Indie/MPB/Experimental song based on a poem by Fernando Pessoa. Song composed for the 2021 AI Song Composition contest.

How we used AI:

At first, we tried to make a GAN learn rhythms from a rhythm textbook. It did give us some novel rhythms, but they could only be used because one of us is a crazy person who likes polyrhythms with prime durations. That is - the GAN did give novelty, but it was disconnected from any sense of intention.

After that, we started reading a poem by Fernando Pessoa, and discussed it to come up with a common ground on its meaning. Then we had an interesting procedure: each of us drew what they understood from each stanza of the poem, and we had an AI (DoodleNet) produce labels for each drawing. Then, we used the labels as keywords for our lyrics. We like to call them our "shared metaphors". This was especially interesting because DoodleNet only provided unexpected labels, which we gave meaning ourselves. We tried to follow Fernando Pessoa's poem's storyline in the lyrics.

The DoodleNet dynamics was much more interesting than the GAN, even if the techniques behind it are not as sophisticated. This is because we used DoodleNet to support our composition process, but the GAN could only be used to produce new material that could be either accepted or rejected. Using the GAN felt more like doing a computer science homework task, or perhaps doing some musicology on (somewhat) random numbers, than like composing music together, as in "sharing the act of creation".

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Lyrics (letra / English translation follows):

Feijão de Corda

Na beira da estrada ao redor da praia
morava uma moça que rastelava o chão.
Ela plantava ervilhas e feijão de corda
e todos os invernos eu a ajudava.

Quando eu ia embora
vinham as andorinhas
e depois, chegavam as tartarugas marinhas,
e a moça costurava essas idas e vindas inexoráveis 
numa colcha de retalhos de destinos.

Ela tinha saudades de quando eu chovia na praia
E a saudade é um mal de quem se recorda
De uma antiga estação
Em uma colcha de retalhos
E ficavam ervilhas e feijão de corda

Num ciclo infinito de esperança e realidade
O rastelo marca as linhas
E deixa viva a ambiguidade
Do crescimento das gavinhas

Com seu destino entalhado
No chão, rastela a linha
dessa colcha de retalhos
Que vai costurar sozinha

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English (translation): String Beans

Near the road, around the beach,
lived a woman who raked the ground.
She planted peas and string beans,
and I helped her every winter,

When I left,
came the birds,
and then, the sea turtles,
and the lady sewed these unavoidable comings and goings in a patchwork blanket.

She missed times when I rained in the beach
and “missing” is a disease for those who remember
an old season
in a patchwork blanket
and all that remains are peas and string beans.

In an infinite cycle of hope and reality
the rake scratches lines in the ground
and brings to life the ambiguity
in the growth of the tendrils

With her carved fate
in the ground, she rakes the line
of the patchwork blanket
she will sew alone

Feijao De Corda (String Beans)

Tridecatonics is a science/art collective named after this amazing paradoxal scale that has 13 notes per octave. Or, in other words: we like science, we like music, and this is our art - we hope you enjoy!

Tridecatonics

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