10th May: Music is hard for humans and AI
Hello all! One day late, as it was a public holiday in Berlin yesterday, the rather curious "Herren tag" (Father's Day), where groups of men go out and get drunk… 🤷♂️. It's also Ascension Day if you're into that sort of thing.
It's a small newsletter this week, and mostly about music.
Enjoy, and if you enjoy what you read, find ways to support me on my website. 💯
Podcast version
Listen to a podcast version of this newsletter on this page, or search for "Chinchilla Squeaks" wherever you get podcasts.
Can AI read and create sheet music?
Sparked by this post and my recent explorations with OCR and sheet music, I came across this interesting article. Despite advancements in tools like ChatGPT4, the nuances of musical notation, such as tempo and dynamics, remain elusive to artificial intelligence. While AI tools like GPT 4 Vision and Anthropix Claude 3 Opus try to decode and analyse musical cues, they struggle with identifying popular music and grasping fundamental music theory concepts like key signatures and time signatures. Considering music generally follows recognisable patterns, it surprised me, but I guess it's also a niche requirement.
The shocking truth about the money bands make on tour
I remember when I was in a touring band reading that Billy Brag in the 1980s made about the same per show as we were making twenty years later. Depressingly, in this article, I learned that it's not any better. In fact, inflation and cost increases have made it even worse. The article sheds light on the sobering truth that the majority of musicians, even those performing for large audiences, find it challenging to sustain a living by touring. The escalating costs of touring, juxtaposed with meagre earnings, present a daunting picture for artists striving to make ends meet through live performances.
Content from me
Writing for robots – How to optimise your writing for LLMs
Based on a presentation I gave (which I will make a video of soon), I wrote a blog post on how to optimise technical copy for LLMs.