Google’s first-ever AI-based Doodle is trained in the school of Bach

You can harmonise a two-bar melody in the German composer’s trademark style.

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In commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach’s upcoming birthday, Google has rolled out its first-ever AI-powered Doodle, which lets you compose a four-voice choral harmony in the German composer’s style.

Through an interactive platform, you can input a two-bar phrase, click on a button and hear your composition harmonised with a Bach-esque, Baroque flavour.

What’s unique about this Doodle, however, is its Coconet machine learning model. Developed by Google Magenta’s AI resident, Anna Huang, Coconet is designed for a variety of musical tasks, including composition and harmonising melodies. Google trained Coconet using 306 chorale harmonisations by Bach, enabling it to generate polyphonic music that sounds like it’s by the German composer himself.

Google’s PAIR (People + AI Research) team then used some clever code, called TensorFlow.js, that enables the machine learning process to take place on a web browser – as opposed to using racks and racks of servers.

The result of this collaboration is a fun and entertaining music creation tool. Start composing your own four-voice piece by clicking on the Doodle here.

Check out how the Doodle was designed in the video above. And for more technical details on Coconet, head over to magenta.tensorflow.org.

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