Researcher  0:05  
Yeah, no, just keep going. That's okay. With the garage band

Participant  0:09  
Um, yeah, it was like a drummer, it wasn't exactly .... I suppose it was an AI, like, I would say, play something like this, something like this something like this, and then it would generate you a drum loop. But it wasn't very dynamic. And it didn't really learn from you, it was sort of predetermined. Like, it seemed like rule based

Researcher: 
it would suggest you things that you could play next is that what you are saying?

Participant: 
 No, no, no, no. So you would say play something into the system? Yeah. So you would tell a auto drama, I want something like rock with a little bit of jazz, right? And then it would kind of meld that in based on I think it just had a whole lot of pre determined loops, and it would like they would just categorised and would just blend them as you wanted it. But it wasn't very, like it wasn't very deep. 

Researcher: 
So that's that was the whole interaction with the system, like some parameters, initial parameters, and yeah, the system would output something and that's it.

Participant: 
Yeah. But it but it wasn't it. Yeah, it wasn't very, like, there wasn't a lot of options. Okay. Yeah, it was, it was pretty basic. Yeah. 

Researcher: 
Okay, now. Perfect. Thank you so much. I guess I have some, a few questions. So have you improvised with a human musician before? 

Participant: 
Yeah, lots lots, Yeah, 

Researcher:
Yeah? Good. Good. So you have good experience. So can I ask you how was it different to do it with the system from your experience?

Participant:
So this thing was, I think. So I find playing with somebody, you can definitely gauge a lot by looking at each other. And you can, you can give cues like, they're like, come on, we're going this, we are building up, we are building up, or then we want to be quiet and really like this. There's a lot more communication that can happen. And I think as well, the other person, especially my brother plays a lot as well, he probably plays more than me. So like, we will saw Brad like, you know, he'll play drums and I'll play guitar, or I'll play drums and he'll play guitar. But I think because we… or whatever, keyboard. And because we've grown up listening to similar music, I think if I play something that would trigger a lot of things for him and vice versa. And so we seem to be able to know like, Okay, I know you'd like to play like that. So if I play something like this over the top, I know you like that. And then I know that would trigger something for you. And this is back and forth, reinforcing growing kind of effect…. I'd say those two things, probably actually get visual cues and you can feed off of each other. You sort of keep building up together.

Researcher  2:52  
So you think that those visual cues are really, 

Participant:
really important. 

Researcher:
And also also the fact that you know, each other, and how you play

Participant  3:04  
Yeah, that's also important. Exactly, because I find sometimes, especially if I'm playing guitar, sitting down to play with somebody, it's not always it's not as easy for every person. It's harder to play with some people than it is for other people just can't seem to find the flow together and the feel. Eventually, we can usually work towards something. But sometimes it's really like, Oh, I know what you want to play like that. Oh, I can't quite find the Find the find the balance and find that. Um, I don't even know that that musical thing.

Researcher  3:45  
Did you find a balance with the system? Eventually? 

Participant  3:47  
No, I felt like it. I never. I never knew what it was playing. And it felt sort of, like there was random things here and there like that. Like, whoa, okay, then I'd be like, Okay, he's does this or this like, this isn't? I felt like I couldn't get feedback properly.

Researcher  4:11  
Okay, okay. Balance. Did you feel challenge? By that, I mean, of course I understand. You want to be able to get like, on the groove in some way, with the system. But what do you think that in any way? Maybe that challenged you to go out of your comfort zone? 


Participant  4:33  
Yes. Yeah, it definitely did. That was that was definitely one thing I noticed was that was like cool. Okay, so if I play just basic chords, it's going to play something that's totally crazy over the top. It's like okay, well how about I try and play something totally crazy as well and and see if that wants to play chords, or if that wants to go even crazier if that balances out. And it definitely like I found myself trying to experiment and see if I could find something that would that would feel more Loving and harmonious with the system... There wasn't definitely wasn't an immediate like, Oh, yeah, perfect. Exactly, that's exactly like what I would expect you to play or like something like what I would expect, like say playing I don't know, I think I just started I think I'd start with the C major, I saw in nodal that it was set to C. So said write C major straightaway. And instead of expecting something like, you know, it would play a C and E, and then maybe something else for colour, like in I don't know an A, like some melody over the top or something like that. It sounded like it was going to keep jumping around the scale and, and all over the place. Which is, which is totally unexpected.

Researcher  5:46  
Would you say in a good way or in a bad way? Or neutral?

Participant  5:54  
it didn't feel natural. No, it didn't feel natural. Or some sometimes there were points and I went, hey, that sounds really cool. Little flashes, like flashes of like, wow, hey, that's really nice. But then it would fall back into something random again, and I couldn't, I didn't feel like it would hold. Like, hold something consistent? together.

Researcher  6:18  
Okay, consistent, you didn’t find consistency, 

Participant  6:20  
no it was, it felt a little too random. Like it was, Like there wasn't? I don't know. Say if you would play a melody and you might play a three note melody. And then so you would play three notes? I don't know you would you would play it for three bars. Then on the fourth bar, you would maybe add a fourth note in to finish or something, you know, there would be this like, natural, consistent, consistent, consistent, a little bit different like this. structured, okay. Which I didn't feel was there. It felt sort of like five minutes, three notes. two notes. One note, nothing.

Researcher  6:59  
Okay, no, that's good to know. Yeah, so you said at some point that you would like to know the intention in the system, in your comments in music circle. I have these one: “did it decide to keep playing what I was playing? Because I stopped and it thought ... was it imitating? or did it think it would sound nice with the arpeggio?”

Participant  7:22  
yeah. Yeah. But the arpeggio so yeah. So I. So in the end, in the end, I think I was playing, I made it as simple I want to make as simple as I could, to see, okay, partly partly, partly because trying to play something complex. And hearing these random things like I was actually struggling to keep in time, like Normally, you almost like you can anticipate and you know exactly what the other person is going to play and when they're going to play it. And so it's easy to keep in time but but I had no anticipation where the system would go. So I think I just had a fifth chord i think i and i think it an A and then a C, and then maybe an E as well like like just distant fifth chords. And another nice little melody over the top to see what it would fill in. And then to see what would happen if I changed and I went to something that was less. uummm, like held notes. And I went to something more like staccato like, like the arpeggiator whether it would then decide okay, well, maybe I should play held notes now. Right? So maybe if I play something that's like, staccato over the top of your staccato, it'll just be like, dude, like, there's no, there's no like chords with a melody on top, or something like that. So So I wanted to see, Well, if I if I start playing something that wants to have chords with it, will the system realise that? And it did in a play the chords I was playing before, but I wasn't sure if that was because it was just mimicking me. Or whether it actually realised No, hey, these chords will be nice, because I because it played the A over the A, the it played a minor over the A minor arpeggio.

Researcher  9:10  
Okay, so would it be? Is it important to you at all to know, if the system was imitating you? why the system decided, for instance, to follow the cords at that time, or it wouldn't be?

Participant  9:25  
It wouldn't be important in the sense that I would feel uncomfortable not knowing. But given I think it was because there was more randomness. And I can't actually, there's no visual cues to know Okay, what is that? Like? What's the system going to do next? They say if you play with playing with somebody and you can play 16 bars, and you get to the end of the 16 bars, and you can kind of see that, okay, by someone's drumming, you know, they might start drumming a little harder, a little harder, you know, it's building up in it. You're at, you know that you want to change, there's going to something else is going to come next. Okay, but that like that couldn't happen with the system. So it would be nice to know, if it's realising, hey, I think I think we should change soon, right? We've played through our 16 bars or 32 bars or however many. And it's, it's, it's time. But the structure of of the way you're playing suggests that you should change to a new section next.

Researcher  10:33  
Do we like to know that from the system?

Participant  10:35  
Yeah, that would be nice to know. Because you can't tell? If you can't tell by looking at it face to face.

Researcher  10:43  
Do you think that it was more about you taking the lead on all those decisions?

Participant  10:48  
Yeah, it was, but then I, it was hard, because I felt like I had to take the lead, in the sense that what I would play, the machine would, the system would play to me. But then I had to also play conservatively, so that the system wouldn't be or that it would be able to learn some structure and some consistency, and it wouldn't be too. Like, it wouldn't feel too random. Okay, because even if I tried to play something more complex, then it wouldn't. When I was rehearsing with the system, and I was trying to play something more complex. I was just getting like, no structure at all. It felt completely like, I have no idea what the system's doing. Like I can't.

Researcher  11:35  
Can I ask actually, when you did the recording did you hit the reset button? Do you remember that? Because the system is learning from you. But if you reset, then it will forget everything



Participant  11:52  
no No, no, no, no, no, I didn't know that. So that's.. when I was rehearsing. I kept. I kept resetting to try different things. And I thought and I thought, okay, no, actually, like, I'm going to play something and I'm gonna play and try and just hold it and play something that's almost exactly the same for 10 minutes, and see if then it builds up model over like, a lot, a lot longer than 30 seconds or something. Okay, a one minute or two minutes. And so getting like, even though I don't want to play the same thing for 10 minutes, I'm gonna play something just in a row with a chord, C chord, E chord, for 10 minutes. And then after that, I did the recording.

Researcher  12:32  
Okay, yeah. Okay. Okay. That's amazing.

Participant  12:35  
Okay. And it did feel after that, it did feel like there was more structure after playing for that long, but it didn't feel like there was that much more, it was noticeable, but it wasn't as much as I would have expected. Okay, although I'm not really sure what I would expect.

Researcher  12:55  
Okay, that's important. Um, I guess you have mentioned a lot about the visual cues, what kind of visual cues do you think that you could have from a system of this kind? Because, of course, we do have you know, gestures or something like that? What kind of visual cues or what kind of communication that is different to the music? Because I imagine you can communicate through the music, Yeah, right. Yeah, but what else

Participant  13:25  
I think in terms of purely purely sound something like a frequency filter increasing or something like something like a volume increasing or just a big long swell, like so you know, when you'd be listening to a song and say, you can feel that there's a there's a chorus coming because everything's swelling up and that the frequency is building and building it higher and higher, it's cutting out the lows, cutting out the lows and lows, lows, lows, lows, until the point that such high frequency and you know, the brighter the end, everything comes back. And you can tell that entirely by listening is no, there's no need to hear. Okay, so there's no need to see, let's say some of the drama. You can hear that the Hi Hat opens up right here it goes much. And starts to the sound starts filling and filling and filling in the volume increases. And, and it's like, okay, something's coming. We got to build we're gonna change the next the next part of the song. So that definitely is completely completely audio.

Researcher  14:34  
Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Participant  14:36  
It's in terms of something visual. Maybe if you had a count of how many bars you've been playing, or maybe it might have something that's new, you'll see like, as if you're in Ableton or something and you watch your that you watch the line. go across through through your song as it's getting the pieces. And you can see you can see the the drop off, or the point where you can see our here's that here's the end, and you watch it, you watch the beats and accounts along and you know, you know what's coming up just by a signal just by a little tick something or a dash? I don't know.

Researcher  15:21  
Okay, okay. Um, what about if you had the kind of information after the performance? So for instance, let's say you annotated music circle, the performance? What if the system was able to respond back to you telling you what it was doing at that point in time? Or showing you this type of information visually, that would help for future performance? Or

Participant  15:48  
it depends, I think. I think it would only be helpful if you wanted to make something else, like what you were making before. So say if you were, say, say, if you were? Well, I can imagine trying to rehearse a song and I say, I really like this set of quotes. I really like this set of chords. And I really like this. Okay, I'm gonna try and make a song out of these. And then you play something you said, Yeah, that was pretty nice. That was pretty nice. Okay, it wasn't super wasn't quite in sync with the systems I would like to be okay. So what was this and thinking? Ah, right. Also one of the change there, and I want to change that. Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay. And then you can try again, same sort of chords, same. Essentially, you're trying to remake the song.

Researcher  16:37  
So we'll be like a kind of a composition exercise.

Participant  16:40  
Yeah. And you end up building with essentially the same. You've got the same sound, not necessarily the same sound, you've got the same, the same chords, the same melody, maybe maybe slightly different. But essentially the same thing you're trying to improve upon the song you just made. But it should be it should be very similar, I think to the song you just made, you're not trying to make something completely new.

Researcher  17:01  
Like, really, for improvisation doesn't work as well.

Participant  17:06  
Yeah, I think seeing seeing what the system did during the song you just made, depending on the depending on how how much the system learns what you're playing, would be less useful for improvisation. I think. I think for improvisation, and this is the way I feel when I'm when I'm playing. If I'm if I'm improvising, what the thing I feel, the way I feel my my, I don't know, my thought process, I guess, most of the show, I've never really tried to put it into words. But I think the way that I'm processing the sound of the way I'm choosing what I'm playing is very much on entirely on past experiences. Like I would take small phrases, small phrases of things I know, and build them up over the chords I can hear. So somebody is playing.

Researcher  18:10  
Mm

Participant  18:13  
hmm. I don't know, say jazzy chords. Now we hear that and I can hear the seventh in there. And the I don't know the the dominant chords and little notes that give that really jazz colour here that and then my, my decisions for how to improvise over that will be will be okay. I know I've played something like that, like x over these chords before. I'll try that again. And that'll be all entirely something that's like, past experiences. And it really is funny, because when that when before I learned how to improvise. And when I was first learning to do it, I thought it was something that you just made up on the spot. And I was like, how does anybody do that? Like, this is so impossible. But now I it's like, no, this is actually the easiest thing. Because it's just practice is all built up. It's all practice and to actually generate a set of chords that sounds unique is so much harder. And I would have thought at the start, but that's the easy part. And it's completely flipped.

Researcher  19:27  
Okay, that's good. Can I ask you one last question? like have you improvised with a person that you haven't played with before? 

Participant:
Yes, yeah. 

Researcher: 
And has it been challenging? Yeah, it is, in any way similar to what happened with the system or he put in?

Participant  19:54  
I think, I think again, the key is, I think improvising with somebody that is very likely that visual cue then suddenly starts to come in so much more. Okay, there's like a there's like a, say play if I'm playing chords and a little bit, there'll be a UK playing like a gesture. Yeah, keep going, keep going, keep going. Keep playing solos. Like, that's fine. Like, watching and seeing how they want to play in sync. Should I play louder? Should I play softer? Should I play? Nice? Should I add morning? Should I take more out? And then the same goes for say, if, if I'm playing a solo for somebody else's chord so that there's a real lot of information gained from face to face. Okay, um, but it's definitely more difficult playing with somebody, you know, at least that's what I've been playing with somebody I've never play with is more difficult. And it's not consistently the same difficulty. So some people it clicks almost, it's like, it's like, or, you know, 10 sometimes, like 30 seconds of war, what's going on? And then it clicks and then it's easiest. And then it's just like, Oh, we found that we found the level we found the sink like that, that okay, this is your this is me, too. It's different, what we usually do, but we we've, we found the balance really quickly. Whereas for some people like that will take half an hour now or even.

Researcher  21:26  
Okay. Rehearse at all before, like doing real improvisation?

Participant  21:32  
not usually. not usually. It depends. I, if it's if it's with somebody that I've never played with before, I'll usually say okay, so like, what do you like to play? Like, do you like, do you like this? Do you like that sound? Do you? like playing to play? High? high tempo, low tempo? Like loud, like soft? Like blues, jazz? That rock, you know, get the kind of like a baseline? Like, it's like, Okay, he's say, Yes. He said, Okay, I like jazz. Alright, okay, grab the seventh chords, got the dominant chord, scrub, the funky, minor, suspended. Second, you know, like, pull pull the Okay, it's like, Okay, I get these interesting cords. Whereas if there's a no, I like, country, looking, okay, straight majors minor, there's nothing else. Like, you know, so this is a, this is little cue at the start. it's almost like it's a. It's like it's a GAN, right? And it's like, you give a GAN, a key word and say, Make me a tree, right? generate me an image of a tree. And you just say tree, and then I'll come up with what my idea of tree is. Right? It's like, okay, say play something country. Okay, I'll come with my idea of country. And it might not be exactly what the other person says. But at least it's like a guide. Whereas with the system, it's like, Okay, I'm going to play and I have no idea what you're going to play. There's no common ground at all to begin with.

Researcher  23:12  
Would you find it useful to have some kind of?

Participant  23:14  
Yeah, I think it would be, I think it would be nice to say something like, Okay. Yeah, just just a little prompt, a little, just just a little bit, a little bit of a prompt to say, it can almost be like two people coming together to draw a picture. But and they just start and they draw something random, you get to completely like that, it might get to a picture that looks complete as a whole. But it might get one person drawing a landscape and the other person during half the face, and they'll just come together. And it's like, cool. Okay, but where's the say, to begin with you say something like a tree, you say something like tree, and then both people will draw something that it might be, it might be really similar, but it's so might be different. But there'll be that key connecting that common ground underneath the both build from and then that and it's apparent throughout.

Researcher  24:22  
Thank you so much. Anything else you would like to? I mean, it's been really, all day. Yeah. Yeah.

Participant  24:32  
It was definitely really interesting. Like, I've never played. I never played with something dynamic like that.

Researcher  24:39  
Would you play with it? Again?

Participant  24:41  
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Definitely. I would, I think I think I would, I would like if it had some kind of common ground, and I knew at least a little bit of what might come next, then I think it would be a lot more enjoyable. And I think I would feel a lot more like it was a collaboration Okay, um, I think maybe not. Maybe Maybe in reality if I dealt with that it would it wouldn't happen it would work completely different. Um, I think that's the fundament. What what actually kind of model is there underneath? Is it? Is it something like a Markov? Yeah, cuz I feel like it's funny. Hearing the way it played. It's like, I think this is probably like Markov Chain. Yeah, I don't know. It's felt like something underneath it was this little bit of, like, randomness in there. Yeah. But being able to, to be so dynamic sounds like a copy. It can't be something like a neural network. Because it's wouldn't be able to be trained in playing so it must be must be something. Yeah, something like that.

I think. Yeah, I think I think it was cool to get the little bits that came out. I was like, wow, I would have never thought to play that. But that sounded so nice. And they just popped out here. And they're like, they were the real parts that I went. Wow. That's like, that's cool. That feels like proper creativity. That it's like, well, that's that's that's really yeah, that's like that's cool. That's that's totally different. Um, but But yeah, there was that and then kind of like random other bits that just didn't sound.

Researcher  26:28  
You really have like cool things but then randomness.

Participant  26:31  
Yeah. And then random as well. But yeah, it was like, Wow, that was so cool. Please do that again. And they would just go off completely do something else. Like, no, I'm gonna

Researcher  26:41  
keep doing this.

Participant  26:42  
Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to be like, pumped up. Like That was great. Just like keep playing that just keep playing that like

Researcher  26:45  
Like a button. Yeah, yeah.

Participant  26:48  
Yeah. Exactly. Like, that was great. Go back to that. Go back to that. Look, that was that was awesome. I love just keep that. Nice, nice, because I felt like in those moments, where where did play something like that? It was really, it was cute here. And it was really great. It was like, Well, you know, this is this is really nice, all together. And it would be nice to explore that. So to keep that as like a central theme, right? Keep that little melody at this system playable. or know that rhythm or something and what whatever it might be, and explore and then building kind of, I think that that little piece of that certainty that you keep coming back to it's like the like the whole kind of pop song. Like Like any melody, you know, it's hear it and then you go away and then you come back and he goes away and it comes back and set that take the grounding. I don't even know how to put it.

Researcher  27:52  
That's okay. I think I have got really good feedback from you, is really useful. Thank you so much. 


