Participant  0:00  
Sort of jammed in that kind of [plays piano notes]... Jammed in that sort of thing and as can can never get it to get out of that. Yeah, it's like 'I don't want to, I don't want this idea anymore, but it's sort of plugging away at that stuff. So I'm not sure whether that was because I taught it that I was gonna be playing like that for the entire thing and then it just stuck itself like that

Researcher  0:28  
So do you think you would like to know how the system works in order to play with it?

Participant  0:35  
Yes, I would. In order, I'd like to know how I can control it in a way, because at the moment, I, well, yeah, I don't know whether that it's based on me or you know, whether am I responding to that, or is it responding to me or, you know, we jammed in this, as it sort of worked out the first thing I played and then want to stick on that for the rest of the session.

Researcher  1:02  
So so I can give you some insight about that. So actually the system, when you started playing with the system, the system didn't know anything about music. So it's just learning, it's basically learning from you.

Participant  1:13  
Oh Okay, I was probably a bad person to teach it then.

Researcher  1:16  
No, no, no, no, no, not at all. So this this kind of information, do you think it would have been useful for you to play with it?

Participant  1:25  
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because I've taught it that really Angular, ugly stuff, and so that seems to be all it knows now.

Researcher  1:37  
I mean, the more you play with it, the more it learns. So if you have more sessions with the system, you know, it would start doing different things, because it would learn more for you.

Participant  1:49  
There's like, there's like three cool things that he does, but there's a lot of clunking around between the times that does those cool things.

Researcher  2:00  
So you mentioned now that you would like some way of controlling it. Do you think that you would like some kind of mechanisms to be able to communicate with the system, something like stop doing this?

Participant  2:11  
Well, I'd like it to be more responsive, however that... So like, it's sort of like, okay where we're stuck in, we're stuck in this loop of this tonality that I'm sick of or want to play something a bit more chill and get some more space happening, but it's still plonking away with that [plays piano notes]. With that sort of stuff.

Researcher  2:40  
So, can I ask, you've been a professional musician. I mean, have you done improvisations with other musicians?

Participant  2:48
Yeah, I studied improvisation at Uni. 

Researcher  2:52 
Okay, so when you do that, for instance, this kind of situation of being stuck in something and you wanting the other musician to respond to you. How would that work, when you do it with another person? Would you signal, or does it happen naturally?

Participant  3:11  
Basically, you would present an idea and that would be so obvious that, okay, were moving to this, okay, he's presented me this cool idea that is this nicer, gentler, tonality, we've got to all chill out, and sort of, get some space happening now. Rather than, you know, keeping plugging away at the same thing. 

Researcher  3:34  
Okay, well, I mean, there is some kind of communication there, right? Through the music maybe?

Participant  3:40  
It's not necessarily physical communication. It's like, you might give them a dirty look, if they didn't pick up on it, but it should be an obvious thing. 

Researcher  3:53  
So it's through the music?

Participant  3:55
Yeah, exactly, exactly.  

Researcher  3:58 
Okay. I was looking at your comments while you were doing the study. There is one comment in which you said, 'It's synth tone has an obnoxious edge to it'. So, for instance, in these kind of situations, would you like to be able to signal in some way to the system to stop doing that, that you don't like what it is doing?

Participant  4:26  
Yeah, it would be nice. I don't know how it would be doable, but it would be... I don't know, is it just this synth patch that it is blasting away at full velocity where you get that really harsh tone? Or is it capable of nuance?

Researcher  4:48  
It would be more capable of doing different things, when the time passes more and if you play more with it, it would be able to do more things. This particular AI is very simple. So as I said, it doesn't know anything about music so whatever it learns, it learns from you. I mean, it is limited on the musical information that it can learn. So, it may not be able to learn what you want. So, I guess what I would like to know is, knowing this, that it is limited on its ability; would you like to be able to signal it? Maybe 'stop doing this', or 'quiet'? Because in one of the comments you said 'that there was no time, there was no time to reflect back'.

Participant  5:43  
'No space', maybe? 

Researcher  3:48
'No space', yes, you said something about 'no space'. 

Participant  5:49  
Yeah it's terrible at finding space, and it's sort of a vicious cycle, you know, you try to chill out and try to get a bit of a space but because it's there, blasting away still you feel 'I've got to sort of join in'.

Researcher  6:03  
So when you say 'finding space' it is to quiet down and think about it?

Participant  6:09  
Well, you know, music is about the space as well as the notes, you need silence and you need periods of very little going on. Which it doesn't understand.

Researcher  6:22  
So actually, if you stop playing, then after 15 seconds it will stop as well, and will give you that space.

Participant  6:33  
Yeah, but yeah, that doesn't seem to, you know, it should... It would be nice if it knew that, 'hang on, I'm gonna...'

Researcher  6:40  
So, in that instance, for instance, imagine a peddal, which when you when you touch it, it will stop. It will kind of move into giving you that space. Do you think that that is something that would improve the interaction with the system for you? 

Participant  7:04  
I guess, maybe. Maybe a way to dump what it's currently got and retrain it. So, to be able to say, 'Hey, don't play this anymore' [plays piano notes], 'All this stuff now, wipe that from your brain'.

Researcher  7:25  
There is actually a way, there is a reset button there. What happened is that I didn't talk about that one. But it's good to know that you think that that would be a good thing. 

Participant  7:35  
Yeah, I think yeah, I mean that's a fun Angular kind of theme, but that's not the thing that I want to play for the rest of the afternoon. 

Researcher  7:48  
And then the last question is, in the video I saw that you were looking at the computer sometimes. I don't know if you realise that, sometimes you looked at the computer. I'm just thinking if the computer, for instance, has some kind of interface that shows you what the system is doing in some way, maybe using colours to signal kind of things, like 'I am going to stop' or something like that, some kind of communication system. Do you think that having something like that, not like a pedal but something that you're just looking at it, you just can look at it from time to time?

Participant  8:27  
Yeah, that would be really cool. And even if there was some way that you could just see it there, banging away. You can sort of pick out little things that it's doing in there that make sense musically, but it would be kind of nice to see it doing something, just to see whether this is totally random or if there is some reason to all of this. 

Researcher  09:13
Okay, perfect. Thank you so much, it is very useful. 

Participant  9:18 
Can I... All the time it wants play E Flat, no matter what [plays piano notes]. Have we reset it? E Flat, all the time, E Flat [plays piano notes]. 

Researcher2 09:47  
That is really interesting. We didn't write the AI model here at SensiLab. That was our partners in GoldSmiths.

Participant  10:01
Because if I am in C-Major, that should be the last thing that it wants to play [plays piano notes].

Researcher  10:05  
Do you think that that challenges you?

Participant  10:08  
Oh, yeah, absolutley.

Researcher  10:10
In a bad way?

Participant  10:11
Now that now that I know that it's just going to that all the time it is super frustrating. So, this is a blank slate now? 

Researcher  10:24
Yeah.

Participant  10:26
[plays piano notes] So it will do my F major.

Okay, so this is better. That got all the F major stuff happening. It does that fine. But there is just that E Flat going on. Has anyone, does the goldsmith guys notice that?

Researcher2  11:35  
You're probably the first person that's gotten to this depth of interaction with it. So we'll bring it up in the next meeting, it will be interesting to see whats going on.

Participant  11:45  
Yeah, it's almost as if there's a faulty key contact or something.

Researcher  11:53  
It's always contacted. Yeah.

Participant  12:11  
What would be cool is if there was a way to explicitly say, never play this note.

Researcher  12:27  
Okay, that's interesting. That's interesting.

Participant  12:30  
Because that's a particularly dissonant note from what we should be doing.

Researcher  12:37  
Okay.

Participant  12:38  
So I can say this is kind of cool. Okay, we're in F major.

Researcher  12:50  
that's actually interesting. I don't know really why's happening. We will talk about that. 

Participant  12:58  
Is that the highest note maybe that it can play? 

Researcher2 13:08
It should be able to replicate what you can put in.

Researcher  13:10  
Yeah, because as I say, it learns from you.

Researcher2 13:13
Okay I'll reset it now. 

Participant  13:51 
[plays piano notes] Okay, we've cured it from its E Flat.

Participant  14:32
[plays piano notes] Okay this is a lot nicer.

Researcher 15:03
Can you record?

Researcher2 15:05
Can we record this?

Participant  15:06
Yeah, of course. [plays piano notes]

I guess if you give it a really simple tonality, and don't stray from it, it can cope with it. 

Researcher2 15:30
Thats what I found as well. 

Participant  15:33
But I guess then its basically just a glorified arpeggiator in a way.

Researcher2  15:42  
Yeah, so it learnes the notes you input and some of the timing information and puts that into a model, and then pulls from that model. One thing we're thinking about adding is a bit of memory. So it can only remember the last minute for the last thirty seconds. At the moment, it keeps it all from when you hit reset, but we're thinking of giving up just a snapshot of memory instead. 

Participant  16:41 
Okay this is so much nicer.

Participant  17:24 
Yeah that one was heaps nicer. 

Researcher  17:41  
Yeah, okay. That interaction was very nice, actually. It was like you really learn how to train it. 

Participant  17:50  
so much like, you got to set a have. You got to treat it easy. And it sort of responds a lot nicer. I guess maybe if you're doing something dissonant and Angular, you need to use the dissonance in judicious ways, which is very hard to teach how to do that, so it's safer to give it some consonant stuff just to go with.

Researcher  18:37  
I mean, the thing that we want to know with this is how we can improve the interaction with the system. In some way you communicated with the system there, by teaching which notes you didn't like. I think that's the kind of thing that we want to know, in which kind of ways would you like to able to communicate with the system and which kind of things you would like to be able to communicate the system. So for instance, the notes that you don't want, or to give you space?  Is there anything that you can think of that you would like to be able to communicate with the system, or the system to communicate to you as well?

Participant  19:26  
I guess with the model, it's just so difficult to do anything more advanced.Yeah, it's not going to work out advanced musical concepts.

Researcher  19:55  
No, no, no, no. that's not done yet. 

Participant  20:02  
so yeah I guess maybe.. have we we reset the model? [play piano notes] Okay so we've got this and it's never going to do anything different from this, and then that's happening it's totally different. Okay. So it kept that F Sharp in its memory. So it's not resetting its memory I think.

Researcher  21:22  
I will have to check that. a 

Participant  21:43
That's why it was giving me that E Flat.
Now let's try something, let's go [plays piano notes]. E Flat [plays piano notes], E minor [plays piano notes], lets go G [plays piano notes]. Yeah its retaining that [plays piano notes].

Researcher  22:43  
Yeah I will have to check that.

Participant  22:45  
That might make a lot of my stuff moot. Because if it's jammed that E Flat in there for a lot of my stuff that might be what was driving me crazy.
