1 00:00:00,927 --> 00:00:03,108 I want to talk to you about one thing 2 00:00:03,108 --> 00:00:04,864 and just one thing only, 3 00:00:04,864 --> 00:00:08,620 and this has to do with when people ask me, 4 00:00:08,620 --> 00:00:11,867 what do you do? 5 00:00:11,867 --> 00:00:13,767 To which I usually respond, 6 00:00:13,767 --> 00:00:16,907 I do computer music. 7 00:00:16,907 --> 00:00:18,852 Now, a number of people 8 00:00:18,852 --> 00:00:21,089 just stop talking to me right then and there, 9 00:00:21,089 --> 00:00:23,502 and the rest who are left usually have 10 00:00:23,502 --> 00:00:25,750 this blank look in their eye, 11 00:00:25,750 --> 00:00:27,919 as if to say, what does that mean? 12 00:00:27,919 --> 00:00:30,137 And I feel like I'm actually depriving them 13 00:00:30,137 --> 00:00:33,342 of information by telling them this, 14 00:00:33,342 --> 00:00:35,070 at which point I usually panic 15 00:00:35,070 --> 00:00:36,660 and spit out the first thing that comes to my mind, 16 00:00:36,660 --> 00:00:40,442 which is, I have no idea what I'm doing. 17 00:00:40,442 --> 00:00:42,054 Which is true. 18 00:00:42,054 --> 00:00:44,910 That's usually followed by a second thought, 19 00:00:44,910 --> 00:00:48,210 which is, whatever it is that I'm doing, 20 00:00:48,210 --> 00:00:49,902 I love it. 21 00:00:49,902 --> 00:00:53,699 And today, I want to, well, 22 00:00:53,699 --> 00:00:55,870 share with you something I love, 23 00:00:55,870 --> 00:00:57,354 and also why. 24 00:00:57,354 --> 00:01:01,283 And I think we'll begin with just this question: 25 00:01:01,283 --> 00:01:02,620 What is computer music? 26 00:01:02,620 --> 00:01:06,400 And I'm going to try to do my best to provide a definition, 27 00:01:06,400 --> 00:01:08,131 maybe by telling you a story 28 00:01:08,131 --> 00:01:09,778 that goes through some of the stuff 29 00:01:09,778 --> 00:01:11,704 I've been working on. 30 00:01:11,704 --> 00:01:13,516 And the first thing, I think, in our story 31 00:01:13,516 --> 00:01:16,064 is going to be something called ChucK. 32 00:01:16,064 --> 00:01:21,437 Now, ChucK is a programming language for music, 33 00:01:21,437 --> 00:01:24,146 and it's open-source, it's freely available, 34 00:01:24,146 --> 00:01:26,066 and I like to think that it crashes equally well 35 00:01:26,066 --> 00:01:28,410 on all modern operating systems. 36 00:01:28,410 --> 00:01:31,370 And instead of telling you more about it, 37 00:01:31,370 --> 00:01:33,196 I'm just going to give you a demo. 38 00:01:33,196 --> 00:01:34,352 By the way, I'm just going to nerd out 39 00:01:34,352 --> 00:01:35,981 for just a few minutes here, 40 00:01:35,981 --> 00:01:38,779 so I would say, don't freak out. 41 00:01:38,779 --> 00:01:40,850 In fact, I would invite all of you to join me 42 00:01:40,850 --> 00:01:42,034 in just geeking out. 43 00:01:42,034 --> 00:01:45,096 If you've never written a line of code before in your life, 44 00:01:45,096 --> 00:01:46,282 do not worry. 45 00:01:46,282 --> 00:01:49,799 I'll bet you'll be able to come along on this. 46 00:01:49,799 --> 00:01:51,218 First thing I'm going to do is to make 47 00:01:51,218 --> 00:01:53,051 a sine wave oscillator, 48 00:01:53,051 --> 00:01:56,085 and we're going to called the sine wave generator 49 00:01:56,085 --> 00:01:58,847 "Ge." 50 00:01:58,847 --> 00:02:00,937 And then we're going to connect "Ge" to the DAC. 51 00:02:00,937 --> 00:02:02,091 Now this is kind of the abstraction 52 00:02:02,091 --> 00:02:04,699 for the sound output on my computer. Okay? 53 00:02:04,699 --> 00:02:07,899 So I've connected myself into the speaker. 54 00:02:07,899 --> 00:02:09,491 Next, I'm going to say my frequency 55 00:02:09,491 --> 00:02:11,459 is 440 hertz, 56 00:02:11,459 --> 00:02:15,278 and I'm going to let time advance 57 00:02:15,278 --> 00:02:18,000 by two seconds through this operation. 58 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:22,068 All right, so if I were to play this -- 59 00:02:22,068 --> 00:02:24,740 (Tone) — 60 00:02:24,740 --> 00:02:27,161 you would hear a sine wave at 440 hertz for two seconds. 61 00:02:27,161 --> 00:02:30,187 Okay, great. Now I'm going to copy and paste this, 62 00:02:30,187 --> 00:02:31,931 and then just change some of these numbers, 63 00:02:31,931 --> 00:02:35,891 220.5, 440 I shall leave it as that, 64 00:02:35,891 --> 00:02:38,331 and .5 and 880. 65 00:02:38,331 --> 00:02:39,693 By doubling the frequency, 66 00:02:39,693 --> 00:02:42,210 we're actually going up in successive octaves, 67 00:02:42,210 --> 00:02:43,547 and then we have this sequence -- 68 00:02:43,547 --> 00:02:45,674 (Tones) — of tones. 69 00:02:45,674 --> 00:02:47,580 Okay, great, now I can imagine creating 70 00:02:47,580 --> 00:02:49,022 all kinds of really horrible 71 00:02:49,022 --> 00:02:51,420 single sine wave pieces of music with this, 72 00:02:51,420 --> 00:02:54,332 but I'm going to do something that computers are really good at, 73 00:02:54,332 --> 00:02:56,156 which is repetition. 74 00:02:56,156 --> 00:02:57,860 I'm going to put this all in a while loop, 75 00:02:57,860 --> 00:02:59,156 and you actually don't need to indent, 76 00:02:59,156 --> 00:03:01,280 but this is purely for aesthetic reasons. 77 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:02,884 It's good practice. 78 00:03:02,884 --> 00:03:04,464 And when we do this — 79 00:03:04,464 --> 00:03:08,961 (Tones) — 80 00:03:08,961 --> 00:03:10,134 that's going to go on for a while. 81 00:03:10,134 --> 00:03:11,628 In fact, it's probably not going to stop 82 00:03:11,628 --> 00:03:13,411 until this computer disintegrates. 83 00:03:13,411 --> 00:03:16,110 And I can't really empirically prove that to you, 84 00:03:16,110 --> 00:03:19,779 but I hope you'll believe me when I say that. 85 00:03:19,779 --> 00:03:21,655 Next, I'm going to replace this 220 86 00:03:21,655 --> 00:03:24,461 by math.random2f. 87 00:03:24,461 --> 00:03:25,739 I'm going to generate a random number 88 00:03:25,739 --> 00:03:28,879 between 30 and 1,000 and send that 89 00:03:28,879 --> 00:03:30,965 to the frequency of me. 90 00:03:30,965 --> 00:03:33,065 And I'm going to do this every half a second. 91 00:03:33,065 --> 00:03:36,007 (Tones) 92 00:03:36,007 --> 00:03:38,668 Let's do this every 200 milliseconds. 93 00:03:38,668 --> 00:03:43,290 (Tones) 94 00:03:43,290 --> 00:03:44,745 One hundred. 95 00:03:44,745 --> 00:03:46,357 (Tones) 96 00:03:46,357 --> 00:03:47,591 All right. 97 00:03:47,591 --> 00:03:49,535 At this point, we've reached something 98 00:03:49,535 --> 00:03:50,605 that I would like to think of as 99 00:03:50,605 --> 00:03:54,626 the canonical computer music. 100 00:03:54,626 --> 00:03:58,443 This is, to me, the sound that mainframes 101 00:03:58,443 --> 00:03:59,565 are supposed to be making 102 00:03:59,565 --> 00:04:02,807 when they're thinking really hard. 103 00:04:02,807 --> 00:04:04,900 It's this sound, it's like, 104 00:04:04,900 --> 00:04:08,471 the square root of five million. 105 00:04:10,427 --> 00:04:14,211 So is this computer music? 106 00:04:14,211 --> 00:04:16,190 Yeah, I guess by definition, 107 00:04:16,190 --> 00:04:17,395 it's kind of computer music. 108 00:04:17,395 --> 00:04:20,403 It's probably not the kind of music you would listen to 109 00:04:20,403 --> 00:04:21,891 cruising down the highway, 110 00:04:21,891 --> 00:04:26,907 but it's a foundation of computer-generated music, 111 00:04:26,907 --> 00:04:29,110 and using ChucK, 112 00:04:29,110 --> 00:04:30,803 we've actually been building instruments 113 00:04:30,803 --> 00:04:32,699 in the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, 114 00:04:32,699 --> 00:04:36,900 based right here at Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. 115 00:04:36,900 --> 00:04:39,683 Now the Laptop Orchestra is an ensemble of laptops, 116 00:04:39,683 --> 00:04:42,312 humans and special hemispherical speaker arrays. 117 00:04:42,312 --> 00:04:43,909 Now the reason we have these 118 00:04:43,909 --> 00:04:46,379 is so that for the instruments that we create 119 00:04:46,379 --> 00:04:48,603 out of the laptop, we want the sound to come 120 00:04:48,603 --> 00:04:51,123 out of somewhere near the instrument 121 00:04:51,123 --> 00:04:52,491 and the performer, 122 00:04:52,491 --> 00:04:55,193 kind of much like a traditional, acoustic instrument. 123 00:04:55,193 --> 00:04:57,079 Like, if I were to play a violin here, 124 00:04:57,079 --> 00:04:59,190 the sound would naturally not come out of 125 00:04:59,190 --> 00:05:01,964 the P.A. system, but from the artifact itself. 126 00:05:01,964 --> 00:05:05,171 So these speakers are meant to emulate that. 127 00:05:05,171 --> 00:05:06,500 In fact, I'm going to show you 128 00:05:06,500 --> 00:05:09,243 how we actually built them. 129 00:05:09,243 --> 00:05:11,307 The first step is to go to IKEA 130 00:05:11,307 --> 00:05:12,687 and buy a salad bowl. 131 00:05:12,687 --> 00:05:15,917 This is an 11-inch Blanda Matt. 132 00:05:15,917 --> 00:05:17,415 That's the actual name, 133 00:05:17,415 --> 00:05:18,837 and I actually use one of these 134 00:05:18,837 --> 00:05:21,065 to make salad at home as well, I kid you not. 135 00:05:21,065 --> 00:05:24,236 And the first step is you turn it upside down, 136 00:05:24,236 --> 00:05:26,711 and then you drill holes in them, 137 00:05:26,711 --> 00:05:29,220 six holes per hemi, 138 00:05:29,220 --> 00:05:30,934 and then make a base plate, 139 00:05:30,934 --> 00:05:33,614 put car speaker drivers in them 140 00:05:33,614 --> 00:05:36,205 along with amplifiers in the enclosure, 141 00:05:36,205 --> 00:05:37,559 and you put that all together and you have 142 00:05:37,559 --> 00:05:39,333 these hemispherical speaker arrays. 143 00:05:39,333 --> 00:05:40,896 Add people, add laptops, 144 00:05:40,896 --> 00:05:43,584 you have a laptop orchestra. 145 00:05:43,584 --> 00:05:47,114 And what might a laptop orchestra sound like? 146 00:05:47,114 --> 00:05:49,033 Well, let me give you a demonstration 147 00:05:49,033 --> 00:05:52,268 of about 200 instruments we've created so far 148 00:05:52,268 --> 00:05:55,511 for the Laptop Orchestra. 149 00:05:55,511 --> 00:05:57,938 And what I'm going to do is actually come over to this thing. 150 00:05:57,938 --> 00:06:00,143 This thing I have in front of me 151 00:06:00,143 --> 00:06:03,355 actually used to be a commodity gaming controller 152 00:06:03,355 --> 00:06:05,145 called a Gametrak. 153 00:06:05,145 --> 00:06:07,021 This thing actually has a glove you can put on your hands. 154 00:06:07,021 --> 00:06:08,581 It's tethered to the base, 155 00:06:08,581 --> 00:06:11,110 and this will track the position of your hands 156 00:06:11,110 --> 00:06:12,163 in real time. 157 00:06:12,163 --> 00:06:15,537 It was originally designed as a golfing controller 158 00:06:15,537 --> 00:06:17,453 to detect the motion of your swing. 159 00:06:17,453 --> 00:06:19,984 That turned out to be a rather large 160 00:06:19,984 --> 00:06:21,688 commercial non-success, 161 00:06:21,688 --> 00:06:25,442 at which point they slashed prices to 10 dollars, 162 00:06:25,442 --> 00:06:27,450 at which point computer music researchers 163 00:06:27,450 --> 00:06:29,508 said, "This is awesome! 164 00:06:29,508 --> 00:06:32,257 We can prototype instruments out of this." 165 00:06:32,257 --> 00:06:35,201 So let me show you one instrument we've created, 166 00:06:35,201 --> 00:06:37,113 one of many, and this instrument 167 00:06:37,113 --> 00:06:38,682 is called "Twilight," 168 00:06:38,682 --> 00:06:41,368 and it's meant to go with this metaphor 169 00:06:41,368 --> 00:06:44,401 of pulling a sound out of the ground. 170 00:06:44,401 --> 00:06:47,752 So let me see if this will work. 171 00:06:47,752 --> 00:06:54,188 (Music) 172 00:06:56,968 --> 00:06:58,791 And put it back. 173 00:06:58,791 --> 00:07:02,886 And then if you go to the left, 174 00:07:02,886 --> 00:07:05,381 right, 175 00:07:09,427 --> 00:07:13,231 it sounds like an elephant in pain. 176 00:07:13,231 --> 00:07:16,259 This is a slightly metallic sound. 177 00:07:16,259 --> 00:07:19,613 Turn it just a bit. 178 00:07:19,613 --> 00:07:22,569 (Music) 179 00:07:25,211 --> 00:07:28,785 It's like a hovering car. 180 00:07:32,406 --> 00:07:33,799 Okay. 181 00:07:33,799 --> 00:07:37,965 This third one is a ratchet-like interaction, so 182 00:07:39,360 --> 00:07:41,911 let me turn it up. 183 00:07:44,915 --> 00:07:49,710 (Music) 184 00:07:50,068 --> 00:07:51,948 So it's a slightly different interaction. 185 00:07:51,948 --> 00:07:54,902 The fourth one is a drone. 186 00:07:55,583 --> 00:08:00,760 (Music) 187 00:08:08,613 --> 00:08:11,319 And finally, let's see, 188 00:08:11,319 --> 00:08:13,130 this is a totally different interaction, 189 00:08:13,130 --> 00:08:14,940 and I think you have to imagine that there's 190 00:08:14,940 --> 00:08:17,872 this giant invisible drum sitting right here on stage, 191 00:08:17,872 --> 00:08:20,315 and I'm going to bang it. 192 00:08:22,255 --> 00:08:24,902 (Drum) 193 00:08:24,902 --> 00:08:27,689 (Laughter) 194 00:08:28,241 --> 00:08:30,685 So there we go, so that's one of many instruments 195 00:08:30,685 --> 00:08:32,455 in the Laptop Orchestra. 196 00:08:32,455 --> 00:08:36,009 (Applause) 197 00:08:36,009 --> 00:08:38,290 Thank you. 198 00:08:38,290 --> 00:08:40,396 And when you put that together, 199 00:08:40,396 --> 00:08:44,464 you get something that sounds like this. 200 00:08:44,464 --> 00:08:51,123 (Music) 201 00:09:33,470 --> 00:09:35,820 Okay, and so, I think from the experience 202 00:09:35,820 --> 00:09:38,343 of building a lot of instruments for the Laptop Orchestra, 203 00:09:38,343 --> 00:09:40,847 and I think from the curiosity of wondering, 204 00:09:40,847 --> 00:09:42,350 what if we took these 205 00:09:42,350 --> 00:09:43,942 hopefully expressive instruments 206 00:09:43,942 --> 00:09:46,575 and we brought it to a lot of people, 207 00:09:46,575 --> 00:09:48,982 plus then a healthy bout of insanity — 208 00:09:48,982 --> 00:09:50,471 put those three things together — 209 00:09:50,471 --> 00:09:53,987 led to me actually co-founding a startup company 210 00:09:53,987 --> 00:09:56,446 in 2008 called Smule. 211 00:09:56,446 --> 00:09:58,366 Now Smule's mission is to create 212 00:09:58,366 --> 00:10:02,223 expressive, mobile music things, 213 00:10:02,223 --> 00:10:06,985 and one of the first musical instruments 214 00:10:06,985 --> 00:10:08,845 we created is called Ocarina. 215 00:10:08,845 --> 00:10:11,610 And I'm going to just demo this for you real quick. 216 00:10:15,234 --> 00:10:17,650 So Ocarina — 217 00:10:17,650 --> 00:10:21,248 (Music) — 218 00:10:21,248 --> 00:10:24,371 is based on this ancient flute-like instrument 219 00:10:24,371 --> 00:10:25,780 called the ocarina, 220 00:10:25,780 --> 00:10:29,163 and this one is the four-hole English pendant configuration, 221 00:10:29,163 --> 00:10:32,566 and you're literally blowing into the microphone 222 00:10:32,566 --> 00:10:35,492 to make the sound. 223 00:10:35,492 --> 00:10:37,125 And there's actually a little ChucK script 224 00:10:37,125 --> 00:10:38,293 running in here that's detecting 225 00:10:38,293 --> 00:10:39,775 the strength of your blowing 226 00:10:39,775 --> 00:10:41,893 and also synthesizing the sound. 227 00:10:41,893 --> 00:10:45,478 (Music) 228 00:10:45,478 --> 00:10:48,808 And vibrato is mapped to the accelerometer, 229 00:10:48,808 --> 00:10:50,461 so you can get — 230 00:10:50,461 --> 00:10:53,790 (Music) 231 00:10:53,790 --> 00:10:57,500 All right. So let me play a little ditty for you, 232 00:10:59,533 --> 00:11:01,349 a little Bach. 233 00:11:01,349 --> 00:11:03,941 And here, you'll hear a little accompaniment with the melody. 234 00:11:03,941 --> 00:11:06,509 The accompaniment actually follows the melody, 235 00:11:06,509 --> 00:11:10,290 not the other way around. 236 00:11:10,290 --> 00:11:15,625 (Music) 237 00:11:23,132 --> 00:11:24,789 And this was designed 238 00:11:24,789 --> 00:11:26,065 to let you take your time 239 00:11:26,065 --> 00:11:29,270 and figure out where your expressive space is, 240 00:11:29,270 --> 00:11:31,077 and you can just hang out here 241 00:11:31,077 --> 00:11:34,139 for a while, for a really dramatic effect, if you want, 242 00:11:34,139 --> 00:11:37,205 and whenever you're ready — 243 00:11:37,205 --> 00:11:41,857 (Music) 244 00:11:52,981 --> 00:11:54,089 And on these longer notes, 245 00:11:54,089 --> 00:11:56,190 I'm going to use more vibrato 246 00:11:56,190 --> 00:11:57,082 towards the end of the notes 247 00:11:57,082 --> 00:12:00,134 to give it a little bit more of an expressive quality. 248 00:12:00,134 --> 00:12:03,750 (Music) 249 00:12:07,473 --> 00:12:11,160 Huh, that's a nice chord to end this excerpt on. 250 00:12:11,160 --> 00:12:14,581 (Applause) 251 00:12:14,581 --> 00:12:17,841 Thank you. 252 00:12:19,750 --> 00:12:23,746 So I think a good question to ask about Ocarina is, 253 00:12:23,746 --> 00:12:28,493 is this a toy or it an instrument? Maybe it's both, 254 00:12:28,493 --> 00:12:30,502 but for me, I think the more important question is, 255 00:12:30,502 --> 00:12:32,043 is it expressive? 256 00:12:32,043 --> 00:12:34,117 And at the same time, I think 257 00:12:34,117 --> 00:12:35,421 creating these types of instruments 258 00:12:35,421 --> 00:12:38,783 asks a question about the role of technology, 259 00:12:38,783 --> 00:12:40,477 and its place for how we make music. 260 00:12:40,477 --> 00:12:42,214 Apparently, for example, 261 00:12:42,214 --> 00:12:44,120 not that long ago, like only a hundred years ago — 262 00:12:44,120 --> 00:12:45,640 that's not that long in the course of human history — 263 00:12:45,640 --> 00:12:47,621 families back then 264 00:12:47,621 --> 00:12:49,509 used to make music together 265 00:12:49,509 --> 00:12:52,557 as a common form of entertainment. 266 00:12:52,557 --> 00:12:53,802 I don't think that's really happening 267 00:12:53,802 --> 00:12:55,337 that much anymore. 268 00:12:55,337 --> 00:12:57,007 You know, this is before radio, before recording. 269 00:12:57,007 --> 00:12:59,214 In the last hundred years, with all this technology, 270 00:12:59,214 --> 00:13:01,388 we now have more access to music 271 00:13:01,388 --> 00:13:03,021 as listeners and consumers, 272 00:13:03,021 --> 00:13:06,084 but somehow, I think we're making less music 273 00:13:06,084 --> 00:13:07,770 than ever before. 274 00:13:07,770 --> 00:13:09,401 I'm not sure why that would be. 275 00:13:09,401 --> 00:13:12,050 Maybe it's because it's too easy just to hit play. 276 00:13:12,050 --> 00:13:14,509 And while listening to music is wonderful, 277 00:13:14,509 --> 00:13:17,918 there's a special joy to making music 278 00:13:17,918 --> 00:13:19,573 that's all its own. 279 00:13:19,573 --> 00:13:20,836 And I think that's one part 280 00:13:20,836 --> 00:13:22,926 of the goal of why I do what I do 281 00:13:22,926 --> 00:13:27,682 is kind of to take us back to the past a little bit. Right? 282 00:13:27,682 --> 00:13:29,462 Now, if that's one goal, the other goal 283 00:13:29,462 --> 00:13:30,892 is to look to the future and think about 284 00:13:30,892 --> 00:13:33,229 what kind of new musical things can we make 285 00:13:33,229 --> 00:13:35,822 that we don't perhaps yet have names for 286 00:13:35,822 --> 00:13:38,685 that's enabled by technology, but ultimately 287 00:13:38,685 --> 00:13:41,126 might change the way that humans make music. 288 00:13:41,126 --> 00:13:43,498 And I'll just give you one example here, 289 00:13:43,498 --> 00:13:49,723 and this is Ocarina's other feature. 290 00:13:49,723 --> 00:13:51,910 This is a globe, 291 00:13:51,910 --> 00:13:54,683 and here you're actually listening 292 00:13:54,683 --> 00:13:56,735 to other users of Ocarina 293 00:13:56,735 --> 00:14:00,715 blow into their iPhones to play something. 294 00:14:00,715 --> 00:14:05,568 This is "G.I.R." from Texas, 295 00:14:05,568 --> 00:14:11,501 "R.I.K." I don't know why it's these three-letter names today, Los Angeles. 296 00:14:11,501 --> 00:14:16,519 They're all playing pretty, 297 00:14:16,519 --> 00:14:19,879 somewhat minimal music here. 298 00:14:19,879 --> 00:14:25,327 (Music) 299 00:14:25,327 --> 00:14:27,933 And the idea with this is that, well, 300 00:14:27,933 --> 00:14:31,850 technology should not be foregrounded here, 301 00:14:31,850 --> 00:14:33,933 and — (Laughter) — 302 00:14:33,933 --> 00:14:36,646 we've actually opened this up. 303 00:14:36,646 --> 00:14:38,153 The first thought is that, hey, you know 304 00:14:38,153 --> 00:14:41,343 there's somebody somewhere out there 305 00:14:41,343 --> 00:14:42,613 playing some music, 306 00:14:42,613 --> 00:14:44,393 and this is a small but I think important 307 00:14:44,393 --> 00:14:45,613 human connection to make 308 00:14:45,613 --> 00:14:48,611 that perhaps the technology affords. 309 00:14:48,611 --> 00:14:51,435 As a final example, 310 00:14:51,435 --> 00:14:52,790 and perhaps my favorite example, 311 00:14:52,790 --> 00:14:55,941 is that in the wake of the 2011 earthquake 312 00:14:55,941 --> 00:14:58,427 and tsunami disaster in Japan, 313 00:14:58,427 --> 00:15:01,270 a woman reached out in one of our singing apps 314 00:15:01,270 --> 00:15:04,157 to try to get people to join in to sing with her 315 00:15:04,157 --> 00:15:05,762 on a version of "Lean on Me." 316 00:15:05,762 --> 00:15:08,810 Now, in these apps, there's this thing that allows 317 00:15:08,810 --> 00:15:10,511 any user to add their voice 318 00:15:10,511 --> 00:15:13,309 to an existing performance by any other user 319 00:15:13,309 --> 00:15:14,363 or group of users, 320 00:15:14,363 --> 00:15:16,388 so in some sense, she's created this kind of 321 00:15:16,388 --> 00:15:19,772 global ad hoc corral of strangers, 322 00:15:19,772 --> 00:15:21,980 and within weeks, thousands of people 323 00:15:21,980 --> 00:15:23,612 joined in on this, 324 00:15:23,612 --> 00:15:25,991 and you can kind of see people coming from all around the world 325 00:15:25,991 --> 00:15:28,272 and all these lines converging on the origin 326 00:15:28,272 --> 00:15:30,620 where the first rendition of the song was sung, 327 00:15:30,620 --> 00:15:32,254 and that's in Tokyo. 328 00:15:32,254 --> 00:15:35,686 And this is what it sounds like when there's 1,000 people. 329 00:15:35,686 --> 00:15:37,663 This is 1,000 voices. 330 00:15:37,663 --> 00:15:41,940 (Recording) ♪ Sometimes in our lives ♪ 331 00:15:41,940 --> 00:15:49,260 ♪ We all have pain, we all have sorrow ♪ 332 00:15:49,260 --> 00:15:53,100 ♪ But if we are wise ♪ 333 00:15:53,100 --> 00:15:58,990 ♪ We know that there's always tomorrow ♪ 334 00:15:58,990 --> 00:16:01,497 ♪ Lean on me ♪ 335 00:16:01,497 --> 00:16:04,310 ♪ When you're not strong ♪ 336 00:16:04,310 --> 00:16:06,950 ♪ And I'll be your friend ♪ 337 00:16:06,950 --> 00:16:11,235 ♪ I'll help you carry on ♪ 338 00:16:11,235 --> 00:16:15,248 ♪ For it won't be long ♪ 339 00:16:15,248 --> 00:16:17,976 ♪ Till I'm gonna need ♪ 340 00:16:17,976 --> 00:16:21,372 ♪ Somebody to lean on ♪ 341 00:16:21,372 --> 00:16:23,726 ♪ Just lean on — ♪ 342 00:16:23,726 --> 00:16:25,296 Is this computer music? 343 00:16:25,296 --> 00:16:28,884 (Applause) 344 00:16:30,728 --> 00:16:32,696 Was that computer music? 345 00:16:32,696 --> 00:16:34,743 Yeah, I guess so; it's something that you really 346 00:16:34,743 --> 00:16:37,028 couldn't have done without computers. 347 00:16:37,028 --> 00:16:41,264 But at the same time, it's also just human, 348 00:16:41,264 --> 00:16:44,353 and I think what I've essentially answered so far 349 00:16:44,353 --> 00:16:47,744 is maybe why I do the stuff that I do, 350 00:16:47,744 --> 00:16:50,136 and let's just finally return to the first question: 351 00:16:50,136 --> 00:16:52,248 What is computer music? 352 00:16:52,248 --> 00:16:54,552 And I think that the catch here is that, 353 00:16:54,552 --> 00:16:55,808 at least to me, computer music 354 00:16:55,808 --> 00:16:57,656 isn't really about computers. 355 00:16:57,656 --> 00:16:59,182 It is about people. 356 00:16:59,182 --> 00:17:00,816 It's about how we can use technology 357 00:17:00,816 --> 00:17:02,862 to change the way we think 358 00:17:02,862 --> 00:17:04,306 and do and make music, 359 00:17:04,306 --> 00:17:07,992 and maybe even add to how we can 360 00:17:07,992 --> 00:17:10,502 connect with each other through music. 361 00:17:10,502 --> 00:17:12,655 And with that, I want to say, 362 00:17:12,655 --> 00:17:15,752 this is computer music, and thank you for listening. 363 00:17:15,752 --> 00:17:19,752 (Applause)