Getting computers to do it

[iratior]

This question had to come up sooner or later.  Is anyone working on getting computers to do piano music, and if so, how do they fare vis-a-vis humans when it comes to performance?  I've read about pianos specially rigged to duplicate human performance;  if they can duplicate it, can they improve it?  Imagine programming the computer to play the double octaves in Lizst's Sonata in B with merciless precision and ferocity, or doctoring up the Winter Wind etude so the right hand had three-note chords where there were single notes.  Imagine a piano with an extended keyboard able to do up to the full range of audible vibrations.  Could a jury be fooled into thinking a computer's performance was human?  One wonders.

[richard black]

Hasn't the hand-played roll piano been doing that for over 100 years already? There's still human input in the interpretation but the right notes are basically guaranteed by design, in prodigious quantity.

[mcdiddy1]

Yes, Yamaha has piano that duplicate human performances completely.

[iratior]

Wow!  Somebody needs to get right to work and program the Yamaha to do Chopin Etudes, only doctor them up to have chords where there are single notes!  Imagine how it would sound!  You could take opus 25 no. 2 and replace each note with two repeated notes!  It would make Godowsky look like chopsticks!  The entire body of written music is just waiting to be rearranged in the light of this.

[Bob]

I think they use synth pianos (and everything) all the time in advertising.  Or they could majorly alter a performance, probably to the point the performer would really have to be a pianist.

I think a listener could be fooled.  But there are all sorts of shades of grey -- What if you just recreate the performance of an actual pianist?  Record it in enough detail that it sounds just like they're playing?  It's an artificial performance but it's a human supplying the material. 

I suppose if a human tweaks things enough a realization built completely from scratch/all in a computer could be believable.  I haven't heard of anything where a machine is taking in the sound of what it's creating -- things like decay on an individual instrument, reverb in the room, etc.  If it's just running through on/off signals like that it can't adjust to a different instrument or room.