CMJ Editor's Notes

Douglas Keislar and Laurie Spiegel Editor's Note Douglas Keislar On 19 May 1998, the Microsoft Corporation was granted a United States patent (number 5,753,843) for a "System and Process for Composing Musical Sections" (including 47 claims), this patent clearly pertaining to the algorithmic generation of music. Computer Music Journal invited Laurie Spiegel to write a guest editorial (below) about the implications of such patents. We also invited letters to the editor in response to the editorial. The abstract of the Microsoft patent describes: A system and process for comprising [sic] a musical section in response to a user's interaction with a multimedia presentation. The system includes a composition engine, performance engine, and arbitrator. The arbitrator provides an interface with an application program running a multimedia presentation. The arbitrator receives parameters from the application program indicative of a user's interaction and the type of music the application program requests in response to the interaction. The parameters are passed to the composition engine which composes a musical section having a chord progression and other data therein. The musical section and a style provided by the arbitrator are used by the performance engine to generate music sequence data for driving a musical instrument. The performance of the musical sequence data by the musical instrument occurs substantially contemporaneously with the user's interaction which caused the musical section composition. Because the composition engine uses processes which vary the composition of musical sections, the user events which initiate composition of a musical section and which occur at the same place within a multimedia presentation, still vary the performance at each user event. The claims includes the following text: A system for composing music in response to a user's interaction with a multimedia presentation comprising: an application program interface for receiving parameters identifying a style, a shape, and a personality for music that conform to said user's interaction with said multimedia presentation; and a composition engine for composing a musical section corresponding to said parameters so that a user perceives the performance of the musical section to be related to said user's interaction with said multimedia presentation." Copies of this patent can be purchased from MicroPatent; telephone (800)648-6787; World Wide Web http://www.micropat.com. Compositional Algorithms Laurie Spiegel There have been patents for musical inventions, such as piano action parts, for many years without apparent detriment. However, throughout the 20th century, the designing of artistic processes and creative techniques has increasingly come to be considered an integral part of an artist's creative work, rather than being seen as the province of a separate tool-building specialist. Entire fields such as algorithmic composition, interactive multimedia, and literary "process art" have become established in recent decades, based on the premise that the designing and implementation of specific creative processes and artistic techniques constitute artistic creation, every bit as much as do the data that such processes generate. If specific compositional techniques are now to be privately owned, must each composer, especially composers of computer-based interactive process pieces, now stop to do patent searches routinely as part of their work or else risk being taken to court? With the floodgates now open for a gold rush of corporate claims to very specific compositional techniques, how are we composers supposed to preserve our sense of freedom, our exhilaration at exploring, and our deep psychological immersion in following musical ideas wherever they may lead us, while knowing that we cannot ever be sure anymore of the simple legality of any new refinement we may make in our own process-based works? Are we composers going to end up having to pay a royalty to the owner of each technique we use, when the royalties we receive from the music we compose using these techniques typically would not even pay for the paperwork of just keeping track of them? Must the education of every composer who wants to make process-based music now include courses in what techniques are exclusively owned by whom and for how long, what fees or methods will decriminalize their use, and the penalties to expect for unauthorized use? Will process-based composing or composer construction of interactive algorithmic tools now become so legally complex (and possibly dangerous) that such approaches will simply die out? When we want to use a specific compositional technique, how do we keep the question of who owns it from interfering with our personal sense of creative freedom? As a method of motivating new development for compositional techniques, how would the use of patents have worked in historical contexts? To hypothesize an instance, what if someone had patented the replaying of a musical theme at a time delay to itself, early in what was probably the last great era of process-based composing: the era of Bach? Would Bach have been able to afford, and also willing to pay, royalties (or--perish the thought--legal defense fees) to use or build new techniques based on the patented imitative contrapuntal processes his works required? Or would composing the way he did have made him a criminal, as Galileo and others came to be considered criminals for their scientific work? And could any patent-holding tool designer ever possess sufficient understanding of the working requirements of composers of Bach's artistic caliber to be able to create procedural tools that were adequately fine-tuned for every possible such composer's unique musical approach? Or, in another hypothetical example, could any tool builder whose products had been fine tuned for Haydn's methods have anticipated the ways in which Beethoven would need to break out beyond their scope, or why this would be important, or how to accommodate the change in advance? Then why does our own society assume that the definition, implementation, and provision of any such creative technique should be done non-competitively, non-pluralistically, under the complete control of any single corporate monopoly? Why should the monopoly we call "patent" include artistic methods, tools, or techniques within its domain? Simply because these can now be constructed within the medium of computer software, and because the law now allows the patenting of such processes if implemented as computer software? The only arguably successful scenario I can envision that takes as a premise the existence of an 18th-century patent on time-delayed repetition techniques, and that would still allow us the Well Tempered Clavier, the Musical Offering, and the Art of the Fugue, is one in which Bach got himself hired as Company X's official court (well, company) composer, in a corporate reprise of the aristocratic private patronage system. But in all likelihood Telemann would have gotten the job instead. We specialists created the field of computer music collectively but from the intersections of our very own personal visions and desires. This field, our lifework, is increasingly influenced by differently motivated entities. The legal departments of large corporations, or those concerned with the price of corporate shares trading in international markets, might govern whether or not the next Art of the Fugue will ever be made. The current situation is neither without precedent nor easily resolved, but we do want to preserve what we value in our art and its potential to evolve.

	Vol. 22 Issue 4 Editor's Notes	CMJ Library >
	Microsoft and Patenting Compositional Algorithms
	Douglas Keislar and Laurie Spiegel Editor's Note Douglas Keislar On 19 May 1998, the Microsoft Corporation was granted a United States patent (number 5,753,843) for a "System and Process for Composing Musical Sections" (including 47 claims), this patent clearly pertaining to the algorithmic generation of music. Computer Music Journal invited Laurie Spiegel to write a guest editorial (below) about the implications of such patents. We also invited letters to the editor in response to the editorial. The abstract of the Microsoft patent describes: A system and process for comprising [sic] a musical section in response to a user's interaction with a multimedia presentation. The system includes a composition engine, performance engine, and arbitrator. The arbitrator provides an interface with an application program running a multimedia presentation. The arbitrator receives parameters from the application program indicative of a user's interaction and the type of music the application program requests in response to the interaction. The parameters are passed to the composition engine which composes a musical section having a chord progression and other data therein. The musical section and a style provided by the arbitrator are used by the performance engine to generate music sequence data for driving a musical instrument. The performance of the musical sequence data by the musical instrument occurs substantially contemporaneously with the user's interaction which caused the musical section composition. Because the composition engine uses processes which vary the composition of musical sections, the user events which initiate composition of a musical section and which occur at the same place within a multimedia presentation, still vary the performance at each user event. The claims includes the following text: A system for composing music in response to a user's interaction with a multimedia presentation comprising: an application program interface for receiving parameters identifying a style, a shape, and a personality for music that conform to said user's interaction with said multimedia presentation; and a composition engine for composing a musical section corresponding to said parameters so that a user perceives the performance of the musical section to be related to said user's interaction with said multimedia presentation." Copies of this patent can be purchased from MicroPatent; telephone (800)648-6787; World Wide Web http://www.micropat.com. Compositional Algorithms Laurie Spiegel There have been patents for musical inventions, such as piano action parts, for many years without apparent detriment. However, throughout the 20th century, the designing of artistic processes and creative techniques has increasingly come to be considered an integral part of an artist's creative work, rather than being seen as the province of a separate tool-building specialist. Entire fields such as algorithmic composition, interactive multimedia, and literary "process art" have become established in recent decades, based on the premise that the designing and implementation of specific creative processes and artistic techniques constitute artistic creation, every bit as much as do the data that such processes generate. If specific compositional techniques are now to be privately owned, must each composer, especially composers of computer-based interactive process pieces, now stop to do patent searches routinely as part of their work or else risk being taken to court? With the floodgates now open for a gold rush of corporate claims to very specific compositional techniques, how are we composers supposed to preserve our sense of freedom, our exhilaration at exploring, and our deep psychological immersion in following musical ideas wherever they may lead us, while knowing that we cannot ever be sure anymore of the simple legality of any new refinement we may make in our own process-based works? Are we composers going to end up having to pay a royalty to the owner of each technique we use, when the royalties we receive from the music we compose using these techniques typically would not even pay for the paperwork of just keeping track of them? Must the education of every composer who wants to make process-based music now include courses in what techniques are exclusively owned by whom and for how long, what fees or methods will decriminalize their use, and the penalties to expect for unauthorized use? Will process-based composing or composer construction of interactive algorithmic tools now become so legally complex (and possibly dangerous) that such approaches will simply die out? When we want to use a specific compositional technique, how do we keep the question of who owns it from interfering with our personal sense of creative freedom? As a method of motivating new development for compositional techniques, how would the use of patents have worked in historical contexts? To hypothesize an instance, what if someone had patented the replaying of a musical theme at a time delay to itself, early in what was probably the last great era of process-based composing: the era of Bach? Would Bach have been able to afford, and also willing to pay, royalties (or--perish the thought--legal defense fees) to use or build new techniques based on the patented imitative contrapuntal processes his works required? Or would composing the way he did have made him a criminal, as Galileo and others came to be considered criminals for their scientific work? And could any patent-holding tool designer ever possess sufficient understanding of the working requirements of composers of Bach's artistic caliber to be able to create procedural tools that were adequately fine-tuned for every possible such composer's unique musical approach? Or, in another hypothetical example, could any tool builder whose products had been fine tuned for Haydn's methods have anticipated the ways in which Beethoven would need to break out beyond their scope, or why this would be important, or how to accommodate the change in advance? Then why does our own society assume that the definition, implementation, and provision of any such creative technique should be done non-competitively, non-pluralistically, under the complete control of any single corporate monopoly? Why should the monopoly we call "patent" include artistic methods, tools, or techniques within its domain? Simply because these can now be constructed within the medium of computer software, and because the law now allows the patenting of such processes if implemented as computer software? The only arguably successful scenario I can envision that takes as a premise the existence of an 18th-century patent on time-delayed repetition techniques, and that would still allow us the Well Tempered Clavier, the Musical Offering, and the Art of the Fugue, is one in which Bach got himself hired as Company X's official court (well, company) composer, in a corporate reprise of the aristocratic private patronage system. But in all likelihood Telemann would have gotten the job instead. We specialists created the field of computer music collectively but from the intersections of our very own personal visions and desires. This field, our lifework, is increasingly influenced by differently motivated entities. The legal departments of large corporations, or those concerned with the price of corporate shares trading in international markets, might govern whether or not the next Art of the Fugue will ever be made. The current situation is neither without precedent nor easily resolved, but we do want to preserve what we value in our art and its potential to evolve.