ABOUT THE TEAM

Sebastien Gulluni is a French composer, sound designer, and music technologist based in Paris. He creates music for media and shapes sounds for companies around the world. His solo project Oblik Lines explores Ambient Electronica territories in both a melodic and textural approach. His compositional process is inspired by his desire to explore new technologies and generative algorithms. Sebastien worked as a research fellow in the GRM (Music Research Group) and obtained a PhD in Music Information Retrieval. For "The last moment before you fly", Sebastien met the Algomus research team in Computer Music. The team works on computer music analysis and notably harmony, rhythm, texture, and music form, in the Université de Lille, with collaboration from the Université de Rouen. Ken Déguernel, Mathieu Giraud, and Richard Groult model music structure and design analytical and generative algorithms. With Emmanuel Leguy, they work on the Dezrann platform devoted to create and share interactive music analyses.

ABOUT THE SONG

From the initial feeling of chaos, from the first impression of nothingness, are born improbable lines that scatter in the surrounding space. Colliding before our confused eyes, the pattern turns around and returns to its core. The meanders – yet linear – embodies the uncertainty where the sounds unfold. Where our mind wanders. Where our thoughts fly away.

The last moment before you fly is a co-creative experiment in shaping music, transforming our way of thinking and generating sound. The composer brings his own chords and melodies, which are mixed and re-generated using algorithms designed by the music research team. Seeking to capture new emotions in that AI music content, the composer selects, designs, and organizes chords, melodies, and sounds in subtle lines scattered in the music space.

ABOUT THE HUMAN-AI CO-CREATION PROCESS

Generating structured music, involving long-term correlations between elements, is a key challenge in music generation. The approach behind the ambient electronica track The last moment before you fly is structure-based. Through rules and probabilities discussed with the composer, the Algomus team generated song structures, and Sebastien Gulluni selected one, transformed it, and used it as a template for the final track. The structure is both the section layout – here A/B/C/A/CC/D/B/CC – but also indications of global timbre, rhythm, and melody variations such as rhythm densification or ornamentation.

The composer provided a corpus with his own chord progressions and melodies in other songs. Starting from this music content, candidates for new chords and melodies were generated for each section with the factor oracle, a representation of music memory. Each sequence of two or three chords is found somewhere in this corpus, but the chain of these sequences is unusual, such as the bright transition to Gb Lydian at the half of the song. While he selected the final chord sequences and melodies, Sebastien felt that "It sounds like it has been generated for me!". He arranged and produced the track with a minimalist style, taking great care on the design of each sound.

This co-creative interaction between the AI, the computer music team, and the musician helped to think outside the box. The last moment before you fly is an artifact from the interaction between the composer and these algorithms.