Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson. And this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music can make our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. We’re talking today about the science behind musical preferences, why we like the music we like. Doctor Nolan Gasser was a guest on this show way back in episode 67, discussing his best selling book, Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste. That book has led to a PBS special that will be telling you about today called Why You Like It: Decoding Musical Taste. Doctor Gasser was the chief architect of Pandora’s Music Genome Project. He’s a professional performer and composer in multiple genres, including jazz, opera, musicals, film scores. His compositions have been performed in venues including Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, and the Rose Bowl. He’s a musicologist and was the subject of the documentary “Musicology.” In the tech world, Dr. Gasser co-founded Katch Data, a data company that combines human and artificial intelligence to quantify individual taste and works with major media players including meta, Paramount, and Comcast. His other music AI projects include a role as expert music consultant for Google DeepMind on their cutting edge AI initiatives. I think we could have a podcast just on that tech component because that sounds fascinating. Welcome back to Enhance Life with Music, Nolan.
Nolan Gasser: [00:01:36] Thank you so much, Mindy. It’s great to be back.
Mindy Peterson: [00:01:39] Well, tell us about this PBS show, Why You Like It: Decoding Musical Taste. I got to watch it, and it’s definitely an interactive experience, like nothing I’ve seen before. So explain it to listeners.
Nolan Gasser: [00:01:52] Yeah, well, certainly that interactive component was one of the big selling points for PBS, trying to kind of move the needle. And the way that we watch television, we always have at least two screens. Right. We have the one we’re watching and the one right next to us. And so why not make them kind of talk to each other a little bit during the show? Yeah. So this has been a really a rich, um, you know, couple years of preparation, um, to bring us to having this wonderful PBS show, which we’ve been thrilled about. We’ve had just great, uh, reception across the country. And, uh, it really is bringing my book. Why you like it kind of to life, but combining it with my other big passions as a composer and a performer, I have this amazing band of just, you know, just, you know, very Mighty Mighty, which is the name of the band, uh, performers who played with some of the greats, along with some great guest artists. And, um, so to combine this explanation of musical taste with this live concert and this interactive element, it’s a lot to put together, but it’s been a lot of fun.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:59] Yeah, it is really amazing how the interactive app obviously you’re kind of on that while you’re watching it, but then even on screen there’s interactive components to it with some animations. There’s like you said, there’s the live concert that’s integrated with what you’re talking about. There’s kind of pop ups that explain more about what we’re hearing. So really fascinating. And I want to talk some more about those components. But first, can you explain the story behind the program? What made you decide to create it?
Nolan Gasser: [00:03:31] Right, absolutely. Well, you know, it’s like so much in life. It’s a bit of a circuitous path to get there. It was not like I woke up one morning and I said, I want to have a PBS show. Um, it, um, the real catalyst for it was actually my vision to put together an amazing band of great players and allow me a kind of a vehicle to, as a composer to do what I like to do, which is to blend musical styles. I was raised on rock and jazz. I’m a classical musician with a PhD in musicology. Um, I’m a classical composer, but I’ve also been very passionate about music from other parts of the world. Something that I kind of gained working at Pandora, where we had to do a world music genome. That really was this invitation to study music from, you know, uh, from, from, from Africa and from the Middle East and, you know, all over the world. And so all these different styles that I, that I fell in love with, you know, to try to integrate them with the music that I grew up in, music that I’m enculturated to use. One of the terms that I talk about in the PBS show, in other words, music that I have, is just part of my overall identity. I was raised in it. I don’t need to think about it. Uh, but then to add that music that I’m just getting to know. So, um, we recorded an album, uh, back in 2019, probably around the time that we met last time. Uh, and the album is called Border Crossing. And again, it features just amazing players.
Nolan Gasser: [00:05:05] Tim Reese, who played with the Rolling Stones, uh, saxophone for 25 years. Jamey Haddad, percussion with Paul Simon. Uh, Carlitos Del Puerto, who played with Chick Corea in the latter part of his life. Um, so just these monster players and I get to join them on stage as the pianist and composer and got a great producer, Gregg Field to, you know, be our producer. Recorded at Capitol Records. And so we had this great album. And the question is, okay, now what? Uh, how do we get this album and how do we get this band, you know, some, you know, exposure that we could go and tour, you know, and do that in a constructive way. So that’s what that was, the catalyst. Obviously I had this book and my passion is what is musical taste. Where does it come from? What are the sources of it? From music and the brain and our culture and psychology. So you had these two different, you know, sort of elements. You know, this wonderful band and this these songs and my passion for musical taste. And when I was speaking with my manager, Bob Murray, he said, well, let’s approach PBS. Maybe we could do something with them kind of combining that. And they really love that idea. They love the interdisciplinary element of combining music and science. Just a straightforward concert. They probably wouldn’t have been that interested in, uh, and maybe a pure science thing. Maybe. Maybe not. But they loved, you know, going back and forth. They also loved the idea of this potential interactivity with an app, which we raised, uh, giving everybody their own personalized playlists.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:41] Yeah. Who came up with that idea?
Nolan Gasser: [00:06:43] Well, I did.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:45] It’s brilliant, I love it.
Nolan Gasser: [00:06:48] Well. Thank you. So that’s, uh. So we had we had the kind of the green light from them to put this together. And that was probably about a, you know, a year and a quarter ago. So just was able to, uh, to put all the pieces together. We assembled an amazing team, directors, animators. As you’ve seen, the show has some really creative animation that kind of supports, like when I’m talking about music and memory or music in our culture that we grow up in, or music in our different personality types. The beautiful animation sometimes, you know, funny and cute that accompanies that, I think brings it to life.
Mindy Peterson: [00:07:29] Yeah. Well, the cool thing is there is so much depth there in terms of information in the app for sure. But then also, you know, with the the show that you’re watching visually, but you can sort of choose how deep you want to go with it. And as a musician, a music educator, as I was watching it, I was just sort of like getting giddy with the educational potential of it like, oh man, this would be so cool for students to watch, but it’s something they could watch with their parents like. It would be fun for the whole family to watch, so it doesn’t really matter what age you are. All ages could watch it. Did you have a certain demographic in mind in terms of like your audience that you created it for, whether it was school use, adults, kids, community? Like who did you have in mind?
Nolan Gasser: [00:08:17] Well, it’s a great question. And thank you for for all that. Um, you know, the the target audience was a PBS audience, right? That was our we had to and that was certainly a lot of the great feedback. You know, I’m an academic, right? So it’s easy for me to go very nerdy and very into the to get very technical and use a lot of, you know, 25 cent words. And so part of the process was to really, you know, keep the essence, keep the main message, but to really put it in everyday language, to language, to put it in relatively simple terms. And I think, um, that is the goal, is that kids could watch it with their parents and their grandparents. Right. So that it would really not be limited. You don’t have to be a musician, certainly. In fact, you don’t even really need to know any musical terms. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, that is the goal. I mean, if it gets picked up and used in an educational context, I love that. You know, it certainly would be a wonderful goal. And as you say, the app, you know, the main the main role of the app is to give you a very simple, intuitive, quick little questionnaire. So I talk about, you know, music and anthropology and our, our origins with music and how it creates social bonding and all that. And then I’ll give you a simple question that relates to, you know, what song that you what kind of music do you like that brings people together? Right. So it’s a multiple choice question. There are eight sections. And so there are eight questions. And by virtue of that I was able to create an algorithm to create you your personalized playlist. But there’s also parts in the app that go much deeper. There’s something called deeper discovery where you can obviously go in, and if you really want to go deep, you can get my book. Yeah. And dive into the real, real nitty gritty.
Mindy Peterson: [00:10:13] Well, I do like how you can go as deep as you want in this, depending on your age, depending on your musical background. Like you said, if you are a musician or if you don’t have any musical training, everybody can get something out of this. But then also I’m just thinking about, you know, if it’s Friday night and you’ve had a rough week and you’re watching this just to sort of chill at the end of a Friday night, you might just not have the energy to go deeper. Like, I just I’m thinking about this, I guess, because last Friday night I went with some friends to a line dancing event, and I kind of had a different image in my mind of what this was going to be. And it was we got there and it was a lot of work mentally, because you’re learning all these choreographed moves. And I was like, oh man, it’s it’s Friday night. Like, I just don’t have the mental energy for this. I just want to sit down and have it. We were at a brewery. I’m like, I just want to sit down and have a drink and catch up with my friends. So, you know, if you’re in that state, you can just watch this, answer a few questions on your app and get out of it what you’re going to get out of it.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:14] But if you really have the energy and the interest and you want to learn more, there is so much in there. And then for the younger kids, like I said, there’s the animations or the pop ups that kind of talk a little bit more about fun facts, about maybe the history of the song or some basics on really unique solo instruments that are being used in the songs, which was really fascinating. And then within that app, you can just go and go and go on deeper and deeper levels into more information on the history, the You, the composer, the the genre, you know so much. And one thing I’ll say that I really appreciate, I was pleasantly surprised that you do not need to create an account. You do not need to generate a password. You don’t have to submit your contact information. You don’t go on an email list where you start getting emails. I was like, oh my goodness, I didn’t know this still existed in this world. But that was that was really a pleasant surprise that it was so easy to access.
Nolan Gasser: [00:12:17] Well, that was certainly one of the, you know, sort of requirements is that we make it as easy as possible. We try to keep you in the app so you don’t need to go outside of it. We are connected to Spotify because I created this huge, you know, array of songs, this, you know, huge library of almost 2000 songs from which I draw on. How you answer the questions is how you get a very rich, very eclectic, um, you know, I can only know so much about you from eight multiple choice questions. Yeah, so I can’t say that you’re going to love every song, but in some ways, part of the the goal of the show overall is to get you to think a little differently about the music that you listen to, to to take away some of the barriers and the the kind of limitations that we all put on ourselves based on our biases or our experiences, and to say, hey, you know, you’ve got a very rich capability to love lots of different kinds of music. So based on your personality type and your cultural background, how you think about, you know, rhythm or melody or emotion in music. Here’s a bunch of songs that you could that you could potentially really love. So, um.
Mindy Peterson: [00:13:30] And we should probably back up just a little and explain to listeners that as you’re watching the show, there’s these eight questions that are very easy to to answer based on what your personal preferences, on what you’re hearing or how you like to listen to music, or what types of genres you like or rhythm, whatever. The question is, and then at the end of the program, you’re able to submit those answers and get a personalized Spotify playlist. So explain a little bit more about that.
Nolan Gasser: [00:14:01] Right. So um, again, so the show has these eight sort of subdivisions. So we talk about music and rhythm or music and entrainment, which is how we lock into a beat. And I kind of give, you know, a little opening explanation with kind of cute animation and simple explanations of how the brain and the body work together for us to be able to find that beat. We we take it for granted that we can keep a beat, but we’re like the only species that can. So how cool is that? Right? And then. And then a song. A very rhythmic song. Um, right. So jump in the line. Kind of a calypso classic. We perform that, um, with Etienne Charles or our wonderful guest vocalist. And then so shortly after the song starts, a little pop up appears on your phone, your phone buzzes or whatever. And there’s a simple multiple choice question like, you know, how do you feel about rhythm? What kinds of rhythm do you like? And do you like it when rhythm kind of flows through your body? Do you like it? Rhythm when it makes you want to dance? Uh, you know, do you like rhythm? That’s kind of interesting and unpredictable. So simple, you know, options. And you pick one, and then that’s it. And then you listen to the song on the show, and then next thing I talk about is, you know, music and the brain. And then there’s a simple question about, like, what kind of memories appear? How does music interact with the way that you that you remember things? Do you know, do you remember particular events? Do you remember more emotions? You know, there’s no wrong answer.
Nolan Gasser: [00:15:31] It’s just how you think about these things. And so you go through all eight and at the end it says, congratulations, you’ve got your playlist. And there’s 30 different playlists based on. It’s actually a crazy number. I’ve kind of forgotten it. It’s like if you have eight questions and there’s five multiple, you know, five potential answers per question, how many permutations are possible? Yeah, it’s like 160,000. I mean, it’s some I don’t remember I should have looked it up. It’s like a huge number. So I was able to use work with I uh, which I’m, I’m pretty good at and to kind of create an algorithm that based on how Mindy answers these eight questions, here’s her. So she’s a, you know, she’s an emotional resonator. Sure. Right. Sure. And get this playlist of 100 songs, and then you can take the quiz again and get a different playlist, and you can share your playlist with your friend. So it’s just it’s kind of a, you know, somewhat cute way of, um, creating interactivity, but it’s also going to expose you to a ton of music, I guarantee you that you’ve never heard before a lot of music that you’ll know, but you have never heard of a lot of the music. Intentionally relatively obscure. Sure. Um.
Mindy Peterson: [00:16:47] Yeah. And I’ll mention, too, that that playlist that you get it is in Spotify, and it works just fine with the free Spotify account. So again, just very accessible, really easy to access all of this. Yes. Yeah. And you mentioned some of the different segments that you cover the brain, you cover physics, culture, psychology. So all of you music educators out there, whether it’s private instructors, K through 12 college, you know, I’m sure you’re just like getting giddy like I did about just the educational aspects and incorporating things like Stem, Steam, the science, technology, engineering, math, you know, all of those components. This is a really great way to sort of bring all those into kind of a holistic educational experience for yourself, for students. And like we said, all ages, as I alluded to, there’s that deeper discovery available for each of those topics in the app. So again, you can go deeper on anything that really catches your attention and you’re like, oh wow, that’s really cool. I like what you said earlier too, about the global music and how that was kind of pulled in multiple genres. Our world has gotten so much smaller with each year that goes by, especially exponentially since technology’s exploded in the last ten years or so. But we we do have access to so many different cultural experiences. And so I do think that people are interested in learning more about global music. Everybody loves music. And if you have friends who are from different cultures, it’s fun to get to know more about, say, music from India or music from China, or, you know, music from these different cultures. And then also, it just expands our horizons with musical genres and it helps introduce those genres to new audiences. So really love that aspect of it. And anything interdisciplinary kind of lights me up too. I love hearing about that. Have you heard any specific feedback from participants in terms of what if there’s a certain demographic that this really is resonating with, whether it’s the educator community or families or anything like that?
Nolan Gasser: [00:19:04] Well, I’ve gotten a ton of really wonderful feedback, um, and really across the board. Um, just gotten feedback that people who have no musical background were really appreciative that it was it, you know, I was never lost. You know, it was very easy to follow you. Thank you for making it, you know, understandable. But I have a lot of musician friends that really got into, you know, if you are a musician, there’s a lot to really sink your teeth into, not only in the app, but in the show. Obviously, I’m touching on at a very, you know, kind of relatively introductory level, these big topics of music and the brain and music and physics, you know, overtones. So I’m introducing a little bit kind of a light level of, of some of the actual science behind it. But if you are a musician and you’re trained in this, you can kind of you can, you know, get a little bit excited about that potential. And then you get to hear this wonderful band performing and there’s just some great performances. We have some we have four great vocalists in addition to our great band.
Nolan Gasser: [00:20:07] So we have Etienne Charles, as I mentioned, we have Ledisi, kind of an R&B star. We have Amy Nuviola, who’s a an incredible singer from Cuba. And then we have um, Malika Tirolien from the island of Guadeloupe, who I think has just one of the most beautiful voices, and she sings one of my original songs called Now Is the Time that talks about climate Change. Uh, and it’s got kind of a West African influence. So to your point about how we live in a in a globalized world. We live in this sort of post-modern, you know, mentality that really anything can mix with anything. Mhm. And you know, that combined with the incredible access that we all have through Spotify and Pandora or whatever, you know, we can there’s or YouTube, there’s almost nothing that you can’t find. Uh I’m hoping as well that the show gets people a little bit excited. Excited about exploring, uh, how music that, you know, can combine with music that you don’t know to create something new. Kind of like a new recipe.
Mindy Peterson: [00:21:08] Yeah. Fusion music. And you just mentioned the word recipe. I mean, that’s become so popular. Fusion food too. And it makes sense. I mean, there’s so many interesting aspects of food and music from all different cultures, and blending them all together brings out a completely new creation. A lot of times.
Nolan Gasser: [00:21:27] You know, and that’s really I mean, you know, we there’s a lot of, you know, talk. And obviously musicians are very much aware of genre, and I do talk about genre in the show as well, about part of what I call intra culture, the the little subgroups within our culture, which is how we, you know, kind of get introduced to music. We hang out with a group of friends that are really into, you know, um, progressive rock or, you know, or Irish folk songs or whatever. And that becomes part of our repertoire because it’s part of our group, you know? But, uh, music is obviously so capable of combining things. And so every genre, even genres that are like huge classic things like, you know, rock or, or jazz, they didn’t just get born out of whole cloth. They are combinations of genres that that preceded them. Sure. And even, you know, jazz is a combination of both Western music, African music, Caribbean music.
Mindy Peterson: [00:22:26] Sure.
Nolan Gasser: [00:22:27] So, um, getting to know music from other cultures is just almost finding how where music is going to go. Right. Because this gets combined with that to form, you know, zydeco or whatever, you know, something new.
Mindy Peterson: [00:22:40] So where can listeners watch the program, local PBS station.
Nolan Gasser: [00:22:45] Their local PBS station, if you are. The nice thing about PBS, I mean, it is still it’s being broadcast. It was initially released as part of the March pledge, and we had over 1100 airings, which is pretty amazing across the country as part of this pledge drive. It’s going to continue to play in other pledge drives as well as many stations are are airing it outside of the pledge drive. So you can look, check your local listings or you can call your PBS station. I would encourage you to do that. Call your PBS station and say, when are you going to air? Why do you like it? But the other thing, if you are a PBS subscriber, you have access to what is called passport, and that gives you the ability to watch it Any time.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:32] Okay.
Nolan Gasser: [00:23:33] On the computer or on your tablet. Or you can cast it to your television.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:39] Pbs is streaming platform.
Nolan Gasser: [00:23:41] That’s right. Passport is PBS streaming platform. And so you just type in “why you like it PBS” into Google and you’ll find it straight away. And if you’re not a PBS subscriber, you should be. Right.
Nolan Gasser: [00:23:55] We should all support public television.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:57] Well, really fascinating. I’m obviously a musician, and I found it so engaging. It didn’t feel at all like you were dumbing it down for people. Very engaging. And like we said, whether you’re a musician, have musical background or not, and there’s always things that you can dive deeper into. So really enjoyed it. I want to say just a little bit of time to hear more about your do you pronounce it Katch data?
Nolan Gasser: [00:24:22] Katch. Yeah. We just call it Katch.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:27] Katch. Okay. Katch. Tell us about that because that sounds really fascinating.
Nolan Gasser: [00:24:30] Well it. Yeah. So this is a company that I co-founded back in 2019. And you know, obviously my background as you mentioned is, uh, you know, I’m a musician, but I got introduced into the tech world right when I was finishing up my PhD at Stanford and got this is around 2000. So a long time ago. Got conscripted to join this, uh, startup music technology company. It was called Savage Beast Technologies back then. It turned into Pandora Radio. So I’m. I’m the architect of the music genome, which is basically a taxonomy. It’s a it’s a very rigorous way of analyzing music in a way that can be, uh, objective and, and scaled across lots of different, you know, content.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:16] So are we talking about things like tempo or speed beat?
Nolan Gasser: [00:25:21] Every every dimension. So part of the, the goal of a genome. And so I’ve become a bit of a I’ve become a genome expert working on genomes for 25 years. And what that is, I’m not talking about a biological genome. So any of any of the biologists out there. I realize that it’s a metaphor. Um, if you really want to understand what’s going on in a song, you really need to understand its musicology. So you need to find a way, just as we do as a musicologist, I will just if I’m doing an analysis of a Beethoven symphony, I’m going to, you know, follow it and I’m going to, you know, find a way to talk about how the form evolves, how the, you know, the themes, you know, evolve and, and the the harmony changes, how rhythm is used, how the instrumentation is used. So these major parameters of music or musicology, the musical action as well as what I call color, which is the, you know, the different timbres. So you really want to try to be very specific. And so the genome finds a way through a taxonomy to make that where you can have the same set of variables analyzed across all different pieces of music.
Nolan Gasser: [00:26:38] If we’re analyzing in the rock realm anything from the Sex Pistols to Pink Floyd and everything in the middle, everything in between will be analyzed by the same variables, the same factors, the same genes, if you will.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:53] So really a way to quantify all of that.
Nolan Gasser: [00:26:55] That’s right. And it’s not just saying like is there electric guitar yes or no. But if there is an electric guitar, to what degree does it impact what I call the identity and the experience of that song? So it’s a obviously we could go on too long, uh, to talk about what that entails, but I did that for Pandora, and following that, I did some other genomes and some other areas like Social impact, even wine. And then in 2019, uh.
Mindy Peterson: [00:27:24] I’m guessing that this provides the infrastructure for the end user when they’re listening to Pandora or some other platform to hit the thumbs up. I like this song. And then that kind of influences the algorithm that they’re fed after that, right?
Nolan Gasser: [00:27:39] Well, that is the basis of Pandora Radio. It is powered by the music genome. So back back in the day, I was, uh, the head of the music operation at Pandora. I had a team of about 60 professional musicians that did gigs at night and that would come into work. This is, you know, back back before, you know, you could work from home. Uh, they would put on headphones and listen to a three minute, you know, song by, you know, the Backstreet Boys or by Elvis Costello or whatever. And they would go through this set of variables and they would rate the song across all of these hundreds of variables. All of that information would go into a database, and the data scientists would kind of create working with, with me, and my team would create the algorithm so that when you create a station, you create an Elvis Costello station. What are the other things that are the other songs that have similar variables, so that when you say thumbs up or thumbs down, you’re kind of teaching the algorithm, oh, I really like a b, you know, an organ, right? So it’s going to give me the, the who or something. So it’s going to, it’s going to give you music that kind of corresponds to your taste.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:51] Yeah. Or for a lot of years what I would do is at night when I was just winding down, getting ready to kind of go to bed, I would just plug into Pandora and your radio just to get like, Enya type music, because that was sort of like taking a tranquilizer.
Nolan Gasser: [00:29:07] Absolutely. And it shows how important context is that there’s some music that, you know, Enya is great if you’re winding down in the day, but maybe not so great for a dinner party.
Mindy Peterson: [00:29:17] Sure. I put you to sleep at the dinner party. That’s right.
Nolan Gasser: [00:29:22] So what Katch does is basically takes that same approach, that same philosophy of a detailed analysis of content, what technically is called a content graph and applies it to to not only music. And we’re doing music as well. But we started with film and television, and then we got in, as you mentioned, we one of our clients that we work with is meta. So we’re doing working with social media content, but we’re getting into other realms like fashion and, you know, food and and games and, and so basically breaking down content. Now why do you need to break down content? Because if you really want to understand preference, just like with musical taste, why does somebody, you know, love a Nora versus, you know, a real pain? What are the elements to Oscar and, you know, contenders one winner. Um, what are those dimensions? The characters, the the plot themes, the cinematography, the music, all these elements that go into what makes that film tick. And therefore, if you like this film but don’t like this film, what? How can we understand your tastes so that we can better, you know, so that a company like, you know, Paramount or whatever can market, you know, to you because it’s going to touch on those things that resonate with you.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:46] Well, then it also informs them in terms of where to invest in creating new music or purchasing the rights to certain films, because, well, this seems to be pretty consistent with what our audience is looking for.
Nolan Gasser: [00:30:58] Exactly. Yeah. So it’s just the basic mission of Katch is to become the the real experts at defining content, really, whatever that content is, breaking it down into a genomic, in other words, a very systematic structure so that that data can be used for all kinds of purposes for, you know, for making recommendations for doing, you know, ad, you know, advertising or marketing to figure out what content to, to buy or to promote. All that kind of stuff. So that’s it’s an exciting, uh, it’s an exciting time. And now with AI, that’s the big difference. So we’re we’re in a world now where what used to require a bunch of, you know, in my genomic work, having a bunch of well-trained humans doing, you know, their individual analysis.
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:52] And.
Nolan Gasser: [00:31:52] Then trying to make sure that it’s all coordinated. Now we can actually use trained AI model and a trained AI model, you know, informed by our process so that we can not just, you know, code one, one film an hour, but, you know, tens of thousands.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:12] Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m just picturing these people back when you were doing the genome project at Pandora, these musicians coming in, sitting down, putting the headphones on, listening to a three minute song. And if it was a three minute song, about how long would it take for them to sort of rate all these hundreds of metrics that they’re looking for?
Nolan Gasser: [00:32:31] It’s a great question. So that was obviously always a concern. It was a bit crazy that we were trying to do this. It would take around 15 minutes by a well-trained analyst to analyze a three minute song, which is.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:45] Which is pretty quick, actually.
Nolan Gasser: [00:32:46] It is pretty quick. But when you think about that, you know, there are, you know, like 200 million songs.
Mindy Peterson: [00:32:56] Yeah, yeah. And they’re doing all of this manually. So, yeah, it’s fascinating. And I can totally see how I would just exponentially speed up this process.
Nolan Gasser: [00:33:06] And just to say I was always the one because as a musicologist or as the, you know, as a genome architect, um, I was always very skeptical of any kind of non-human ability to really make, you know, a proper interpretation. Like, what kind of harmony is this? What kind of rhythm is this? You know, what is the meter? What is how does the instrumentation, you know, how can it be defined back in, you know, the early Pandora days, there were like machine listening technologies out there, but they were always horrible. And so I just said, no, no, no, no. And even with cash, we started in 2019 before the AI revolution, we had experts in film and television, highly trained rating and watching a film and then going through it. So that would take sometimes to code. A two hour film would take three hours.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:00] Oh, I’m sure.
Nolan Gasser: [00:34:01] So very labor intensive. And I saw some early versions of an AI version of how we could use our, our approach and initially like in 2021 or whatever. Yeah. No, it’s not good. And then we have some experts in AI, one of our co-founders, Jacob Clifton, just kept tinkering and tinkering and tinkering, and it got to be the point that I said, oh my God, it is so good. And so now I am.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:28] Skeptic was converted.
Nolan Gasser: [00:34:31] The skeptic is now the, the evangelist.
Nolan Gasser: [00:34:35] And I it just coincides. You know, I decided when the AI revolution. I’m not a techie. I’m not an engineer, you know, couldn’t program my way out of a paper bag, but I made it a mission to really understand AI as much as I could, including music, AI. And, you know, that’s a huge topic. And, you know, happy to talk about it, but it’s, uh, you know, we are living in an AI world whether we are sometimes happy about it or not. And so how do we how do we navigate that.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:05] Yeah. Well, and whether we recognize it or not, you know, some people point to very specific applications of AI and can get sort of irate about AI doing this or that or taking over jobs or whatever. And, and then people point out we have been using AI for lots of years. When you think of MapQuest and, you know, um, and it is so convenient. I mean, I’ve gotten to the point where if I’m online shopping and I’m not getting pop up, um, examples of compliment, maybe you should consider this product if you like that one. Or, you know, I’m shopping for music and it’s like, well, if you like this, consider that. And if I don’t get that, I’m kind of like, come on, like, give me some ideas here. Like, you want me to research this on my own, right?
Nolan Gasser: [00:35:51] Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:51] Or you go to Amazon and it’s like you plug in a coffee grinder and it gives you five different products at different price points with different ratings. And if you like this, you should consider that. And it’s it’s really nice I got to say.
Nolan Gasser: [00:36:04] Well we I mean it’s getting more and more integrated. And obviously, you know with ChatGPT and we all have the capability of, you know, not just having assistance writing an email or, or a term paper or whatever. Or getting a summary of, you know, crime and punishment. But you just, you know, all kinds of practical things as well. And I think increasingly it will become integrated. You know, it already is like if you do a Google search, I mean, chances are you’re going to get a response from Gemini, not just, you know, here’s here’s eight, eight websites to go explore. It’s going to start by giving you kind of a condensed, um, answer. But um, obviously when it comes to the arts, there’s um, you know, a lot of consternation about what is it going to do to the arts? Is it going to like, put musicians out of work? I mean, that’s what you hear. You know, obviously there’s a lot of, um, anger, even, you know, that among musicians that have, you know, the that, you know, these big tech companies like Google or Meta or whatever using label, you know, established artists that are content to kind of train their model. How are they getting compensated. Right.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:13] And just recognition Transparency. Yeah. Payment.
Nolan Gasser: [00:37:17] Yeah. And yeah it’s and it’s a it’s a tricky thing. But you know technology always has, you know a combination of taking jobs away but then introducing a whole bunch of new jobs.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:31] Exactly.
Nolan Gasser: [00:37:32] So yeah. So but it’s a definitely a big, uh, transformation. This is you know, we’re still in the very early stages. So ten years from now, 20 years from now, it’s going to be very interesting to see where things are with, you know, generative music. And that’s one of the things I’m working on with Google is to help improve, you know, the capability of these models to generate music. And, you know, is that a betrayal of me as a composer to put, you know, people out of work? And I say, absolutely not. There’s there’s never not going to be a need for real humans to write music. Sure. No machine is going to be able to do everything. Nobody’s going to want to see a concert with a bunch of computers on stage? Sure. So, um, but, you know, we would be putting our heads in the sand if we don’t think that music, AI, or any other kind of AI is going to keep on improving. And yes, there are going to be jobs that get lost as the old expression, you know, goes. Or as I say, you know, I won’t take your job, but somebody who knows how to do I will.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:37] Sure.
Nolan Gasser: [00:38:38] So it’s really incumbent on all of us, I think, to become as familiar with it as we can.
Mindy Peterson: [00:38:44] Definitely. Well, very fascinating topic and fascinating frontier. And the fact that you were started on this so much earlier, I mean, 2019 with Katch and then even well before that with the Pandora Genome Project, you’ve really been at the forefront of this new frontier for a long time. Well, I’ll for sure include lots of links in the show notes. Listeners, check out “Why You Like It: Decoding Musical Taste.” Really fun, interactive, fascinating show. Really great educational potential for all of you out there like me, who are music educators and really get into that kind of stuff. Uh, Nolan, as you know, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Do you have a song or story that you can share with us today in closing?
Nolan Gasser: [00:39:35] Yeah, well, I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a song that is or music that has enhanced my life, but it’s actually apropos. Um, when I got your invitation to think about a coda, um, and something that was maybe on YouTube, I’ve got a lot of things on there. But the thing that came to my mind is an actual I human collaboration that I put together. And this was quite some time ago, and we’re starting to work. Me and a collaborator, um, who does a lot of the video stuff. His name is Malcolm McDuffie, and he’s very talented. Uh, starting to, uh, work on a second version. My idea was this. To create a setting where I could actually compose to a sort of a video. So I came up with the idea of like asking AI or ChatGPT to create a story, almost like a children’s fable. It did that, and then I used AI to do a voiceover. It did that. Then I had I create images that would accompany this, and then it did that. And then we had I do turn some of these images into video and it’s called the The Wisdom of the pond. Now again, some people may say, you know, you’re taking you know, you’re putting voiceover people out of work. Nobody is making any money on this. So for PBS, I promise you, I hired real voice and we hired voiceover people.
Nolan Gasser: [00:40:57] But I did all this so I could have an excuse to have this story, this children’s story about this boy who and his faithful dog, uh, who kind of have this life lesson. They go to a pond and they look for this wise old frog. And instead, what they discover is that nature is kind of beautiful and gives you lots of bounty against this three minute thing. And then I had the ability to compose a score to it. And so that was the exercise. It was called The Wisdom of the Pond. And so my coda is for people to so for me, it was a joyful thing to write the music, to try to match the like doing a film score, trying to match the emotion of the story and the flow of the narrative. It’s just solo piano. You can actually see me playing it, um, on the bottom of the of the YouTube video. Anyway, I hope people like it. So that’s, you know, version one. And so you can stay tuned for the next, uh, it’s called The Adventures of Carson and Louis. So Carson is the boy and Louis is the dog. And, um, so we’ll have to see what they’re up to next. But we’ll well, it’ll be AI that creates the story.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai