Google’s first AI-powered doodle celebrates musician Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth anniversary

Google’s first AI-powered doodle celebrates musician Johann Sebastian Bach’s birth anniversary 

Google is celebrating world renowned German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach with its first AI-powered doodle. Today’s doodle is an interactive experience which is encouraging users to compose their own notes and create a melody of their choice.

In order to create your own melody, you have to click on the play button placed on the doodle. After this with the help of machine learning you marked notes will be harmonized with the melody of Bach’s signature music style and your own melody will be created.

The model used in today’s Doodle was developed by Magenta Team AI Resident Anna Huang, who developed Coconet: a versatile model that can be used in a wide range of musical tasks - such as harmonizing melodies or composing from scratch.

Specifically, Coconet was trained on 306 of Bach’s chorale harmonization. His chorales always have four voices, each carrying their own melodic line, while creating a rich harmonic progression when played together. This concise structure made them good training data for a machine learning model.

Bach is known for his instrumental compositions such as the Art of Fugue, the Brandenburg Concertos, and the Goldberg Variations as well as for vocal music such as St Matthew Passion, and the Mass in B minor.

Born in 1685 in Eisenach, Bach’s father was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father taught him violin and harpsichord.