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chriswmwhite.bsky.social

@chriswmwhite.bsky.social
1.4K followers 184 following 104 posts

Music theorist & autism dad. Forthcoming book= The AI Music Problem, Routledge. Sometimes in Slate and the Chicago Tribune. The last King of Rome.

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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I had an absolute delight chatting with H‑Music's Editor Andrea Calilhanna’s about music, the body, and computers on their podcast last week! @h-net-humanities.bsky.social Check it out:
networks.h-net.org
The Music in the Data: How We Hear, Feel, and Compute Sound | H-Net
Dive into the hidden patterns that shape how we hear music. In this conversation with Associate Professor Christopher White, we explore how big data, cognitive science, mathematics, and AI are transfo...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
"As anyone who has cooked chicken breast in a microwave or made music with a generative AI will attest: even if this technology is faster, convenient, and more complex, it is not necessarily better." <- pleased w myself for that lil phrase from the intro of my new music & AI book project #softlaunch
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Hey y'all— come get paid to study computer-assisted music analysis (partially with me!) this summer in NYC. Applications are here: institutes.ams-net.org, and the longer description is.... [in the comments]
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Writing about AI and creativity in 2025 sometimes feels like fiddling while Rome burns
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Anybody got a Sora invite they’d like to waste on me?
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
Check it out— two chapters from The AI Music Problem are now Open Access. Download and read for free! www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
Last week to for vote for my panel "Can You Hear the Machine? The Disappearing Tells in AI Music" for South By Southwest 2026! Click the little heart in the link below to keep us in the running! participate.sxsw.com/flow/sxsw/sx...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
I can use your vote! I'm on a proposed panel for this year's South By Southwest @sxsw.com about music and AI w/ a dizzying lineup of co-panelists: @adamneely.bsky.social, @charlieharding.bsky.social (of @switchedonpop.bsky.social), and @Tristra Yeager (of @RockPaperScissors inc.) 1/2 w/ voting link:
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Heavy way to start a morning, @mikeduncan.bsky.social, with the fall of the Girondins… I mean fall of the Mons Cafe crowd
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
New article out! It's a collaboration in the journal Music Perception where we show that metric emphasis influences what listens hear as tonic/stable in pop music loops: static1.squarespace.com/static/54518...
static1.squarespace.com
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
This article feels like a clear example of techo panic that we'll all make fun of in 10 years. Note the use of #anecdata rather than any actual data in the reporting. #AI www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/t...
nytimes.com
She Is in Love With ChatGPT
A 28-year-old woman with a busy social life spends hours on end talking to her A.I. boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex.
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
I'm conflicted about this footnote I just wrote: a thread: I would only ever venture to place these kinds of thoughts in a footnote, but LLMs do provide a certain comfort for those of us working in esoteric text-based scholarly fields. ...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Everyone who receives an email from @kevinroose.com this week is going to be wondering whether his #AI wrote it...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Should @theorymeg.bsky.social and I create an early-music-themes #memecoin called #dufaynance? Yes or no or heck yah
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Our paper about how we perceive AI-generated music was one of the TOP DOWNLOADED MUSIC PAPERS on SSRN over the last 60 days (with a grand total of 33...) Get my totals up with a download of your own: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Deliver...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Got a working paper on Music and #AI with a bunch of coauthors. Gives a lay of the land in industry and academia. And, because AI has the potential to change how we think about expression, art, and education, we argue humanistic thinkers need a seat at the policy table. zenodo.org/records/1453...
zenodo.org
The Future of Musical Knowledge in the Age of Machine Learning
Machine learning and methods of artificial intelligence (AI) have become increasingly present for music practitioners, music researchers and music listeners. Going beyond the more widely-known cases o...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Another problem with #music #GenAI: it's tough to actually get crisp, reliable datapoints out of audio. Here's a graphic showing what an #AI might "see" when it "listens" to Lizzo's Truth Hurts. OODLES of mistakes. #MusicScience #MusicTheory
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Re Musical #GenAI, musical datasets are MUCH smaller than those in other media. Here's an infographic showing when a human would need to start reading/listening/watching to consume the whole dataset. In a landscape of ice-age-length data, music lives in a world of American and Maoist revolutions
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Reposted by @chriswmwhite.bsky.social
In Quires and Places where they meme @quiresandplaces.com · 11/12/2024
OK people, let's take it down a notch and calm down with a gentle sleigh ride. #CursedCarols
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
The 1981 chipmunks Christmas special is among the most underrated holiday content out there.
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
As far as I can tell, the Bill Murray Xmas special on Netflix just contracted a dozen talented folks, rented the Carlisle for three hours, turned on the cameras, and taped a bunch of one-take Christmas musical numbers. AND I LOVE IT. Strong recommend.
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
“Ok hear me out— what if she blows out all the lightbulbs in Emerald City in her last belted sustain?” “But that doesn’t make any sense” “And what if there’s pulsing green lightning in the clouds behind her” To whoever said yes to that ridiculousness: thank you
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Reviewing an article with lots of content from #ChatGPT, and English seems to not be the authors' first language. I'm torn about how to think about this. Love the cultural accessibility AI allows, but lots of sentences aren't "by" the authors, and (worse) don't communicate their intended ideas
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Musical creativity both recombines inherited materials and adheres to set expectations. Here's a graphic I made: music boxes adhere to expectations but make nothing new, R. Scott's Electronium made new music but 100% randomly. #GenAI and #Humans are special bc they maximize both
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Just a friendly reminder you can find “the love is gone” in the “Extras” of muppet Christmas Carol. (Also great ex. of mixture)
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
1) The ways keys are NOT transpositionally equivalent (e.g., how pieces in B major behave differently that in Bb) and how that changes over time (with @theorymeg.bsky.social) 2) Basically 1% of atonal 20th-c. music actually uses strict transposition, even tho we obsess over it in the classroom
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Love seeing all these new people from the #musicNerd #musicTheory and #musicScience worlds on bluesky! Welcome friends!
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
I had a great time at the University of Delaware discussing music, #AI, and education with the #musicEd students! I also worked with the composition students, showing them how to build a music-making GPT. Yay #Delaware!
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 15/10/2024
If you just want more #ChrisContent about music and the computational humanities, check out the most recent episode of the Café Technika podcast! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
podcasts.apple.com
Eps 07 - Christopher White of UMASS Amherst
Podcast Episode · Café Technika · 10/03/2024 · 45m
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 22/08/2024
This morning I signed a contract with Routledge for my next book.... The AI Music Problem: Why Machine Learning Conflicts With Musical Creativity It's due to them early fall, so it'll probably be in print early summer 2025!
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 08/07/2024
The amazing Patrick Hicks interviewed me on his substack podcast about music and AI! Check it out: patrickhicks.substack.com/p/why-does-a...
patrickhicks.substack.com
Why Does AI Music Suck?
A conversation with music theory professor Christopher White
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 11/05/2024
I'm giving the keynote "Why is AI so Bad at Music (at least so far)?" at the New England Music Library Association May 31st at Smith. Reg. is free for 1st-time attendees, so if you're looking for some hot takes on a Friday afternoon, come heckle me! nemla.musiclibraryassoc.org/nemla-meetin...
nemla.musiclibraryassoc.org
Spring Meeting Program & Details (May 31, 2024) | NEMLA
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 17/04/2024
I’ve got a pretty hot take (for music theory) out today, coauthored with a veritable flamboyance of amazing scholars! #musicScience #musicTheory mtosmt.org/issues/mto.2...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 27/03/2024
How much much smaller are musical datasets than those in other media? This lil infographic shows how long it would take an immortal human to consume various content sources. More curated and accessible musical datasets are quite small compared to what big-brand LLMs use! #musicScience
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 20/03/2024
Workshopping titles for the new book:
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 18/03/2024
Here's my first foray into music & AI! It's about interpreting Generative Pretrained Models (GPTs) by mapping internal connections under the hood, and by stopping its training periodically to see when/how it "learns" #musictheory concepts tinyurl.com/bdfvuya4 #musicscience
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 19/02/2024
I was writing about the myriad reasons for why musical datasets are so small, and just wrote the sentence, "There's less cheesecake in the world than there is cheese" and I think I'll never construct a better metaphor
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 31/01/2024
I've been doing some research into early critiques of AI and it's FASCINATING. In 1842, Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer code. In her notes, she used a #music example to talk about AI's potentials, and in the same breath talked about its limitations. She wrote: (1/x)
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 22/01/2024
doing a little back-of-the-envelope math here while working on a history of #Music #AI: a computation that takes my current laptop 2 minutes to complete would have taken David Cope’s or H.J. Maxwell’s computer over 1 year of uninterrupted work. #musicscience
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 20/12/2023
Here's my piece for New England Public Media! www.nepm.org/commentary/2...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 20/12/2023
any of you listening to New England Public Media, I'll be on tomorrow (Wednesday) morning a a few minutes before 6:30 and before 8:30!
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 19/12/2023
Scriabin legos:
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 18/12/2023
PSA: Writing requires SO MUCH EFFORT. I was reminded of this when I sat down to edit my own prose (of what I thought was a near-final draft), and ended up with pages that looked like this. A prof once told me 'writing that sounds effortless takes a lot of effort'. Solid #truth
White pages with black printed type a lot of handwritten edits in blue pen.
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 05/12/2023
One of my students put together a survey to see whether folks can tell which of two rhythms was written by AI... want to see if you can tell? We be grateful if you spent two minutes trying! docs.google.com/forms/d/14Ny...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 02/12/2023
AI: Can you make me a picture of a music theorist?
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 30/11/2023
Strong recommend of Cher's new Christmas album. It's a beautiful glorious rainbow of a trainwreck, and it'll be on repeat in my ears for the next month
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 29/11/2023
Wm. (Gosh, why did I let myself get goaded into that in 2013)
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 12/10/2023
Preprints are up for our paper "Metric Accent Affects Perception of Key Center in Pop-Music Chord Loops"! We find that listeners use 2 strategies to assign key in loop-based pop... 1/2: osf.io/preprints/ps...
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chriswmwhite.bsky.social @chriswmwhite.bsky.social · 19/09/2023
Just used #GPT4 to format my bibliography, and it inserted Taruskin's History into it. I do not cite Taruskin in this paper, but clearly this LLM thinks I should.
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