Make music like German composer Bach with first AI-powered Google Doodle

Google celebrated the birth anniversary of Bach, among the world's most recognised musicians, with a Google Doodle that uses machine learning to "harmonise the custom melody into Bach's signature music style". PHOTO: GOOGLE

Think you are tone-deaf or lacking in musical talent?

Well, for the rest of Friday (March 22), you will be able to create music just like German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, thanks to Google's first AI-powered Doodle.

Google celebrated the birth anniversary of Bach, among the world's most recognised musicians, with a Google Doodle that uses machine learning to "harmonise the custom melody into Bach's signature music style".

Bach was born on March 21, 1685, in a small town of Eisenach in central Germany.

Google users are first greeted by an animation showing the Baroque composer behind an organ, with a "play" button at the side that prompts interaction.

Clicking on it takes users to a magical music box, where they are able to compose a two-measure melody of their choice.

Another click of a button transforms the custom tune into a musical masterpiece in the Bach's signature style.

Google said that there is also a special Easter egg in the Doodle that will trigger a Bach 80s rock-style melody.

A total of three Google teams were involved in the creation of the Doodle, which is powered by a machine learning model.

Machine learning is the process of teaching a computer to come up with its own answers by showing it a lot of examples, instead of giving it a set of rules to follow as is done in traditional computer programming.

One of the teams came up with a model that was trained on 306 of Bach's chorale harmonisations.

Bach's chorales are known to always have four voices, each carrying their own melodic line, creating a rich harmonic progression when played together.

Another team worked to allow machine learning to take place entirely within the Web browser instead of running on its servers.

The Doodle team then combined art and engineering to create the final look of the project for users.

Bach, who was known as an exceptional organist in his lifetime, grew up in a large family of musicians.

His father played many instruments and was also the director of the town's musicians.

His eldest brother, who was also a musician, raised Bach from the age of 10 after his father died.

Bach composed music at a prolific pace, but lived to see only a handful of his works published.

But more than 1,000 of them that survived in manuscript form have now been published and performed widely around the world.

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