People really avoid considering what the word "general" implies. Yesterday I tried sending o3 a screenshot of some sheet music, asking for a midi file of how it sounds. Complete failure x3. Could not even get the value of the first note right. This is not "general" intelligence.
These models are notably terrible at music in every dimension.
Music is essentially mathematical. Weakness in math is being addressed by dedicated capabilities that are triggered by mathematical language in prompts, but because these models are actually terrible at math there is no lateral transfer of skill to the domain of music. That's my theory anyway.
I think actually you could do that if you wanted to; look up what notes mean, write some little program to make a sound if you had to. You could do it in a week if it was your only job.
