Artificial Intelligence Music

[Slim]

I think you're unwise to say "never". I don't believe that, today, a neural network could write a What a Fool Believes or a What You Won't Do For Love but I've already seen it come up with considerably better songs than most of the rubbish I hear these days written by humans. Better than anything on Vapor Trails or Snakes and Arrows, for that matter.

[David L]

I'm not a musician and listen (more or less) exclusively to 'legacy' music so I don't really mind where this goes. However, I will feel regret for the thousands of musicians that will possibly become redundant as a result. Progress, eh?

[Slim]

I think some will persist. But professions becoming redundant is the stuff of history. Lift operators, TV repairmen, etc, Thinking about it, it may be a long time before AI takes a lot of the jobs it's threatened. How long have we had online newspapers now? Thirty years? But the physical newspapers still make it to the newsagents shops, so the print workers haven't all disappeared.

There's one important thing about music, which is that some musicians become the focus of a cult. The guy who plays the keyboards on Sainsburys adverts or sitcom theme tunes can be replaced by AI and no-one would notice or care, but Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift? People want to buy into the person, the artist.

Which makes me think actually that the present generation doesn't really have purely instrumental heroes - no Ritchie Blackmore or Keith Emerson, no John Bonham, no John Entwistle.

[The Picnic Wasp]

I think you're unwise to say "never". I don't believe that, today, a neural network could write a What a Fool Believes or a What You Won't Do For Love but I've already seen it come up with considerably better songs than most of the rubbish I hear these days written by humans. Better than anything on Vapor Trails or Snakes and Arrows, for that matter.

I think there was consensus on here before when a few of us debated when people write their best material. I think VT and S&N were closer to male menopause than their pubescent days.

I don't think, or maybe hope is a better way of expressing it, that artificial means will ever have that magical spark of actual humanity. Call it from the soul, an expression I guess you won't agree with.

[Slim]

Well I don't believe in a "soul" in the religious sense, but as a metaphor for an emotional and personal core, yes. Some music does come from that but a lot doesn't.

[The Picnic Wasp]

I think some will persist. But professions becoming redundant is the stuff of history. Lift operators, TV repairmen, etc, Thinking about it, it may be a long time before AI takes a lot of the jobs it's threatened. How long have we had online newspapers now? Thirty years? But the physical newspapers still make it to the newsagents shops, so the print workers haven't all disappeared.

There's one important thing about music, which is that some musicians become the focus of a cult. The guy who plays the keyboards on Sainsburys adverts or sitcom theme tunes can be replaced by AI and no-one would notice or care, but Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift? People want to buy into the person, the artist.

Which makes me think actually that the present generation doesn't really have purely instrumental heroes - no Ritchie Blackmore or Keith Emerson, no John Bonham, no John Entwistle.

I don't think when teenagers fall in love, smoke weed or take LSD they have any desire to fix a TV or wish that bus conductors would make a comeback, but I think they will always want to write words and music and express that undefinable thing within us. I don't think the guitar will ever die. Even now we can plug it into a computer and create sounds the 70s could only dream of via software but I think we'll always be the hardware.

[Thenop]

It will end up being both:

One big commercial money making machine churning out AI tunes and making the non talented rich, which is what happens always.

And one group that keeps making music as means of expression. This will be the music that preserves the urgency that makes it exciting to listen to.
In situations like these I always think of the late 60s, early 70s. The Who played live as if they could fall apart at any moment, but it didn't. It felt like it and that felt urgent, real and imperfect.
Then came the 70s, and the Eagles (and Zeppelin luckily). And the Eagles are driven, calculated and designed to please. I hate the Eagles, but there is an audience for it.

This is similar, there is an audience for AI generated music. But it's not me.

[David L]

It will end up being both:

One big commercial money making machine churning out AI tunes and making the non talented rich, which is what happens always.

And one group that keeps making music as means of expression. This will be the music that preserves the urgency that makes it exciting to listen to.
In situations like these I always think of the late 60s, early 70s. The Who played live as if they could fall apart at any moment, but it didn't. It felt like it and that felt urgent, real and imperfect.
Then came the 70s, and the Eagles (and Zeppelin luckily). And the Eagles are driven, calculated and designed to please. I hate the Eagles, but there is an audience for it.

This is similar, there is an audience for AI generated music. But it's not me.

The question is: would you be able to discern whether it was AI generated or otherwise? If so, how?

[pxr5]

I think this is OK:

https://suno.com/song/6b4aa8ad-6fc3-4e22-9484-b6235117daee

[The Picnic Wasp]

I think this is OK:

https://suno.com/song/6b4aa8ad-6fc3-4e22-9484-b6235117daee

Extremely polished and very musical. I quite like it and if it had played in the background without any pointers to AI I would have accepted it as a conventional production. 

However, I'm glad I can still pick up on certain non human-like instances. It's a bit like the top of the range Yamaha or Korg arranger keyboard workstations. The sound emulations are incredible, almost indiscernible from a real acoustic instrument, and then there's a weird background to a trumpet trill or something like that.

Maybe I'm kidding myself and I'm just finding something that's not there because I've been alerted to the AI input, but I hope they never quite get there. Rick Beato's kids seem to be able to spot AI immediately when someone of Rick's musical stature can't.

[Slim]

Only suspected this might be AI about three minutes in - gorgeous early '60s soundtrack style.