AI and music

[Lost to the Void]

this makes a lot of sense actually. Of all the aspects of the whole electronic/dance/club music experience, being able to read the floor in real time and take people for a trip is perhaps harder for a AI model to learn than producing new music, for better or worse. All the information needed to conjure a new variation on the "electronic music track" theme, is encoded in actual audio track files, making it easily consumed and processed by a machine. I don't know how you would make a "track" that encodes the intuition of a human curator performing live track selection.

You play enough parties and you soon see that simply isn`t true. It`s why a lot of really big names get very cynical and complacent.

If you really know your shit then you realise the crowd drives the party. If they are up for it, they are up for it, and they will fucking dance around a generator. IF they aren`t into it, you might as well go home.

AI replacing a DJ can be done right now.
So many DJ`s play pre-recorded sets, and the crowd goes crazy.
If anything AI is more likely to make the DJ redundant, or at the least, give them time to ponce around behind the decks more, and do less.

It would be easy for a AI to just read the play lists of a particular DJ and just algorithmically imitate them.


I once played a (live PA) set years ago, and my setup went wonky and got locked up, just stuttered out on some weird midi lock. Heat, smoke, vibration, whatever.
I was panicking, it was a 40,000 crowd in Poland. Tried to find a DJ to cover for me so I could reset shit quick, found one, was about to flip over to him, then shit suddenly switched back and all was fine. Crowd when fucking insane and thought that minute or so of fucking horrible glitch was part of the show.

A good crowd with good drugs will dance to a repetitive fart.

[willemb]

I once played a (live PA) set years ago, and my setup went wonky and got locked up, just stuttered out on some weird midi lock. Heat, smoke, vibration, whatever.
I was panicking, it was a 40,000 crowd in Poland. Tried to find a DJ to cover for me so I could reset shit quick, found one, was about to flip over to him, then shit suddenly switched back and all was fine. Crowd when fucking insane and thought that minute or so of fucking horrible glitch was part of the show.

A good crowd with good drugs will dance to a repetitive fart.

Similar story, about 20 or 25 years ago my brother was doing a live set with MPC in China for a big crowd (Shanghai i think) - but when the kick was supposed to come in, nothing happened. It became apparent that the cable for that channel was broken. As he and his partner in music were trying to identify and fix the problem, the music just kept playing without kick. Eventually when they decided to sacrifice another channel and plugged a working cable into the kick channel output, the crowd had been dancing to a kickless tune for 2 or 3 minutes, when the kick then dropped, crowd went ballistic.

[Amøbe]

I once played a (live PA) set years ago, and my setup went wonky and got locked up, just stuttered out on some weird midi lock. Heat, smoke, vibration, whatever.
I was panicking, it was a 40,000 crowd in Poland. Tried to find a DJ to cover for me so I could reset shit quick, found one, was about to flip over to him, then shit suddenly switched back and all was fine. Crowd when fucking insane and thought that minute or so of fucking horrible glitch was part of the show.

A good crowd with good drugs will dance to a repetitive fart.

Similar story, about 20 or 25 years ago my brother was doing a live set with MPC in China for a big crowd (Shanghai i think) - but when the kick was supposed to come in, nothing happened. It became apparent that the cable for that channel was broken. As he and his partner in music were trying to identify and fix the problem, the music just kept playing without kick. Eventually when they decided to sacrifice another channel and plugged a working cable into the kick channel output, the crowd had been dancing to a kickless tune for 2 or 3 minutes, when the kick then dropped, crowd went ballistic.

Haha it actually says something important about the power of holding back stuff

[Amøbe]

this makes a lot of sense actually. Of all the aspects of the whole electronic/dance/club music experience, being able to read the floor in real time and take people for a trip is perhaps harder for a AI model to learn than producing new music, for better or worse. All the information needed to conjure a new variation on the "electronic music track" theme, is encoded in actual audio track files, making it easily consumed and processed by a machine. I don't know how you would make a "track" that encodes the intuition of a human curator performing live track selection.

You play enough parties and you soon see that simply isn`t true. It`s why a lot of really big names get very cynical and complacent.

If you really know your shit then you realise the crowd drives the party. If they are up for it, they are up for it, and they will fucking dance around a generator. IF they aren`t into it, you might as well go home.

AI replacing a DJ can be done right now.
So many DJ`s play pre-recorded sets, and the crowd goes crazy.
If anything AI is more likely to make the DJ redundant, or at the least, give them time to ponce around behind the decks more, and do less.

It would be easy for a AI to just read the play lists of a particular DJ and just algorithmically imitate them.


I once played a (live PA) set years ago, and my setup went wonky and got locked up, just stuttered out on some weird midi lock. Heat, smoke, vibration, whatever.
I was panicking, it was a 40,000 crowd in Poland. Tried to find a DJ to cover for me so I could reset shit quick, found one, was about to flip over to him, then shit suddenly switched back and all was fine. Crowd when fucking insane and thought that minute or so of fucking horrible glitch was part of the show.

A good crowd with good drugs will dance to a repetitive fart.

I'm very confident that Music information retrieval (MIR - the technology behind AI in music) has been on a level for at least a decade, where it easily could mimick even more avantgarde selectors and DJs. The question is more if we really want to go to a party and dance to something that mimicks how it usually works? I know I wouldn't really be interested in that - even though I'm aware that people are already mimicking each other for whatever usually works. The idea, that somebody put work into putting this party nicely together in whatever manner it presents itself, is important to me.

[Ben Kohonays]

It may replace DJ`s....lmay, but live music played by humans won`t change.

People still shit the bed if an artist uses a laptop instead of Hardware live.

They aren`t going to want to go see an AI play

Are you sure about that?

Are you not?

I don't think it makes sense to talk in absolutes. There have always been 'manufactured' records that get promoted beyond their value and plenty of people enjoy them, but most of those people are not what you would call music lovers - they're the sort of people who enjoy it in the background, or like an artist because of something they said or the clothes they wear. People who really like music tend to steer clear of boy bands and X factor, and will seek out the type of music that has something to say or evokes a feeling or emotion. This won't change and the AI will be primarily replacing the manufactured stuff that's currently made by Max Martin or whoever, and the same type of people who used to enjoy boyzone or spice girls will be enjoying the AI that replaces Max Martin.
It's also well known that music performed live can be a much more powerful and enjoyable experience than a recorded artifact. A few times I've discovered something through a live performance and bought the record, only to realise that it is in fact inferior to the live version. The thing is, often the reason the live version is better is because of mistakes, performance nerves, playing too fast, tension etc. Things that would be impossible to replicate artificially.

So yes, live music will still be made by humans.

[illit_]

this makes a lot of sense actually. Of all the aspects of the whole electronic/dance/club music experience, being able to read the floor in real time and take people for a trip is perhaps harder for a AI model to learn than producing new music, for better or worse. All the information needed to conjure a new variation on the "electronic music track" theme, is encoded in actual audio track files, making it easily consumed and processed by a machine. I don't know how you would make a "track" that encodes the intuition of a human curator performing live track selection.

You play enough parties and you soon see that simply isn`t true. It`s why a lot of really big names get very cynical and complacent.

If you really know your shit then you realise the crowd drives the party. If they are up for it, they are up for it, and they will fucking dance around a generator. IF they aren`t into it, you might as well go home.

AI replacing a DJ can be done right now.
So many DJ`s play pre-recorded sets, and the crowd goes crazy.
If anything AI is more likely to make the DJ redundant, or at the least, give them time to ponce around behind the decks more, and do less.

It would be easy for a AI to just read the play lists of a particular DJ and just algorithmically imitate them.


I once played a (live PA) set years ago, and my setup went wonky and got locked up, just stuttered out on some weird midi lock. Heat, smoke, vibration, whatever.
I was panicking, it was a 40,000 crowd in Poland. Tried to find a DJ to cover for me so I could reset shit quick, found one, was about to flip over to him, then shit suddenly switched back and all was fine. Crowd when fucking insane and thought that minute or so of fucking horrible glitch was part of the show.

A good crowd with good drugs will dance to a repetitive fart.

I'd like to see an AI mix like Sterac...

House was born from a DJ putting a disco drum break vinyl on whilst he went out for a fag. Just a series of looping percussions for about 9 minutes and when he came back the crowd was going nuts. I don't think crowds are much to go off, as you say, they'll dance to a repetitive fart.

AI will just be another tool used in a new way. Like when computers took over typewriters, or iphones took over cameras, or cameras took over paintings. The old doesn't disappear and soon enough the new isn't new it's just normal. Kids grow up, old people die, the planet will out live us all.

We're basically just sex organs for robots at this point anyways, let them play some tunes for a bit

[subvers^v]

People need creative expression. I can't see AI having any impact on that. Sure, robo-DJ for a store or hotel lobby, whatever, couldn't give a fuck.

But of course web3, nft, crypto heads will proclaim it as the next level thing but fuck that. The idea of following what music an algorithm spits out next is uninteresting... well, maybe for five minutes to see how coherent it is. But then I'll move on...

[Lost to the Void]

this makes a lot of sense actually. Of all the aspects of the whole electronic/dance/club music experience, being able to read the floor in real time and take people for a trip is perhaps harder for a AI model to learn than producing new music, for better or worse. All the information needed to conjure a new variation on the "electronic music track" theme, is encoded in actual audio track files, making it easily consumed and processed by a machine. I don't know how you would make a "track" that encodes the intuition of a human curator performing live track selection.

You play enough parties and you soon see that simply isn`t true. It`s why a lot of really big names get very cynical and complacent.

If you really know your shit then you realise the crowd drives the party. If they are up for it, they are up for it, and they will fucking dance around a generator. IF they aren`t into it, you might as well go home.

AI replacing a DJ can be done right now.
So many DJ`s play pre-recorded sets, and the crowd goes crazy.
If anything AI is more likely to make the DJ redundant, or at the least, give them time to ponce around behind the decks more, and do less.

It would be easy for a AI to just read the play lists of a particular DJ and just algorithmically imitate them.


I once played a (live PA) set years ago, and my setup went wonky and got locked up, just stuttered out on some weird midi lock. Heat, smoke, vibration, whatever.
I was panicking, it was a 40,000 crowd in Poland. Tried to find a DJ to cover for me so I could reset shit quick, found one, was about to flip over to him, then shit suddenly switched back and all was fine. Crowd when fucking insane and thought that minute or so of fucking horrible glitch was part of the show.

A good crowd with good drugs will dance to a repetitive fart.

I'm very confident that Music information retrieval (MIR - the technology behind AI in music) has been on a level for at least a decade, where it easily could mimick even more avantgarde selectors and DJs. The question is more if we really want to go to a party and dance to something that mimicks how it usually works? I know I wouldn't really be interested in that - even though I'm aware that people are already mimicking each other for whatever usually works. The idea, that somebody put work into putting this party nicely together in whatever manner it presents itself, is important to me.

Well, obviously I'm not interested in that.
Art is an expression of the human condition, to me. And I'm not interested in art that is not human.
Whilst I haven't gone to see a DJ specifically, for a long time. The DJ's I like tend to not be beholden to the crowd and give something different. Or they are exceedingly technically proficient in a creative way.
I'm not interested in having a machine do that.

[gedda]

There's something about Techno that I think makes this hard.

I can give you a recipe:
Dorian scale
140 BPM
Polyrhtym lines

etc.

All that stuff goes through tape sims, amps, whacky compression etc. You actually need a human brain for that. And I asked an AI to make some type of techno and it all sounded muddy as hell.

[Barfunkel]

Didn't read the thread yet and I've written about 10 pages worth of stuff about AI the last few days and I'm tired, so I'll just TLDR it now:

AI might be a real threat to some professional music services (things like ghost producers for techno DJ's will probably simply cease to exist) and it will generally make selling and streaming music even less profitable than it's now. But it can only make the actual music better for most musicians. I've thought about a dozen possible scenarios AI assisted music making can lead to, and the conclusion has every time been that it's basically impossible for the AI to make things worse. If it does actually perform a task worse than the producer or the musician can, he can simply either discard it and use his own version, or tell the AI to try again. I don't see a realistic scenario where the human using AI's help would choose the inferior AI creation for any task. AI either doesn't end up in the finished song at all, or it will make it better somehow.

I know I could be naive of course. But I just see the positive side of AI when it comes to art and music. It could potentially free the musician to do exactly what he or she wants, without being restricted by budgets, limitations (such as not having a great singing voice) or simply by not having access to something, because it either doesn't exist at all or it doesn't want to collaborate even for a large amount money.

You can try to prove me wrong of course. It will be difficult though. I can't see think a single harmful thing if I, for example, wanted to have a great male soul vocalist in my song. I can't afford one now, neither I have the required fame and contacts. And if I want him to sing in Finnish I simply can't, as the amount of great Finnish male soul vocalists in existence is exactly zero. When AI can do that in 5 or so years, I can simply make better music because of that. Music that even can't exist in real life.

[DixieWhiskey]

A good crowd with good drugs will dance to a repetitive fart.

you mean a bad crowd and good drugs? I've seen people go off at literal trainwrecks by a drunk dj. I don't know if I would call them a good crowd though. One that appreciates a well executed set and atmosphere is more what I would call a good crowd.

Crowd when fucking insane and thought that minute or so of fucking horrible glitch was part of the show.

I'm willing to bet that you've also played for crowds that would, OTOH, absolutely NOT go nuts at the sound of technical difficulties. Not to mention that a single moment in time is not representative of a maybe several hour performance. Would the crowd still go off if you decided to do that again another 4 times, now on purpose, since they seemed to like it so much the first time?

So I understand what you mean, but I'm having a hard time believing you are being sincere when you say so categorically that it isn't true that a DJ could make a party any better or any worse by their ability to "read the crowd" or their lack of it. We're talking about a type of performance with the distinguishing feature of actually allowing for the possibility of making it as on-the-fly as desired, unscripted. Unlike most performances in the pop/rock branch, where scripted is the norm.
Would you say every DJ out there that claims to feed off of the crowd's response to navigate a performance is either lying or deluded? If a DJ can in fact become "complacent", as you say, wouldn't that necessarily imply the possibility of them doing just the opposite of that?

But that isn't even the point. Of course mediocre examples will be easiest to emulate. Yes, an AI will probably be able to create a performance of quality equal to one that has been worsened by technical difficulties, as well as one from one of those complacent djs playing for an undiscrening audience. The question is, will it be able to create one of those amazing sets that some Djs can pull off while others can't, the ones that are built by playing off of the responses from the crowd? Definitely seems farther away than an AI churning out tracks of as good a quality as you would hear from any human producer.

I'm very confident that Music information retrieval (MIR - the technology behind AI in music) has been on a level for at least a decade, where it easily could mimick even more avantgarde selectors and DJs. The question is more if we really want to go to a party and dance to something that mimicks how it usually works? I know I wouldn't really be interested in that - even though I'm aware that people are already mimicking each other for whatever usually works. The idea, that somebody put work into putting this party nicely together in whatever manner it presents itself, is important to me.

Right, it could take a recording of a set and use it as example to produce something similar, but that is not a performance. A dj set is (sometimes) about the dj doing something, the audience reacting to it, and then de dj responding to that reaction by either doing more of the same or changing something about it. Rinse and repeat. For an AI to do that it would need to be able to decode human emotional queues from a crowd, in real time.

I mean, it's either that, or making it so that people can react to the robot dj with emojis from an app on their phones or some shit like that.

Are you not?

I'm absolutely sure that yes, people will in fact go see an AI play. Hell, they might not even be aware of it. That's my entire point.

and will seek out the type of music that has something to say or evokes a feeling or emotion. This won't change and the AI will be primarily replacing the manufactured stuff that's currently made by Max Martin or whoever, and the same type of people who used to enjoy boyzone or spice girls will be enjoying the AI that replaces Max Martin.

You are undersetimating the capabilities of the technology. It will be able to produce recordings of as good musical quality as anything a human could produce. Simply because they are using those very same recordings as training data. For better or for worse that's the truth, at least for recorded music.

It's also well known that music performed live can be a much more powerful and enjoyable experience than a recorded artifact. A few times I've discovered something through a live performance and bought the record, only to realise that it is in fact inferior to the live version. The thing is, often the reason the live version is better is because of mistakes, performance nerves, playing too fast, tension etc. Things that would be impossible to replicate artificially.

So yes, live music will still be made by humans.

Agreed.

People need creative expression. I can't see AI having any impact on that.

Yes, people will probably start to rely more on creation and less on consumption to fulfill their need to engage with certain types of media.

The idea of following what music an algorithm spits out next is uninteresting

But what if you can't tell. That's what people seem to be struggling with understanding. Then your interest will be based purely on wether you are aware of the authorship of whatever you're listening to.

You actually need a human brain for that. And I asked an AI to make some type of techno and it all sounded muddy as hell.

You most certainly do not. Or, at least, will not. Check again in a few years.

It could potentially free the musician to do exactly what he or she wants,

The problem for most seems to be not people just using it as a tool, but using it to replace human producers entirely. So, from the POV of the producer yeah, it's just another tool. From the POV of the consumer, well, that's the tricky part.

[Lost to the Void]

So I understand what you mean, but I'm having a hard time believing you are being sincere when you say so categorically that it isn't true that a DJ could make a party any better or any worse by their ability to "read the crowd" or their lack of it. We're talking about a type of performance with the distinguishing feature of actually allowing for the possibility of making it as on-the-fly as desired, unscripted. Unlike most performances in the pop/rock branch, where scripted is the norm.
Would you say every DJ out there that claims to feed off of the crowd's response to navigate a performance is either lying or deluded? If a DJ can in fact become "complacent", as you say, wouldn't that necessarily imply the possibility of them doing just the opposite of that?

When I was putting on raves we put on a party every week, relentlessly for 7 years, party ran from saturday night to sunday evening or monday morning. It was the height of the infamous free party scene in london, we had tourists from all over the world, thousands, sometimes 10`s of thousands every weekends flocking to the office buildings, factories and warehouses where we put on multi rig (4-15 soundsystems) parties.

Everyone wanted to play, every rig had a queue of DJ`s hoping to get a slot along with the rig members, and travelling artists in town for the weekend.
I`ve seen literally everything. Everything, that could possibly happen at a rave.
We didn`t care if a DJ had a name or not, if you weren`t part of the crew you got treated the same as everyone else, you put your record bag in the queue, and eventually you got your spot. I`ve seen big names and hot names utterly fail to capture the crowd, despite their skill and experience, and we`ve had to pull them off the decks, and I`ve seen first chance, first time on a rig people slay it. We had the most brutal crowds I`ve ever experience in all my time in dance music. They had paid £3 to get in, or even nothing, they had multiple rooms to choose from, if they didn`t dig your shit, they would walk away, or even start heckling yo, they had low investment and high expectations. It was a real training ground for a DJ. And sometimes DJ`s learned that, they just didn`t have right music, or the right vibe for the crowd, no matter how good their reputation.
The crowd weren`t there for the DJ`s, they were there for the party, and the reputation, the vibe and knowing they were getting the underground shit. Most of the time they didn`t even know who the fuck was playing. And THAT makes a massive difference. Stripped of the "oooh blah blah is playing" you got a very realistic picture of a working party. Sometimes "blah blah" could be playing, and I can`t recall ever having a big name do anything better than some of the unsung anon DJ`s that populated the free party scene in the uk back then.

EVERY professional DJ will have their stories of impossible crowds, of the vibe just not being right, of the crowd "just not feeling it".
Something I always used to say to DJ`s who were just having a bad set, regardless of who they were, was that "this shit happens mans, they just aren`t feeling you", and explained it was not necessarily a reflection of whether or not they were good. They just didn`t fit that crowd on that night.
Unless it was some arrogant prick who couldn`t handle the knock to their ego, most understood this.

The crowd is way way waaaaaay more important than the DJ. And the DJ centric nature of modern dance music, as perfectly captured by Boileroom, obscures this truth.

And the whole "DJ reading the crowd" is overrated bollocks. It`s not even a difficult skill. Is the crowd dancing? no? Play something else.
It`s not rocket science. Mostly it`s about how well the DJ`s taste gels with people.
They are just people playing other peoples music. You either like what they play, or not. They aren`t a jazz musician literally winging the vibe and changing it on a whim. They are people playing pre-recorded music, the only winging it, is playing a different record.

With dance music, the vibe the crowd brings, and the atmosphere set up by the venue, the sound, the available drugs (super important, super super important, no matter how much people want to brush this under the carpet) etc are just as, if not more important than the DJ.

"Would you say every DJ out there that claims to feed off of the crowd's response to navigate a performance is either lying or deluded? If a DJ can in fact become "complacent", as you say, wouldn't that necessarily imply the possibility of them doing just the opposite of that?"

Absolutely, not so much lying as egotistical delusion......DJ`s have a tendency to think themselves way more important than they actually are, especially when they get more popular (which isn`t always to do with skill, quality of music or whatever, there are many factors at play, obviously). They are, essentially, record player players.
That`s not to say I have no respect for DJ`s. Not at all. There are some guys I adore and will actually make an effort to see them, because I share their taste in music, or because they aren`t beholden to the crowd and are willing to go off map.
I just think their importance is way way way overhyped, and a lot of DJ`s suck up that ego gratification from the crowd as if they were entirely responsible, which is a total fallacy. It`s actually a very empty form of ego gratification that can cause issues (DJ`s were kinda like Instagram influences, before instagram existed), but that`s a very different discussion.

DJ`s are servants of the music. And of all the things an AI can replicate or replace, the most easiest would be a DJ.
IF we are talking pure crowd pleasing, then an AI will have access to all the sets that have the most success.
If I were to put on a rave again, I would still prefer to have humans on my soundsystem, but AI would take out a lot of the trouble dealing with pompous ego`s.

[subvers^v]

The idea of following what music an algorithm spits out next is uninteresting

But what if you can't tell. That's what people seem to be struggling with understanding. Then your interest will be based purely on wether you are aware of the authorship of whatever you're listening to.

I guess it goes a couple of ways...
AI is lauded as cool or shunned as uncool...

Either AI is held up like a brand, in which case it is the new mainstream/pop, or AI is buried behind an "alias" in which case it becomes a game of trainspotting and not much else...

[Ben Kohonays]

You are undersetimating the capabilities of the technology. It will be able to produce recordings of as good musical quality as anything a human could produce. Simply because they are using those very same recordings as training data. For better or for worse that's the truth, at least for recorded music.

I'm not buying that at all.

It will be able to program the type of manufactured pop that gets promoted beyond it's value, but it can't play an instrument with feeling.

[DixieWhiskey]

And the whole "DJ reading the crowd" is overrated bollocks.

Alright, I may be overstating it.

Still I just don't find that type of categorical statement persuasive when they lack any nuance whatsoever. "Any DJ that claims any different is an egotistical charlantan". The "atmosphere of the venue" is so super important, but the fate of the party is sealed the moment the DJ hits play and there's nothing in their power as to allow them to steer that very same atmosphere in any capacity (the very person who actually decides what the music is gonna be). I'm honestly trying here but it feels like a horrible stretch. I do take it as a valuable opinion from experience and I may well be completely wrong, but I'm not convinced.

Having said that, nothing I've said implied anything about "big names" or "professional". Many of the times I felt the dj was probably "one of those", was not a big name at all, not even within the local scene sometimes. So I don't know what inspired that paragraph from what I said. I appreciate the engagement though, and the cool stories. I'm serious.

And I actually do agree with most of what you said, which is why I think you misinterpreted my point. Yes the crowd itself is probably more important. Yes there's probably no hope for a good party if the DJ and the audience have different tastes. Yes the drugs are aboslutely critical. I don't think anything I've said goes against any of that.

And of all the things an AI can replicate or replace, the most easiest would be a DJ.

I can meet you at "equally as easy". Saying one is easiest when one of them is a sequence of the other and both are just audio files that are consumed and processed the exact same way by the algorithm implies either a misunderstanding of the technology or dishonesty.

I'm not buying that at all.

It will be able to program the type of manufactured pop that gets promoted beyond it's value, but it can't play an instrument with feeling.

But it absolutely can. It can't *literally* play with feeling because it obviously can't physically grab an insturment at all. However it can (will be able to) create a digital audio file that when played back will contain an original piece of music with the exact characteristics that make up whatever it is you call "feeling". So in that sense, it can play with feeling in the same way that you can "rewind" the track in your audio software even though there is no physical tape involved. And you probably don't have a problem with using that word because you know it effectively achieves the same thing and wouldn't really make sense calling it anything else. It's the same here.

You feed enough labeled examples to the right neural network with sufficient processing power and it will give you a piece of output of the same type that perfectly meets your criteria, because the prompt you give the AI will contain many of the same labels already used in the training data (this is a very crude and inaccurate approximation of how it actually works).

I understand that you don't buy it. I used to think that too. Have you seen some of the "AI art" that you can generate nowadays? Illustrations and such? I used to think I wouldn't see machine generated art in my lifetime that I could not tell apart from that of a human and yet here we are. Diffusion models have shattered that notion for good and for me music has gone together with it. Even if it's not been perfected yet.

This is a science fiction story magazine that recently suspended submissions since currently they have no way to tell when a submission has been written by a language model: https://twitter.com/clarkesworld/status ... 60704?s=20

What does music have that would make it immune to being generated that illustration or literature don't? I don't see it tbh.


I believe as a species we may have, as we always inevitably do, enshrined our brains and its capabilities as sacred and irreproducible, but that may not be entirely true. We are beginning to create artificial brains that can do some of the stuff we previously thought could only possibly belong to the human mind to do. It's honestly mind boggling, so I understand the reticence.
The possibility exists that the technology plateaus and some technical or theoretical limitation makes it impossible to get there, but at this point you would need a more convincing argument to back that up, since it would mean a sharp turn away from the ongoing trend.

[Ben Kohonays]

I'm not buying that at all.

It will be able to program the type of manufactured pop that gets promoted beyond it's value, but it can't play an instrument with feeling.

But it absolutely can. It can't *literally* play with feeling because it obviously can't physically grab an insturment at all. However it can (will be able to) create a digital audio file that when played back will contain an original piece of music with the exact characteristics that make up whatever it is you call "feeling".

We can't even reproduce a convincing guitar sound without using an actual guitar, so how is it supposed to make it sound like sombody playing it as well?

[DixieWhiskey]

I'm not buying that at all.

It will be able to program the type of manufactured pop that gets promoted beyond it's value, but it can't play an instrument with feeling.

But it absolutely can. It can't *literally* play with feeling because it obviously can't physically grab an insturment at all. However it can (will be able to) create a digital audio file that when played back will contain an original piece of music with the exact characteristics that make up whatever it is you call "feeling".

We can't even reproduce a convincing guitar sound without using an actual guitar, so how is it supposed to make it sound like sombody playing it as well?

I give a very simplified explanation in the very next paragraph if you continue reading.

Neural networks take in humongous amounts of whatever type of data you want and "learn" how to make something new that conforms to the same characteristics of that data. Suppose I take every "rock" song in existence and feed it to the network saying here, this we call "rock". Then it tries to reproduce its characteristics, first very badly, almost at random, but then the models that perform below a certain threshold are culled and those that perform slightly above average are kept to be iterated over and improved until a desirable outcome is reached. More or less. Here's a good introductory video:

youtu.be/R9OHn5ZF4Uo

An amp simulator is different in that it has to process a sound input in real time. I'm talking about generative models here. So there's no signal processing at all, only new data being generated synthetically. Also bear in mind that it's constantly improving, so you have to think a bit ahead to realize the potential.

[DixieWhiskey]

If you were referring to virtual instruments, well, in that case the limitation is not that it's difficult to recreate a guitar tone, but that playing an instrument allows many different ways to modulate the sound by applying different techniques and whatnot. There's so many parameters to control that it ends up being easier to just grab a guitar and record it than programming it. That's why bass is easier to program in a virtual instrument, there's usually less need for nuance in the performance. But again, all that pertains to a human creating a piece of music by controlling an instrument in whichever way, not to audio generated synthetically from a specification or prompt, which is what we're talking about when we talk about AI generated music.

[Lost to the Void]

And the whole "DJ reading the crowd" is overrated bollocks.

Alright, I may be overstating it.

Still I just don't find that type of categorical statement persuasive when they lack any nuance whatsoever. "Any DJ that claims any different is an egotistical charlantan". The "atmosphere of the venue" is so super important, but the fate of the party is sealed the moment the DJ hits play and there's nothing in their power as to allow them to steer that very same atmosphere in any capacity (the very person who actually decides what the music is gonna be). I'm honestly trying here but it feels like a horrible stretch. I do take it as a valuable opinion from experience and I may well be completely wrong, but I'm not convinced.

Having said that, nothing I've said implied anything about "big names" or "professional". Many of the times I felt the dj was probably "one of those", was not a big name at all, not even within the local scene sometimes. So I don't know what inspired that paragraph from what I said. I appreciate the engagement though, and the cool stories. I'm serious.

And I actually do agree with most of what you said, which is why I think you misinterpreted my point. Yes the crowd itself is probably more important. Yes there's probably no hope for a good party if the DJ and the audience have different tastes. Yes the drugs are aboslutely critical. I don't think anything I've said goes against any of that.

And of all the things an AI can replicate or replace, the most easiest would be a DJ.

I can meet you at "equally as easy". Saying one is easiest when one of them is a sequence of the other and both are just audio files that are consumed and processed the exact same way by the algorithm implies either a misunderstanding of the technology or dishonesty.

I'm not buying that at all.

It will be able to program the type of manufactured pop that gets promoted beyond it's value, but it can't play an instrument with feeling.

But it absolutely can. It can't *literally* play with feeling because it obviously can't physically grab an insturment at all. However it can (will be able to) create a digital audio file that when played back will contain an original piece of music with the exact characteristics that make up whatever it is you call "feeling". So in that sense, it can play with feeling in the same way that you can "rewind" the track in your audio software even though there is no physical tape involved. And you probably don't have a problem with using that word because you know it effectively achieves the same thing and wouldn't really make sense calling it anything else. It's the same here.

You feed enough labeled examples to the right neural network with sufficient processing power and it will give you a piece of output of the same type that perfectly meets your criteria, because the prompt you give the AI will contain many of the same labels already used in the training data (this is a very crude and inaccurate approximation of how it actually works).

I understand that you don't buy it. I used to think that too. Have you seen some of the "AI art" that you can generate nowadays? Illustrations and such? I used to think I wouldn't see machine generated art in my lifetime that I could not tell apart from that of a human and yet here we are. Diffusion models have shattered that notion for good and for me music has gone together with it. Even if it's not been perfected yet.

This is a science fiction story magazine that recently suspended submissions since currently they have no way to tell when a submission has been written by a language model: https://twitter.com/clarkesworld/status ... 60704?s=20

What does music have that would make it immune to being generated that illustration or literature don't? I don't see it tbh.


I believe as a species we may have, as we always inevitably do, enshrined our brains and its capabilities as sacred and irreproducible, but that may not be entirely true. We are beginning to create artificial brains that can do some of the stuff we previously thought could only possibly belong to the human mind to do. It's honestly mind boggling, so I understand the reticence.
The possibility exists that the technology plateaus and some technical or theoretical limitation makes it impossible to get there, but at this point you would need a more convincing argument to back that up, since it would mean a sharp turn away from the ongoing trend.

Find one article, one statement or anything describing how to "read the crowd"
It`s mythical bollocks.
IF the crowd is not dancing, play a different tune, if the crowd is dancing carry on.
Sure you can build tension or hold the toys out of reach and decide when to give the award.
It`s not some magical skill it`s just basic common sense. You are elevating that a DJ does in a way that your typical Guetta fan might, but it isn`t real.

[[wesellboxes]]

Haha it actually says something important about the power of holding back stuff

And that the best art comes from happy accidents.