AI Generated Metal...

[StevenC]

And so the end is near... This shit is awful to see and I don't understand how anyone can find this cool or exciting.

All this does is make me want to just quit guitar or making demos. AI just cheapens the experience for everyone else and makes it not worth the time investment.

I'm generally speaking very anti AI art, but I just don't understand this take.

What end?

There's a handful of people on this forum making money on music, let alone a living. The only people who are really successful have rarely written their own music, while pop is getting less and less varied. Making money from boring music has always been totally random, and making money from interesting music is even riskier.

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician.

 

[Albake21]

I'm generally speaking very anti AI art, but I just don't understand this take.

What end?

There's a handful of people on this forum making money on music, let alone a living. The only people who are really successful have rarely written their own music, while pop is getting less and less varied. Making money from boring music has always been totally random, and making money from interesting music is even riskier.

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician.

This is only the start. I give it 10 years and by then every idiot with zero musical knowledge, who has a computer, will be able to make songs that compare with what we have releasing today. We are still in very early stages with AI.

That, to me personally, cheapens the experience. It's a personal thought that will always run through my head whenever I try to make anything. "What's the point? AI can just do it better anyways?"

Should that stop me from making my own art? No, but it will always be a thought in the back of my head.

 

[StevenC]

This is only the start. I give it 10 years and by then every idiot with zero musical knowledge, who has a computer, will be able to make songs that compare with what we have releasing today. We are still in very early stages with AI.

That, to me personally, cheapens the experience. It's a personal thought that will always run through my head whenever I try to make anything. "What's the point? AI can just do it better anyways?"

Should that stop me from making my own art? No, but it will always be a thought in the back of my head.

So you never do anything just because it's fun?

Like I'm bad at lots of things I enjoy. In fact, music specifically. I know I'll never write anything as good as Weightless or Discipline or Traced in Air or The Mountain, and maybe you are a great composer but why is AI the line and not just every other musician who makes music you can't?

Also, why the elitism? 60 years ago every idiot with zero musical knowledge, who has a guitar, was able to make songs that got on the radio. For 30 to 40 years people have already just needed a computer to make music without any specific knowledge. Robots can make guitars but we still want handmade ones.

 

[jonsick]

This is only the start. I give it 10 years and by then every idiot with zero musical knowledge, who has a computer, will be able to make songs that compare with what we have releasing today. We are still in very early stages with AI.

That, to me personally, cheapens the experience. It's a personal thought that will always run through my head whenever I try to make anything. "What's the point? AI can just do it better anyways?"

Should that stop me from making my own art? No, but it will always be a thought in the back of my head.

I am in full agreement with you here. I have a bunch of digital artist friends and they all have similar sentiments, including clients complaining about art prices and going for AI generated stuff.

While to the untrained eye (mine), AI generated art looks good, when you get told what to look for by an actual digital artist, you realise that it misses certain nuances that AI does not have.

But to paraphrase the point you made, back in the late 1990s, I started a university course in Music Technology. Dreams of being a studio engineer/producer, I started writing around as you do for volunteer places, started trying to get my ins. I got a feed of good (and bad I suppose) gigs, got some great experience especially live mixing. I did get to the point where a couple of middly-ish bands would ask for me specifically for their FOH and managed to get some good tours out of it.

About year 2 of my course, that's when the landscape really changed. It went from being the case that you needed a decent four-figure investment into ADAT devices and various preamps in order to record a band. Then it went to being a good-enough PC and £1500 or so on a 4-channel PCI interface. By year 2 of my course, the option was PCI (the best) or USB (the cheap and nasty approach for the time). But nonetheless, I could see the writing on the walls. The three studios my band(s) used to use to record £1200 special 4-track demos destined for cassettes all closed up. And the reality was, for about £500, any hack could buy an interface and call themselves an engineer. It didn't matter if they were any good or not, the fact that they could buy this hardware for that money made the cost of entry super cheap. You know, screw things like what mic position is, what phase is, how to use that compressor, just get the audio in, make some semblance of a mix and you're there.

It essentially made the low-mid tier recording engineers redundant overnight. And thus the bar to getting to the higher echelons of producing/engineering world were all but closed. If you hadn't already had made your name so to speak, you had no hope.

I switched disciplines going into year 3 for electronic engineering. Everyone was mad at me, but I could see that audio engineering-wise, the days were numbered and the struggle was long and up hill. And given the technology was only getting better and cheaper, I predicted that it wouldn't be long before you could essentially record your own £1200 special demo for a fraction of that at home. I mean, not well, but it's there.

I don't regret switching, from my various stints of being involved in the live music scene in the early 2000s, nobody wanted to pay for recording ever. To suggest as such was damn near tantamount to insulting one's mother.

The odd part to the whole thing, looking back and only from my perspective, people have realised that recording at home with very little to no engineering or production knowledge has its ceiling. That is, it can only sound so good at the end of it all. Thus it's spawned a bunch of recorders/producers who charge very well for their time and equipment usage. I do feel that they all generally have something lacking. That is, while they have the gear and know how to use it, these were the guys back in 2002 offering to record their bands for free. And most of the time, all I hear is a bass-heavy mix, compressed to all hell, and everything sounding very much like everything else. Whilst the quality overall is better than what we used to get spending 2-3 days in a studio to get four songs down and spending £1200 on it, there is definitely something been lost. And I do honestly think it's the attitude of the engineer. While back in the day, the engineer cared far more about the sources and getting the player to do it right first time and play with whatever effects they have and recording wet, today's engineer wants the software to do all the work. And if the player isn't exactly spot on, don't worry, they will grid the hell out of it.

So in reality, given today's musical palette is actually extremely narrow in terms of production, is AI producing all future music really that far away and will most music listeners care?

 

[iamaom]

why is AI the line and not just every other musician who makes music you can't?

Existentialism. If computers can be creative to the point of taking up most jobs and hobbies, what is there to do for 99% of the earth's population? Depending on ones philosophy, all of life is pointless distractions from death, but culture and civilization were sure nice distractions. Part of the accomplishment of composing a song or painting is the time it took to do it, it's a lot of the reason joe plumber doesn't like Pollock paintings ("man I coulda did that") but respect the skill of marble statues even while knowing little of sculpting. We all have limited time, so everyone can enjoy skills others developed that you chose not to. Computers are only limited by how much processing power and energy we dump into them, so if every piece of creative art can be generated with a click of a button, what's the point? The enjoyment of aesthetics lasts for a few moments, the experience comes from continued knowledge of how it came to be. Knowing Van Gough had mental issues or Beethoven composing while deaf heightens the experience for most people. Hiking around a mountain older than our species that takes days of effort to navigate fills us with a sense of wonder and respect for our limited lifespan that a painting of the same mountain wouldn't. An AI generated image of a mountain that doesn't even exist but looks realistic will illicit "huh that's cool" for a mere second. I don't know about others, but I can't sustain a happy life on second to second sensory blips from algorithms. Maybe generations raised with AI will have different psychologies, maybe the rise of ADHD to due constant social media connection will be a blessing in disguise to stave off boredom and depression.

 

[StevenC]

Existentialism. If computers can be creative to the point of taking up most jobs and hobbies, what is there to do for 99% of the earth's population? Depending on ones philosophy, all of life is pointless distractions from death, but culture and civilization were sure nice distractions. Part of the accomplishment of composing a song or painting is the time it took to do it, it's a lot of the reason joe plumber doesn't like Pollock paintings ("man I coulda did that") but respect the skill of marble statues even while knowing little of sculpting. We all have limited time, so everyone can enjoy skills others developed that you chose not to. Computers are only limited by how much processing power and energy we dump into them, so if every piece of creative art can be generated with a click of a button, what's the point? The enjoyment of aesthetics lasts for a few moments, the experience comes from continued knowledge of how it came to be. Knowing Van Gough had mental issues or Beethoven composing while deaf heightens the experience for most people. Hiking around a mountain older than our species that takes days of effort to navigate fills us with a sense of wonder and respect for our limited lifespan that a painting of the same mountain wouldn't. An AI generated image of a mountain that doesn't even exist but looks realistic will illicit "huh that's cool" for a mere second. I don't know about others, but I can't sustain a happy life on second to second sensory blips from algorithms. Maybe generations raised with AI will have different psychologies, maybe the rise of ADHD to due constant social media connection will be a blessing in disguise to stave off boredom and depression.

AI can't take up hobbies. If you don't want to play guitar anymore because something else can do it better you should never have picked it up in the first place. Have you ever listened to anyone on this forum's music? It's all unoriginal garbage that might as well have been produced by and AI already.

 

[iamaom]

If you don't want to play guitar anymore because something else can do it better

You didn't read my post did you?

 

[StevenC]

You didn't read my post did you?

No. Apologies. Can't do big blocks of text like that. I see now we don't disagree, though I don't mean you in particular but one.

 

[narad]

Existentialism. If computers can be creative to the point of taking up most jobs and hobbies, what is there to do for 99% of the earth's population? Depending on ones philosophy, all of life is pointless distractions from death, but culture and civilization were sure nice distractions. Part of the accomplishment of composing a song or painting is the time it took to do it, it's a lot of the reason joe plumber doesn't like Pollock paintings ("man I coulda did that") but respect the skill of marble statues even while knowing little of sculpting. We all have limited time, so everyone can enjoy skills others developed that you chose not to. Computers are only limited by how much processing power and energy we dump into them, so if every piece of creative art can be generated with a click of a button, what's the point? The enjoyment of aesthetics lasts for a few moments, the experience comes from continued knowledge of how it came to be. Knowing Van Gough had mental issues or Beethoven composing while deaf heightens the experience for most people. Hiking around a mountain older than our species that takes days of effort to navigate fills us with a sense of wonder and respect for our limited lifespan that a painting of the same mountain wouldn't. An AI generated image of a mountain that doesn't even exist but looks realistic will illicit "huh that's cool" for a mere second. I don't know about others, but I can't sustain a happy life on second to second sensory blips from algorithms. Maybe generations raised with AI will have different psychologies, maybe the rise of ADHD to due constant social media connection will be a blessing in disguise to stave off boredom and depression.

You're still just as able to stop and appreciate human-created art. If the struggle is an important part of your appreciation of art, then the struggle of trying to stand out in a sea of AI generated art should be just the thing. I don't really see the argument. Having AI that's able to create music or art doesn't stop cultural advancement. It may even supercharge it. The one thing it does really eradicate is the need for mediocre art or music, which frankly is a lot of the art and music that humans as a whole are creating.

 

[TheBloodstained]

Random thought: ...I wonder if AI is capable of creating stuff like Carbomb, The Dillinger Escape Plan and/or The Tony Danza Tapdanzing Extravaganza?

You know... stuff that sounds chaotic but still has very evident structure behind the chaos?
I wonder if Ai is too bound by rules and parameters to actually create stuff like that without just making random noise?

Personally I do believe that it takes human involvement to create controlled chaos.

Just a thougt though...

 

[narad]

Random thought: ...I wonder if AI is capable of creating stuff like Carbomb, The Dillinger Escape Plan and/or The Tony Danza Tapdanzing Extravaganza?

You know... stuff that sounds chaotic but still has very evident structure behind the chaos?
I wonder if Ai is too bound by rules and parameters to actually create stuff like that without just making random noise?

Personally I do believe that it takes human involvement to create controlled chaos.

Just a thougt though...

Unlikely. There's not a lot of (or essentially no) rules in modern AI.

 

[sylcfh]

Most tech/prog/shred sounds AI generated as it is.

 

[BMFan30]

Everything was created by this company's AI tech https://musicalbits.de/

I actually can't really believe it because there was nothing uncanny about this valley this time around. If this truly was 100% AI with no help from a human then I'm extremely impressed and I really dig it alot.

 

[bostjan]

Not sure why most people are skeptical of this.

I used a pretty lean machine learning algorithm on a 2018 album to program some of the songs' drum tracks, and no one can tell me which tracks were different. That was five years ago. There have been tons of AI vocal generators that have been pretty darn convincing for a few months at least. We've seen how easily chat api can generate lyrics that fit specific styles. So why not?

 

[StevenC]

Most tech/prog/shred sounds AI generated as it is.

They replaced Dream Theater with an AI trained on Dream Theater 15 years ago

 

[Neon_Knight_]

It could easily be an Amon Amarth song lol! I like the fact that the AI made the female Orc play guitar instead of bass. A solo would have been beyond impressive, maybe on the next song lol!

But if this is really AI generated from start to finish, is there any point in composing music anymore?

Human's are capable of composing music that incorporates new ideas and is truly unique, whereas AI can only rehash ideas that humans have already composed.

As AI music can't be anything more than a generic representation of something that already exists, I don't see how it could be anything better than average / mediocre, let alone ground-breaking or inspiring.

 

[p0ke]

It may even supercharge it.

That's kinda how I see it. It can do all (or at least some of) the systematic and time consuming stuff for you, leaving you to do just the creative part. Say for example that you came up with a cool melody and you kinda hear in your head how you want the backing parts to sound, but you just can't figure out what chords it needs - you could spend a bunch of time trying out all the possible chords, or you could have an AI generate it from your description of how you want it to sound.

 

[narad]

Human's are capable of composing music that incorporates new ideas and is truly unique, whereas AI can only rehash ideas that humans have already composed.

As AI music can't be anything more than a generic representation of something that already exists, I don't see how it could be anything better than average / mediocre, let alone ground-breaking or inspiring.

This is one of those [citation needed] moments. I don't recall Alpha Go making a bunch of generic moves that already existed, for instance.

 

[StevenC]

This is one of those [citation needed] moments. I don't recall Alpha Go making a bunch of generic moves that already existed, for instance.

Understanding the rules of Go and understanding what makes music innovative are two different types of understanding.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

This is one of those [citation needed] moments. I don't recall Alpha Go making a bunch of generic moves that already existed, for instance.

There's a huge difference between selecting where to place a piece on a board to win a game and doing something creative.

A board game has clearly defined and rigid rules to adhere to. If music adheres to clearly defined and rigid rules, it will inevitably sound unoriginal.

This is probably why electronic chess has been readily available for decades, whereas AI music is still in early infancy.