AI disqualifies anyone as a musician! It's like playback.

[tq]

You do know that tech giants like Meta, Google, Apple, and
others will be optimizing their "business model" through AI, right?
I'm sure you discuss this in your academic circles as well? But
that's beside the point.

Absolutely, I know. More than you might be aware of. I don’t think we disagree here.

As for your other argument: I appreciate your impetus of saving human expression. I understand you make an absolute statement on purpose here.

I still disagree, and I doubt that such absolute statements are helpful. Similarly, Spotify introducing badges for „human made“ songs or Bandcamp claiming to just accept human made songs is just virtue signaling, as they must know they cannot control or really check it, and as they have no clear cut definition of what „AI use“ actually means - we had several examples in this thread where we agreed AI is a production tool, an assistant, and not involved in the creative process. So I still would insist that a much clearer definition of where it has been applied in the process, and what for, would be needed to define acceptable or non-acceptable use.

Just one example: so you wrote song, completely human, traditional recording. Somebody feeds it to Suno, makes a cover that sticks 100% to your original composition, but uses a professional sounding voice. Does this make you, the original composer, a non-musician? If we follow your argument: yes, maybe, as AI was involved (even if it’s retrospectively)? Or can we agree that the composition is human, and just parts of the performance AI generated on the basis of a human performance?

(Anyway, I assume I cannot convince you, as you seem to insist on your initial statement - but I appreciate the exchange of thoughts. )

[zerocrossing]

Ah yes, thanks for the reminder that authenticity requires suffering.

Not necessarily suffering, but some sort of emotion. When people say, "generative AI is just a stochastic parrot," they are missing the point. When I write music, I'm also using what my "model" was "trained on," but I have the added element that I have an emotional bond with the material. I remember going to a record store in Manhattan and shopping for records with my first real girlfriend, and then the lonely NJT ride back to my sh!thole hometown. Going though those records and formulating a report for her and yearning to see her next weekend and bring the cassette recordings of the good stuff for her.

AI has none of that. AI has no intent. We think it's doing a great job, because the music world is full of people who aren't really artists, but just interested in the mystique of being a musician. Whenever I hear someone say, "yeah, I gave up music when I got married and started a family," I know they weren't ever a true artist, but just going through the motions. I make music because I literally can't stop. So, AI is great for imitating music that's going through the motions, but inspired work? Impossible. Best case scenario is that it will copy some elements of inspired works and blend it together in an interesting way.

In case it's not obvious, I'm not talking about the sophisticated auto-accompaniment stuff that's done when a human wrote song is fed in and spit back out with a full arraignment. That's a different matter altogether.

[Tiles]

Not necessarily suffering, but some sort of emotion.

That's what also most AI users invest. It's not all Suno and three words. That's the smallest part nowadays.

And the author still mixes AI with Suno. It's like mixing Linux with Open Source. Or an ape with all animals. I haven't forgotten the last 30 years of experience in song writing just because i use AI in my mastering chain. That's why this statement that you are no musician anymore in the moment where you use AI is so absurd. Since it does not make any distinction how i use AI. Even when he would state that all Suno users are no musicians it would be a false assumption. Since even Suno has grown far behind the point to throw dices.

AI has none of that. AI has no intent.

Neither does an equalizer or a vst synthesizer. Let alone a sample.

It's the musician who shapes it. Even with Suno.

Whenever I hear someone say, "yeah, I gave up music when I got married and started a family,"

What has this to do with AI? Maybe it's time to grow up and have a family and some kids to understand what is meant there. This is the deepest kind of feelings that you can have.

[Zeisner]

Generative AI only seems impressive and useful if you have 1) no strong creative vision and 2) if you're actually incompetent - not just at making music and audio production, but also at listening. Just the sound artifacts make it completely useless, it takes me 1-2 seconds to hear if something has been synthesized with generative AI and about 10-15 seconds to hear if something has been composed by AI. It's very similar to aliasing. Many people can't hear it, even if it's just 3 dB below the main signal while I need a minimum distance of 58 dB to not scream in agony (at least on the inside). So it really feels like trying to explain to a blind person why their squared orange-pink-cyan shirt is hurting my eyes. It doesn't matter how hard you try, their perception is too limited.

[Hipster Bales]

Generative AI only seems impressive and useful if you have 1) no strong creative vision and 2) if you're actually incompetent - not just at making music and audio production, but also at listening. Just the sound artifacts make it completely useless, it takes me 1-2 seconds to hear if something has been synthesized with generative AI and about 10-15 seconds to hear if something has been composed by AI. It's very similar to aliasing. Many people can't hear it, even if it's just 3 dB below the main signal while I need a minimum distance of 58 dB to not scream in agony (at least on the inside). So it really feels like trying to explain to a blind person why their squared orange-pink-cyan shirt is hurting my eyes. It doesn't matter how hard you try, their perception is too limited.

+1

[Zeisner]

At first I thought people who posted AI music here (claiming it was soooooo good) were trolling. It took me a while to realize that their hearing is really that bad. A recent example is that song on The King of the Sofa thread about a guy who flies to the Moon to get some silence and peace. Well, at first it's a guy but then the sex changes to female and back to male at least three times. That's atrocious even for a local model. But for a big cloud model it's a whole new level of failure. It's basically anti-functionality, broken beyond broken. But yeah - turns out a lot of people can't even tell the difference between a male and a female voice. And it looks like it's getting worse too.

[BONES]

Using AI to compose a song or to create the lyrics disqualifies you
as a musician. Totally.

Fine by me. In my experience musicians are mostly a bunch of f**king wankers anyway, who would want to be counted among their number?

As a true musician, you struggle – with feeling, with great effort
and sweat – to create a composition, making many changes
sometimes through the night.

That sounds more like a description of a sad f**k to me. But here's the thing, "musician" and "song writer" or "composer" are not the same thing. Many revered musicians are known for playing other people's music. Think members of a symphony orchestra and people like that. They are two separate things and many excellent musicians are shit song writers. Similarly, many great song writers aren't known as musicians at all - Max Martin, Freddie Mercury and Brian Ferrie were all front men who wrote some of the most popular songs of the last 50 years.

If you leave all this to a machine, then you relinquish your creativity; then it is no longer you who composed this song. It is then an AI song.

So what? I do cover versions of songs I didn't write all the f**king time, like this one -


I enjoy them at least as much as performing my own compositions. Even within NOVAkILL, my songs aren't always the best songs on the album but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, it is quite a privilege to be working with someone whose input I value and respect.

The same applies to the lyrics: You yourself wrestle with every
word and every sentence, turning its meaning over and over
countless times, rearranging the words until you're satisfied, until
you like your lyrics.

Do I? Pal, the only thing I struggle with is getting things to rhyme and fit the melody/meter of the song I am shoe-horning them into. I honestly don't give a shit what they mean, as long as they sit nicely within the music.

If you let AI do all that, then it's no longer you who expresses the feelings, who conveys the message. It's the AI.

Except you have to tell the AI what feelings and emotions you want the AI to convey. If you don't give it that input, you're likely to get any random thing out of it. That's actually one of the advantages of using AI - you have to think a lot more deeply and clearly about what it is you want to express before you even start, which gives you focus as you coerce and cajole the AI into producing something at least a little bit like what you were thinking of when you started. It's a collaborative process, the AI has no real ideas of its own, it kind of relies on you to provide that.

You are no longer a musician!

Thank f**k!

What's clear from your ridiculous rant is that you have no f**king clue what you're talking about. You have obviously never made any effort to use AI creatively, or you'd understand that it's a creative process like most other creative processes. You explore and develop ideas and see where the journey takes you. It can be frustrating at times but if you are patient, take your time and maintain your own quality standards, you can make incredible music with AI. But you have to put in the effort if you want the kinds of results you seem to think are worthwhile. Sure, you can put in a three word prompt and the AI will spit out a song but if you think that is the sum-total of it's value to music, then you have absolutely no imagination whatsoever and, obviously, not the spirit of adventure that would allow you to be any kind of creative artist in the first place. To put it another way, you come across as a pathetic nobody who is scared of progress and unwilling to try new things.

[BBFG#]

Uh-oh, I think I just heard someone say that vocalists aren't musicians!
Think I'll just get some snacks while that's brewing.

[ksandvik]

Wouldn't it be faster to sit down by a keyboard or guitar and just write music than write endless prompts? Sounds boring for me.

[BONES]

I find sitting at a keyboard boring. That's why I leave most of the ideas to my bandmate. I'm much happier having something to work with, I get no enjoyment from starting with a blank canvas. That said, I don't like leaving it all to my bandmate, I feel like I need to pull my weight, so I still write one or two songs on each album, but I have no interest in going back to our early days when I was the main song writer.

... there's a cut off surely? Where you leave enough of that random, messy humanity behind so the results are just generic to the point of blandness?

Except most pop music today could be described in exactly the same way. Most music is bland and boring to me but it's still music and it has worth to others. In the end you can only decide what you like.

Frankly speaking I think *avoiding* the blood, sweat and tears to write music and compose texts is the reason behind prompt music. The result is then also bland.

Except it's not, or at least it doesn't have to be. I'd suggest the percentage of slop in music overall is probably not much different to the percentage of slop in AI generated music. Honestly, if my choice was to listen to AI music or the stuff enroe has on his website or the stuff hipster bales has on his YT channel or the stuff zerocrossing has posted in various threads lately, I'd choose AI stuff every time.

Whether it does or not, is or isn't, it will also have an element of "artificial". Like saccharin in a diet pound cake.

There are still plenty of people around who'd say the same about drum machines and synthesisers and you are just as wrong as they are.

Neither did Elvis. He hardly wrote anything, but everyone already knew that

Another good example is Michael Jackson. He only wrote four of the songs on Thriller but you'd never pick which they were if you didn't know.

It's sort of the same with NOVAkILL, I don't think anyone could pick which songs were mine and which were my bandmates. That's because the performers are the same in all of them and, ultimately, the performance shapes the song and stamps it with your signature sound more than any other part of the process. In the end, the song is just a framework to hang the performances from.

I'm discovering this more and more as we work through our new album. I was initially apprehensive as to whether or not putting my vocals in would ruin the songs, or at least ruin the magic that the AI had created with them. We were also a but concerned that it wouldn't really sound like us any more but now that we've got my vox on all but one of the songs, we've realised that it sounds exactly like us now. That's because we have been in control of the process from the get-go, from the first prompt through to the finished NOVAkILL product. We sent some demos to the label a few weeks ago, without telling them about AI involvement, and they love 'em. To them it just sounds like a natural progression from the last album.

[BBFG#]

Naw, those that have to can acquire a taste for anything. It's only off to those that can discern the difference.
And some have literally been raised on sh*t.

[BONES]

Their ability to create entirely new songs is astonishing. However, the songs are full of minor flaws, don't sound truly optimal, and often you can even hear the stem extraction noises that were used.

Maybe sometimes, in specific situations but not always and, I'd suggest, not even usually. What you are basically pointing out is that issues that will crop in any form of music making can crop up with AI generated music as well. To me that makes the AI process more organic, more human and as a result a lot more interesting.

Can these platforms replace composers, musicians, and mixers?

Of course they can, they already have in countless blind tests that have been conducted. And they are only going to get better and better.

AI artifacts are too easily audible

Where they exist, which isn't pervasive enough to be more of an issue than, for example, musicians fluffing a take. Just as you rerecord a part where the musician has f**ked up, you can reiterate an AI generated song to eliminate issues/errors. Or, horror of horrors, you can embrace the imperfections, as we often do with live recordings of actual human players or in the way that idiots deliberately put crackles and pops into their recordings so they sound like vinyl on a turntable. It becomes a creative decision.

small, and the mix is ​​too poor if you have the highest standards.

AI mixes are way better than the stuff I heard on your website.

You're no longer a musician, no longer an artist — you're just
a consumer! You might as well press the play button on a
CD player or select an MP3 from a long list.

Things I do and enjoy every day. I have no hang-ups about being a musician or being creative or any of the ego-driven bullshit that seems so desperately important to you. All I want is to have good music to listen to and perform, whether I make it myself or someone else writes it or it was created by AI is not something I give a rat's arse about. I just want it to be good and the AI music my bandmate has created is as good as music gets.

[TechHaus]

BONES, can you share one of your successful / good prompts?

[Seafire Mk2]

"Write me an ebm song that sounds like everything else from the 90's"



I jest. He's very good at what he does.

[BONES]

I completely agree with this! There are people who are willing to spend a month on 1 project (like me 99% of the time) and then there are people who just want to generate slop for a quick buck.

Clearly you don't know what you're talking about, then. Our current album, all based on music generated by my bandmate (one by me) using AI is going to take us longer to finish than our last album, which we did the old fashioned way. Sure, some people just want to "generate slop for a quick buck" but that's not the only use-case for AI. Like most things, you get out of it what you are willing to put in.

So when Sonus is out trolling for content, it's like a dog eating its own vomit. I think the quality of AI music is going to get worse as time goes on, and it didn't start out great.

Maybe if that's how it worked but it's not. AFAIK, AI doesn't continually train, it gets trained and then released into the wild and you'd have to be a bit f**king stupid to allow it to train on its own output, don't you think?

What really doesn't make any sense to me is the prompt jockeys who are just asking for a song in a style with a little description. What satisfaction can you get from that?

If you're not a musician and have no interest in buying lots of gear, I imagine it would be quite exciting to be able to pump out your own songs.

Why not just listen to music? Why would anyone listen to your AI track when making them is so low effort? If people end up just asking AI to make music that only they listen to... that's some Dark Mirror sh!t. Bleak.

What, you don't listen to the music you make? I never used to - once it was out the door I was basically done with it - but I've found I quite like listening to our last three albums, they are much closer to what I've always wanted to do and the production quality is considerably higher to my ears.

Yes, there's something special if the artist is a human, not an algorithm.

Right, because someone clicking notes into a piano roll with a mouse is imparting soooo much of his humanity into the process, just like the guy using the chord tool or an arpeggiator and quantising everything, all so very, very human. The reality is that 90+% of people can't tell the difference so you need to get over yourself. You're not special, you don't have any gifts that can't be perfectly replicated by a computer algorithm.

@Tiles: Let me give you a hint: It’s about "distinguishing" and "differentiating."

And, as I've said, multiple surveys have shown that the vast majority of people cannot "distinguish" or "differentiate" between AI generated music and music created by other methods. That's just a fact, it's indisputable and it totally destroys any argument you might think you have.

Hey people, ca we keep this discussion civil without personal attacks? enroe makes an argument and defends it, which is perfectly fine.

No he doesn't. Incoherent rambling does not constitute a defence of anything.

I disagree with him, but I appreciate the time he takes to argue (and so far, this has been astonishingly fine and civil, especially according to KvR standards...) . So let's agree we can disagree?

Facts are facts, you can't disagree or argue against them but if enroe wants to stick his fingers in his ears and shout "la-la-la-la", he can expect to get some stick for it.

In terms of creativity, AI means "cannibalization."

What, and none of the music you've listened to throughout your life has had even the slightest effect on what you do? AI is just doing EXACTLY what we all do - it's listening to music made by other people and using that to inform its own music creation.

The absoluteness is a very deliberate choice and intention.

Which is precisely what makes you look like a clueless fool. You're talking about things of which you have no experience and it just makes you look stupid (almost as stupid as I am, knowing full well you are too afraid of the truth to read any of my posts on the subject).

Because whenever AI becomes creative instead of a human,
a red line is crossed.

Except that AI cannot be creative without creative input from a human, so no lines are being crossed at all. Without input from a human, AI will do nothing. What the AI spits out is, realistically, a direct reflection of the creativity of the human directing it. If you're not very creative, you'll get garbage out of it but if you put in the thought and effort to guide and refine the AI's output, it can be a very powerful creative tool. But you wouldn't know that because you are too scared to give it whirl.

As long as the AI ​​helps me by adjusting guitar tracks, improving EQ, or enhancing the mix, everything is fine. Because that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

Why can't you do those things for yourself? I'd suggest they are very basic things that anyone should be able to do without any help from AI. What's wrong with you that you have to fake it with AI?

However, as soon as the AI ​​generates new, original notes, even completes entire songs, or even plays a whole vocal part or guitar solo itself, the red line is crossed. Because in the compo-
sition, in one's own notes, in one's own singing or guitar solo lies the core of human emotion – all the happiness, the suffering, life – actually everything. It is here the most profoundly human, emotional expression!

The only suffering I've done today is listen to your music. It's so generic, it could be any of thousands of other people or bands, yet you want to put it up on a pedestal above what AI can generate. Well, I'm sorry, pal, but I'll take AI generated music over what you churn out every day of the week.

If AI creates this, then the music at that point is dead, sterile, worthless.

If that were true, wouldn't it be obvious to anyone listening? So how come more than 90% of people can't tell the difference. It's a simple question and if you can answer it logically, you might be able to convince people of your point-of-view. But you can't, can you? That's because your point-of-view is deeply flawed, invalid.

The person who sends out a short text prompt — it could be the label's or record company's business manager — is NOT a musician. Nor do they have any connection to a real musician.

So what? I'm not a musician's arsehole but I've released 9 albums over the last 30 years and the last four have all gone Top 5 in the German Alternative Chart (DAC). Do you want to put money on the fact that our next album, based entirely on AI generated songs, won't be Top 5 again?

It will happen that tens of thousands will generate AI-generated songs through simple text prompts. Spotify is already flooded with them, and in just a few years, 99% of Spotify songs will be AI-generated.

You're only upset because you know that most of them will be as good as or better than your music.

The AI ​​revolution means that for humanity, the "creatives" —
that is, artists, painters, writers, and musicians — will be
pushed into a small niche of insignificance.

When do you think you were anything else? How full of yourself are you?