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

[Tiles]

You’re framing this as a loss of expression, which I don’t agree with. I see AI as a tool that changes the workflow, not replaces creativity

[tq]

This is also why, conversely, song creation using text prompts —or iterative text prompts, if you want to be a bit more complicated — is empty, emotionless, and sterile. And this is despite the fact that the AI-generated song is good in itself and hardly distinguishable from a human-generated song by the audience.

Ultimately, we arrive at the ultimate question:
Is the use of AI necessary for creating a song?

If you do that, the question arises: If you are a musician and a human being, why do you let AI take over the most interesting and essential aspects of composition? In doing so, you are giving up on yourself. You are acting like an empty shell, creating supposedly original songs with text prompts – not for personal
expression – but for money and fame?

Jeez, you really want to misunderstand what a couple of us argued here:

1) There are uses were the AI does not do any creative decision.

2) … where the AI serves the role of a studio musician, and then will do exactly what the composer wants, i.e. realizing her/his creative vision better than a bad, underpaid and uninterested studio musician.

3) There are numerous uses where the AI enables a composer to try things without investing shitloads of money. It’s the contrary of making easy money and fame - it’s people who cannot afford a gospel choir or a hired band of studio musicians (which is often a resource of rich and famous or the big players in music industry).

Evil use of an empty shell musician? I don’t think so.

I think 99% here agree the one-liner prompt of a song in Suno is not composing, and has no artistic value. But you disregard all other potential applications and lump everything together with tha „evil, no-soul Suno-jockeys“.

Also, if everybody can do this, how would this enable quick fame and money? This defies basic market logic, as a start.

[BONES]

When I write a song, it pops out of me in some raw form, and then I hone it over time, often by performing it with a band. Those people bring themselves into it, and to some degree enhance and shape the music in a way that I couldn't really predict. Then I go into a studio and start recording and producing it. I'm making thousands of choices. Each one informed by years of my own experiences and my emotional connection to my experiences, all which have formed me.

All that stuff is a bit over-rated, though, don't you think? The stuff you're talking about is just to pump up your ego - "look at me, see how clever I am. I wrote a song". The brutal truth is that nobody f**king cares, it's either a good song when it's finished or it's not. The process might mean something to you but, especially with the way we get to experience music these days, it's totally irrelevant to anyone else.

I'll use some technology to make parts of the job that I can't do possible, but it's all under my very direct control.

Why does that matter? Does keeping it "under very direct control" make the result better or does it just help prop up a sagging ego? Where relinquishing a bit of control might make the result better, I'll never hesitate to do it. It's really the basis of collaboration, be it with other humans or with AI, and collaboration pretty much always improves the result.

It's not a fast process, but in the end, I have a deep feeling of accomplishment.

Even if it's a shit song? I mean, I like getting something finished but whether it was just my vocals or I did the whole thing doesn't make the end result any more or less satisfying. What makes it more or less satisfying is how good I think the end result is and ALWAYS, in every case, the best results, the ones I feel the greatest level of accomplishment about, are the ones where we have both contributed, where we have put our egos aside and allowed each other to lend our strengths to the piece, even if it means one of us stripping out a part the other had put in.

So since no one listens, why not just ask Sunos to make a song for me, based on my instructions? Because that's not making music, and I am a musician.

So you only ever listen to music you made? Really?

[starflakeprj]

This is simplistic, and like so many other arguments misses the point. Let's use Photoshop as an example. if I use its AI capabilities to remove a telephone pole from an image of a corn field that I took, that's a tool. I could do that using the rubber stamp tool, like I used to, but it's an often long and tedious process. I spent years going it, and while I'm very good at it, it's not fun or creative. All hail to our computer overlords and the new process.

Yes, it is, I agree. I was in that mood. But I wouldn’t say I completely missed the point. AI can also be a tool. It depends on how you use it.I would say I’m quite crappy when it comes to composing and producing music, but I don’t use AI to produce full tracks either. For instance, I would never release something I had simply prompted. I’d rather use it for inspiration and then try to mimic it.

I guess that's faster, but is it better? Will I see that cornfield in someone else's image? I've already seen Midjourney image from other people that were nearly identical to what I got. Multiple times, actually. Who owns it? The first person who asked for it? Midjourney? Do I feel any connection to it, or is it just another bit of content to be shoved out there and abandoned?

It’s definitely faster, yes. Probably not better, not anytime soon. And when it starts getting better, or at least as good, I’m both sure and hopeful that there will be more regulations and limitations on the extent to which you can monetize the music.

So since no one listens, why not just ask Sunos to make a song for me, based on my instructions? Because that's not making music, and I am a musician. If that's what you want to do, no one is stopping you, but if you think you're a musician, you're delusional.

I never said I’m a musician. And as I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, creating music is not the same thing as being a musician. A musician is not necessarily a composer or a producer. So when people say you’re not a musician if you create music with AI, they’re comparing apples to bicycles. Don’t confuse musicians, meaning those who perform the music, with composers and producers, meaning those who create the music. Of course, someone can be both.

I’m not here to defend people who create complete tracks with AI and call them their own. I’m here to defend AI as a tool, just like you mentioned Photoshop can be used for object removal. And also to correct those who make the wrong comparison between musicians and AI-generated tracks.

[zerocrossing]

Is the use of AI necessary for creating a song?

Well, considering these models have only been around for a very tiny part of human existence, I'd say, "obviously not."

If you do that, the question arises: If you are a musician and a
human being, why do you let AI take over the most interesting
and essential aspects of composition? In doing so, you are giving
up on yourself. You are acting like an empty shell, creating
supposedly original songs with text prompts – not for personal
expression – but for money and fame?

Here's my theory. Most artists of all types are poseurs. At best, they are skilled crafts people, who know how to go through the motions to make something that people like. If you go to local art fairs, you can see this very clearly. Lots of very similar still-lifes and landscapes. There's some art in it, but not much. Music is like this too. Go to a street fair that has a band and listen to it. They may be good, but they're almost always forgettable, or doing covers. The last one I went to had a band called The Sun Kings, who were a Beatles tribute band. They were quite good, but is that art? I say no. They are craftsmen whose craft is copying other music.

This isn't a slight. There is something important about it, but it's important in these types of discussions to clearly define terms, like I've been trying to do with AI. Calling all machine learning models "AI" and calling all music "art," makes it impossible to properly discuss the problem.

So, if you're a craftsperson making your crafts, AI is awesome. It'll let you do what you do much more quickly, putting out a uniform product of decent quality. Sell your club track or lighthouse image with much less labor. Of course, the need for you also is much less. There's now no real reason to buy your lighthouse when people have access to the same lighthouse image generator. Why buy BONES's lame EDM track when it's easy to type a prompt in and make your own?

For actual artists, it's a different dynamic. They're generally in it for personal expression, and not the money or notoriety. I've only been commercially successful at music during two periods of my life, yet I keep on writing songs and doing my improvised live-looping stuff. Yesterday I had a blast making an entire track out of nothing. I bought the rest of Aqeel Aadam's plugins and did a guitar improvisation instrumental piece, using Mobius looper. Want to hear it? You can't! Once the RAM buffer's are cleared, it's gone, like a monk blowing away their sand mandala. I do it because I am compelled to do it. Would it be nice to make some money doing it? Sure, but the world has weighed in on that and the verdict is, "no thanks." I can't even get people to listen to my stuff for free. This doesn't bother me. I'm going to persist until I can't. AI does not have this. The model will sit patiently waiting for a prompt until the hardware that runs it fails. Nothing compels the machine to do anything. It has no urge to do it, unless it is urged to do it by an external prompt.

[zerocrossing]

This is also why, conversely, song creation using text prompts —or iterative text prompts, if you want to be a bit more complicated — is empty, emotionless, and sterile. And this is despite the fact that the AI-generated song is good in itself and hardly distinguishable from a human-generated song by the audience.

Ultimately, we arrive at the ultimate question:
Is the use of AI necessary for creating a song?

If you do that, the question arises: If you are a musician and a human being, why do you let AI take over the most interesting and essential aspects of composition? In doing so, you are giving up on yourself. You are acting like an empty shell, creating supposedly original songs with text prompts – not for personal
expression – but for money and fame?

Jeez, you really want to misunderstand what a couple of us argued here:

1) There are uses were the AI does not do any creative decision.

2) … where the AI serves the role of a studio musician, and then will do exactly what the composer wants, i.e. realizing her/his creative vision better than a bad, underpaid and uninterested studio musician.

3) There are numerous uses where the AI enables a composer to try things without investing shitloads of money. It’s the contrary of making easy money and fame - it’s people who cannot afford a gospel choir or a hired band of studio musicians (which is often a resource of rich and famous or the big players in music industry).

Evil use of an empty shell musician? I don’t think so.

I think 99% here agree the one-liner prompt of a song in Suno is not composing, and has no artistic value. But you disregard all other potential applications and lump everything together with tha „evil, no-soul Suno-jockeys“.

Also, if everybody can do this, how would this enable quick fame and money? This defies basic market logic, as a start.

Right. There's a vast difference between music generated by a prompt, and a guitar amp model generated by training data taken from a guitar amp.

[zerocrossing]

Interestingly, in Golf, they are seriously considering designing equipment with reducing the performance of high level athletes in mind. They are hitting the ball too far. heh

Really? I had no idea, but maybe golf would be boring to both play and watch if all holes would be par 2 holes

The issue with this analogy is that it doesn’t apply to what some AI music generators are doing. Imagine typing, “I’m playing a game of golf against these opponents,” and then you watch a video of the results. That’s what’s happening, and if you tell people, “I played golf today,” you’d be wrong.

[zerocrossing]

Fourth, the claim that AI results lack individuality is not specific to AI. Similarity exists in all tool-driven production environments, from genre conventions to preset-heavy workflows. That has never been used as a criterion to deny musicianship.

Sure it has. I’ve been pointing out that Kanye West is a hack that turns his lame music into hits by including the best parts of other songs since the first time I heard his lame music. Feel free to like his music, but he’s a shadow of someone like Ray Charles, whose music he’s plundering.

Ultimately, it’s up to you with how much of the process you relinquish to the machine. You bring up sample libraries, but with them, I’ve got precise control of the arrangement, including each instrument’s articulation on each note. All those samples were played by people. Would I use an AI tool inside Kontakt that used a recording of my vocal utterances to create the articulations? Yes, if I thought it was doing a good job. I’m not sure I’d give up full control, though, as I’ve tried that with other generative AI models, and I found that the output deserved the nickname, “slop.”

[Tiles]

Bringing up Kanye West doesn’t really support your point. Sampling has been a core part of modern music for decades, and it still involves selection, transformation and context. Calling that “plundering” doesn’t change the fact that it’s a recognized form of authorship. By the same logic, collage, remixing or even reinterpretation would all be invalid, which clearly isn’t how music history works. And comparing that to Ray Charles just shifts the discussion to taste, not definition.

On control: you’re treating it as all-or-nothing, but it’s a spectrum. Even with sample libraries, you’re not controlling how the sound was originally played, recorded or interpreted, you’re working with pre-produced material and shaping it. AI just moves that boundary further.

Also, your personal experience with current outputs (“slop”) is a quality judgment, not a categorical argument. Tools improve, and even now, results depend heavily on how they’re used, iterated and integrated into a broader workflow.

In the end, deciding how much control to keep or delegate is a creative choice. It doesn’t define whether someone is a musician, it defines their process.

[zerocrossing]

This is simplistic, and like so many other arguments misses the point. Let's use Photoshop as an example. if I use its AI capabilities to remove a telephone pole from an image of a corn field that I took, that's a tool. I could do that using the rubber stamp tool, like I used to, but it's an often long and tedious process. I spent years going it, and while I'm very good at it, it's not fun or creative. All hail to our computer overlords and the new process.

Yes, it is, I agree. I was in that mood. But I wouldn’t say I completely missed the point. AI can also be a tool. It depends on how you use it.I would say I’m quite crappy when it comes to composing and producing music, but I don’t use AI to produce full tracks either. For instance, I would never release something I had simply prompted. I’d rather use it for inspiration and then try to mimic it.

Then why not just listen to streaming music tracks from other musicians? It's definitely cheaper and you will probably find more high quality music. That's what I don't understand. I can't figure out why asking for a track is better than just saying, "Pandora, make me a music station based on these artists."

I guess that's faster, but is it better? Will I see that cornfield in someone else's image? I've already seen Midjourney image from other people that were nearly identical to what I got. Multiple times, actually. Who owns it? The first person who asked for it? Midjourney? Do I feel any connection to it, or is it just another bit of content to be shoved out there and abandoned?

It’s definitely faster, yes. Probably not better, not anytime soon. And when it starts getting better, or at least as good, I’m both sure and hopeful that there will be more regulations and limitations on the extent to which you can monetize the music.

Again, I can't really figure out why someone would buy your totally AI generated track when they can just do their own. Why wouldn't Spotify just generate the music and shove it in your stream and save you the bother of using Suno? They already know what music you like. I recently started using TikTok for this. Do a search for some music you like, and watch the algorithm start feeding. you new artists. It's quite good at it and I have found a lot of cool new music.

So since no one listens, why not just ask Sunos to make a song for me, based on my instructions? Because that's not making music, and I am a musician. If that's what you want to do, no one is stopping you, but if you think you're a musician, you're delusional.

I never said I’m a musician. And as I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, creating music is not the same thing as being a musician. A musician is not necessarily a composer or a producer. So when people say you’re not a musician if you create music with AI, they’re comparing apples to bicycles. Don’t confuse musicians, meaning those who perform the music, with composers and producers, meaning those who create the music. Of course, someone can be both.

I do see AI as a boon to the singer-songwriter who maybe only plays the guitar or piano to some basic degree, but wants a fully fleshed out track. There's some guy who posted a video of them doing exactly that and spitting out a full R&B track. IMO, it sounds pretty good, but also kind of uninspired and lame. I can say that about a lot of pre-generative AI music, though. If that makes you happy, have at it. I'd rather keep making music the way I have since the 80s.

I guess my main question is still this: if everyone now has access to a frictionless way of making good, but uninspired music, where is the shared experience? Where is the sense of satisfaction? Will it become something like cooking with a pre-packaged meal kit, where everything is measured out and all you have to do is combine stuff and heat it up? Will generations grow up without being able to say, "oh, my mother's lasagna was the best!" Sad.

I’m not here to defend people who create complete tracks with AI and call them their own. I’m here to defend AI as a tool, just like you mentioned Photoshop can be used for object removal. And also to correct those who make the wrong comparison between musicians and AI-generated tracks.

Sure, there's a lot of misunderstanding, and part of that is due to how these things are being marketed. As I've said, there's an ocean of difference between Tonex and Suno. One of the reasons I think AI is a huge bubble that's going to burst soon, is due to how hard it's being marketed and shoved at us. I stopped using Gmail because it was constantly trying to make my writing more concise. Fu<k that. Feel free to correct my grammar, if I'm wrong, but when you start to try and change my writing style, you can fu<k off, thank you very much. As they shove this new feature at me, they're telling me that they'll no longer grab email from my personal email service, making them much less useful to me. Gemini seems hell bent on giving me information that's often wrong. I watched this yesterday and it's a good example of how AI is eroding knowledge, as well as eroding music.

[bermudagold]

Bringing up Kanye West doesn’t really support your point. Sampling has been a core part of modern music for decades, and it still involves selection, transformation and context. Calling that “plundering” doesn’t change the fact that it’s a recognized form of authorship. By the same logic, collage, remixing or even reinterpretation would all be invalid, which clearly isn’t how music history works. And comparing that to Ray Charles just shifts the discussion to taste, not definition.

On control: you’re treating it as all-or-nothing, but it’s a spectrum. Even with sample libraries, you’re not controlling how the sound was originally played, recorded or interpreted, you’re working with pre-produced material and shaping it. AI just moves that boundary further.

but it does...collage art is still directly derivative...ur borrowing someone else's ideation, performance, and musicality...you are dependent on someone else to make music...the people you are sampling are not dependent on you to make music...that difference in dependency makes the two groups fundamentally different...sampling grew from the lack of access to resources...instruments, instruction, equipment...making lemonade when only lemons are available...that lack no longer exists...the bars have been lowered in all areas...there are orders of magnitude less gatekeepers...so many people should stop living in the past, get out of their comfort zone, and learn some new tricks

that is why sampla.ai is blowing up...as if old record sample slice and trigger hip hop wasn't fisher price enough...now they made it even easier lol...now you don't even have to dig in the crates...which was part of the discovery, appreciation, and celebration of often relatively unknown artists...DITC was a hobby and pastime unto itself...and more importantly now you don't have to pay the rights holders...kanye west calling himself a musical genius and being lauded as such shows how much music in the zeitgeist has regressed

In the end, deciding how much control to keep or delegate is a creative choice. It doesn’t define whether someone is a musician, it defines their process.

disagree...the objective reality has never changed...whether it is loops, construction kits, midi packs, generative midi, or AI...the lower percentage of the end result comes from ur conscious intent,...the less of a composer and musician you are...period...doesn't mean the results cant be good...doesn't mean the results cant be commercially viable...both of those things are irrelevant...the olympic level mental gymnastics people will perform to not have to look in the mirror and face whether they have any musical ideas and anything to say musically is silly...so many people want to DO music,...without having to DO music...make it make sense

[Tiles]

You’re framing this as “dependency vs independence,” but that distinction doesn’t really hold up in practice.

Music has always been dependent on prior work:

harmonic systems, scales and genres are inherited
instruments, presets and recordings are made by others
even live performance depends on builders, engineers and prior knowledge

Sampling just makes that dependency more visible, not fundamentally different.

Also, “derivative” isn’t a disqualifier. All art is derivative to some extent. What matters is how material is selected, transformed and contextualized. That’s why sampling, remixing and collage are widely accepted forms of authorship.

The argument about access cuts both ways. Yes, barriers are lower now, but that doesn’t invalidate approaches that came from earlier constraints. It just means more people can participate. Lower barriers don’t remove creativity, they broaden who gets to be creative.

On tools becoming easier: that’s been a constant trend across all of music production. Drum machines, DAWs, presets and loop libraries all reduced effort and increased accessibility. None of them created a clear line where something stopped being “real music.”

And regarding AI tools like sampla.ai, they remove some steps but don’t remove decision-making. Discovery, taste and context still exist, they just happen differently.

In the end, you’re making a value judgment about preferred processes, not establishing a clear boundary for what counts as musicianship.

That “percentage of conscious intent” idea sounds clear, but it doesn’t actually work as a definition.

There’s no objective way to measure how much of a piece comes from “conscious intent” versus tools, systems or collaborators. By that logic, a lot of established practices would fall apart:

improvisation (where outcomes aren’t fully pre-planned)
working with session musicians
generative or chance-based composition

In all these cases, the creator doesn’t control every detail, yet authorship isn’t questioned.

It also assumes that value only comes from micromanaging every element. But composition has always included higher-level decisions like direction, selection, structure and context. Reducing those to “less musicianship” ignores a large part of how music is actually made.

Finally, this turns into a normative claim (“you should do it this way”), not an objective one. People choose different workflows depending on their goals, skills and interests. That doesn’t make them more or less of a musician, it just means they’re working differently.

[tq]

I think a lot of arguments have been exchanged, and we exhausted pros and cons a bit. What I see here are some people who feel deeply about music - on both sides -, which is good. And a disagreement on a new tech that some perceive as a threat, others as a helpful tool and progression. Whatever your feelings on this are - I am sure AI will play a pretty decisive role in music production in the future. For me, it's time to move on - I hope at least some of my input was helpful, even if you disagree with my positions.

[bermudagold]

I think a lot of arguments have been exchanged, and we exhausted pros and cons a bit. What I see here are some people who feel deeply about music - on both sides -, which is good. And a disagreement on a new tech that some perceive as a threat, others as a helpful tool and progression. Whatever your feelings on this are - I am sure AI will play a pretty decisive role in music production in the future. For me, it's time to move on - I hope at least some of my input was helpful, even if you disagree with my positions.

but nothing new has been achieved...there is no moving on to anywhere...i can point you to a thread right here on kvr about the use of loops from 20 yrs ago were all the same points were made...humans innately will always look for shortcuts...but there's only so many shortcuts one can take to a destination before the reality becomes apparent, that you individually haven't travelled very far...if anybody is happy being a 20% conscious intent creator, then great...but don't expect to be viewed the same as a 100% conscious intent creator...because ur not

humans will always innately value and admire sacrifice, commitment, work ethic, and mastery...and that value and admiration will always be striated by levels and degrees...people remember the guy who climbed everest, not the guy who walked up his local hill to sled down...demand will always be related to supply...shortcuts create infinite supply...sacrifice, commitment, work ethic, and mastery create scarcity...that's why kenny G can pack a concert hall without releasing an album in years,...while the soundcloud rapper cant pack a dive bar despite going viral

[Bunny_boy]

that's why kenny G can pack a concert hall without releasing an album in years,...while the soundcloud rapper cant pack a dive bar despite going viral

You made that comparison on purpose!