Comment by wrs
1 day ago
Yes, it's really easy to argue against AI music and find that you're making exactly the same argument that was used against DJs and sampling in the 90s. "Real musicians" thought they were being ripped off by "non-musicians" who didn't know how to play an instrument, just a turntable or an AKAI. But it turns out that turntables and samplers are instruments if you allow people to get creative with them, and now we have entire genres of music that exist because sampling is legitimate (though the copyright wars did make it more expensive than the original guerrilla days). I mean, do we seriously think DJ Shadow isn't a musician?
You could regard AI as being literally just a very advanced form of sampling. I've seen and heard some very creative uses of AI tools, and it would be a terrible shame if that baby got thrown out with the bathwater.
Yeah, I want the Paul's Boutique of AI music, but I'm not interested in wading through the AI equivalent of a hundred thousand acoustic guitar covers of Wonderwall
This demonstrates where a lot of the mismatch in impressions of this tech arise. The thousandth amateur Wonderwall rendition is not at all interesting as a piece of recorded music, but for the performer (and those listening around them) it can be a fun and playful experience. The same could be said for AI generated music: it could be a fun and playful experience in the present moment, even if the resulting product is totally worthless to the market. This would still be a valuable thing for the human experience.
Arguably this is a return to a more traditional way of experiencing music from before the invention of recorded music. Before this, music was an entirely transient and often communal experience. Once the musician stops playing, the music is over. Songs from these times have largely unknown authors, and likely don't even have any single author or for that to even be a coherent concept. They were simply part of the shared culture that many had contributed to. Now music is owned by specific people and you can play back their performance as much as you like (for an increasingly insignificant price).
This tech may be a negative thing for the market of recorded music, but it needs to be argued that recorded music is the only authentic way to experience music, and that this is why that's how most people experience music currently, rather than that being an historical anomaly due to the technology available. Once you step away from treating music like it's only valid when it's a product for a market, the problems of AI music seem a lot less catastrophic.
We have had algorithmic composition for a long time. Here is a brief history of algorithmic composition from 1999 https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~blackrse/algorithm.html
What is meant by "AI Music" is not works by Iannis Xenakis or certain Autechre albums.
We should be defining all this better but we won't. It is also that there is no "AI music" equivalent of the amen break to invent new forms of art. The cultural structures and norms that made that possible no longer exist.
It really is the difference though between art and porn. A blurry distinction on paper but quite obvious in practice. Quite obvious in motivation.
Ever since the first electric guitarist who turned their amplifier input up way too high (*), artists have been ignoring the instructions that came with the technology and (mis)using it to make art, and they’ll do it with this one too.
(*) and before, but that’s an obvious example