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Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

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Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#341

Post by tchaffee »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #259
tchaffee wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same arguments were made to dismiss rock music when compared to classical music. And a world without the Velvet Underground would be more soulless to me. I've heard soulless music performed by highly trained musicians playing on great instruments. And soulful music played on crappy instruments by untrained musicians. On average, the great music comes from the more trained musicians on the better tools. AI is just…

> The same arguments were made to dismiss rock music when compared to classical music Just because people were wrong in the past doesn’t mean they are wrong now. > AI is just another tool Not all tools are the same. A tool that changes how sound is amplified (like an electric guitar) is vastly different than a tool that can theoretically replace the human in the loop entirely. Someone playing a piano and someone play…

That same argument has been wrong over and over again. So there's no reason to believe it's now suddenly a good argument unless given solid evidence.

Distortion was just another tool, and first rejected as highly undesirable. It's literally "just" putting an electric guitar through a tube amp and turning up the knob. And it revolutionized music. It sounds amazing in the right hands.

The more important point that I already made is the not all musicians are the same. Give a piano or a player piano to the vast majority of musicians and the output will be common and familiar. Give either to a musical genius like Hendrix and they'll manage to get something beautiful and new out of it. I'm looking forward to what the handful of geniuses out there will get out of AI. It's going to be fun.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#342

Post by WhrRTheBaboons »

jamesdhutton wrote: post #80

In "Brave New World," all the music is made by machines. We are approaching that dystopia. For me, much of the pleasure in listening to music lies in appreciating the virtuosity of the musicians. It's like watching a great tennis player or a great dancer. You admire their skill and grace and technical mastery. For me, listening to music made by machines would be like watching robots playing tennis, or robots dancing.…

studio albums are already partly machine generated and completely different from live performances. popular music is often impossible to perform live due to the actual track being composed from split segments sawn together so fast that a human performer does not have any time to breathe.

And that's without even going into voice tuning. We've crossed into that world long time ago and the line is only going to get more blurry.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#343

Post by tchaffee »

sesm wrote: post #177
tchaffee wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of what you are claiming is false. Most chess AIs for example can identify almost every opening move in existence. Something no human can do. That's a type of position evaluation, and a good starting point for further research. No free coach is going to sit for 4 hours straight, 5 days a week, playing thousands of games exploring variations of a particular opening. That kind of self-study will definitely help yo…

Chess engines are very important for grandmasters, for sure. But for beginners they are mostly useless. That’s what I was arguing about. Regarding openings - the best place to learn are books/studies/even Wikipedia articles that explain the ideas behind the major moves and variations, which chess engines don’t do. Also, a human can explain which opening are good to play at your skill level and which are not. Regardin…

Chess engines aren't useless for beginners. That's an empty claim and is as easily dismissed as it was made.

I gave a list of reasons why a chess engine is good for learning. Refute those as a start.

Here's another reason: an AI engine will point out illegal moves, and patiently over hundreds of games in your home. A free coach isn't going to come to your house and do that.

Neither will most friends or relatives. People get bored and move on.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#344

Post by tchaffee »

darkerside wrote: post #155
tchaffee wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will those players analyze and rate your moves like a chess engine will? Will they name common opening strategies for you so you can research them in books? Will they let you take back several moves to explore different lines?

AI can do that to a game you play against humans.

Yeah, I've used that a lot. Yet another example of how AI engines can help you learn quicker.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#345

Post by voitvod »

seydor wrote: post #85
sirwitti wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality never was the only or even the most important aspect of popularity in music and probably art in general. So I'm not sure your projection is valid.

Hm. It was before the 20th century maybe. People knew of artists by name, not by their social life and sex tapes. The pop culture paraphilia is a very recent thing.

Picasso died an inflation adjusted billionaire.

Like most things I read outside programming on this board, it is people talking out their ass about things they don't know much about but they think they do because they are well paid to write javascript.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#346

Post by theGnuMe »

jmathai wrote: post #291

The older I get, the more I appreciate craftsmanship. Applies to nearly everything. Lately, I’ve been sitting in a chair and listening to records - not doing anything else. There’s a connection to myself, the music and the artist that’s different than when I’m listening on Spotify with my AirPods on. To each their own (I mean that) but I do wonder sometimes…At some point, what’s the point?

I think these tools will unleash a Cambrian explosion of music from all types of people. It’ll be amazing.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#347

Post by voitvod »

DevX101 wrote: post #298

Michael Jackson was an excellent musician, who just happened to not play any instruments. He'd hum lines, beatbox rhythms to his band who'd then take his ideas and transform his ideas into instrumental music. Most people don't have access to the quality musicians MJ had, but there's a lot of creative people that lack the skills to create their artistic vision. Tech like this could be the unleashing of an age of new g…

Michael Jackson also would not be Michael Jackson if not for the advent of MTV and Thriller. Embracing a new artistic medium to its fullest extent to make a 13 minute video in an age of 3 minute songs on the radio.

Creative people will find creative ways to use new creative tools.

There is even still amazing marble sculpture being made today but we are not going back to ancient Rome in terms of the importance of sculpture as a popular artistic medium of the day.

There will be cool, new electronic music genres from these AI tools and that sound might eventually make its way to whatever cultural icons of the day are making music. Mostly though no one will listen to these genres just like they don't listen to them today. Music just isn't that culturally important anymore overall.

The real big deal is AI video because video is the dominant artistic medium of right now by several orders of magnitude. This is all just a dress rehearsal for AI video at mass scale.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#348

Post by tentacleuno »

phatskat wrote: post #185
datpiff wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this reads as very cynical, but a lot of the replies here seem to be written by people who do not like music, or don't place much value in it.

A ton of these comments are cynical or defeatist. It’s like they think that music is already a dying art and this is the final nail in the coffin. There’s tons of amazing, wonderful music being made all the time, to a degree that is staggeringly incomprehensible, and nothing about AI generated music is going to stop people from making beautiful art “by hand”

100%! I think a lot of people love to say "Music's not what it used to be."; while they do have a point, in that music does tend to rely more on computation than instruments, it's not like the usage of instruments is a dying art. Some artists just choose to provide a different experience; if people like it, they buy it, and that's the form of quality control we've always had for music (I'm not saying it's perfect, of course.)

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#349

Post by vjerancrnjak »

butlike wrote: post #266
vjerancrnjak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't music more than just the music track? People like to listen to the same music, go to concerts, share it with others, share the experience of audience/artist performance. Moments where music is truly important in one's life will never be replaced by meaningless bit fiddling. I cannot imagine people caring about books, music, art created by bit fiddling. They will always care about things created by other peo…

Would you say a mastering engineer is "fiddling with bits?" and also: would you say there's artistic merit in bringing out the brilliance of a song with said engineering?

Almost no human activity in music is fiddling bits, everything has its place. Pretty sure there are not that many points in music where your role can be trivial. Mastering engineer is somewhat replaced by good music production software and his craft became more approachable to the artist who's not familiar with mastering but can now do it easily due to software.

I do not know if mastering engineers who worked with analog equipment started complaining about losing jobs to digital programs, making their experience obsolete. Did they? I don't think any AI product will be able to separate itself from the human will. Anything we humans do is by humans for humans and all of these places where software would steal our music experience is just hard for me to imagine.

Re: Google's advanced music generation model and two new AI experiments

#350

Post by phatskat »

tentacleuno wrote: post #348
phatskat wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of these comments are cynical or defeatist. It’s like they think that music is already a dying art and this is the final nail in the coffin. There’s tons of amazing, wonderful music being made all the time, to a degree that is staggeringly incomprehensible, and nothing about AI generated music is going to stop people from making beautiful art “by hand”

100%! I think a lot of people love to say "Music's not what it used to be."; while they do have a point, in that music does tend to rely more on computation than instruments, it's not like the usage of instruments is a dying art. Some artists just choose to provide a different experience; if people like it, they buy it, and that's the form of quality control we've always had for music (I'm not saying it's perfect, of…

You made me think of some of my favorite lines from LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge”:

> I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a Yaz record.

> I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.

> I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.

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