AI and the future of music creation

Hey guys, as I contemplate buying a MPC3 (very pricey in Canada), I was left thinking about the future of music creation given AI advancements.

Just wanted to hear your perspective on this.

My guess is that the performance and personality of an artist will take front and center and the music production aspect will ultimately be AI, maybe moderately influenced by a producer.

I guess the subtext to my question is: am i dropping 2.5k in Canada after taxes on a device which will be obsolete in a few years? Will akai ultimately become a subscription service to get AI music/stems and the MPC will be a performance device for live gigs (not a production machine). The live 3 seems to be selling well, so perhaps it's not a common consideration

AI will not stop you creating music (for the purpose of art, enjoyment, hobby etc). It will almost certainly help with many mundane tasks as AI 'assistants' inside your DAW.

Each person's definition of mundane tasks will vary of course, some mundane tasks could be 'analyse this folder of drums and edit, top & tail where appropriate') others might start creeping into skilled, creative processes (analyze this folder of 70s recordings then stem separate all the drums, chop them, create multi-velocity drum kits in various sampler formats, create a name and samplepack image and upload to my Splice account...). Of course will anyone need services like 'splice' anymore when AI can generate loops for you?

I'm sure many artist/producers will like the convenience of using AI 'singers' or AI instrument libraries.

Beyond that, almost certainly AI music will be everywhere and lots of jobs will disappear, but I assume 'human' music will always be promoted as something distinct and desirable, and live performance will become ever more important (so start practicing your finger drumming and light shows)

MPC-Tutor wrote:Beyond that, almost certainly AI music will be everywhere and lots of jobs will disappear, but I assume 'human' music will always be promoted as something distinct and desirable, and live performance will become ever more important (so start practicing your finger drumming and light shows)

Now it makes sense why the live 3 has lights everywhere

Japan already has virtual performers like Miku Hatsune. There have been hologram shows for departed artists. If the people will eat it up someone will be there to serve them. In the rest of the world, as regards large shows where most people absorb the visuals through a screen, I could also see it happening. It's not my idea of a good time but I don't make money from my music, although I did get about 3000 streams last year on SoundCloud. Is that worth even a penny?

There are some aspects of electronic music production that are very tedious and no creativity is replaced. I'm just a drooling old fart these days but I'll continue to make my beeps and boops by hand as much as possible.

I would like to see some ai agents built into the MPC software

like a virtual bass player; so u can use that to assist in creating melodies and patterns.

Say i have drums and and some sample chops; i might use the ai agent to create a background melody, then u can edit the midi created by the agent.

I would suspect that AI agent that makes basslines or composes music is coming, and I suspect it will be a subscription.... which would be a non-starter for me. I'm still annoyed that they are charging for the clips upgrade on my MPC live 1!

For me I find most joy in the creation of all the melodies, composing, sound design, arranging etc, so these are the aspects that I would not want AI involved in at all. But for example I hate mastering and would happily 'outsource' this to AI (or pay a mastering engineer, how novel!).

I was watching the CEO of one of those AI music companies (suno or udio, can't remember) he was making a beat using his service, they market it as 'handling the crap jobs so you can concentrate on the creativity' but it literally did everything for him, his 'skill' was the prompts and I suppose the 'decisions' he had to make at each step. I guess some people just want the joy of 'creating' something without needing x,y or z skills.

I guess that's the same as me with mastering, it's a skill I have no interest in learning and no time to learn it even if I wanted to, so why not let someone or something do it for me so I can concentrate on the fun stuff.

Some of this is no different to using loops; can't play bass? Download some bass loops, get AI to create some ideas, play a bass synth/kontakt instrument or actually learn how to play bass. Each to their own!

theabstract wrote:I would suspect that AI agent that makes basslines or composes music is coming, and I suspect it will be a subscription.... which would be a non-starter for me. I'm still annoyed that they are charging for the clips upgrade on my MPC live 1!

there is no Akai using the subscription models; despite ur thirst for a subscription

My very short(*) gist on the matter is: There will always be music made by humans and there will always be people explicitly searching for and listening to music made by humans.

(*) this is worth awfully long discussions. And AI will completely change the way we listen to, perceive and make music one way other the other.
There will be movements, counter movements, die hards, purists and sell-outs.

Music is first and foremost a form of art. Like every form of art there's the other side of monetary maximization. You either paint your one of a kind piece of art or switch on the printer and print a billion copies of your line drawing. People will buy more of the cheap line drawings. But the one of a kind piece of art will be the one that people will remember in a hundred years.

If you see it as a pure art form, then there's no obsolescence. Never.

You can make music with the same stick that someone from the Homo family made music with a couple hundred thousand years ago and create a piece of art.
If you see it as being just some money thing, then you will most likely not create any art but mass produce the next thing nobody will remember in a week but that gets you the 5 mins of one-hit-wonder fame and enough money to feel rich but that won't mean anything for you because you will most likely loose it faster than you can imagine.

And then there's everything in between. Really everything. There will be new genres because of this for sure. There will be new platforms dedicated to human made music. And there will be music made with AI under the control of a creative human you never dreamed possible.

When the first performance with a microphone was done people freaked out because what wimp needs to use amplification to get their voice across the room? This will be the end of music! Now it's bread and butter and music hasn't lost its soul.

There's no answer here other than: Do what makes you happy. It's a sandbox.

There will be a billion shitty sand castles and there will be thousands of awesome sand castles. And everything in between.

My take on this whole situation is that if people are making very generic / formulaic music in genres that already seem to be flooded with beats that all sound much the same, then they're the people most likely to loose work. That's AI music's M.O. after all.

I have a cousin that works in AI in the US. He tells me that the advancements are coming weekly and the money and resources thrown at it is unprecedented. I hope the MPC live 3 has sufficient processor capability to incorporate AI for mixing, etc.

given the power the next gen MPC's now have its only logical that AI should come to MPC.

I would like to see the full range of AI tools, virtual mix engineers, mastering, virtual musicians, etc then people can pick and choose which tools they want to use.

in the current era where artist have been unorginal and copying whats popular AI is fine cos nothing is orginal now anyways so why not use AI.

Better that artist loose income if they are just going to copy and trend hop; but AI aritists would of been a no go in the 90s and before, cos artistry and orginality was more valued back then.

theabstract wrote:My guess is that the performance and personality of an artist will take front and center and the music production aspect will ultimately be AI, maybe moderately influenced by a producer.

Do people really care about artists? In Asia idol bands are popular. In EDM ghost producing is everywhere (is it really?) and all are happy. IMHO this audience does not care at all the whole production were done by an AI.

People will propably still throwing coins to a street musician, but will happily shell out much more to see a synced show with lasers and fireworks where an "artists" hops around pressing fake buttons to play tracks created entirely by AI.

And personality is just a public image. Hire a social media team and you can have any personality you want to have.