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Artificial Intelligence in Music

Ellison Murray ‘24

Ellison Murray ‘24

Overview

Over the past year or so, artificial intelligence has become increasingly more accessible and easy to use, with the release of chatbot, Google Bard, and other AI technologies. However, AI is much more powerful than just a chatbot that can answer one’s chemistry homework. It is a tool that has the ability to evolve, and learn. This characteristic allows for endless possibilities in its various fields.


There are several different uses of AI in the production of music, some being more useful than others. One of these uses involves the deepfaking of voices of famous artists. A user of this method who goes by the name of Ghostwriter has already released a few of these songs. Two of them being Heart on My Sleeve and the other being Whiplash. These songs have received a lot of attention, with listeners noting how similar the deep fakes sound to the actual artist. 


Creative Implications

With the use of AI to deep fake voices to put on tracks, doesn’t change the creative process of making a song. Soundtracks are still produced the same way, and vocals are still recorded, but simply altered through AI technology. However, another use of AI to generate chord progressions, and melody has the potential to change the creative process of making music. AI such as ChatGPT does have a general understanding of music theory, it lacks the human element, which can be seen with its inability to deviate effectively from the rules of music theory. Which can be seen with its struggles of writing jazz music, which is characterized by its unorthodox rhythms and melodies. 


Ethical Implications

One ethical consideration that one might consider is if the use of AI in music would devalue the work of human composers. Though it's true that Artificial intelligence has the potential to become good at producing music, I would hesitate to consider that a bad thing, even if it devalued some of the work of human musicians. In fact, I believe that AI’s ability to create music will only create a higher standard for what is considered “good” music.


Also, there is concern with the use of deep fake voices, as someone could be profiting off of someone else's voice. Although currently there is copyright law in place to deal with this, with this new technology, a reconsideration of the application of this law should be done. 


Testing it out

To test out AI in Music I decided to attempt to make a Travis scott style song using AI throughout the entire process, meaning using AI to generate the soundtrack, the lyrics and a deep fake voice filter. The DAW I used for this project was FL Studio. First, I asked ChatGPT to provide a BPM for a Travis Scott song, and it gave me 78 BPM. I also inquired about which instruments I should use in this song. It suggested a PAD synthesizer, guitar, hi-hats, kick, snare, and an 808. Then, I asked ChatGPT to produce parts for each of the instruments it suggested for this song."



The chord Progression:

| Em  | Cmaj7 | Am7  | Dmaj7 | G   | Cmaj7 | Am7  | Dmaj7 |


808 Pattern 

| 1   | 2  &  | 3   | 4  &  |

| E   | -  C | A   | -  D |

| E   | -  G | A   | -  D |


Kick Pattern

| 1   | 2  &  | 3   | 4  &  |

| K   | -  &  | K   | -  &  |


Snare Pattern

| 1   | 2  &  | 3   | 4  &  |

| -   | S  &  | -   | S  &  |

| -   | -  &  | S   | -  &  |

| S   | -  &  | -   | -  &  |

| -   | S  &  | -   | S  &  |


Hi-hat pattern 

| 1   | 2  &  | 3   | 4  &  |

| H   | H  H  | H H | H  H  |

| H   | H  H  | H H | H  H  |

| H   | H  H  | H H | H  H  |

| H   | H  H  | H H | H  H  |



(Verse 1)

In the city lights, where dreams collide,

Chasing stars, in the night we'll hide,

Through the haze, we find our way,

Lost in the moment, we're here to stay,


(Pre-Chorus)

Eyes wide shut, but we're wide awake,

In the echoes of the night, our fate we'll make,

We're rising high, we touch the sky,

In this cosmic dance, we'll never say goodbye,


(Chorus)

We're riding on the waves of neon dreams,

In this electric world, we're a thousand streams,

Lost in the rhythm, we find our soul,


(Verse 2)

Concrete dreams and midnight schemes,

In the city's heart, we'll find our themes,

Through the chaos, we paint our scene,

In shades of gold, we'll reign supreme,



I then imputed all of this into the DAW that I used, which was FL Studio 20. 


What I noticed is that ChatGPT could only provide options many times and couldn’t make certain decisions. This is because it is simply an AI language model and isn’t trained to do so. Overall, I thought the song was not very good, but I find it amazing that ChatGPT was able to produce what it did, especially considering that it wasn’t specifically trained for this task. The result slightly resembled Travis Scott’s slower songs, though I still felt it was quite limited. I believe that AI will continue to improve and may eventually generate songs that are good.


Song: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e7LtPcH4DulsXtlYXy0P9qtno4jMuh1y/view?usp=sharing


What I foresee: 

There are endless collaborative possibilities between human musicians and AI. Many contemporary artists are incorporating AI-generated elements into their compositions. I believe that this collaborative approach demonstrates how AI can be a tool for human creativity rather than simply a replacement for it.

Overall, these recent advancements and their applications indicate an involving relationship between technology and the arts and marks a new musical era. 




Sources

"Can you write me a guitar solo, tell me the notes, and the beats that each note falls on" prompt. ChatGPT, September 25 Version, OpenAI, 23 Oct. 2023. https://chat.openai.com.

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