Artificial intelligence is a part of our daily experience, and it can be found in fields ranging from medicine to technology to art. During the past several years, the position of AI within music has grown tremendously, giving creativity new possibilities. Though only a few years ago, AI in music was thought of as something dark and far away, we’re now witnessing concrete demonstrations of the way in which these technologies are disrupting the musical experience itself.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of AI in music is that it creates music that sounds stylistically reminiscent of one’s favorite artists and genres. This creates opportunities for musicians to use AI as a creative force. Meanwhile, AI never assumes the hat of the artist: it uses data fed in by humans and merely optimizes arrangements, harmony decisions, or background noises. In this way, AI is no longer a rival but rather an enabler that augments and speeds up the performance of musicians.
Key Takeaways
- AI’s Role in Music: Artificial Intelligence enhances creative possibilities, serving as a supportive tool for musicians rather than a replacement, helping to expand their artistic expression.
- Technological Evolution: AI is the latest advancement in music technology, continuing the legacy of innovations like the player piano and digital audio workstations by offering new methods for music creation and manipulation.
- Collaboration over Competition: AI assists musicians by suggesting new compositions and arrangements, thus enriching the creative process without overtaking the unique emotional contributions of human creators.
- Educational Impact: AI improves music education by analyzing large datasets to help students and musicians explore various styles, thereby simplifying the learning process.
- Democratization of Music: AI democratizes music production by making tools accessible to a wider audience globally, enabling more individuals to engage in music creation.
Future of Music Technologies: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence
Music technologies, like music itself, evolve continually. Ever since humans invented the first musical instrument, they have been searching for ways to record, create, and reproduce music. We need to understand that every technological breakthrough in music has thrown the door wide open to possibility, and that is going on steady.
The first major step in the evolution of music technology was the development of the player piano in the early 20th century. That instrument, whose tone can be programmed to automatically play music, would become emblematic of the way in which technology could “rescue” musicians from their effort, freeing them up to pursue more pressing creative attempts. Yet for all its improvisatory potential, the player piano did not replace real performers, but was integrated into the musical landscape.
The next critical stage was sound recordings: recordings in which individuals could record and reproduce music. Multitrack recordings, made by recording and editing software, arrived in the 1960s and ’70s, radically reshaping the practice of studio work. These technologies allowed musicians to synthesize, rig up effects, and build complex sounds.
Once digital technology developed in the 1980s and ’90s, a new era dawned — computers and music programs, like MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), that made it possible to connect electronic gadgets with computers to make music. Software programs such as Pro Tools and Ableton Live revolutionized recording, editing, and mixing, accelerating production and giving musicians new means to express themselves. Modern electronic instruments and musical software allowed professional musicians, amateurs, and novices to create music that could be more easily performed to a wider audience.
Here, on the verge of technological innovations, comes a new phase in the evolution of music technologies—Artificial Intelligence. This step makes sense because AI is a technology that will combine everything that has been achieved in the past and give us entirely new opportunities to make music. Artificial intelligence can not only make music but also evaluate current works, propose new voicings, and automate production.
If we compare this phase with other periods in the history of music technology, artificial intelligence in music is a step forward toward new, faster, and more convenient ways to produce and listen to music. But, as with all other technologies, the challenge is not to replace musicians or artists but to equip them with fresh tools to realize their vision.
Competition or Collaboration? Musician and Machine
Whether AI will bring out the best in humans when it comes to making music is a hotly contested question. Yet despite AI’s obvious success at creating music, for a number of reasons, there is no way that AI could ever effectively usurp human-mediated musical production. AI may generate songs, but it cannot contain the two things that really matter in music: emotional feeling and historical individuality.
Music, as a practice, has always been deeply intertwined with experience and interiority. Every piece, whether it’s a song or composition, reflects the individual’s experiences, perspective, feelings, and moods. Such subjective dimensions of creativity make music something more than just a series of notes. AI can copy style and form, but it doesn’t have life experiences to inject into a piece. It doesn’t experience happiness, sadness, affection, or struggle, and so its “music” lacks the special kind of emotive resonance we humans possess.
But AI isn’t a threat to musicians. Rather, artificial intelligence is a tool to create new possibilities. It enables musicians to experiment with material, generate inspiration, and speed up the music-making process. AI-based programs can suggest melody, chord, orchestration, and arrangement, freeing musicians to spend more time doing creative work instead of the mundane. AI, for instance, can suggest different harmonic forms of a melody to be added to a composition in order to allow the composer to decide upon which form best fits his next progression.
The musician-AI collaboration shares some of the same technologies for creativity. In other domains, such as online gaming, the tech and the services distract people from the important aspects of their lives and take them away from mundane tasks. Path of Exile 2 players, for example, can use premium services to buy PoE 2 currency so that they can have fun and creative activities in the game rather than wasting hours on currency storage. It’s as if musicians use AI to make music faster, not better. In both cases, technology does more to enhance efficiency than it does to undermine the uniqueness of human action.
The deployment of software, like AIVA or OpenAI MuseNet, that are not musicians but collaborating programs is an illustration of this musician-machine collaboration. A composer could improvise on the AI’s signal and embellish it, adding his or her own flavor to it. This alliance enables the creation of higher-quality, multi-layered music.
The controversy over human-machine rivalry usually converges on the misguided belief that artificial intelligence can ever take the place of living imagination. AI could do things we once did, but its roles in music production are less about replacing humans than opening up possibilities. The composer and the AI are two collaborators who can create something new together.
Artificial Intelligence: An Instructional and Experimentation Tool
As music education and genre discovery have become increasingly crucial, AI offers the possibility to learn, experiment, and be inventive. Machine learning can analyze huge amounts of musical data and discover and emulate specific musical styles, which helps students and musicians fine-tune their research. It’s an opportunity for amateur and professional players to immerse themselves into a different world to discover what it means to play classically, jazzily, electronically, or even off-beat. Artificial intelligence can slice musical pieces into sections – melody, harmony, rhythm – to give musicians a glimpse into how styles are constructed.
Moreover, AI is an exciting space for creating new genres. By combining elements of multiple genres, AI can suggest new combinations and styles never thought of before, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved through music composition. Such genre-fusion experiments can open up an entire musical landscape, challenging the way that musicians think normally.
Perhaps AI’s greatest potential contribution to democratizing music production is that it can open music production to a wider public across the globe. Making and training music once required capital, professional equipment, and high-level education. AI-powered tools, however, break all of these barriers and enable anyone with an internet connection to make music. It lets aspiring musicians access knowledge and ingenuity that they could not have had even a few decades ago. This openness makes space for diverse skills and imaginations to be developed, and music can be made from all corners of the world.
AI is a great mentor for budding musicians. AI-powered learning platforms allow students to experiment, learn in an environment that’s virtual, receive instant feedback, and experiment with it. Whether it’s playing an instrument, creating music yourself or learning something new, AI saves you the time of getting to grips with all the minutiae of music making and lets novices focus on developing creativity. Moreover, AI also provides personalized recommendations to give learners more freedom to work. That makes music instruction more individual and intimate.
AI education and musical experimentation not only deepen learning but also promote more creativity and inclusion in music. By introducing these tools and making them accessible to musicians of all abilities, AI transforms how music is produced and taught and informs the musical future for those yet to come.
