6 ms·

DJ performance remixing AI-created music- which is then live-remixed by a 2nd AI

76 points by pizza 5y ago

azaras 5y ago
If the DJ is removed the music quality would be the same.
- visarga 5y ago
  Humans can set the input configuration for the AI and then filter the generated content. AI could generate too much content for anyone to hear, so there's value in human curation.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    We might get a good idea of the kind of music AI's enjoy listening to /s
- SjorsVG 5y ago
  Probably, but DJing is a fun social activity. The DJ puts a bit of themselves in the mix. I think an AI for music mixing isn't really solving much of a problem. It's just a neat trick in my opinion. Making fun and skill obsolete is sad!
- Larrikin 5y ago
  If you can't tell the difference between a dj and playlist or AI then the DJ is terrible.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  But missing someone pretending to turn knobs.
- laumars 5y ago
  It really depends on the style of music being played and the quality of the DJ. I’ve heard some DJ really elevate tracks with the way they’ve mixed them. I myself would typically have two or more tracks playing at once (more than 3+ deck mixes when playing on vinyl turntables or up to 5 channels when playing from Ableton) and using that to layer percussion loops over older electronica and industrial tracks to make them sound fresher and more club friendly. I’ve also heard some DJs completely ruin songs by badly mixing a sparsely engineered track (ie something set at a particular tempo but sounds a lot slower) after something heavier and more pounding, thus sucking the energy out of the second track. Even with pop songs where there isn’t a whole lot you can actually do with them, I’ve heard some DJs take average or even bad pop songs and drop the hook between some really good songs and do so in a way that really compliments both. Resulting in the otherwise average pop song sounding better than it normally would if it were played in full. Not to mention there’s DJs who spin their own remixes of tracks. DJs who seek out bootlegs. DJs who bring fx and synths to gigs. And all the other creative stuff going on beyond just spinning other peoples records. I remember spending a few weeks trying to track down a song I’d heard on a mix tape one weekend, only to discover it was actually two different tracks. an instrumental electro with an a cappella layered over it. It sounded perfectly mixed as if it were originally released like that. I also remember spending months tracking down a remix of Leftfield’s Space Shanty, which I heard then play on a Radio1 essential mix. Turned out that was a one off pressing they made for a few gigs in ‘93. DJing is a really diverse scene and those that play the in bars of your local high street pub or the guys that entertain your drunk uncles at your sisters wedding are really only the upper most tip of the iceberg in terms of DJing.
  - Hendrikto 5y ago
    Thanks for the insightful comment, I enjoyed reading it. That being said, I don‘t think azaras was talking about DJs in general. Just this specific example.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Have a go at mimicking a daft punk setlist, they make it look easy - it's not. The techniques are often simple but art is not about technique
ehsankia 5y ago
This was... really not good. As anyone who's played around with a grid beatmaker, honestly almost anything you put in there kinda sounds good and groovy, yet honestly most of the stuff there felt less good than average, no better than random.
- nikanj 5y ago
  The way to get good results from AI is letting it randomly generate stuff, then have a human pan for gold
  - makapuf 5y ago
    You can say that with randomly generated content, or simple heuristics+random based content, it's not specific from AI
  - Hendrikto 5y ago
    No, that‘s the way to get your paper published. Actually good AI systems produce convincing results without curation.
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    I agree that the "AI as assistant" model is AI's sweet spot now and likely for the next few decades. This model is already common now in systems like Tesla's badly-named "Full-Self Driving" Autopilot, which Tesla itself notes "is a hands-on driver assistance system that is intended to be used only with a fully attentive driver". Similarly, "AI as creator" mostly leads to uninteresting outcomes. In contrast, "AI as creative assistant" will lead to actually-fascinating advances in the creative arts in the near future. AI will help creators think differently, and in turn, creators will weave good and/or interesting output into coherent, higher-quality pieces.
  - scsilver 5y ago
    You can probably teach it to start producing higher gold/crap ratios with enough human planners training it?
- rzzzt 5y ago
taylorius 5y ago
Maybe get an AI to listen to it too? Closed loop system...
- ruined 5y ago
  this is the real danger of AI, replacing consumers
  - yowlingcat 5y ago
    It seems like this isn't too far off from the truth, given that botting traffic is quite high [1] on all the major streaming providers. [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/how-to-fight-spotify-streaming-fraud-850990/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/how-to-fight-spoti...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I have the minority opinion here: I thought the music was interesting, and love the hierarchy of models for generating music given latent random seed vectors and adding the extra layer of models to simulate DJs, under a layer of a human DJ. I once built and worked on a model to generate spreadsheet data given example data using a GAN (generated spreadsheet data could be used to train models that were accurate when tested against real data - that whole experience was an eye opener for me). The architecture of this system is more complex and much cooler than what I did. I also look at this system as a solid indicator of how humans will interact with AI systems in the future: we will lightly affect and guide automated systems with an internal complexity way beyond what we can understand. There used to be an expression “a human in the loop” and I don’t think this expression really describes future AI/human interactions.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  Musical complexity is hard to judge, and the relationship between complexity and "sounding good" is evasive. Consider Satie's Gnossienne #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0 It's ... simple, right? It's just a few really good choices in an unbelievably enormous nearly-Hilbert space. I could listen to that stuff forever. Most of Nirvana's songs have a similar quality. Judging from where OpenAI Jukebox was a couple years ago, I imagine in a decade we might have AI that sounds as good as Nirvana. On the other hand, my favorite piece ever is Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. We seem to be very far away from any kind of Stravinsky algorithm.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    Ha! I grew up listening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, my Dad loved it. And yes, it will be a while before any combination of DL models can write something as touching as Gnossienne, or ‘simple’ Bach stuff that I love like Jesu Joy of Man;s Desire.
    - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
      Bach is a good example of music that's both simple and complex. He'll take a few (often just one) fairly simple theme, and weave variations of it into a lush fabric that's coherent and natural (yet always surprising) -- the nearest thing to justice one finds in music.

76 points by pizza 5y ago

azaras 5y ago

If the DJ is removed the music quality would be the same.

visarga 5y ago
Humans can set the input configuration for the AI and then filter the generated content. AI could generate too much content for anyone to hear, so there's value in human curation.
- rapnie 5y ago
  We might get a good idea of the kind of music AI's enjoy listening to /s
SjorsVG 5y ago
Probably, but DJing is a fun social activity. The DJ puts a bit of themselves in the mix. I think an AI for music mixing isn't really solving much of a problem. It's just a neat trick in my opinion. Making fun and skill obsolete is sad!
Larrikin 5y ago
If you can't tell the difference between a dj and playlist or AI then the DJ is terrible.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
But missing someone pretending to turn knobs.
laumars 5y ago
It really depends on the style of music being played and the quality of the DJ. I’ve heard some DJ really elevate tracks with the way they’ve mixed them. I myself would typically have two or more tracks playing at once (more than 3+ deck mixes when playing on vinyl turntables or up to 5 channels when playing from Ableton) and using that to layer percussion loops over older electronica and industrial tracks to make them sound fresher and more club friendly. I’ve also heard some DJs completely ruin songs by badly mixing a sparsely engineered track (ie something set at a particular tempo but sounds a lot slower) after something heavier and more pounding, thus sucking the energy out of the second track. Even with pop songs where there isn’t a whole lot you can actually do with them, I’ve heard some DJs take average or even bad pop songs and drop the hook between some really good songs and do so in a way that really compliments both. Resulting in the otherwise average pop song sounding better than it normally would if it were played in full. Not to mention there’s DJs who spin their own remixes of tracks. DJs who seek out bootlegs. DJs who bring fx and synths to gigs. And all the other creative stuff going on beyond just spinning other peoples records. I remember spending a few weeks trying to track down a song I’d heard on a mix tape one weekend, only to discover it was actually two different tracks. an instrumental electro with an a cappella layered over it. It sounded perfectly mixed as if it were originally released like that. I also remember spending months tracking down a remix of Leftfield’s Space Shanty, which I heard then play on a Radio1 essential mix. Turned out that was a one off pressing they made for a few gigs in ‘93. DJing is a really diverse scene and those that play the in bars of your local high street pub or the guys that entertain your drunk uncles at your sisters wedding are really only the upper most tip of the iceberg in terms of DJing.
- Hendrikto 5y ago
  Thanks for the insightful comment, I enjoyed reading it. That being said, I don‘t think azaras was talking about DJs in general. Just this specific example.
mhh__ 5y ago
Have a go at mimicking a daft punk setlist, they make it look easy - it's not. The techniques are often simple but art is not about technique

ehsankia 5y ago

This was... really not good. As anyone who's played around with a grid beatmaker, honestly almost anything you put in there kinda sounds good and groovy, yet honestly most of the stuff there felt less good than average, no better than random.

nikanj 5y ago
The way to get good results from AI is letting it randomly generate stuff, then have a human pan for gold
- makapuf 5y ago
  You can say that with randomly generated content, or simple heuristics+random based content, it's not specific from AI
- Hendrikto 5y ago
  No, that‘s the way to get your paper published. Actually good AI systems produce convincing results without curation.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  I agree that the "AI as assistant" model is AI's sweet spot now and likely for the next few decades. This model is already common now in systems like Tesla's badly-named "Full-Self Driving" Autopilot, which Tesla itself notes "is a hands-on driver assistance system that is intended to be used only with a fully attentive driver". Similarly, "AI as creator" mostly leads to uninteresting outcomes. In contrast, "AI as creative assistant" will lead to actually-fascinating advances in the creative arts in the near future. AI will help creators think differently, and in turn, creators will weave good and/or interesting output into coherent, higher-quality pieces.
- scsilver 5y ago
  You can probably teach it to start producing higher gold/crap ratios with enough human planners training it?
rzzzt 5y ago

taylorius 5y ago

Maybe get an AI to listen to it too? Closed loop system...

ruined 5y ago
this is the real danger of AI, replacing consumers
- yowlingcat 5y ago
  It seems like this isn't too far off from the truth, given that botting traffic is quite high [1] on all the major streaming providers. [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/how-to-fight-spotify-streaming-fraud-850990/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/how-to-fight-spoti...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I have the minority opinion here: I thought the music was interesting, and love the hierarchy of models for generating music given latent random seed vectors and adding the extra layer of models to simulate DJs, under a layer of a human DJ. I once built and worked on a model to generate spreadsheet data given example data using a GAN (generated spreadsheet data could be used to train models that were accurate when tested against real data - that whole experience was an eye opener for me). The architecture of this system is more complex and much cooler than what I did. I also look at this system as a solid indicator of how humans will interact with AI systems in the future: we will lightly affect and guide automated systems with an internal complexity way beyond what we can understand. There used to be an expression “a human in the loop” and I don’t think this expression really describes future AI/human interactions.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
Musical complexity is hard to judge, and the relationship between complexity and "sounding good" is evasive. Consider Satie's Gnossienne #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0 It's ... simple, right? It's just a few really good choices in an unbelievably enormous nearly-Hilbert space. I could listen to that stuff forever. Most of Nirvana's songs have a similar quality. Judging from where OpenAI Jukebox was a couple years ago, I imagine in a decade we might have AI that sounds as good as Nirvana. On the other hand, my favorite piece ever is Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. We seem to be very far away from any kind of Stravinsky algorithm.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  Ha! I grew up listening to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, my Dad loved it. And yes, it will be a while before any combination of DL models can write something as touching as Gnossienne, or ‘simple’ Bach stuff that I love like Jesu Joy of Man;s Desire.
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    Bach is a good example of music that's both simple and complex. He'll take a few (often just one) fairly simple theme, and weave variations of it into a lush fabric that's coherent and natural (yet always surprising) -- the nearest thing to justice one finds in music.