3 ms·

>Are you making music, or generating music? > You don't have much control over what is being generated I don't understand this nitpick at all. What part of "m

by saghm 3y ago

>Are you making music, or generating music? > You don't have much control over what is being generated I don't understand this nitpick at all. What part of "make" implies fine-grained control over the output? Parents didn't have much control over what's generated when a child is, but by any reasonable definition of the word "make", the baby that comes out is "made" by the mother and (to a lesser extent) the father! > A lot of the enjoyment of music comes from connecting emotionally with the artist. The artist had something to say based on their experience of life and adversity. You relate maybe because you've been there too. I think you might be assuming that your experience generalizes a lot more than it does. I've been a musician for decades, and I'm constantly listening to music, and I don't need to know who did what to be able to enjoy a song. To be clear, there's nothing _wrong_ with that being part of your enjoyment, but there's nothing wrong with just liking to hear sounds that sound "good" without caring about where they came from.

adroniser 3y ago
I am definitely generalizing. It does seem to be a common sentiment expressed when this gets brought up though. Whether it's just an instance of me clinging on to anything to distinguish from AI or if it's a legitimate problem remains to be seen I guess. And there definitely are songs I feel I just enjoy in their own right. As for 'make' I guess that just comes down to semantics.
- saghm 3y ago
  How do you reconcile the fact that music from people who have done pretty despicable things can still be widely popular? You can certainly argue that enough people are willing to look past someone being a murderer or child abuser or something because they still can find some sort of human connection with the artist, but given how uncommon that sort of sentiment is in basically every other part of life, it seems far more likely that people just don't really think about it an artist at all when they listen to their music if the artist is someone they wouldn't want to connect with.
  - adroniser 3y ago
    Do you think people would listen to Kanye if it wasn't Kanye?
    - saghm 3y ago
      I don't think his personality was really that much of an outlier when his music first became popular, so I'd argue that empirically the answer is yes. From looking at Wikipedia, his first album was released in 2004 and charted at number 2, with his first single hitting 15 on the charts and his follow-up being number 1. I don't think you can argue that he was famous enough for anyone to be listening to the music because they knew who he was rather than because of the music itself.
      - majormajor 3y ago
        Nobody needs to know who the artist ahead of time is to connect to what they say (instrumentally or vocally). The art does the talking. I largely agree that if you don't know anything about music but generate some stuff with a very-high-level AI tool then you are unlikely to produce anything that resonates with people for any significant amount of time. If you do know something about music (say, producer- or other-tastemaker level) and you replace the artists with an AI tool - you could have much better luck - but I'm curious there how much longetivity you get. Could you create the next star or the next trend or will the tools not have the ability to "break the mold" in ways that really connect to audiences and new generations without being used by newcomers themselves?
        saghm 3y ago
        > I largely agree that if you don't know anything about music but generate some stuff with a very-high-level AI tool then you are unlikely to produce anything that resonates with people for any significant amount of time. I feel like you're not really making a strong assertion here because of how subjective "resonates with people for any significant amount of time" is. Instead, I'd propose something akin to the Turing test; instead of conversing with someone and trying to determine if they're a computer or a human, the participant would listen to to a piece of music and try to guess whether it was made "traditionally" or by someone who used an AI tool and had no experience making music in any other fashion. I think we're not far from the point where it would be possible to generate instrumental music with AI that would be indistinguishable from a control set of human-created music (either instrumental or with the vocal track removed from the mix) with a certain level of complexity (let's say songs without changes in tempo, time signature, or key, which would give us at absolute minimum a few thousand popular mainstream songs over the past half century, and potentially a lot more). How long do you think it will take for this to be possible (if ever)? If you don't think it will ever be possible, why not? And if you do think it will be possible, isn't this sufficient evidence that there isn't any inherent need for a "human" element in music?

by saghm 3y ago

adroniser 3y ago

I am definitely generalizing. It does seem to be a common sentiment expressed when this gets brought up though. Whether it's just an instance of me clinging on to anything to distinguish from AI or if it's a legitimate problem remains to be seen I guess. And there definitely are songs I feel I just enjoy in their own right. As for 'make' I guess that just comes down to semantics.

saghm 3y ago
How do you reconcile the fact that music from people who have done pretty despicable things can still be widely popular? You can certainly argue that enough people are willing to look past someone being a murderer or child abuser or something because they still can find some sort of human connection with the artist, but given how uncommon that sort of sentiment is in basically every other part of life, it seems far more likely that people just don't really think about it an artist at all when they listen to their music if the artist is someone they wouldn't want to connect with.
- adroniser 3y ago
  Do you think people would listen to Kanye if it wasn't Kanye?
  - saghm 3y ago
    I don't think his personality was really that much of an outlier when his music first became popular, so I'd argue that empirically the answer is yes. From looking at Wikipedia, his first album was released in 2004 and charted at number 2, with his first single hitting 15 on the charts and his follow-up being number 1. I don't think you can argue that he was famous enough for anyone to be listening to the music because they knew who he was rather than because of the music itself.
    - majormajor 3y ago
      Nobody needs to know who the artist ahead of time is to connect to what they say (instrumentally or vocally). The art does the talking. I largely agree that if you don't know anything about music but generate some stuff with a very-high-level AI tool then you are unlikely to produce anything that resonates with people for any significant amount of time. If you do know something about music (say, producer- or other-tastemaker level) and you replace the artists with an AI tool - you could have much better luck - but I'm curious there how much longetivity you get. Could you create the next star or the next trend or will the tools not have the ability to "break the mold" in ways that really connect to audiences and new generations without being used by newcomers themselves?
      - saghm 3y ago
        > I largely agree that if you don't know anything about music but generate some stuff with a very-high-level AI tool then you are unlikely to produce anything that resonates with people for any significant amount of time. I feel like you're not really making a strong assertion here because of how subjective "resonates with people for any significant amount of time" is. Instead, I'd propose something akin to the Turing test; instead of conversing with someone and trying to determine if they're a computer or a human, the participant would listen to to a piece of music and try to guess whether it was made "traditionally" or by someone who used an AI tool and had no experience making music in any other fashion. I think we're not far from the point where it would be possible to generate instrumental music with AI that would be indistinguishable from a control set of human-created music (either instrumental or with the vocal track removed from the mix) with a certain level of complexity (let's say songs without changes in tempo, time signature, or key, which would give us at absolute minimum a few thousand popular mainstream songs over the past half century, and potentially a lot more). How long do you think it will take for this to be possible (if ever)? If you don't think it will ever be possible, why not? And if you do think it will be possible, isn't this sufficient evidence that there isn't any inherent need for a "human" element in music?