“Make My Melody”, AI and Music

For my Senior Capstone, we had to write a series or saga of articles. My topic of choice was Artificial Intelligence. This Article covers the music side of things, but the remainder goes over AI and the Creative Writing industry.

“Hey, chat. With this amount of bpm, come up with a melody for me.”

Artificial Intelligence has taken over the world faster than anyone could have imagined. What was once a far-off thought, only for the rich and powerful, is now a staple in everyday life.

For many, AI has been a positive introduction to the creative realm. It has allowed many people to come up with new ideas and projects.

“AI is beneficial, especially with today’s technology usage. I feel like it is helping individuals with new ideas and certain tasks that might just be too time-consuming,” said Caleb Hargrove, an up-and-coming musician from Charlotte, NC.

AI has been used with diverse media and has reduced the workload for many people. Many can argue that it has allowed for more creative control and flow of their work.

“It is really opening up new possibilities in music production, like generating melodies, suggesting harmonies, or even analyzing lyrics based on trends. It’s beneficial for helping overcome creative blocks, I’ve used it myself to help finish some of my lyrics,” said Hargrove.

Greyson Dembroski, a songwriter, shares similar thoughts to Hargrove but is more reserved.

“I think artificial intelligence is simultaneously the most exciting and terrifying development in technology since the creation of the internet. Similarly to the internet, I think the ramifications AI will have on the world will be so varied and innumerable that they will be nearly impossible to predict. “

Creativity is a way to self-express and share who you are with everyone without being literal. (Because of this creativity and self-expression, we have common interests, movies, different music, and anything that allows us to connect on a deeper level. )Creative masterpieces become masterpieces through the human struggle to find just the right lyric, rhyme, beat, or color.

“Struggle is the key here; there shouldn’t be lazy half-assed effort. If they are genuine, people who make art struggle through and produce something meaningful and unique to themselves,” said Dembroski.

AI is not only being used creatively but technically as well, while some may believe it helps creativity, others do not; there is an agreement on its technological uses. New platforms are slowly (up and coming). (Starting on the basics of Spotify, a common music app used) Spotify now has AI-generated playlists and DJs based on the algorithm created by the listener. Dembroski finds this ability to be fascinating and useful under the right circumstances:

If AI analyzes every single aspect of the songs you like and uses that information to recommend songs that have similar aspects, then that would be great… but if some big record company pays Spotify a ton of money to supplant real recommendations with new “popular” singles then it quickly becomes less about music recommendation services and more about marketing and homogenizing listeners. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is already going on with the music recommendation tools that exist currently.

Michael Garrett, a member of the pep band, offers no sense of concern for Artificial intelligence and the music industry.

“I don’t see AI as a threat or a compliment, it’s very easy to discern the difference between AI and human work. It isn’t a threat because AI can’t match the feelings that humans give songs,” said Garrett.

Hargrove also finds it hard to believe that AI would take over any more than technological advances.

“When it comes to live performances, AI can’t replace human creativity; it will help artists, producers, and engineers to enhance human-human interactions in the studio, but we can’t always rely on it,” said Hargrove.

Garrett can see AI collaborating in the future with humans, but ultimately thinks AI just will not be successful in the music industry.

“AI has sung a few songs, but I don’t think it’ll affect us. It can’t replicate the human aspect of music, holding certain notes or phrases, or actively changing the song to make it sound better; it’s ultimately not a performer,” said Garrett.

Both Garrett and Dembroski believe Ai to be stealing from other artists and should not be considered “creative.” Useful, in certain aspects, but ultimately it does not compare to humans.

“AI learns from the internet and all there is to see, it’s ripping off others,” said Garett.

Dembroski believes that, if used properly, AI could be quite beneficial to making a song, but only if it is mainly human-created.

“ I like writing songs, and I like recording, but I generally dislike mixing and mastering (it’s hard for me to be a creative force and an engineer at the same time), so if AI tools developed to where they could mix/master according to a prompt even decently well, I would be willing to try it out,” said Dembroski.