October 17, 2022 A robot named Ai-Da passed out in the middle of a House of Lord's hearing on the benefits of AI art. This does not bode well. In today’s email:
CLASSICAL CHARTS THE BIG IDEA Music And Artificial Intelligence: A Bond That’s Growing By Leaps And BoundsOver the last decade or so, artificial intelligence (AI) has become more and more prevalent in everyday life, from online ads that seem to know just what you’re looking for to music composition and other creative applications. The very notion of making music with AI raises questions about the nature of creativity, and of the future for human composers. From useful tools to pioneering prototypes, here’s a look at some of the most recent innovations that use AI in the music writing process. ScoreCloud SongwriterDoReMIR Music Research AB recently announced the launch of ScoreCloud Songwriter, a tool that turns original music into lead sheets. The software uses the information recorded with a single microphone, and can include vocals and instruments. Various AI protocols separate out the vocals, and then transcribes the music, including melody and chords, along with the lyrics in English. What you’ll get is a lead sheet with the melody, lyrics, and chord symbols. “Many established and emerging songwriters are brilliant musicians but struggle with notating their music to make it possible for others to play,” explained Sven Ahlback, DoReMIR CEO, in a media release. “Our vision is that ScoreCloud Songwriter will help songwriters, composers, and other music professionals, such as educators and performers. It may even inspire playful use by lovers of music who never thought they could write a song. Our hope is that it will become an indispensable tool for creating, sharing, and preserving musical works.” Harmonai’s Dance DiffusionHarmonai is a company that creates open-source models for the music industry, and Dance Diffusion is their latest innovation in AI audio generation. It uses a combination of publicly available models to create audio bits — so far, about 1-3 seconds long — from nothing, as it were, which can then be interpolated into longer recordings. Since it’s AI, the more users enter audio files for it to learn from, the more it will evolve and develop. If you’re interested in how Dance Diffusion came together, there’s a video interview with the creators here. Here’s one of their projects, an infinite AI bass solo that has been playing since January 27, 2021. It’s based on the work of the late musician Adam Neely. It’s still in the testing stages, but its implications are profound. Google’s AudioLMGoogle’s new AudioLM bases its approach to audio generation on the way language is processed. It can generate music for piano with a short excerpt of input. Speech combines sounds into words and sentences, in the same way the music is about individual notes that come together to form melody and harmony. Google engineers used the concepts in advanced language modelling as their guide. The AI captures melody as well as overall structure, and the details of the audio waveform to create realistic sounds. It reconstructs sounds in layers designed to capture the nuances. Meta’s AudioGenMeta’s new AudioGen uses a text-to-audio AI model to create sounds as well as music. The user enters a text prompt, such as “wind blowing”, or even a combination, such as “wind blowing and leaves rustling” and the AI responds with a corresponding sound. The system was developed by Met and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and it is able to generate sound from scratch. The AI can separate different sounds from a complex situation, such as several people speaking at once. Researchers trained the AI using a mix of audio samples, and it can generate new audio beyond its training dataset. Along with sounds, it can generate music, but that part of its functionality is still in its infancy. What’s next?With AI music generation in its infancy, it’s easy to dismiss its future impact on the industry. But, it can’t be ignored. An electronic band by the name of YACHT recorded a full album with AI in 2019, using technology that’s already been surpassed. Essentially, they taught AI how to be YACHT, and it wrote the music. The band then turned it into their next album. “I’m not interested in being a reactionary,” YACHT member and tech writer Claire L. Evans mentioned that ambivalence in a documentary about their 2019 AI-assisted album Chain Tripping (as quoted in Tech Crunch). “I don’t want to return to my roots and play acoustic guitar because I’m so freaked out about the coming robot apocalypse, but I also don’t want to jump into the trenches and welcome our new robot overlords either.” The onslaught of new technology is relentless. The only choice is to hop on the train. THE LATEST Breaking: Ukrainian conductor shot and killed by Russian troops for refusing to participate in concert Opinion: Critics weight in on Berlin’s new Ring as PETA cracks down Honours: Yannick Nézet-Séguin gets immortalized with his own mural PR: Why was there so little coverage of The BBC Young Musician contest? News: National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine announces UK tour Missing: Have you seen this cello? Connections: How a Ukrainian pianist and a St. John's violinist bonded over music Long Read: The author rediscovered the instrument she played as a child, and you should too TECH Is TikTok Planning A Shake-Up Of The Music Streaming Biz?A report on TikTok in the Wall Street Journal this week has started a buzz in the music world. According to the story, ByteDance Ltd, the Chinese parent company to TikTok, is in discussions with major music labels with a view to entering the music streaming market in direct competition to Spotify and other services. Music streaming would be integrated into its existing short video service. ByteDance already has a music streaming service in Resso, which is currently available in India, Brazil, and Indonesia. The plan, according to the report, is to expand to several more countries, and it looks like it may be rebranded as TikTok Music. Industry observers say it may be a boon for record labels. International financial consulting firm BNPP Exane issued a statement in the wake of the report. “We view the WSJ [report] as supportive with ByteDance getting closer to launching a global music service which will be critical in reducing the ‘value gap’ and driving improved monetization for labels,” it said. Plans may already be on the books to expand Resso to several other countries in the near future, but the United States isn’t on that list. To complicate matters, Sony Music Entertainment recently refused to renew its licensing agreement with Resso, pulling their entire catalogue. ByteDance has not responded to subsequent requests for more details from other media services. Supporting evidenceThe report doesn’t fully name its sources, said to be close to the company’s operations, but there has been evidence of the move for some time now. In August, savvy insiders found an application for a US trademark for “TikTok Music”. The application was filed by ByteDance in November 2021 in Australia, and in May 2022 in the United States. As described, it would offer users the ability to “live stream audio and video” as well as “purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics”. Other related patent applications date back to 2018. It only makes sense for the social media success story to jump into the music streaming game when music is already an integral part of its offerings. A recent job listing for a backend software engineer for TikTok Music notes that, “TikTok Music team’s mission is to build resonance and inspire expression through music, which includes Resso, TikTok Music and SoundOn.” The job posting goes on to describe the three as separate services, but adds that the company plans to “integrate more ByteDance products in the future”. While record labels and shareholders may benefit, as the experts seem to think, and consumers may get yet another choice, it’s unclear how, or whether, music artists will gain anything from a new music streaming service. Payouts for rightsholders from Resso are a function of both ad revenues and subscriptions, similar in structure to Spotify. The WSJ report suggests that some rightsholders are unhappy with low returns. CLASSICAL 101 The Surprising Origins of the Door-Knocking SongAnyone who has ever stood in front of a door has probably performed the door-knocking song at least once in their lives. The strange thing about it is we all seem to know how it goes – like it was somehow part of our collective musical DNA. You know the one: dut, dut-dut dut, dut… dut, dut. The tune originated from a song written in 1899 by Charles Hale called “At a Darktown Cakewalk”. Did you catch the rhythm? It came to be called, “Shave and a haircut, two bits,” and was most often used at the end of a piece of music for comic effect. Over the past hundred years, it has become one of the most recognizable rhythms in North America. It’s been used on car horns, Morse code “dah-di-di-dah-di, di-dit” ( –··–· ··) and even at the end of communications by ham radio operators to sign out. We leave you with one of our favourite knock-knock song inspirations... ....Leonard Bernstein's “Gee, Officer Krupke” from the West Side Story [see video below starting at 4’11”]) AROUND THE WEB
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