NotABanjoYoda - Posted - 08/26/2024:  16:51:28

So I recently got introduced to AI generated music. Write a song, upload your lyrics, pic a genre and hundreds of versions of your new song pop up for download.

Theres also sites that just generate thoudands of boilerplate songs no lyrics.

Goto, stocktune.com
Type in "banjo" or "bluegrass"
Kinda amazing what AI makes.

i didnt take the time to upload any AI stuff I generated ... yet.

chuckv97 - Posted - 08/26/2024:  19:33:37

As long as people continue to love the process of learning and playing an actual musical instrument , something that hearkens back to our caveman ancestors , Al will continue to be a cheap facsimile, imho. The world of electronics can attract many, but it’s soulless.  (why do folks still like to sit around an open campfire kind of thing)

Edited by - chuckv97 on 08/26/2024 19:35:21

phb - Posted - 08/27/2024:  01:37:16

The AI generates the song faster than the song plays. Thus, you could have the AI play "original" songs all day and broadcast all of it. But who would want to listen to something like this? There always has been a lot of quality music that few people got to listen to. There has been industrialised music production for a hundred years or more, too. It mostly produced music that artistically wasn't much different from the artistic value of the AI-generated music. The music business will be even more about marketing now, I guess.

Pomeroy - Posted - 08/27/2024:  03:06:56

AI doesn't replicate enjoying a pint with your mates while playing.

In human terms music is a participatory social activity. In regard to the Frankenstein that is the commercial sector technology progressively dehumanises when profit is the defining factor. No big surprise there.

Edited by - Pomeroy on 08/27/2024 03:30:07

Pomeroy - Posted - 08/27/2024:  03:33:22

quote:

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Originally posted by phb

The music business will be even more about marketing now, I guess.

---

Of course. Frankenstein Rule #1 -  Manipulate people to want the monster.

It's why marketing expenditure correlates with what people need least.

Edited by - Pomeroy on 08/27/2024 03:37:32

Texasbanjo - Posted - 08/27/2024:  04:24:31

I'm sure some people will take the easy way out and use AI to do various things they want to do without any of the sweat and tears it takes to actually learn how. If that's the way they want to do it, go for it. But.... they'll never really learn the joy and elation of being able to do something well without artificial help.

Me? No thanks. I'll use my own brain, hands and fingers to make music that I have generated internally.

Eulalie - Posted - 08/27/2024:  04:31:08

quote:

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Originally posted by Pomeroy

quote:

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Originally posted by phb

The music business will be even more about marketing now, I guess.

---

Of course. Frankenstein Rule #1 -  Manipulate people to want the monster.

It's why marketing expenditure correlates with what people need least.

---

  “We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

– Paul M. Mazur,  “The logic of department-store organization”, Harvard Business Review, April, 1925, pp. 287-296.

Paul Mazur was a banker with the now defunct Lehman Brothers, and he authored the standard textbook on retail business, Principles of Organization Applied to Modern Retailing, Harper, New York, 1927.  The other major link in the chains that bind us is corporate monopolization.

“Criminal cabals arise to prey upon the public goods produced by larger scale institutions. Elites take advantage of key locations in the fabric of society to extract disproportionate private rewards for their work.”

– Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson, “Culture and the evolution of human cooperation“, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences, published 5 October 2009.

phb - Posted - 08/27/2024:  05:55:32

There is also the thought that AI may not be able to come up with an original idea at all but only combine what's already there and has already been done by humans. After all it relies on the probability that one word or note or other basic element leads to a specific other basic element. It learned those probabilities from consuming everything that is there and it will produce results that reflect the majority of this input. Taking this into consideration we can get a feeling about how little original ideas there really are, perhaps in our type of music even more than in other (even more popular) genres. It will be interesting to see what happens once the majority of texts, images and sounds were created by AI. Then AI will mostly learn from AI. Will this be noticible?

Owen - Posted - 08/27/2024:  06:21:06

Chuck: "... why do folks still like to sit around an open campfire .... "

I like to sit and watch the endless changes in the shapes, colours, and [tongue-in-cheek] wonder* how it is that, as I was told in a science class somewhere along the line, the fire is gasses burning. i.e. heavy log >> burn gas which weighs next to nothing >> left with ashes which weigh very little ... where'd all the weight go?  

* - I also contemplate/wonder about some of life's little mysteries, what-ifs, whys-and-wherefors, etc., etc  ... and also be thankful that I can still manage a "real" fire and hope it'll be a good long while before I have to switch to a propane fire-pit.  

[Fwiw, not much playing/singing 'round my ol' campfire.]

Now, aren't you glad you asked(?) ?!?!?! 

Edited by - Owen on 08/27/2024 06:26:13

steve davis - Posted - 08/27/2024:  06:23:39

I don't know anything about AI.I just play music with my friends.
As far as I can tell AI has no effect on my life.

steve davis - Posted - 08/27/2024:  06:40:38

People enjoy sitting around a campfire for the company of others.
They (we) like to talk,play and sing together because we like each others' company.
It's called "friendship".

Tim Jumper - Posted - 08/27/2024:  07:39:15

A pertinent quote from the late neurological genius Dr. Oliver Sacks:
"My first pilgrimage to the U.S., out of Canada in 1960, was to Marvin Minsky [A.I. pioneer] at MIT. At the time I stood in awe of the whole A.I. enterprise. I'd like to visit him again today and attack him. Really. Everything to do with A.I. is Golem-making. It's worse than perverted; it's sinister. Its highest possibility would be toward Pavlov's puppet theater. I can't figure out how someone as gifted musically as Minsky can square that with the aspiration of A.I."

RB3 - Posted - 08/27/2024:  07:47:30

I did a search on "Bluegrass" in the stocktune.com website and listened to some of what came up. I'm impressed that their AI algorithm has been able to capture the essence of contemporary Bluegrass music, but of course it also captured the essence of what's wrong with contemporary Bluegrass. As Earl Scruggs once said, "that sure is a lot of notes".

Jbo1 - Posted - 08/27/2024:  08:23:05

Remember back when websites first started out, some savvy people bought the rights to Coke.com, Coca Cola.com, GM, General Motors, etc. .com....
All so they could then sell the sites to the companies when they realized they needed them. What's to stop someone from "writing" thousands of AI generated songs on the hope that Taylor Swift's next big hit sounds exactly like one of those thousand songs? Plagiarism Lawsuit!

banjo bill-e - Posted - 08/27/2024:  09:13:39

I am becoming more and more aware of the value of true folk music, which is participatory and not at all expert or performance oriented. Same with dance. We have let dance turn into a narcissistic exhibition instead of a group of people happily jumping around to the music. No AI will ever replicate a community bonding experience, and hopefully we will relearn to treasure that.

phb - Posted - 08/27/2024:  10:01:35

quote:

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Originally posted by Jbo1

Remember back when websites first started out, some savvy people bought the rights to Coke.com, Coca Cola.com, GM, General Motors, etc. .com....

All so they could then sell the sites to the companies when they realized they needed them. What's to stop someone from "writing" thousands of AI generated songs on the hope that Taylor Swift's next big hit sounds exactly like one of those thousand songs? Plagiarism Lawsuit!

---

Well, I can tell you: AI-generated content usually cannot be copyrighted as there is no human creator involved. If there is no copyright, there is no plagiarism lawsuit. 

Jbo1 - Posted - 08/27/2024:  10:15:31

Dang it! There goes my dream of suing Taylor Swift!

NotABanjoYoda - Posted - 08/27/2024:  10:33:49

Interesting discussion. (Aside) I like hiking up the mountain behind my house and sitting alone by my campfire btw. No distractions. I contemplate things like why I care for some life forms deeply but can squash most, but not all, bugs without a second thought.

Why do I appreciate FREE AI music? I suppose I could make bold statements that humans can only congregate what they know into different forms and AI neural nets imitate this but better, faster, and with more feedback. AI can also make sounds we cant and play instruments faster, or slower, or with perfect or imperfect intonation. AI is also capable of learning without prejudice, not a human trait.

Everything I just typed is sarcasm. My pet parrots like hearing really fast bluegrass and salsa music to entertain them while Im gone. Otherwise, parrots become self destructive. AI generated a 300 song playlist almost instantly and my parrots arent purists... 300 new songs daily, nothing but the best for my birds. It would be interesting if the AI took bird feedback, they have good taste.

Owen - Posted - 08/27/2024:  12:39:07

.... community bonding experience, you say??

From Purple Hulls >> to my Facebook >> BHO:

Caption: "Bluegrass really brings people together."

Actually by some fluke I came across this, which I've been enjoying this aft ....  may be closer to the mark [action doesn't seem to start until around 36 minute mark ??? ]  youtube.com/watch?v=RkyL8UNmOmA

steve davis - Posted - 08/28/2024:  06:04:03

AI doesn't affect my banjo playing,pool shooting,personal friendships,diet,sense of humor or love of my neighbors.
I guess I just don't get it.

BG Banjo - Posted - 08/28/2024:  09:19:24

My wife and I go out and listen to live music. I play banjo in a less than prime time band that grew out of a country/bluegrass jam. One of our members writes songs. They are pretty good and we play them, but mostly we just play the standards. People come to listen to us. When we aren't doing our band thing, a bunch of us get together informally just for the fun of it.

I guess I don't see AI as a threat to any of that. Maybe there is something else that I'm not aware of, but how will AI stop musicians from getting together and playing music?

Edited by - BG Banjo on 08/28/2024 09:23:18

steve davis - Posted - 08/28/2024:  17:43:21

I can't see AI from my porch.

NotABanjoYoda - Posted - 08/28/2024:  21:27:57

Im pretty sure AI cant stop us from doing physical endeavers, yet. It cant stop me from making home movies either. I make good toy money playing live music and I dont see AI affecting that for a long time, barring martial law. I have used AI to practice for 15 years now. It helps.

Look at how cgi changed the TV\Movie resumes. AI is that times a million for "musicians" yet to be born. I found the tech cool.