By Christa Sampson, Geeks & Beats
Creative types know that writer’s block can strike at any time and it’s often a hard rut to climb out of. The process of songwriting can be collaborative, where two or more people working together bounce ideas off each other. However, this is not always the case. Writing is more often than not a solitary function of the creative process. How is a songwriter able to motivate her or himself when the inspiration is lacking? If only there was an app for that. Well, very soon there will be. Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered songwriting app Amadeus Code, currently only available for iOS devices.
Amadeus Code is a tool developed for musicians, by musicians. The inspiration for the app came to Amadeus founder Jun Inoue during a hectic point in his career as a music producer. He was under constant pressure to deliver hit songs within tight time constraints. Inoue and his team say that Amadeus Code will be to songwriters what an idea board is to a designer. The mission is “To catalog and share all of the most influential melodies of humankind”. So, how exactly will Amadeus Code do this?
Inoue, along with co-developers Gyo Kitagawa and Taishi Fukuyama, created a database of thousands of the world’s most influential songs, dating back to the 17th century. From this database each song was divided into smaller, but still viable, parts. However, Amadeus Code could not stop there. The creators recognized that the proficiency of AI is limited by the delivery of a single correct answer out of a group of possibilities.
Source: Rock Paper Scissors Press Release
Amadeus code is built on not one, but a series of algorithms that are linked together. This chain-link code is then able to generate new music from several different sources. Users can also manipulate the app for the type of music they want to create by filtering the time period and/or genre they want to source from. The app is also programmed to project possible future hits.
Once the melody is created in the app users can save the file, delete it or edit it to keep only certain pieces and then merge those pieces with other app-generated music. Amadeus Code’s sophisticated programming also enables the user to export songs into other music-making software where the track can be worked on further.
“This experience taught me that there was a lot in common between songwriting processes and genetic evolutionary processes. It convinced me that the feeling that encourages musicians to write songs was essentially the same as humankind’s urges to share and change, and thus ensure high-quality evolution. This astounding fact is one of the things that I want to share with everyone.”
– Jun Inoue, CEO and Founder, Amadeus Code
From the sound of it, the Amadeus Code app seems like it will be a great tool for songwriters, if only to refocus their minds on something different than the chorus they can’t seem to finish. The only thing left unanswered is whether the app is intelligent enough to produce music that doesn’t carry any copyright issues? However, given that the music sources in Amadeus’ database are broken so far down into tiny pieces of the original, the likelihood of enough of those similar pieces coming together is probably minimal.
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