AI and The Music Production Industry
Has AI affected the music industry? If yes, how so? And what does the advent of AI mean for the music industry and everyone who is a part of it?
These are the questions that I will be answering through this article today!
It’s a well known fact that AI has seen massive progress from its time of inception. It has grown leaps and bounds and has found its functionality in almost every imaginable industry. This also holds true for the music industry. AI has found a use case in almost every section of the industry from song writing to instrumentals to arranging drum patterns to creating melodies and rhythms and even the mixing and mastering of the actual tracks.
Earlier, if say a rap song was to be made, it would start with a producer making a beat. He/She would arrange the drum pattern and make the melody from scratch or sample a piece of pre-recorded audio. He/She would then either mix and master the track himself or send it to a sound engineer for the same. Then, the rapper would come in, listen to the beat and write a song and would then proceed to record it.
Now, I might have explained the process in a very broad sense, but let’s actually delve into finer details to better our understanding of how AI impacts this process.
CREATING A MELODY:
It starts off as a simple chord progression on an instrument and evolves into a piece of audio filled with various instruments, complementing each other and eventually leading to the creation of a melody that is starkly different from every other melody that exists.
Here, the producer has to worry about sound selection ( Does this guitar go with this grand piano? ). He then has to come up with a chord progression, add effects, EQs, etc. Then complement that with various other instruments ( guitars, pianos, pads, etc.), eventually creating a melody that fills the audio spectrum and that is rich to listen to.
The constant need to create something new every time one fires up the DAW ( Digital Audio Workstation) often leads to creative blocks which in turn staggers the productivity of the producer. This is where AI comes into the picture. Programs and plugins such as Orb Producer, Aiva.ai and Ecrett provide a unique starting point from which the producer can draw inspiration or can also choose to build upon the suggested melody. This majorly helps the producer evade creative blocks.
SAMPLING:
If you want to go down Kanye’s route of sampling pre-recorded audio to make your beats but don’t quite know how to do so, don’t sweat it. AI powered websites and tools exist that will help you become the next Ye. For example, Samplette.io scouts YouTube in its entirety for music that you can sample based off of a few parameters set by you. Another cool AI powered website is PlayPhrase.me that lets you type in a phrase after which it searches for that exact phrase used in any video/movie/series. You can then use that vocal sample as per your liking!
LAYING DOWN THE DRUMS:
Now we get to the drums. They are an aspect that can either make or break a track. Drums create the bounce that helps us differentiate the track from the rest.
Take genres for example. What majorly differentiates trap music from reggaetón music? It’s the drums! The sound selection and placement of the drums helps us differentiate between music and thus have a major bearing on how we perceive it.
From time to time, producers have a difficult time laying down drum patterns for various reasons. Maybe he finds his drums repetitive and needs a new perspective. Maybe he is facing a creative block and needs a starting point to help get his juices flowing. Maybe he isn’t able to select the right sounds or maybe he finds the process of laying down drum patterns time consuming and needs an alternative. Well, there is an alternative. There are a few to be precise. Drum monkey by Unison lets you choose a genre and BPM ( Beats Per Minute ) and all you have to do is click ‘generate’ and that’s it, you have a drum pattern that fits the genre and the BPM. This eliminates three of the four problems mentioned above. That’s INSANE!
If sound selection for the drums is a hurdle then let me introduce you to DrumNet, Emergent Drums and the Infinite Drum Machine, all of which use AI to generate unlimited drum samples that are accurate and unique.
MIXING AND MASTERING:
Mixing and mastering is one of, if not, the most important aspect of music production which greatly enhances the sound output and gives the listener a rich experience.
Mixing is the process of combining individual tracks to sit perfectly with each other that eventually leads to the output of a single track.
Mastering, on the other hand, is the process of fine tuning the ‘mixed’ track to balance its output across all listening platforms and make it ready for distribution.
This aspect of music production is especially difficult because, in my opinion, you need a really good ear to do a good job at it. Many-a-times, producers pay and send their beats/music to sound engineers ( people who are trained in this particular field ) to mix and master their tracks.
Surprise Surprise! AI can do this too. Tools like Landr and AI mixing by Unchained Music claim to give you a professional sounding mixed and mastered track in a matter of minutes. For people who are not practitioners or aficionados of the music production sector, the ability to mix and master a track within a few minutes is an absolute game changer.
WRITING LYRICS/ SONGWRITING:
The ability to song write is nothing short of a talent. It takes an immense amount of skill and capacity to pen down words in a sequence that not only sits well on beats/music but also touches the listeners and invokes in them feelings that mere spoken words fail to bring out. Songwriters, like producers, often face creative blocks mainly due to lack of inspiration. In such cases, AI powered websites such as Jarvis and even the good ol ChatGPT can help the songwriters overcome their blocks. I just asked ChatGPT to write me a verse in the style of Drake and it may not be something that the Canadian star might actually pen down but it did provide a fairly good starting point.
When it comes to writing lyrics, I think AI can be used best to generate ideas, not the verses themselves. Human emotion isn’t something that can be artificially ‘generated’ which is why I think, in this aspect, AI works best as an ‘idea/inspiration generator’ and not ( if I may use the term ) ‘ghostwriter’.
OTHER:
AI websites such as LALAL.Ai possess the ability to split music. Yes, you read that right. Let me explain. Take ‘Shape of you’ by Ed Sheeran for example. By simply uploading the song onto the website you can ‘split’ the song into its respective stems such as the vocals of Ed, the drums, and the melody ( the one that goes Dun Dun Dun, Dun Dun Dun, Dun Dun Dun, Dun Dun Dun), each of which are separately downloadable. So you started off with the track ‘Shape of you’ and ended up with the different components that made up the actual song ( stems ). This is what helps producers remix and sample pre-recorded songs.
AI, for example Cyanite Ai, can also be used by producers to segregate and systematically store music based on parameters such as BPM, key, genre, mood, etc.
( Every point that I touched upon in this article is applicable to every genre and is not exclusive to any one. )
It is obvious that the introduction of AI in the music production sphere is, to a certain extent, a game changer. At the end of the day music is more than just sound waves. It is a phenomenon that holds the potential to influence the moods and emotions of the listeners which is why I think, right now, AI serves producers as helpers, making their job easier and helping them evade numerous obstacles, rather than replacing them and that is where I think the line must be drawn. Human feel is something that can not be replicated artificially and I think it should remain that way.
If you are a producer, I hope this article has brought to your knowledge certain websites and plugins that you can start using yourself. Otherwise too, I hope this article helped broaden your understanding of the Impacts of AI in the music production industry.
