Artificial intelligence and music production industry

Has AI impacted the music industry? If so, how so? What does the advent of AI mean for the music industry and everyone involved?

These are the questions I will answer today with this article!

As we all know, AI has made great progress from the very beginning. It has grown by leaps and bounds and has played a role in almost every industry imaginable. This also applies to the music industry. AI finds use cases in almost every part of the industry, from songwriting to instrumentation, to arranging drum patterns, to creating melodies and rhythms, and even mixing and mastering of actual tracks.

Earlier, if you wanted to make a rap song, it started with the producer hitting the beat. He arranges drum patterns and makes melodies from scratch or samples a piece of pre-recorded audio. He then either mixes and masters the tracks himself or sends them to sound engineers for the same. Then, the rapper would come in, listen to the beat and write a song, and then continue recording.

Now, I may have explained the process in a very broad sense, but let's really dive into the finer details to better understand how AI affects the process.

Create a melody:

It starts with a simple chord progression on an instrument, then evolves into a piece of audio filled with a variety of instruments that complement each other and eventually create a melody that is very different from all the other melodies that exist.

Here, the producers have to worry about the choice of sound (does this guitar go well with this grand piano?). ）。 Then, he has to come up with chord progressions, add effects, EQ, etc. It is then supplemented with a variety of other instruments (guitar, piano, pads, etc.) to create a rich melodic listening that fills the audio spectrum.

The constant creation of something new every time a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is launched often leads to creative roadblocks that affect producer productivity. This is where AI comes into play. Programs and plugins such as Orb Producer, Aiva.ai, and Ecrett provide a unique starting point from which producers can draw inspiration or choose to build on suggested melodies. This mainly helps producers avoid creative obstacles.

Sampling:

If you want to sample the pre-recorded audio along Kanye's route to make your beat, but don't quite know how to do it, don't worry. AI-powered websites and tools will help you become the next Ye. For example, Samplette.io searches YouTube for music that you can sample based on some parameters you set. Another cool AI website is PlayPhrase.me, which lets you enter a phrase and then it searches for the exact phrase used in any video/movie/series. Then you can use that vocal sample to your liking!

Put down the drums:

Now we start playing the drums. They are an aspect that can make or break a track. The drums produce bouncing and help us distinguish the track from the rest.

Take genres, for example. What is the main difference between trap music and reggae music? It's a drum! The sound selection and placement of drums helps us distinguish music, which in turn has a significant impact on how we perceive music.

For a variety of reasons, producers sometimes have difficulty determining drum patterns. Perhaps he found his drums repeated and needed a new perspective. Maybe he's facing creative hurdles and needs a starting point to help him keep making a difference. Maybe he couldn't choose the right sound, or maybe he found the process of setting up the drum pattern time-consuming and needed an alternative. Well, there is another option. There are several to be precise. Unison's Drum monkey allows you to choose genre and BPM (beats per minute), you just have to click "Generate" and you will have a drum pattern that suits the genre and BPM. This eliminates three of the four problems mentioned above. It's crazy!

If drum sound selection is a hindrance, then let me introduce you to DrumNet, Emergent Drums, and Infinite Drum Machine, all of which use AI to generate accurate and unique infinite drum samples.

Mixing and Mastering:

Mixing and mastering can greatly enhance sound output and enrich listeners, if not one of the most important aspects of music production.

Mixing is the process of combining individual tracks together to perfectly combine with each other, ultimately resulting in the output of a single track.

Mastery, on the other hand, is the process of fine-tuning a "mix" track to balance its output across all listening platforms and make it ready for distribution.

This aspect of music production is particularly difficult because, in my opinion, you need very good ears to do it well. Many times, producers pay and send their beats/music to sound engineers (people trained in this particular field) to mix and master their tracks.

Surprise surprise! Artificial intelligence can do the same. Tools like Unchained Music's Landr and AI Mixing claim to give you professional mixing and mastering tracks in minutes. For someone who is not a practitioner or enthusiast in the field of music production, being able to mix and master a track in minutes is definitely a game changer.

Write lyrics/write songs:

The ability to write songs is simply a talent. It takes a lot of skill and ability to write words in order, not only to fit the beat/music well, but also to touch the listener and evoke their feelings that cannot be expressed by mere spoken language. Songwriters, like producers, often face creative hurdles, largely due to a lack of inspiration. In this case, AI-powered websites like Jarvis or even good ChatGPT can help songwriters overcome obstacles. I just asked ChatGPT to write me a Drake-style verse, which may not be something the Canadian star actually wrote, but it does provide a pretty good place to start.

When it comes to writing lyrics, I think AI is best suited to generate ideas, not the lyrics themselves. Human emotions are not something that can be "generated" artificially, which is why I think AI is best suited as an "idea/inspiration generator" rather than (if I can use that word) "ghostwriter" in this regard.

Other:

AI websites such as LALAL.Ai have the ability to split music. Yes, you read that right. Let me explain. Take, for example, Ed Sheeran's "Shape of you." By simply uploading the song to the website, you can "split" the song into its own stem, such as Ed's vocals, drums, and melodies (Dun Dun Dun, Dun Dun Dun, Dun Dun Dun, Dun Dun Dun), each of which can be downloaded separately. So you start with the track "Shape of you" and end with the different components that make up the actual song (stem). This helps producers mix and sample pre-recorded songs.

Producers can also use AI, such as Cyanite AI, to separate and systematically store music based on parameters such as BPM, tonality, genre, mood, and more.

(Every point I've mentioned in this article applies to any genre, not to any one.) ）

It's clear that the introduction of AI in music production is a game-changer to some extent. At the end of the day, music is more than just sound waves. It's a phenomenon that has the potential to affect the mood and mood of listeners, and that's why I think, right now, AI is helping producers to make their jobs easier, helping them circumvent countless obstacles, rather than replacing them, and that's where I think the line has to be drawn. Human feelings cannot be artificially replicated, and I think they should be kept that way.

If you are a producer, I hope this article has given you an idea of some of the websites and plugins that you can start using yourself. Otherwise, I hope this article has helped broaden your understanding of the impact of AI in the music production industry.

Stay curious and learn every day.