What do you think AI will do to music?

[Bob]

Artificial intelligence.

We've already got things like Band-in-a-Box to imitate improvisation.  Composition has already happened.  I imagine that would continue and improve.

I wonder if there would be anything with instrument construction techniques too.  Something "growing' a piano with intelligent nanotechnology instead of building it.

[themeandvariation]

for: --- where electric sheep may safely graze.

[ted]

A very thought provoking question, Bob, and one which is difficult to answer with any certainty. The reasons we create music are deeply interwoven with the personal psyche and the desire to implant highly individual perceptions on abstract sound. There is also the physical component, the pleasurable experience of generating music after the manner of a yoga. Whatever AI does, I feel most people are likely to want to preserve these two individual, participatory aspects. While the products of code such as that of David Cope are certainly admirable in a loose, imitative sense, the creative human mind is likely to want more than emulation of music of the past. AI cannot, obviously, substitute for the physical experience, the joy of playing an instrument. It might perhaps evolve sufficiently to partner the brain in the creative act, in much the same way as computers test hypotheses for mathematicians and facilitate otherwise unreachable proofs, the four colour theorem being a case in point. But art is not quite the same as science, it has no universal validation. The solution of a mathematical problem is invariant over all human brains, a work of art has as many meanings as there are perceiving minds.

Technology in the broad sense has, of course, already changed how we record and listen to music in ways too numerous to list, and has done so very quickly. It is not inconceivable that AI might extend that process into the realm of human intellect and emotion. Maybe, instead of our using it, it will commence influencing us. J. B Priestley remarked that all we would have to do to effect this switch is to simply start preferring computer music to our own.

[klavieronin]

I think AI will become more and more relevant in music just like it is in every other area. Here are a few things I can see happening;

Virtual instruments - instead of using recorded samples of real instruments to create music on your computer there will be software run by (or created by) AI that will generate the raw sound waves of instruments in a realistic way.

Virtual performers - I can imagine a program that you could give a piece of sheet music to and it would be able to 'perform' the music intelligently and artistically (again, by creating a raw sound wave).

Popular music - Just like Facebook and Google use AI to their sinister ends to get people to stay on their sites longer and click on lots of ads, big music studios will start using AI to create music that people will want to buy. Advertising agencies will probably use AI the generate jingles as well.

The idea of 'growing' a piano is fascinating, especially if it could keep itself in tune and repair itself but I imagine something like that is a long way off.

[Bob]

I suppose when I typed out the question I was thinking of AI being separate... I suppose it could be AI + human.  AI + human creates something new and/or AI + human develops the ability to perceive something new.