Recently, a few of my students reached out to me asking my opinion about AI in music and, different than many, I honestly feel it will help us more than destroy us, so we should stop worrying about it. Here are a few thoughts on it…
4 THOUGHTS FROM ME
Ask yourself “Why do you make music?” and that should already calm you down.
A lot of producers are worried about AI, but that puts into question their reason for getting into music in the first place. If your goal is to make music to express your art creatively, then AI won’t change a thing for you as, with AI or not, you will still want to make your music.
In addition, as someone who’s learning music production, you want to be proud of what you create and of your growth as a producer, and not what you generated with AI, right? Therefore, AI doesn’t matter to begin with since it doesn’t change your reasoning for starting to produce (I Hope).
In any case, remember this:
- Why did you start making music?;
- Why are you bothered if a machine can do better music than you, but not bothered if thousands of ghost producers sell their music for less than $200 USD?
Isn’t that the same thing? But, then you can ask me, “what if I also want to release my songs and have some commercial success with it as well?” Then…
Do your research with your genre and desired label, and see if it would accept AI-generated music.
I’ve asked some of the biggest labels in the melodic scene (progressive house, melodic house, etc) and the three that responded to me, which are the top three labels in the industry, said the exact same thing: ‘We don’t mind if you use AI to help you, but we will not sign a fully AI-generated song” (Apr 2024).
Even though this approach can change over time, if the labels that you respect and want to sign your songs say the same thing, again, how will AI impact your ability to sign music? When you have the peace of mind that your desired labels won’t sign AI-generated music, you can break any possible impact of AI in your career and move along like nothing happened.
In addition, before you freak out, test if these AI tools can make music in your genre and you’ll be impressed by how poor it does in more niche genres. I tested ‘Afro-House’ and ‘Melodic House’ trying to achieve Keinemusik or Ben Bohmer, respectively, and the result is still pretty bad.
“But, what about Deep House?” Yes, Deep House is quite good actually, but at the same time quite generic. So, if you’re in a genre where AI is already doing good music, how can you be better than it?
In any case, even if you’re not better than AI, if labels don’t sign AI-generated music it is like if we built a robot to play soccer better than any player, but not allowing it to play… it would be impressive, but quickly forgotten.
Use AI to enhance your creativity and generate new song ideas.
One thing that I’m doing more and more is using Suno.Ai or Udio.ai to generate chord progression ideas for my songs, and then, after some tweaking, I convert them into my ideas. “Leo, but that’s cheating?!”. Well, how is that different from using a midi from a sample pack?
Using AI to generate your ideas is a totally valid method to enhance your music with technology instead of solely relying on creativity. At the same time, I don’t recommend using AI to create everything for you like the Chords, the Melody, the vocal, etc, but use it as a way to spark your creative flame and then spin it around. Again, we want to be proud of what we create, not what we generate.
So,
- Change the key;
- Change the progression that was generated;
- Create some melodies on top of what was created, or anything that makes this generated idea into your idea, and you’re good to go.
If you still think that’s cheating, then my question to you is… is doing a collab cheating as well? Why is it cheating if you grabbed the midi from a pack or from AI and tweaked it, but not cheating if a friend came up with an idea for a song and asked you to collab with him?
When you compare what AI does and what we’re constantly exposed to in music production, you’ll see that there are lots of alternatives, and this can make it a lot easier for you to accept AI as a tool to enhance your creativity rather than a competitor that wants to knock you down.
Use AI tools to enhance your mixing and mastering, develop better songs, and develop your mixing and mastering skills.
One thing AI is getting better and better at is mixing and mastering, and lots of tools that I currently use already take advantage of AI to enhance what I’m currently doing. To name a few plugins, Gulfoss and Soothe2 are plugins that I use a lot in my mixes, and I have some control of what they are doing, but other than that it’s all AI.
At first, I used to say “if I don’t control it and I’m not the one doing it, then I can’t use it”, but that only made my mixes worse than what I could achieve with them. isn’t the goal to make the best song you can do?
Therefore, (1) take advantage of every tool you can to make it better. Not only this, but (2) understand what the AI model is suggesting to your mix so you can learn from that and become a better engineer yourself.
1 QUESTION FOR YOU
What tools can you use to help you create songs?
1. Use Sonible for a Smart Bundle with compressors, de-essers, EQ, and others. They not only can help you use these specific plugins better, but also understand when you really need it as well;
2. Use Suno.ai, FL Studio (beta), and Udio.com to generate new ideas. I specifically like the new ‘chord generator’ from FL Studio, still in Beta (21.3), as it gives you many options and even builds upon your current chord progression;
3. Use Gullfoss, Soothe2, and iZotope to help you with mixing and mastering. I like iZotope’s Ozone 11 new master assistant and the results are really good for an AI-powered master, but I still prefer to do my own master as I get better results with it.
