The Coming Invasion and Unintended Consequences of AI Music

AI Music Composition and Production

Hi Folks!

I have been concerned about AI/computer generated music composition since the 80's. The 80's you say? Yep! I once did a concert performance with my long (very long) time friend and colleague Mike Brigida (Arp, Berklee and Kurzweil) for Ray Kurzweil and Kurzweil Music Systems at the Boston Museum of Science. Mike and I were both playing the K-250's which were new and leading edge technology at the time. The theme of the event/exhibit was The age of the machine in music, etc. Lots of cool folks there from MIT, Harvard, Industry, Press, etc. Again, synthesizers and electronic production were not as ubiquitous as they are now back in the 80's.

One of the exhibits that night aside from me and Mike was a computer that could compose music and did so on demand. I was fascinated by this thing. While the music the computed spit out sucked and was very abstract (if memory serves), the fact that the computer was able to "compose" music at all was something I took note of and wondered what would happen to musicians and composers if this evolved. Perhaps not to dissimilar to what orchestral and live musicians felt to the invention of samplers including the K250. This technology was going to put "real" musicians out of work.

Well, I think we have crossed the Rubicon with AI and the pandora's box it opens for things like copyright, real vs. AI, competition (as if it wasn't already tough enough), etc. Jeez! The master Rick Beato had a great video on this and I wanted to share. You should definitely take a look. Rick has some great insight (warnings?)!

-DF