Metal Machine Learning Music - A thread to discuss and keep track of the use of AI and machine learning in music. RFI, S/D

I've just been watching some videos of album covers generated by AI/machine learning and thought they were pretty compelling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtPGIuAZpAo

And I've listened a few times to Emptyset's Blossoms, which was partially created by AI/ML. I've found it a fairly difficult listen, but it's also compellingly unusual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhini2OpykQ&list=PLMJuPm-2EpGZB8MXpwrsYOb10jsBxocfq

https://thequietus.com/articles/27258-emptyset-blossoms-review

So, what else is out there?

Hmm, seems to be a problem with the emptyset video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9-AChAxBDE

saw the title, came here to post the emptyset. big fan, haven't heard this one yet beyond the one track they played on the radio

late junction on friday had another,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ds69

"Holly Herndon with her A.I. 'baby', Spawn

Verity Sharp hears from Berlin-based composer, academic and artist Holly Herndon. Herndon is interested in our complicated relationship with technology, often using the voice to explore the boundaries between the human and the technological.

Her last record, Proto, was created with a choral ensemble and a nascent A.I. ‘baby’ called Spawn which was conceived with her partner Mathew Dryhurst and created by A.I. expert Jules LaPlace. It uses neural networks to process audio and respond to music it ‘hears’. Holly has given Spawn she/her pronouns and sees her as a member of the ensemble. She interrogates some of the ethics around making music with a neural network and where she thinks we are heading to next."

Fantastic! Thank you. I've somehow never managed to get into the habit of listening to LJ but this episode is clearly brilliant. About to get to the Holly Herndon bit and am excited after hearing the track that they open with.

following, mostly b/c of my interest in AI trying to construct playlists or DJ sets

listened to the linked track

i'm not sure the machine has come up with a way of approaching repetition that's interesting to me

i guess the closest human music i can think of is spectralism - there's real opportunity in the way the machine genuinely approaches sound from its material aspects in a way humans can never truly emulate. on the other hand, its approach to iteration doesn't do anything for my ears. i know that the loop changes over time, but it doesn't change in ways that i care about. what it really reminds me of is that time somebody opened the program file for MSPaint as an audio file, except not as good?

emptyset arrived this morning (physical copy, lol), listening now, and the first thing that sprang to mind was pre-empted in the thread title:

> Metal Machine Learning Music

it's one of those things that you can't ignore - everytime it starts to fade into background there'll be some sound that'll grab your attention (like the way you strain to hear snatches of coherant speech in a room full of babble)

https://happyvalleyband.bandcamp.com/album/organvm-perceptvs

wired magazine did one of their Invisible Jukeboxes with william gibson in the recent issue and they played him After The Goldrush from the above. it's taking tracks, transcribing them using ML and then people are replaying them.

That Born to Run sounds like someone playing a Horse Lords track on top.

Recently listened to Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst interview "research scientist and Director of Spotify's CTRL lab François Pachet and his collaborator, the composer Benoit Carré" on their podcast. Sounds like some really interesting ML-aided composition. Here's some of their stuff, I'm really enjoying American Folk Songs.

Daddy's Car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHZ_b05W7o

The Ballad of Mr.Shadow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcGYEXJqun8

American Folk Songs EP: https://skyggewithai.bandcamp.com/

"Black is the Color” by SKYGGE featuring Pete Seeger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=sv56kfvsQAM

ripped all those jukebox openai soundclouds to mp3 last month and have been listening to them regularly. actually can't get enough of them. christine payne is a fascinating character who clearly has a vision towards the creative unheard potentials of all this; I just wish she was working for anyone but google

Does Dadabots belong here? It’s “raw audio neural networks that can imitate bands”.

This was tom ravenscroft's pick of the year on radio 6

https://dylanhenner.bandcamp.com/album/the-invention-of-the-human

'Anarchic Artificial Intelligence' - https://mouseonmarstj.bandcamp.com/album/aai

"The fear of machines integrating with humans has driven sci-fi anxiety for decades, but Mouse on Mars invite us to see it as a positive on their new album, AAI, recorded with a bespoke AI speech replicator and a team of top programmers. Artificial intelligence, the German band argues, deserves as much consideration as humans when it comes to an artistic collaborator. "

https://spectrumculture.com/2021/02/28/mouse-on-mars-aai-review/

Does Dadabots belong here? It’s “raw audio neural networks that can imitate bands”.

https://interdependence.fm/episodes/dadabots-playing-with-fireand-extreme-ai-music

https://app.suno.ai/song/30a612d0-1c1c-406e-a95b-1c6d6b486cf5/

I liked this - 'Guys what is wrong with my cat?'. Everything else I've tried on the website falls into the category of surprisingly/impressively competent in terms of sounding like an 'actual' song created by a person, but not actually good or something I'd care to listen to again, which I guess is the worst possible combination in terms of what all this means for the future of music and musicians?