vladasyn
Saying, "We just basic DAW, if you want other tools- go with 3rd party" is not the way to move toward the future.

Actually...I think it is. The field of machine learning (which I think has far more potential for music than AI) and AI are complex, evolving, and specialized fields. Furthermore, the level of integration with a program is mostly scooping up data - the analysis happens outside the program, and then the conclusions "pour" back into the program the same way (but of course, in a much more involved way) as data from a hardware controller making changes in EQ, automation, etc.
 
If I was a machine learning developer who was interested in music, I would not design a DAW to go along with it. I'd feel that the DAW world is relatively mature, and I would just want to create compatible products rather than re-invent the wheel.
 
As soon as plug-ins were invented, DAWs went down the road of being modular, rather than self-contained. Machine learning is a perfect candidate for a modular approach.
 
I wrote an article for Pro Sound News, Pro Audio and Machine Learning - Ready for Prime Time? that you might find interesting.
 

vladasyn
There also apps that use artificial intelligence to fill song with drum tracks and even create melodies and chords.
 

You really want that? 
That's ridiculous. 

vladasyn
This is nice article, thanks for sharing. Could you, please, explain this better?
 
"I analyze a mixed file and look for half-cycle peaks that exceed, for example, -3 dB below a reference. There can easily be 30 or 40 such peaks. I can then normalize each half cycle down to -3 dB, which allows raising the overall level by 3 dB without introducing artifacts like pumping, while maintaining the dynamics."

 
Basically, it opens up headroom by reducing the absolute highest peaks. Then you can raise the file's overall level without exceeding the available headroom.
 

So you say that it is a job of AI or ML developer to make compatible product and you dont see any use of DAW company to actually find talented individuals or small companies and collaborate with them to inspire, motivate, encourage them to develop mutual products that would benefit DAW and offer support and umbrella to new developing company?

 
No, that's not what I said at all.
 
We already have a fine example of what I'm talking about: Melodyne. ARA came about because of PreSonus collaborating with Celemony, and Cakewalk was involved as well. I don't think either Cakewalk or PreSonus wanted to stop development of their flagship products to become experts at pitch correction.
 

But otherwise how do you break ahead of competition?

 
You can point to other programs that do pitch correction, but they won't create a tempo track like Cakewalk can because they're not ARA. If you want pitch correction that's integrated really well with a program, yet has the potential for future expansion and development, at this point your best options are CbB and Studio One. They're ahead of the competition in that respect not because they did the pitch correction, but because they signed on with a company that have incredible expertise in that field, and shared their expertise.

My first post here was meant to be sarcastic, but I am not sure that is how it was taken by all. There really is a significant philosophical question regarding fully machine generated music which will probably never be addressed in practice. Like most such profound questions about the nature of humanity, it is likely that technology will just make philosophical insight largely irrelevant. From a consumer/publisher point of view, music is a commodity, and when machines can create hit songs more reliably, faster and cheaper than humans by themselves or using machine assistance like DAW's, the average listener and publisher is just going to go for the artificial stuff. There will undoubtedly be boutique human crafted compositions for a long time to come, just as there are artisanal pickled carrots and hand made furniture being sold in today's modern world of the future. But the stuff playing on the radio will mostly be factory built. People will think it is quaint that we once thought that music was a mode of communication person to person. The current method of music created by teams led by "producers" cobbling together beats and loops to mimic the sound of the last big hit is already showing the direction the industry is moving.
 
So my music hobby will be like every other human hobby, just a way of keeping busy exploring my own taste and technique, and the people on forums like his will be like civil war reenactors encouraging each other to live in an imaginary past. From time to time a robot monitoring our self indulgent efforts will find something it does not already do, improve it and start turning out much better stuff in our style for the masses. 

@noel, when's the replacement forum coming? thx

chuckebaby
So im all for Artificial intelligences. Not so much to write the songs for us But to assist in the process.

 
Exactly. There have been lots of "computers make music" experiments and while they have the "look and feel" of music, for some reason they just don't connect. Even the attempts to take highly defined music like Bach's and create a new piece based on the kind of "rules" Bach used just don't sound like Bach.
 

Oh, I always thought AI means extraterrestrial in German (AusserIrdisch)!
Sometimes you find AI also on number plates in Switzerland.
 
Frankly, I think AI is an expression invented by IT guys to define how brilliant their software is. Often it's hard for me to find their "hidden" intelligence! Most of the time it's rather primitive what they call AI.
 
Marc

BenMMusTech


My point to all this...if havent been able to decipher my long and verbose missive :) is...embrace all ideas in regards to sound and vision production...but never call yourself a musician unless you play an instrument or indeed read and write music. If you're an errant button pusher...you are nothing more than a child in kindergarten playing with coloured blocks! One of your tracks - someone like me could replicate in a day and day in and day out. We need to encourage people who want to make music to embrace music literacy to get the best of of the amazing tech available to each and everyone of in the contemporary era. We need to embrace the new digital theory paradigm, which some still resist because of a misunderstanding of the medium and because it was 'how we did in analog' and worse 'their ideas are based on digital audio theory' that are now 20 and even worse 40 years old. PCM was invented in the 1930s and the first digital recording was made in the late 70s. If we don't - then the continued decline in music but not just music will continue to decline in quality, learning to less innovation. Of course I accept some may still enjoy the children's music of today. But to me...music is still a high order language - capable of communicating the full range of human emotion and to be able to express these emotions even if you can't speak the native tounge of the listener.

Peace and Love

Thank you for having the courage to speak the truth, in an age when most are falling all over themselves not to offend somebody, and - horror of horrors - get banned from a forum. 

jb101

pwalpwal

jb101

BenMMusTech
Come on too...I mean writing drums isn't hard. Mostly, its 4 bars of time and then a bar of fill.

Really?

i'd love to hear from some drummers on this

Well, five bar phrases are not the norm..

Lol...in my music yes. But mea culpa...it should have been 3 bars of time and 1 fill. I don't really do genre type music, and can get some ideas confused...my brain hurts like a warehouse, I had no room to spare :) db by the way and 5 years.

michael diemer

BenMMusTech


My point to all this...if havent been able to decipher my long and verbose missive :) is...embrace all ideas in regards to sound and vision production...but never call yourself a musician unless you play an instrument or indeed read and write music. If you're an errant button pusher...you are nothing more than a child in kindergarten playing with coloured blocks! One of your tracks - someone like me could replicate in a day and day in and day out. We need to encourage people who want to make music to embrace music literacy to get the best of of the amazing tech available to each and everyone of in the contemporary era. We need to embrace the new digital theory paradigm, which some still resist because of a misunderstanding of the medium and because it was 'how we did in analog' and worse 'their ideas are based on digital audio theory' that are now 20 and even worse 40 years old. PCM was invented in the 1930s and the first digital recording was made in the late 70s. If we don't - then the continued decline in music but not just music will continue to decline in quality, learning to less innovation. Of course I accept some may still enjoy the children's music of today. But to me...music is still a high order language - capable of communicating the full range of human emotion and to be able to express these emotions even if you can't speak the native tounge of the listener.

Peace and Love

Thank you for having the courage to speak the truth, in an age when most are falling all over themselves not to offend somebody, and - horror of horrors - get banned from a forum. 

I do, and it is lonely...but someone has too! When you've been given great power, then you have the responsibility too...as uncle ben from spiderman would say lol. It's because I stand up for these inalienable truths, versus relative truths ;)) that I've been exiled from the uni system here in Oz. They won't let me finish my phd.


Ben

vladasyn
I would be happy if it fills song with drums for me. 

There is a difference between tools that streamline or make the process easier, vs tools that do the work for you.
 
But I am thinking maybe we should have these mind reading machines, they read your thoughts and develop a melody. 

Hang on, the producer is pissed, "I am going to develop an angry song based on Drowning Pool's Let the Body Hit The Floor." - AI/Machine!!

BenMMusTech
...but never call yourself a musician unless you play an instrument or indeed read and write music. If you're an errant button pusher...
 
 
. Of course I accept some may still enjoy the children's music of today. But to me...music is still a high order language - capable of communicating the full range of human emotion and to be able to express these emotions even if you can't speak the native tounge of the listener.

Peace and Love

If you look up the definition of a "Musician" it does not necessitate playing a physical instrument, it can refer to someone with muscial abilty.  There are "button pushers" with musical ability.  
 
 
Many people don't need an academic approach to convey the emotion.  Reading and writing music is not required at all for many great musicians.  
 
In addition to that, people can compose music in a DAW without the ability to play a physical instrument.  How is soemone writing notes on a sheet of paper that much different than pencling in blocks in a PRV?  Neither necesitate having an "instrument" in hand if you have the right skill set.  Both of these are completly foreign composition concepts to me, but I've seen it done by others.  
 
The method "button pusher" vs "string hitter" quite frankly is irrelevant as long as the intended emotion is conveyed.  I haven't met many button pushers that move me emotionally, most string hitters don't either for that matter, but I'm not going to deny that there are those that can.  
 
Many extremely accomplished musicians can't read or write music in the traditional sense.  

Brian Walton

BenMMusTech
...but never call yourself a musician unless you play an instrument or indeed read and write music. If you're an errant button pusher...
 
 
. Of course I accept some may still enjoy the children's music of today. But to me...music is still a high order language - capable of communicating the full range of human emotion and to be able to express these emotions even if you can't speak the native tounge of the listener.

Peace and Love

If you look up the definition of a "Musician" it does not necessitate playing a physical instrument, it can refer to someone with muscial abilty.  There are "button pushers" with musical ability.  
 
 
Many people don't need an academic approach to convey the emotion.  Reading and writing music is not required at all for many great musicians.  
 
In addition to that, people can compose music in a DAW without the ability to play a physical instrument.  How is soemone writing notes on a sheet of paper that much different than pencling in blocks in a PRV?  Neither necesitate having an "instrument" in hand if you have the right skill set.  Both of these are completly foreign composition concepts to me, but I've seen it done by others.  
 
The method "button pusher" vs "string hitter" quite frankly is irrelevant as long as the intended emotion is conveyed.  I haven't met many button pushers that move me emotionally, most string hitters don't either for that matter, but I'm not going to deny that there are those that can.  
 
Many extremely accomplished musicians can't read or write music in the traditional sense.  

Let me clarify for you, some of the issues you've raised in the above post. I had to look up the word musician, to check what you said in reference to this point...my ego is not so large that I can't admit I don't know everything :). You are right, in regards to the definition of the word musician, but I would hazard a guess this is the contemporary definition and not the historical one...semantics though I know. But in all fairness, you are right - a musician only needs musical talent to be classified as such. And indeed, it's taken 32 years to reach the level of musicianship I now have. I was 10 years old, when I taught myself the basic rudiments of sight reading and the recorder...true story, perhaps indicating I was a prodigy. I come from pondscum - so the only way to foster my musical ability was through my own force of will :). And a composer and a musician are by definition two completely different things. A composer doesn't necessarily have to be a good musician and a great musician isn't necessarily a great composer.

I think you're confusing academic and musical literacy and or theory though. Again, through my own sheer force of will and extreme autodidacticism...I've learnt the academic side of both musicianship and composition. It's somewhat the problem, in the stand- off between myself and the conservatoriums of Oz. They insist on the 123 way of learning and I can skip learn :), and indeed it is impossible for me to learn the rote 123 way. But I digress, yes great composers and songwriters - because composition and songwriting are different sides to the same coin, but both disciplines contain great non trained exponents of the art and craft of composition. What I was trying to emphasize though is the lack of music literacy as the problem within contemporary music...and this is the problem. Music literacy isn't just music theory though, its historical and cultural context, it's also mastery of the technological eco-system, which in itself is a type of musical instrument. Without a little from colum a and a little from b and c - the quality of music as a first order language or a language that transcends language is diluted. And worse, which was more my point...it means that the cog that was driving music innovation, composition challanges contemporary music technology, meaning better music technology, which then challenges composers and musicians alike to become better musicians and indeed write better compositions. Think about Mozart and Beethoven, Beethoven in particular re-writes the classical music 'rulebook'. He gets the pianoforte introduced, because of moonlight sonata, he doubles the size of the orchestra for the 5th and adds voice in the 9th...the first time a symphonic work featured vocals. This leads to bigger concert halls, and the late romantic period composers to push their ideas about what composition should be and indeed music instrument technology. In the contemporary historical era, The Beatles do the same thing. They introduce feedback to analog recording art, which inspires them to explore the avant-gardes sonic artists, they introduce these artistic sonic techniques into the popular musical lexicon - leading to the next wave of great musicians and composers...leading to better sonics. First they had 4 track, then 8 and then 24. First they have a Redd tube console with a rudimentary EQ, then the TG12345 solid state with EQ and compressor and finally the SSL solid state which is perhaps the ultimate large format recording console. Without The Beatles...Hendrix could not have spent months in the studio composing, Pink Floyd too and then of course Queen who are perhaps the closest to The Beatles in regards to their use of the studio. So hopefully you see my point, without composers and musicians challenging the limits of music technology through composition - music innovation can become stagnant. And we're seeing some of this now - music is mostly dross turned out by errant button pushers, more interested in style than substance. So whilst I agree with you, that yes you don't need all my tricks to be a great composer or musician, and I'm not saying that I'm great or anything like that :), but without them and without someone promoting these tricks where is music innovation going to come from? It's the healthy composition amongst masters, that's missing from this current cycle.

Finally, the difference between using midi and a notion instrument such as Notion by Presonus is the ability to easily dial in the feel of a musician, but that's not all...you need to be able to understand the feel of a musician to 'fake' it. Rather than guessing, and I suspect most button pushers don't even change the velocity of each midi note or phrase from the standard 100, but rather than guessing the velocity or humanize feel with a midi effect or by hand...I can use proper musical literacy and theory to do so. This also helps expand the compositional language avaliable to the composer and indeed increases the range of emotion a composer can convey. So a gentle motif at the beginning can be set using the dynamic marker of piano, which leads to a sudden and dramatic point in the composition...let's say forte or double forte. To create the build up, you use a crescendo marker. I then could use the swing 8th humanize slider to gently pull the piano timing back just off the groove. The drums could be dead set, and the bass just in front. I can also add ghost and grace notes to further add to the realness of musical phrase. And then gently bring all back down to a piano dynamic and bang everything back on the beat. This is what an aware composer should be able to do, and again its something we should be encouraging any aspiring musician or composer to do...not push a button that has no correlation with the emotion a composer or musician is trying to convey. Yes, you can do similar things with midi...but it's harder to control, harder to learn the fine nuanced control of the composer in regards to expressing the emotion of the composer and indeed it makes it easier to leave the velocity at 100 and timing flat. Worse, though - it creates a false sense of belief that if you push a button you're a musician. Even if you have only opened Garageband for the very first time. I'd prefer these types to call themselves entertainers perhaps, I'm a snob though, 32 years of researching and composing music does that to you.

We all need to challenge cultural producers is my point - because the technology avaliable to almost anyone provides limitless permutations of cultural product. For example, I'm writing a modern take on the symphonic form, I would even use the phrase strum und drang...german again ;), to describe sonata no.4a, and it is written with modern instruments...808 kicks, synths guitars etc and with strings and brass and I'm combining this with 3d animation to create a gesamtkunstwerk;) art form. This is me pushing the limits of modern computing power, along with my knowledge as a way to push the boundaries. If we survey mass music culture, and in many ways that's all there is...its the same old paradigm of the 80s. A button pusher or one of the few guitar bands left, write a song, record it in a studio...someone from the art department and moving image department then create a video clip - either using the classical idea of the gods or perfection or surrealism...think the world of dreams. I'm saying...we can return to the romantic idea of the genius alone doing it in service of the art. An idea that gave birth to modernism and the age of enlightenment. Romanticism isn't perfect, but it's better than the beta boys of postmodernism who prefer the communism form of cultural production...art in service of lecturing people or the neo-techo-classiscm of perfection and the gods...Beyonce anyone.

Hopefully I've answered your question...yes I know I'm teriably verbose lol.