AI Composition: What Will It Bring to Pop Music
2024-09-04
In recent years, with the development of technology, AI (artificial intelligence) has penetrated into various fields of artistic creation and gradually sparked a revolution in artistic creation models. In the field of popular music, a batch of AI composition software has rapidly iterated and upgraded, effectively promoting the structural optimization of new works, enhancing melody expansion capabilities, and to some extent promoting the survival of the fittest in popular music works. The threshold for AI creation is getting lower and lower, making it possible for "mass producers". In this context, the impact of AI on popular music creation has become a hot topic. Compared to other forms of music, AI has a more profound impact on popular music. Currently, AI composition software is emerging in large numbers and gradually becoming popular among musicians and music enthusiasts. Taking some AI composition software as an example, to create a popular song, users need to first input a description of the song on the website, which is the meta tag of AI composition. This can include music styles such as jazz, rock, and electronics, as well as mysterious and lyrical music feelings. Users can also specify the accompanying instruments and melody structure of the song. They can also input a piece of music within 60 seconds and ask the AI to create a similar song. With these steps, a song can be created. This mode not only reduces the difficulty of operation for users, but also gives them sufficient creative freedom. As a directive existence, meta tags determine the fundamental direction of music creation. The more specific and accurate the meta tags are, the closer they can be to the creator's ideal music. After setting the meta tags, as the creator inputs lyrics, selects the singing voice, and clicks the generate button, a complete popular song can be created within a few seconds. When the song creation is completed, the AI composition software will provide two versions of the work for creators to choose from. Creators can rewrite and continue any version of the work, continuously inputting meta tags to repeatedly adjust the song. Although AI composition cannot be considered as traditional artistic creation, it still follows certain rules, which is consistent with human led artistic creation. Specifically, the structure of popular songs created by artificial intelligence is usually relatively fixed, basically following the rules of harmony, and using electronic instruments more often, often accompanied by obvious rhythmic movements in rhythm. In addition, compared to music genres such as light music, orchestral music, and Chinese ethnic style music works, AI is better at writing popular songs, and the group of creators using AI is also more inclined to create popular music. Therefore, compared to other forms of music, the impact of artificial intelligence composition technology on popular music is more profound. Firstly, AI composition has changed the traditional mode of popular music production, shifting the skill of music creation from professional musicians to ordinary enthusiasts, achieving a transformation of popular music from production to consumption. Secondly, AI composition technology has improved the production speed of popular music. The optimized and upgraded AI composition software can perform unlimited creations in one day, while ensuring basic creative quality and avoiding generating the same music. Finally, AI music composition has a low threshold for participation by the public, which has stimulated more people's enthusiasm for music creation and enhanced the influence of popular music from the audience level, achieving the re popularization of popular music through public participation. AI composition maintains a high level of musicality, which is beneficial for solving some existing problems in popular music. In the era of streaming media, with the rise of short video platforms, the music market has been plagued by drool songs for a long time. As is well known, the underlying logic of AI composition software is to learn and imitate various internal data, styles, and patterns of popular songs. The database learned by AI is often high-quality songs created by excellent popular musicians, and drool songs and other vulgar popular songs will not be its learning objects. This also indicates that in the future, AI composition will still maintain a high level of musicality, which can to some extent squeeze the living space of saliva songs and promote the development of popular music towards higher quality. In addition, during the process of using AI to compose music, the author found that if a real composer is mentioned in the meta tag instruction given to it, it will receive a prompt of "generation failure, artist name cannot be included in the description", indicating that these composition software currently have a strong awareness of copyright protection for music works. Some AI composition software officials have pointed out that they have a review method for identifying and detecting AI music works. Although the accuracy of this feature still needs to be tested, it can at least regulate it in a timely manner in the most complex copyright issues of popular music. However, there are still obvious areas that need to be optimized for AI composition. For example, although the work can be repeatedly rewritten, the innovation of the music is not enough, and the rewritten music is not much different from the previous version, with low precision processing ability and a certain degree of randomness. From an auditory perspective, AI composition has a recognizable sense of "breakage", where the connections between different parts are not very smooth, which can easily create the feeling of two or several songs being pieced together. The above problems are expected to be improved and solved with the iteration and upgrading of artificial intelligence, but new problems brought about by technological innovation also need to be taken seriously. As mentioned earlier, the emergence of AI composition has broken down the barriers between ordinary people and popular music creation, making popular music creation accessible to all. However, in this process, some popular musicians and music enthusiasts have encountered the problem of excessive dependence on AI composition. For example, due to the fun of AI composition and the sense of achievement it gives to creators, some people have become obsessed with AI composition. Almost every day, they use AI to create at least one popular song and publish it on the internet, sharing it widely and enjoying it endlessly. The result is that music creation seems to have become entertainment and a child's play, dissolving the seriousness of creation. For example, due to the highly efficient nature of AI composition, some professional musicians, after tasting the "sweetness" of using AI, always tend to use AI to find "inspiration" first. Over time, they will be led by AI, leading to a decrease in their creative ability. To make good use of AI and not be led by its nose, will AI composition replace human creativity? This is the most discussed issue since the emergence of AI composition. The advancement of technology has brought more or less concerns and anxieties to people, and many people have exclaimed that 'pop musicians are collectively unemployed'. Indeed, with the upgrading of artificial intelligence, the gap between AI composition and musician creation is gradually narrowing, even surpassing the works of many musicians. In fact, AI will accelerate the survival of the fittest in music works, but as long as musicians maintain their creative passion and adhere to their unique artistic thinking, they will never be replaced. On the one hand, although artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, fundamentally, it is humans who determine its level of development. A small step forward in technology often means a big step forward for humanity. To some extent, the logic of AI represents the logic of humans, as it transforms popular music into a patterned form based on human creativity. Simply put, humans innovate in music creation modes, and AI understands these innovations as a working mode. So, composers need to clarify the boundaries of human creation, fully recognize and unleash the creativity and innovation of artists, utilize and control AI, and better promote the innovative development of popular music. On the other hand, people have rich experiences and emotions, growing up in different family, school, and social environments. The creation of each song reflects a person's true experience of life and emotions. The fundamental difference between humans and AI is that AI learns the results of human creation rather than the process, and cannot learn the process of humans. At present, music created by AI is ultimately a replication of previous works, which cannot reflect the understanding and interpretation of art in creation, let alone accurately express human emotions and feelings. From this perspective, AI can change the creative mode of popular music and empower it, but true artistic creation still needs to be completed by humans. In summary, the impact of AI on popular music is complex and profound. It is accelerating the change of the fixed development pattern of popular music for decades, while forcing musicians to think about how to respond to challenges and how to maximize the irreplaceable artistic creation of humanity. It has revitalized popular music and activated a pool of spring water. So, the development of AI is both a challenge and an opportunity for popular music. On the one hand, we need to use AI to constantly seek new possibilities for popular music; On the other hand, we must always be vigilant and respond to the new problems brought by technology, and we must not be led by its nose. (New Society)
Edit：Xiong Dafei Responsible editor：Li Xiang
Source：GMW.cn
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