These type of stupid statements are meant to rile up people and generate free publicity. Don’t feed the trolls.
Oh yeah, nobody spends years and decades mastering a skill set unless they hate it. Authors? They fucking hate books. Actors? They actually all want to work in finance. Teachers? You’d better believe there’s nothing they hate more than explaining shit to children. And there’s not an artist alive that wouldn’t give up their art in a heartbeat if it meant they could live their dreams of working in customer service.
JFC some people will say anything to justify being a jackass.
every time these lizards say shit like this I get more vindicated in saying people who believe “ai” “art” is legitimately art are not human.
“making moosic with eenstrooments is such a terrible experience am I right fellow hoomans?”
no you fucking bot. people who do it are delighted by it and most of those who don’t do it wish they could.
and most of those who don’t do it wish they could.
ok, out of the people who , let’s say, own an instrument, how many do you think fall into this category?
All this generative AI for “creative works” basically makes it so that if you lack the skill to do something, you can feed it something among the lines of what you want, and it will do the hard work that takes years of effort to achieve for you.
In the right contexts, it allows for personal curation of art the user can imagine but lacks the technical ability to create.
Of course, corps and assholes looking to make a quick buck are also abusing this to make money at the expense of genuine people who are expressing something and have honed a craft. Guess what, that shit’s happening anyway, Taylor Swift is charging 5k for tickets to watch her lip sync to music she didn’t write and isn’t singing at the concert. It’s already fucking over, and has been for ages. It’s even worse, there are bands out there that have bothered to hone their craft and are out there touring their asses off, but because they “found their niche” are basically phoning it in and making the same fucking album every two to five years. Great work. Think about the last few meshuggah or mastodon albums. Violent sleep of reason, koloss and immutable are variations on the same fucking ideas. at least the band grew and tried to find themselves, and perfected themselves in the era between nothing and obzen. Mastodon stopped giving a shit since Crack the Skye.
EDIT : If I want to hear hardcore mixed with lounge , and I don’t want to learn to scream, play the sax , drums, guitar, bass etc, and I have a machine that can interpret that for me, why shouldn’t it enrich my day? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ-K647LViU
EDIT2 : You wanna tell me that there’s more value than the latest Boardroom generated pop album with no AI compared to Pho Que which was made by someone who understands what goes on under the hood with the way the AI would generate the music to fulfil their personal tastes in music and curiosity?
EDIT3 : You know what, I’ll even multiple down. I spent the morning checking out bands from a gig poster in town, unheard regional bands, and you know what, they were all generic and mid. 6/10. I was hoping to go to the gig, have a good time, discover great local talent, but I don’t want to, since it’s not worth it to bother going out to do that while I have other responsibilities or ways of having fun.
I’m still listening to Pho Que (ai generated by the guys at dadabots, through suno, the company in the OP) and I’m enjoying myself more than when I was listening to their generic efforts at black metal. There’s more dynamics, more surprises and it’s better overall.
Tech bros’ lack of empathy means he literally can’t imagine anyone liking something he doesn’t.
Finally the actual reason he said this.
Stop listening to CEOs. They are fucking morons. And in this case I would argue his sentiment is corrupt and bias. He just wants to push his shitty product by down playing instrumentalists.
No AI will ever replace an artist like Prince. I’ll wipe my ass with any of this AI garbage.
I think people need to stop using the term ‘AI’ for everything a computer does to simulate thought or creativity. AI algorithms are basically large scale piracy machines capable of scanning the entirety of human art so that it can create a reasonable imitation based off the source material its consumed. Its strength is in its ability to internally pursue, and fail, billions of potential outcomes and come to one that meets the criteria its been givien within seconds or minutes. Instead of a million monkeys at a million typewriters, its like a quadrillion monkeys, and they’re all on adderall.
The truth is that it never understood the source material. It doesn’t feel anything from it, it doesn’t comprehend it. Everything that it does is derived from the material used for training and the instructions its received. If thats the case then we’re talking about Virtual Intelligence, not true AI or AGI, and I think thats an important distinction. I’m also surprised that more lawyers and copyright holders don’t feel that way.
machines capable of scanning the entirety of human art so that it can create a reasonable imitation based off the source material its consumed
I am counting the days until we see a tech giant’s legal team argue that this is how human artists work, and that the AIs must therefore be people with rights just like their corporate parents.
I would say I hate putting this idea out into the universe, but you know plenty of those ghouls are way ahead of me.
I wouldn’t wipe mine with AI Music. Using a hard drive to wipe sounds painful.
What about an optical disk? You can use it to scrape most of it off.
I wouldn’t want to risk it shattering, personally.
What about magnetic tape? You can use it to floss your ass
That’s disingenuous and fucking dumb.
Granted, I personally no longer enjoy playing music, but I did it for about 22 years. It got old for me because I realized it was a hobby that was costing me money, and health.
I no longer desire to spend Friday and Saturday nights at bars, lugging gear around in order to play songs for a few drunk people. Like… when you break it down, it’s incredibly depressing.
Nothing kills the joy of a hobby faster than trying to make a living out of it.
It’s one of the symptoms of the SYSTEM when a kid shows talent and/or strong interest in a thing, it could be most anything, the adults that this child looks to for guidance push them to make this interest and/or talent into a career. And as soon as that suggestion takes root in that child’s head then it just time before the hobby/talent is abandoned with regret and sadness.
This may not be universal but it’s not rare either - as you know first hand.
Hope one day you can, if you want, get back to what drew you towards playing music in the first place and I hope you find joy in it for nothing more than that.
What you’re saying makes a lot of sense and seems to add up.
Also, thank you for the kind words.
Glad you filled in what the health risk was on the second paragraph because I immediately thought “What risk could you have playing music? Are you drumming with your head?”
SHIKAKA
Gradual hearing loss is ironically a huge risk/side effect of playing live music. You can get specialty earbuds now that reduce db while not loosing too much frequency range, but it is still noticeable.
Know that us drunk people love you and people like you for it. Can imagine it gets old for a lot of folks though.
Why stop playing music tho? Surely there is more to the world of music than just playing other people’s music in a dive bar?
Expand your horizon.
I’ve gotten everything I wanted out of it, and I no longer feel any emotional or psychological reward from playing music. I was originally not talking about playing other people’s music though. I wrote my own, toured in a band playing our music, and sold my music in other countries. It was all relatively small scale though; not enough to supplement a normal job or anything like that.
You never even listen to a song and want to play along with it? Or do you not even listen to much music anymore?
I’ve never had much commercial success with music, and it’s probably more brutal now than it’s ever been, but I still love writing, recording, and jamming out with my favorite songs, so it’s hard to relate. I’ve known people who gave up on the dream of “making it”, but I’ve never known someone to stop playing music altogether.
Not anymore, no. I used to, but for the most part, no… not really. I’ll pick up my acoustic maybe once every 4-6 months for a 5 hour session but then I won’t pick it up again for another 4+ months. When I play that acoustic, I play the shit out of it… then it goes back into the box and I go back to my desk and write some more IaC. 🤷♂️
That’s hard to believe. Are you sure you didn’t just go down the wrong road with it and get burned out?
Playing bar gigs isn’t exactly a thrill and it’s no wonder it feels depressing.
I’ve always been of the opinion that if you’re not producing your own music and finding your own path then it’s largely a waste of time. There’s nothing interesting about being in a cover band.
Fair enough with where you are coming from; but I’m not trying to prove anything. I can only speak to my experiences but I want to clarify that I’ve never been in a cover band. I’ve done covers of songs, sure… but never been in a band with the sole intent of playing other peoples’ music. I agree with you, that’s a bit more soul crushing than what I did though.
There was undoubtedly a huge aspect of burnout involved - so you nailed that one. It’s fucking exhausting going to band practice 3-4 nights a week after work, eating bullshit food (if you could afford it that week) that you got through the drive through on the way from the office to the drummer’s house. It’s exhausting carrying a 4x12 guitar amp cabinet up three flights of stairs to play some bar in Philadelphia.
I was playing progressive metal back in 2009-2012, and prior to that was a punk band 2006-2009. I’ve played at venues as large as the House of Blues, comic cons like Supercon in Miami, and Megacon in Orlando. I’ve played in bar basements in Manhattan, garages in North Carolina, run down music venues that share the strip-mall with strip-clubs, the 2600 club in Detroit, Ground Zero in Spartanburg, TN and biker bars in places like Mt. Dora, FL (just to give some examples of the vast span of different types of venues I may have ended up playing in). I’ve also played in festival shows similar to Warped Tour (but not Warped Tour). Non-signed bands during those years that I was active would have a pretty unpredictable set of places we’d be asked to play.
I stopped doing band stuff when I hit about 30 (or maybe it was 29 or 31… somewhere around there). I’m 41 now. When I was a kid picking up guitar for the first time at age 10, I never had the aspiration to make it as a “rockstar,” largely because people told me it was unrealistic and unlikely; but I did have an intent to do 3 things (more attainable goals): I wanted to play at a big venue like HOB, I wanted to tour, and I wanted to have music that I wrote sold in a country that I hadn’t been to yet. Those three goals were achieved.
I really disliked touring. It’s uncomfortable, and I hate being in cars / vans / suvs for long periods of time. I hated hoping to rely on the kindness of stranger that would allow the band to sleep on the floor in their living room. I hated that I was putting roughly 10-15% of my income from my shitty (day) job that was paying me $27k a year into things like buying gas for vans with no efficiency whatsoever, getting stickers and t-shirts printed, trying to make my band successful, and to get more exposure, etc.
Getting on stage was always a little bit scary; so I drank more than I should have. Then I was drinking to be able to socialize after the shows. Then there’s this whole aspect of “always being on” when you’re at shows; like, constantly trying to sell yourself, your band, your music. There’s an unspoken obligation to go to other local bands’ shows too… so when I wasn’t playing, I was going out to hear other music, drinking too much, and largely not using my limited time here very wisely. Not to mention, this too gets pretty expensive.
Got out of all that - went hard into upskilling my IT skills around 2010, and now I’m a Sr. Cloud Engineer earning a good living. Most of the music that’s new and popular today, doesn’t do it for me… except for some Rap, and reggae every now and again. In all, I think of the “music” part of my life as being in my past; and I’m totally ok with that.
Sounds like you gave it all you had and found out the hard way it wasn’t for you. Respectable. Sorry to hear it didn’t work out. I know I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the personality for all that stuff and I would be beyond exhausted.
I can’t blame you for feeling that way and wanting to rather be done with it all.
It’s a shame you can’t find any enjoyment out of it anymore. My original point being was that you can still accomplish a lot in the hobby space, producing music on YouTube, something small time that has no pressure. But that still requires motivation and inspiration, something that doesn’t come easily. But maybe one day it will come back to you.
Suno was what radicalized my stance on AI, and I refuse to use any of it.
As a solo hobbyist game dev who struggles with art, I had a pretty reserved approach for AI for stuff like art, animation or most notably voice acting, which makes the game a lot better but is really hard to do if you’re not a native speaker or don’t have a budget. My plan was to start with AI filling in places I couldn’t do, but then pledge that 100% of the first sales will go towards paying an actual artist/VA and replace the assets as soon as possible. That felt like a fair compromise.
And then I tried Suno. You see, as a programmer, my line of work isn’t really threatened by AI. Quite the contrary - it hinders the learning process of so many new programmer who will end up missing core skills, that it kind of increases my job security.
And since stuff like VA is something I don’t really understand, I mostly considered it as an asset that AI can temporally provide.
After trying Suno, which makes something I am passionate about - I’ve tried and failed for the past few years to learn instruments, and starting a band and making music is one of my so far unattainable dreams, it was so, so devastating. To see something you’ve actively struggled with, dreamed about, and made an effort for to overcome the challenges, unsuccessfuly so far, be overtaken by a literal three word prompt, making a better song I probably ever will - it’s so heartbreaking, demoralizing and awful. Which is something I haven’t realized when thinking about art I was not invested into, but now, thanks to Sunk, I see how it must feel for every artist, and I refuse to support any of it. It gave me determination and motivation to make the effort towards meeting people who do VA or assets I need, and collaborating, even if it postpones everything by a long time.
Fuck AI, and fuck this guy. The product may be useful and is pretty mindblowing, but it comes at a cost of making a lot of artists demotivated and miserable. Also, saying that “music is hard, people don’t want to” just adds salt to the wound, insult to the injury, and is really fucked up thing to say, after the product you’ve made affected and demoralized artists at large so much. Seriously, fuck that guy.
AI is also not very good at replacing artist or anyone if your standards aren’t in the Mariana trench. Best use of it is somewhat realistic clip art generation, otherwise it only generates a shitton of soulless stuff.
A version of generative AI with more human involvement would be closer to what I call “art”, but that is not what makes investors soyface over the tech, whose idea of art is “coming up with an idea”.
Its also terrible for originality. Itcan create a basic template, but that is all it will be. If you want to make music for your game, and you have a specific kind of theme and instrument in mind, you’d be hard-pressed getting that right with generative AI.
more like it’s one of the few things people still can enjoy.
For now…
Gross
Music, even the boring practice, is one of the few remaining joys in my life
This man needs to be sentenced to 10 years solitary confinement in a room with 100 electronically controlled vuvuzelas serenading him at all hours of the day and night.
I think one week of that will render you insane
I used to keep a piano keyboard next to my computer for loading downtime, and it was the least depressed days of my life.
Why not do it again then? Even a small keyboard might do.
I gave it to a relative that wanted to learn piano and I was too busy with work to sit at the comp/piano station, then never got around to getting another. I have a second hand seaboard now but I haven’t looked into setting it up or if it even works under linux
seaboard
This? That is… holy shit, really cool! I didn’t think there was anything beyond velocity and polyphony in terms of expanding the capabilities of what a keyboard controller could do. I kinda want one myself, now.
Also, LOL at the the other thing they sell that looks like a Theremin but actually uses computer vision to turn your hand gestures into MIDI commands. I don’t know what drugs that company’s product designers are on, but it’s the good shit.
or if it even works under linux
Well, when it comes to MPE devices (Seaboard, Linnstrument, Osmose, etc.) the MIDI spec is being… stretched.
the midi definitely works, the firmware updates was the mystery. worst case I have a shitbook laptop in the closet with windows for doing such updates
edit: I remember what i thought might not work. the original board and the minis of the same time period can connect over bluetooth but it sounded like it worked fine on mac os but windows was nearly unusable, and no linux users even knew about the thing. No idea if the seaboard 2 or the current minis have that fucntionality.
How long do you think it would take to set up?
realistically probably a month or two. I’ve been in renovation limbo and parts of the house are incomplete, and I still need to redo some of the parts that are done.
just setting it up though, maybe like 30min of research on the clock at work when nobody is looking and maybe about the same for the actual setup.
I can’t believe I’ve never heard of the seaboard before. Just looked it up and have straight up cartoon heart eyes about it. What a cool instrument! I’m used to playing on a regular keyboard and then spending hours editing the expression in my DAW (for things like synth, strings, brass, wind, etc). The concept of playing it that way to begin with is kinda blowing my mind.
I demoed it before I took it home. Its super cool. Its the original 25 key model which I suspect will end up making me want the bigger one fairly quickly. Hopefully I’ll have time for it soon.
I hope so too! It can be so challenging to find time for what makes us happy in this day and age, but gosh is it important.
I don’t have a Seaboard, but FWIW it shows up as a valid controller in the menu for Bitwig Studio under Linux, so it might not be hard to set up at all. Bitwig also has great MPE support, and if my Linnstrument is anything to go off of, you’ll have a ton of run with MPE on the Seaboard. :)
If it’s a midi keyboard, it should be pretty easy to get working. No problem if you got a DAW definitely, but I’m sure there are enough programs that can play piano sounds at midi input.
And midi is mostly just USB nowadays, so connecting should be easy enough.
If it’s not a midi keyboard, it should have its own speakers, otherwise what’s even the purpose?
I swear I wish I wasn’t so stupid.
I have Roland electric drums and I couldn’t figure that shit out to save my life. I finally plugged them into my old Mac and Logic Pro just did it for me.
Electric drums are not a piano though. Getting drum pads (or pads in general) to work correctly can be a bit weird.
I seem to recall that it was convention for all drum pads to always be on midi channel 11, so even if your device normally outputs in channel one, it does that. Maybe try to set it to that? But it’s a long time ago that I’ve worked with that so don’t quote me.
A Yamaha Reface is a lovely thing for just that.
It’s called projection…
Tell that to the $1700 guitar I just bought
Or the $600 guitar, $600 baritone guitar and $600 fretless bass I just bought. 🥴
Ahh but you have both fallen into the guitarist’s blunder. They get you to BUY the guitars, and amps, and pedals, but you do not use them to make music. Hence the CEO is right! Mwahaha
Now excuse me, a package from Sweetwater just arrived.I was able to successfully break free of this cycle lol… But I just know it’s still there waiting to bubble up again as soon as I see a nice Fender Jaguar that I want.
What kind of baritone for that price? The Danelectro one? Hagstrom?
I picked up a real nice baritone (a little pricier) a few years back and it’s pretty fun to fuck around on… Make sure to put heavier gauge strings on it if you can. I’ve also found that it sounds better coming from a bass amp than my tiny Vox.
Or the $200 guitar I’ve spent a small fortune to upgrade. Or the MIDI controller I’ve fixed and planning on turning it into a Jankó-style keyboard. Or the few software synths I’ve made for my game engine.
I totally suck at the piano/keyboard but I still enjoy it so much
