The impact of artificial intelligence on composers.

The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into the world of music composition will revolutionize the way music is composed and experienced. The ability of artificial intelligence to create structured and complex works that resemble those created by humans is both exciting and terrifying. As artificial intelligence begins to take on more creative tasks for composers, it could change the direction of music development. This article examines how artificial intelligence is likely to affect composers and explores the positive and negative aspects of this pioneering technology.

The first steps

Today, the role of AI in music composition is not yet fully understood. Although there are already companies that generate complete songs (such as https://www.aiva.ai/), the quality of these solutions, while impressive at first glance, is not yet suitable for professional use. Then there's the OpenAI Jukebox project, which the company has put on hold for now, but it can create creative things. We can get it to generate completely new music from an existing song, or to make the singer sing something other than what was originally sung. So it seems that the application of AI in the music industry is still in its infancy, but it is clear that significant changes will take place within the next five years.

An uncharted territory

Where AI can make a big impact is not in generating music, but rather in the area where composers continue to create their own songs, but mixing software with AI support helps the composers' work. So, in the next two to three years, a smaller trial-and-error period is expected in this area. Automated EQ, automated volume and compressor usage. Although creating these software applications is more complex than those without AI, it is not impossible to program them, as they do not require significant data usage. The first major attempt at automation was in the Bitsonic Godlike mastering EQ, which automatically set the correct frequencies. This was taken over by the company iZotope in their own mastering software, which they then further developed. Today, Ozone heavily relies on deep learning technology, for example, in its Tonal Balance software.

So, the presence of AI is not devilish now. In the coming years, we will see more and more software appearing in this field.

On the other hand, the use of artificial intelligence in music composition also has negative connotations. Many feel that the application of artificial intelligence to music composition will lead to homogenization of pieces, and many compositions will sound similar, as they all use the same basic structures and algorithms. This can lead to a lack of variety in the musical palette and a general decrease in quality, as AI-composed-mixed pieces may lack the unique spark and creative mood of human-created pieces. However, there is no need to fear this in the next 10 years. The market is constantly changing and transforming, whether AI is present or not. Personally, I believe that artificial intelligence will rather help professionals to reach the end of a work process faster.