How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Music

mbone writes "Ever wonder how Jimi Hendrix would cover Lady Gaga? Whether you do or not [I'm guessing not], you may be about to find out. Writing for Wired, Eliot Van Buskirk describes North Carolina's Zenph Sound Innovations, which takes existing recordings of musicians (deceased, for now) and models their 'musical personalities' to create new recordings, apparently to critical acclaim (PDF). The company has raised $10.7 million in funding to pursue their business plan, and hopes to branch out into, among other things, software that would let musicians jam with virtual versions of famous musicians. This work unites music with the very similar trend going on in the movies — Tron 2.0, for example, will clone the young Jeff Bridges. If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors? In the future, it could be harder to make money playing guitar with all of the competition from dead or retired artists."

Comments

Re:It's a shame, but I'm ok with it

[theheadlessrabbit]

It'll totally be worth it if it gets rid of the Nickleback derivatives.

Since all Nickleback songs sound the same, does Nickleback count as a Nickleback derivative that will also have to be gotten rid of? That would be something all music fans can hope for.

Oh, and as a Canadian, I'd like to apologize to the rest of the world for Nickleback. We're not happy about them either. Sorry.

zenph does not play new pieces

[pikine]

Not to mention, currently all they do is to extract the timing of notes and the velocity of an existing performance from an old recording, and then play it using a player piano. Their technology doesn't play new pieces. From TFA:

As things stand now, Zenph’s technology looks at actual old recordings to find out how a performer played a certain song, and is not capable of figuring out how a musician would play a new part.

All they do is digital signal processing, not artificial intelligence.