Fancy having AI Elvis singing on your next record? Getting an AI Lennon and McCartney on your album? Incredibly, you can. That’s how fast AI has moved. In this feature we’ll learn how it can transform your music production toolkit and become your dedicated creative co-pilot

Words: Andy Jones

The world of artificial intelligence is shifting so rapidly that, by the time you finish this feature – which could have been written by AI (but wasn’t!) – another cuttingedge app will be grabbing the headlines, promising a revolution in human society.

In music, this advancement of artificial intelligence has been so rapid that we get news every single day telling us about some new piece of software promising that its machine learning will benefit our and your lives.

In reality, this rapid advancement can be seen in extremes; if you look at recent developments it would be all too easy to read the headlines and believe that AI is absolutely terrifying. You can now, for example, visit websites and either get an algorithm to create an emulation of your own voice, which can sing anything, or use one of hundreds if not thousands of ready-made voices, many of which are unashamedly recreating famous singers and using their voices in your songs.

There are also many websites that claim to – and many can, because we have tested them – create entire pieces of music for you in any genre. Want a piece of dubstep/ambient/country for your next corporate video? A five minute online journey later, and you can download it… usually for a fee.

Then there are the many apps you can use to create beats, chords, melodies, mixes and masters. It’s frankly bewildering what you can do. But terrifying?

We understand that it’s easy to be scared by all of this rapid advancement in AI, but we’re here to show you how you can use it to your own advantage. As musicians we have been here before. Remember when the Musicians Union tried to ban synthesisers in the early ’80s? Remember when sampling threatened to undermine creativity? Or when Napster ended money for musicians?

These chapters in music technology ended up (mostly, anyway) as forces of good for music. Synths became their own instruments as opposed to classical instrument emulators and sampling became an art in itself. Downloads? Well that particular tech minefield is still unravelling, but our point is that musicians have generally used technology for the creative good, and that is where (we are hoping) AI will lead us. Not necessarily to some kind of musicians’

‘Hollywood-style’ strike but to even better music and greater opportunities.

In this feature, then, we’ll look at how AI can assist with song creation and explore the many creative AI apps that help you make better melodies, beats and more. We’ll have some thoughts on the future, for sure, but mostly we will find out how AI will help you and how best to embrace it. Time to look behind the fearmongering headlines, and make AI work for you!

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Where we are with AI (this second...)

It’s a fast-moving world out there in AI land, and one that is ever-shifting and hard to keep tabs on. But try not to panic and let’s look past the headlines to learn how it can be of benefit

It’s only around 18 months ago that we last featured artificial intelligence as a large cover feature in Computer Music. But looking back now, even that cutting edge report is now mostly out of date, so fast has the technology has been sweeping through every aspect of our everyday lives.

In music production, especially, AI seems to have been making the most rapid progress. Huge headlines have been made like when the band Breezer released The Lost Tapes Volume One, featuring their Oasis-style songs with an AI-generated Liam Gallagher vocal ‘singing’ on them. Liam described one of the songs as “mad as fuck,” but added: “I sound mega”.

The TikTok user Ghostwriter977 caused an even bigger stir with their AI-generated song, Heart on My Sleeve. It featured AI-generated lyrics and vocals ‘sung’ by AI version of both Drake and The Weeknd. It ultimately ended up being pulled from various platforms due to copyright issues.

Then there are the other AI-generated headline makers: an AI Rihanna covering Beyoncé, an AI Freddy Mercury singing Thriller by Michael Jackson. All great fun but all – if you think just a bit too much about it – absolutely terrifying. Especially if you are any kind of singer, either scratching a living as a session vocalist, or even one of the high profile originals.

In researching this feature, we’ve seen how many different strands of AI are impacting music production. There are the videos telling you how to recreate any kind of vocal – and then revealing that the commentary telling you how to do it was totally AI created!

And if you want a voice to sing, up until recently that has meant using a piece of software called SoftVC VITS Singing Voice Conversion. But it has now become even easier, and it’s safe to assume that the point where we can just upload some lyrics, choose a famous vocal style – or get an algorithm to learn a new one – is minutes away, if not here already.

Websites that are getting close to this include Voicify.ai and Musicfy.lol. They allow you to ‘create AI cover songs with your favourite voices’ and feature the likes of an AI Miley Cyrus, AI Adolf Hitler and AI Donald (it doesn’t say ‘Trump’ but the picture makes it pretty obvious). We’ll be looking in more detail at these websites later in this feature.

So what does this all mean?

For famous singers, it has already meant lawyers. When there is cash involved, this will always be the case. In the Ghostwriter977 case, most of the uploads have now disappeared as Drake’s record company UMG, became involved. There have also been several cases where high profile voices have been copied for use in promotions and adverts, without the permission of the original artist and the courts have generally found in favour of that artist.

But while there is some legal protection for the original artist, the explosion of social media – where many such AI-generated copies are or will be singing ‘hilarious’ songs to generate likes – means that there will be potentially thousands of such cases to deal with. Just keeping tabs on the sheer weight of AI songs could be several full-time jobs, and taking action on each and every one could be the stuff of nightmares.