Can AI make a hit song?
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Welcome to the verge cast, the flagship podcast of procedurally generated for on the floor. I'm in from David piers and this is the second episode in our three part series about ai. What we're trying to do in these episodes, not just talk about A I as a theory, or fast forward a dozen or one hundred years to when A I takes over the world and kills us all, but actually look at what A I is really doing in our lives right now.

This week we're gona talk about how A I is changing music, and we actually got started down this particular rapid hole while we were making last weeks episode about cloning your voice. Because in the making of that, we discovered this tool called voice ify that A I that claims to be able to train a model to sound not like you're speaking voice, but are singing voice. As far as I can tell, voice ify isn't really a production tool so much as IT is sort of a silly tool to let you make songs using voices like, I don't know.

sponge web be to dream high in the quite of night and or .

Michael Jackson voice.

Just like we always talked.

but you can also train IT with your own. So obviously that I had to test that. So I got out, my mike put on some headphones, and I spent about an hour singing a few of my favorite songs into a record.

I'm not going to play those recordings for reasons of my own embarrassment, but also because, trust me, literally no one needs to hear that. But the thing is, you're kind of about to hear my voice anyway. Or at least what voice fight that a think, think. I sounds .

like the process .

is kind of weird. You upload a bunch of stuff, a process is your voice, and then you just plug in a youtube R L. IT tries to extract the vocals, then sort of paste yours back in, and then we rate the song using your voice. It's monkey, but it's super fund and pretty quick. So without further to do, please welcome to the stage A I David piers singing, I want to hold your hand but people.

It's actually not bad, like I cannot stand the sound of my own singing voice, but that does kind of sound like me, I think at least until you get a little further into the song and then IT all just .

completely falls apart. You have you happy my side?

Okay, I could do this forever. We made a lot of songs, but i'll only do one more here. This is suspicious minds by l pressly A I.

David peers. I can walk out. Because I love you too much, baby.

can't.

Okay, let's just move on before this goes any further off the rails or everyone stop listening because of my voice. Let's bring in a couple of actual musicians to talk about how A I is changing the way we make music. My guests today are charly harding, a song writer and the co host of the wonderful podcast switched on pop, who has been on the show before. He is responsible for laser R.

R, who has worked with everyone from B.

T, S to marriage oblige to netflix in the NBA. Ian also runs a company called biscuit head collective, which works with artists of all sizes to make songs. So you could say A I is very important to both of these people and their livelihood going forward.

And I want to know how they're thinking about that right now and how IT fits in charly. Hearting, welcome back to the verge cast. Thank you about me. This just a light for having you back IT always gets weird when you're here, which is my favorite thing about having here is going to be, get word and people, welcome to the shell.

Okay, so I want to do this episode, two parts, talking about eyes, very complicated, because you end up having to talk about, like, the cool things that can be, and then the terrifying things about IT and then raw gna die and illegal all the same time. So we're just going to split those things apart. So for the first half to show, I want to talk like super practical how this that actually works, what you can do with IT your both professional musicians. I want to talk about like how this actually works, like in the world and then we're going to take a break, we're going to collect ourselves and then we're going to talk .

about our feelings. Yeah.

that's so good. Good at that. okay. So I gave you a some home work and we're going to get to IT in a minute and it's very exciting. But I think the first way I want to start is like if you're a working musician today in september twenty, twenty three, are you thinking about A I in your data day like at all right now?

I am as a music reporter, sure. But in terms of making music, I think we probably share this the only tool i've really used to assist in any part of the creative process in ChatGPT.

But even that is a limited interest. That's not. So how are you using IT right now where t GPT this arrival dictionary?

who? Okay, but IT hasn't come into my life very much. I mean, I wanted to bring in into this conversation because I feel like he kind of has I think he is the most skin in the game because on top of being a record producer, he's got you know, plant and records gram nominations.

He also runs a business where he will help you take your indie track and make IT like top forty professional style song. So there's anyone who probably cares about the world of A I replacing musical things like I know he's directly invested in IT. I'm current has how has A I been your life?

I mean, the number one thing to think about, at least when i'm jumping into IT is generally, you know we go back a couple decades and we're looking at people like going to tape and that kind of thing, and then we have things like VS s the plugging, replacing all that. So now we're getting into this new era of A I and like all these new technologies coming out, the number one thing i'm paying attention to is just trying to be current. I'm Young.

I mean, my twenty years, but the same time with all of this technology, we have to do IT like IT has the we always have to keep up with the times, otherwise we're gonna get left behind. But there is so many amazing functions going on inside of IT. And me being a music professional who is a musician that can play multiple instruments and programmed drums and all that kind of stuff, IT doesn't come in into my world as often as like a new music produce what OK.

Um just because of so many fresh right now trying to get in the game, you think you would be maybe more invested in .

figuring out some the I know how program drums there's you can just pull up this one VS that allows you to program drums with the hit of a button is automatically reads your tempo. Um you can set the vive that you want and then you got drums and then you click the back again and then you have a variation of that. And IT, is there so many tools at creating to really save time? And also in the learning process, it's a bigger jump.

It's a lock quicker. So it's allowing new music producers to be able to jump on away quicker. But that being said, the thing I only really use in my professional life would be ChatGPT for the same reason. Rinning dictionary, all that stuff, not as much for me sometimes the lyric editing um to see if I can make pull something Better out of IT not as often but the most i'm actually using IT for is writing well converting business emails like that's the top of 这个 i've using that that's your head album while converting business .

business yeah exactly let's make that。

But yeah, it's the top thing of music for as this time it's you know it's the side bar. The music industry is the business of the music industry, but it's something that's very important for somebody like me who's trying to afford to live in new york.

you know yeah for sure. So is there is there anything that feels like you would love to offload part of the process to A I where I feel like everybody in who does sort of Normal death jobs is like love the eyes because I can write their emails, right? And like the kind of thing that is like, this isn't really my job, but it's a thing I have to do is part of my job. So like, terrific, if I can offer. So that amazing were .

talking yesterday, a jealous ian, because he has a team of people that work with him to help him do all the rapture, which is really boring. So crapping a mix session takes forever. You have to cut out all the silences.

You have to get everything in the right order. You have to color the tracks, tuning vocals, lining things. A lot of things do have creative choices that happened in them, but there can be just dozens of hours a week of prep work that usually handled by an assistant or an engineer.

And I don't finish songs often because i'm like, I don't want to spend my entire day doing all this prop work, which not only slows me down, but IT also IT drags me down as well. Like IT puts me in a creative whole where what I need to do is just like to get right into my creative state. But I have to do that five hours into staring at my computer. So there's a lot of things that I would love for you to automate.

And at this point, it's not replacing anything on doing or my assistance are doing. But there is technology now coming out that is helping with IT, but I think we're just on the verge of that. Um I saw one last week that sorry, talk about the stamps of a song of the different instruments and vocals and everything.

And if someone you know a lot of times we will get IT from the producer, the artist, and nothing will be labeled. So we have to go through and listen to every single one and others in new technology where you can enter in your stems and you can name exactly what they are and you can choose how they're named and everything like that. So at this point, there is new technology coming out that can really save us a lot of time, say my assistance in particular, a lot time. But IT, we're just on the verge of that, which is personally really exciting .

for me and is important because like if you are mix the artist, jacket collar, grammy winning artist and what is the a small session of is like four hundred and five hundred tracks, right? So if those haven't labelled, you have four hundred to five hundred tracks, I apple literally expand the number of tracks there. G A W logic can have because he was feeling like he was, uh, hamstrung by the number of track you could have. So you can have these huge sessions. If things are unlabelled, I mean, you could take IT an entire day just to get things set up properly so you can make .

some that's really good people. I mean, that is kind of the like the work about the work and that's so much of A I like we talk about this even with like what google and microsoft are doing, where it's like you can't do your actual sort of meaningful work Better, but you can turn an access prettied into a powerpoint deck more quickly. And that's where we are with A I and a lot of places, I think, and that's that's finding good.

But yeah, I just feel like there's there's a leap away before IT starts being more than that. Like do you feel like you're in a moment of exceptio business questions about like how do I do this job? We're going to get a much more that .

the first tty? No, it's definitely I am not worried at all, nor should anybody in my company be worried about like you know for it's just miniscule task at this point. There is, you know those things rolling through my head like, okay, we have the stem technology to read the stems so that means you know A I can't hear critically but I can like read waves and all that kind of stuff to really understand what's going on.

So IT can tell what different elements are. You can reference things that sounds good. And then I could like mix your song in a way that sounds good. And you know, it's that is not at a point we are at right now that technology has been made.

But I see IT in the future for possibly being able to automate some of the bigger jobs that we have, which is the data set that you need in order to create. That would be incredible. You know, total.

yeah. So music is is what music creation, though a big business is. Often a lot of all the company is that serve the music professionals.

There are small businesses, meaning some of them are multimillion dollar shave. But you know if you look at like the synthesizer companies, they're like a dozen people. They're using really old technology from the seventies. Often there are handful of certainly music technology companies that are working in AI, but they don't have the resources of google, right? In fact, some of the tools that we've used for fun have been created by google as outside throw projects.

And so one of the big problems, I think, in serving music professionals is large, good data sets that might exist for, you know uh, helping us make powers points because how many powers points exist, but getting access to good data. I mean, I remember the verge had an amazing article written by A A former journalists here, the any deal who talked about the meddle, a problem within music. And just like people don't submit the meta data to the streaming services for you to then know how to get paid. So there's just like the data problem is always to a significant problem through the muses or broadly making tools that are built off of that training data for our subset that fairly nh industry, i'm skeptical and expect the best tools probably being things that are appropriated from the larger tech companies got IT.

Okay, right? So that the super primitive nature of all this makes me very excited for what about to happen, which is that I basically told you I wanted to talk about some of the specific tools that are out there and how they're using them. And the two of you went like several orders of begins to beyond that. And you just made A I music is essentially my understanding of .

what happened here. We made music using A I tool. okay? I want to walk .

through this whole process. I want to hear the thing that you made. I have not heard any of this. Very excited. But before you get into how was this, you did this with, like, very little notice or time.

Has this? Was this? Like, was this fun? Was this awful? Was this, did you make the worst thing you've ever made in your lives and you hate IT forever? Like.

how did you feel? I feel in you make stuff just every single day. How different for you? I'm curious.

I'm so happy I was doing you with him first. A lot other people, this would have been so frustrating, but I felt like out a broken leg the whole time. It's slowed down the process.

And it's not just like figuring out these tools and how to use them. It's how to like we had to restart manipulate audio in a way after after using the AI to actually get IT to fit in correctly, which was, you know, so time consuming. It's like one of the tools we used was just to create a simple base, which was just a sign wave.

And I could pulled up a plugging and done IT three seconds, but in order to try and create a sign way of using some of these things that took us ten minutes, you know, so is just a slow process, is going through the entire thing. And, you know, it's really fun getting started. Ideas and little things that I personally wouldn't think of and pulling nose in. But using IT for the entire process was very inhibited. I believe that yeah I mean.

learning any new tool is always going to slow you down like with any studio tools. Well, like if you ve got new equipment in the studio, you spend and learning IT. So there we were held back by using new things while trying to be creative at the same time.

That said, most of the material that we put together would have been a lot of are affected ative. Just use the existing tool sets that we already have. So that was a fun exercise, uh, a set of constraints and a fun excuse to hang out and make a song together.

Let's so let's let's do you walk me through like, so you sit under you this where do you even? Where do you start?

Well, I had done a little bit of research the night before to make sure. And, you know, I I cover music. And so I had a list of things I was curious about expLoring.

And we thought that we should probably begin with an idea, right, like typically a good so long is gona have some kind of hot, some of core ideas going to guide, so that we know which direction to go. And we figured we could use ChatGPT, which is the that maybe the top of the final. Everyone knows that.

Let's see if we can use that for some sort of create a purpose. And so I came into the room I have been talking about. I've just started a teaching position, which I was found for me of teaching music school, and I actually didn't finish my music major.

So there is kind of this like impostor sa that I have of going into class every day and teaching something where I kind of drop that major. And so I thought, let's go that idea and I think you win a little further. And like, how about let's let's take you to like, just to feel like nap belonging and so you may meet, you have a way of prompting ChatGPT in that is sophisticated and results in some. I don't find IT sophisticated.

but thank you. Yeah, so especially he had the impostor. And my idea, I was thinking like, okay, what can we make this more standard, strong, core, liberal content wise? And so what we what I thought I was like, okay, I have in posture syndrome and in posture synergy with somebody else, you would be really easy to jump in to a relationship.

So I prompted a little bit relationship, and I also prompted IT with I have in posture syndrome being in musical or in any world with A I also there, I feel like it's Better than me. I feel like I can do Better than me. So a lot of, you know the nouns and things like that, there were verbs and everything we were like, electrical, techy stuff like that.

which obviously, right, like a multiparty raph long proms that is like you have this way of just kind like it's maybe that will prompt resting in creative things and and I think we came to deal like we will like this long to be maybe from the perspective of an AI that has imposter syndrome trying to exist in the world, and has an amazing studio in mid town that that has there are on the eighth floor with this giant window that overlooks the empire state building.

So we had to make IT also set in new york. So we sent that prompt and we got back garbage. He used ChatGPT three point five.

I used four. I think four is must be the more creative. And so this is what we got from our just first verse after this day. Prompt woke up today, in a word so bright, but shadows form beef, the city lights, you're soaring high while I remain tied to the ground by invisible chains. Starting a song with walk up today is got to be the most clear way of beginning a song and off.

off, off broadway show.

And so the real chAllenge here is IT does write. You have the most cliche kind of lyrics, very obvious. And rimes bright lights remain chains as kind of actually made a slant rime.

But it's really bad at, like multi slab c rimmed, which is what makes you know a great verse, uh, strange ryme schemes and things like that. We were also upset that I was kind of vae, good song, are gonna some specifics like you want the red scarf and a tailor with died you through the entire narrative. And so we tried a different approach.

I borrowed this song rating tool from jeff tweet of welcome, and he's got this idea where you want to hack your brain and put together unlikely parings of words are often where you find interesting new meaning. So I said, give me, this is one of the the exercises. Give me ten verbs that are about imposter syndrome, and then give me ten nouns that are objects in new york city.

And I started giving me more interesting poetic things, including intruding skyscrapers, shattering street lamps, looting new stands, tampering taxes as that. Okay, we'll take some of those and try to, 呃， some lyrics. So IT gave me this first entreating skyscrapers piercing the night and their looming shadows.

We tried to find the light, sneaking subways, silent cries, the echo, or in different lanes, waiting for the metro. Now, Better, not Better. We liked metro, although clearly nobody in new york city calls the subway, the metro news.

Subway kind of works from the, the subway. And then.

so then I was like, we need more specific things. So I then prompted IT further, like, but can you give me some specific places in new york city? Now we go down the rabbit, updated to inshoot skyscrapers, the empire might by the flat iron building, we first saw the light sneaking subways beneath the central park. By the the bethesda's race we lost our Spark .

and you immediately start .

singing remember ah the issue yeah .

he was so like incredibly specific or like get you know I I I love an actual place, something tangible you know like I put the word bowling in so many of my songs are ridiculous but not every line yes yeah. So we kept prompting .

and kept prompting and trying to get Better material out of IT, and I just wasn't working. And so we decided to go with. And what was the second prompt? The one that used that very exercise is really good at uh, reducing bad yorick that spend some time to time and make them know more.

Snl, so we knew we had something he could work with. I think my favorite AI tool actually, that we use the entire time. I'm assuming ing I I I don't know, was he took a picture of my computer screen with the lyrics on IT and apple automatically you can identify the text, and he happy and pace the text from the picture into an apple note and IT IT. I think .

most the .

best was the best.

So and I I think .

most the tools I had, where are the things that often market their aist the least. So I don't know if there is some sort .

of machine learning .

or we ve got an idea, we've got some rough lyrics, we need a vibe. And so we went hunting for sounds. And the first place we went was A A web cycle suno sono is kind of like the mid journey for music.

They have a discord server where you can enter a prompt and it's going to spit out rather than a picture. Like mid journey is going to spit up music, and it's, I believe, fully synthesized music, including lyrics and vocals. So can I play what we got, please? OK where into a smelter ing? In the sounds, we entered the first verse that, including skyscrapers, reverse and necessary, gave us.

Including by. The night. Ming shadows.

I was like, okay, I like the nokia ring term. We're going .

to use that and we've .

got some vocals. So all of was in this isn't being degraded at all through the listening progress here. This is the full of audio qualities. It's basically the exactly okay.

And then I actually just like majority, we'll give you alternatives. So IT gave us us us other track as well. And this one we thought was .

kind .

of trash, but IT has, yeah.

we like this little sort of. Now we have the problem that we want these individual pieces of material to play with. So we go to a website called audio shake dot A I, and they will stem your preexisting music for you.

When you're all separated. Audio will take that track. And that gives us the vocals, the mole piano, if we from the first one, and and some like other stuff, and then you can listen the individually.

So this seems like the kind of think that I could even be useful for lots of things in the world, but not really in the music making process. Like are you often pulling stamps out of existing things when you're making music?

What I mean generally that's .

against copyrights.

A people use IT for remixing， so so especially when like it's a really old song and so you do have the rights for a big name. Is that actually using this .

tool to build to get the stems from next tiktok OK?

So slated voice.

okay, right.

And we a little fun. Ref, this, a little city thing. I like my my note. OK, so that's the first sound we assemble. We've got sono.

We also pull p that thing .

from the bad country song. Yeah, we got that as well. Alright, so we got those sounds. I then just want to make a ton of other, we will make music for you, A I sites, making me back and to keep standing stuff. And a lot of them are really be bad.

The quality of music that we were getting back would not fit like top forty pop kind of vibe. There are much more like background advertisement sort of mood music. But we figured maybe we could know, get inspired by one. And so we went to a place called sound fall and heard this music, which I think sounds like a farmer ad.

Side effects include and try now .

yeah exactly. And we're like, okay, so we we took this audio shake and we got the piano. Okay, the quality is not great, but this guys a wizard, and we knew he could do something with that.

When we play with that, weve got a few more sounds. We went to supply is one of the biggest libraries of samples, and they have a new tool that will automatically pair different samples together for you. I sort of like a starter OK.

And we went to their beta, A I tool, and they made this sound for us. These are four different examples. This place just kind of rally put together and we thought sounded kind of like a really bad phone call again.

Yeah.

like you're aon waiting. I just but we like the kick drum.

So we'd ve got a kick drum drum.

You had a sample of your own and has a professional producer, has a bunch of starter sounds that he can bring to any session, just like getting is going creatively. But we had to figure out how to process something he'd already made through a AI. And so there was a tool by a company called output called arcade that will automatically take example and play IT back to you with some kind of A I tool that will make some creative .

choices with listening and shopping. Arcade also does a creative function where you can set the key and IT looks at the temple. K, and then I will give you sounds that could work.

It's not using any kind of learning technology in this case, but they have a new portion where you can input a sample. IT learns that sample figures out where to chop IT and then place IT back to you. And creative chops, I see. okay.

So here's the chops that they gave us.

All right now we have a selection of sample, basically, we have lyrics we have collected, our pains we got to now puts together, and all in different keys, all in different time. I think that whole process took us like two and a half hours of getting all that material, and just like getting something to work with.

And .

me.

very moody. We were thinking.

moody. We actually made, and we did make a little reference, players of artists that maybe could inspire the vibe we definitely wanted. Moody piano was on there. We wanted a sort of mid tempo, happy, sad walking through new york in the rain kind of thing at night but it's like neon all around, right? That's the vibe ah and with all that prompt, we probably could have written a solar war two in the of time that I took us to collect these sounds which are very low fy and need a lot of process that takes some good so in takes first the piano and gives us this ref the the piano from sono.

People sound for actually.

Which you sounds a whole lot Better than.

Yeah because that we start.

And then I think we have this like interesting we have those like Sparkly sound effects.

We tell them .

together.

And then .

we had that big drum.

IT took us pretty half hour to process the sounds that actually sound Better than they initially did. We thought, okay, that sort of like a precis corus. Now lets see for other sounds, let's make a verse. And one of the issues, we didn't have a base and we were trying to limit ourselves to only the sounds that we had our disposal. So we took this tiny little sample from sono again, you know, the sort of majority like.

and I turned that .

into a big sound.

Like a space, space like staring a feeling.

Basic, I put that out to a sample. I processing a budget, different things to IT to give us some kind of be something. And I think use the same sample and to make this as well.

And just took so from that one to another one, we just had this run IT through like three plugging.

And yeah okay, so and we have one more sound which was k remember which one .

this came from OK.

And so kind of all those things together give us a verse vibe.

And then I think there's other little chirpy sound.

The piano.

Sounds like there's got a texture. I think that some kind of like the nokia ring turn is probably the metaphor for me. It's like those really bad mp three that you definitely didn't unload off of gaza or npr, you know twenty years ago. That's kind of the quality that they came.

Yeah there's that one that that kind of makes you want to like peel your head phone off just to make sure it's like not you didn't blow your speakers .

ah so the next thing is okay, we now we have a vie, we have some lyrics. We've got to put together some kind of top line. We need a Melody gonna on top. This is where I think we gave up on trying to use an airedale. I just like .

in get .

the booth.

Under the city lights .

nobody he kind of has saved the lyrics I will say I think intruding skye scrapers is a terrible opener to very wordy .

ah intruding skyscraper.

This isn't obviously. So we build a whole bunch of Melody ideas, pair them with these lyrics, inputs on a whole side of vocals, the entire song. The more interesting thing that is, we can't use his voice.

We have to use someone else's voice. So we send this through voice swap that A I. If you want to release a track with them, they will actually allow you to license their professional singers. This is one of the few tools that has actually made pretty high quality tools, specific s for musicians.

So they're actually generating models like with specific musicians. And then you can play your own stuff in and get there generated.

if you like, that for a couple hundred dollars, basically. So this is .

for journalistic demo purposes.

You have not heard the court.

You're alright. I don't. Below in, this is intruding.

That's IT perfect, alright. So we send his voice through the voice model.

In truth, skyscraper night loving shadows, no IT sounds very process .

and affected, because we intentionally took his auto to and vocal. And the model, we want this to sound like at my B. N. A.

we did not. More robotic.

yeah. We didn't want you to sound natural. That was the goal. I probably voice office, I suppose, to the best of doing this, but we try to hack their thing to give us bad quality material back.

There were a few other small tools we use at this point. I mention that google a has a handful of projects, one called magenta, where they will edit middle data. That's basically, you know, the programme language that musicians used to input music into their their software.

And we had made this little rythm on our own. Just that. And what magenta would do is IT will give you variations on. So IT gave us this.

okay. I mean, one of us going to done this.

but we figured how many these tools are doing .

of roughly the same thing for you. It's like, I mean, they basically all ChatGPT you say like here's a thing, give me other versions of this thing and it's it's able to do that with sort of some level is come. But there are so many moments in this process that seems like where you've said like, okay, we need to put all these pieces together.

or we need to are from touching, get somewhere and these or somewhere. But if you ask me, can you like, go interpolate and make me an interesting little top percussion moment? Like this would be faster the program, but I used magenta to make us at all.

It's intentionally buried in the back of the track and there's a um artificial tape plugging in to sound like like a tape machines that's trained off of a neural net that we put in here to the process for me by baby audio. Finally, I can play the whole thing into second. We put the whole song together.

And there's a company called iced hope that, uh has a mixed master assistant tool h. Their mixing tool is called neutron. And that will go on every single track. And you can basically say, hate mix, this track for me, and at the end, the full master track, you put ozone and same thing. Rather than mixing a master in the song ourselves, we just hit the mastery ist, with a license that I was on that I so talk give .

us for to make this。 And I specifically is pretty widely used, right? I don't know .

how much I and this is a great example of like the AI marketing around to ozone, tiny little slice of that being used for. And I think they're .

mostly chasing after the people who are doing the top of the top work and know the sounds so well and just want to make a really big help tool in order to jump on. They don't want to necessarily take someone from like zero percent to ten percent. Yeah, yeah.

yeah. So anyway, don't hear the track. So we got.

this is, I don't belong panta .

is in two skyscraper woman shadows on the city lights. The echo waiting for the metro. Well, in passing five cape, try to make you mind with every gLance walking street, where do.

right? We're going to take a quick break and they are going to come back and talk more about this, but we're going to let this play us out.

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right? We're back. We brought in any light. Tel, hi, I I. Hey, what's up? It's time to talk about our feeling. But first I want to know you are sitting in the control room listening the sun. What do you think that the big.

I think someone needs to go and move those into the pocket early. The stare was early. That's like I can't hear anything beyond that and that just that just me oh.

i'm confident .

there .

are more to it's really hard for .

my musical representation on the show of the it's .

very for me so do .

you do you listen to that and think like, is there anything in that that's .

interesting to you? And so the more i've done this, the more I produce music for, like so many different people, the more i've really that I do make bad music and that's okay, and that's onna go right into the trash can and that is just fine. I'll make a Better one tomorrow.

And you know, is really fun using all these tools. But I would take me more time to go into this and try and save stuff from IT. Then I would just be to make a new song yeah yeah.

My own feeling that AI in general is IT is a canon of c plus content. And if you point canon of c plus content at any business model, something happens. And that song like it's a that song is like a king in last of sea plus content.

I think the biggest problem was that we use that piano, which came from what sounds like like a farmer add. And so we started IT from a terrible source materia. I'm never when we were when you were working with IT, we're like we're not going in the right direction.

What are we going to do? And I was like we got to make the the verse has got to be minor because it's too happy. And I just like we ended up making like slightly Better remixed form of music yeah so I don't know.

I mean, can you listen the rain? It's not not what .

the kids .

ah okay.

So the piece of this that I think is left to talk about is the like this means like the capital of feelings about all of this, right? And I think now we spend a lot of time in the show talking about like what I does to these industries in how we use them. But i'm especially curious, like, and we talk to look bit about this at the ginning, but like as people who make music professionally, we're in this moment where I think most of these tools are not very good. Many of these tools are useless, as we were talking about at the beginning.

But like there are a lot of people who would tell you we are on the road to this stuff becoming a part of life, right? And I guess the first thing I want there is like the stories of technology helping us make music goes back forever, right? And there's like there have been these sort of moral panics about auto tune and the idea that you can make drums on your computer instead of having to play drums and everybody gets up in arms about that. Like is A I different from those things? Or is IT just kind of another technology on the spectrum of how we make music, which is a forever changing thing?

I don't think this is any bigger of a step that we've had in the past just because a lot of the AI technology, uh, that we have is just doing little steps if you really look into IT. So we have like spice that has every loop under the sun that I can just drop into my song and I can or cannot work, but I instantly have a great quality, let's say, drama recording.

And then you have uh, programs like drum monkey, which he uses A I M not actually sure how because i'm pretty sure I just reads the B P M of the song, which is incredibly easy to do. And then you choose the join where you want, and then you hit, generate. And that gives you a trump sample pattern, and you can IT generate again and will give you different trump sample pattern.

And to me, that's kind of no different. Going on space and going through those sounds and picking one from there, it's automatically sinking up right away. So you can hear IT quicker. But there isn't a giant step anywhere in music that I ve seen, at least.

But there are great analogy. Gy, you would be like the release of drama. Ines, in the ninety eighties.

Like originally, these things were made to be like demo devices, maybe replaced the drama, and a lot of them were completely not. There are failures. The most important sound and contemporary popular music is probably role in T.

R. A. away. The drive machine that was a failure ended up in pn shops. And early hip p. Producers start thinking, well, that's a cool sound. If I, if I was appropriate and using these different ways, and I mix IT in interesting ways, this thing which sounds kind like a toy, actually sounds amazing. And IT took decades for these uh, in rejected devices than to become the mainstream sound.

I think what will be most interesting are the weird sounds that you can get out of these tools, kids in their basements figuring out how to this use them, at least of the state we are today, create new, interesting, create material. But this is mostly a really chAllenging exercise, with the exception of I, top schools are very useful, very useful. I mean, we use those every day.

professional. Anyways, apple's iphone is very useful. And ChatGPT was mild that useful.

All you know, you brought a auto tune and the panic over auto tune. It's important to just remember when auto to first hit is an effect. They lied about IT because the stigma was so incredible, so believed by share.

They overdid the automaton, and there are articles upon articles for the producers of that song, just invented other lives. It's a claim that they had done something that was not used auto tune on share, because they were so worried about the stigma of having used the software. And now it's like everyone, she's at all the time.

And I I think we're in that moment with A I line across the board creatively or no one wants to cope to IT, but it's just gonna be in the background of all these tools that we're using all the time. And the question is, can you makes something that sense different or great? And I think the worry is that you're going to type in pop song and get that and they owe me all the music. And okay.

I feel slightly insulted. Just to be clear, we, you prompt that actually watching to make something over about two hours that was song IT song ish.

Yeah, yeah, you know.

using only A I tools. And yeah, I IT was very chAllenging to make anything. I just let us in strange directions.

But I think that as big of a hit is believe, oh, I know.

I want to get .

out there. You have a good day. How about so you?

And if somebody walks into your studio and is like, I have the beginnings of something I made IT entirely with A I are you gonna roller is and kick them out of the studio.

Now I take demos from artists all the time. So a lot time we will do stuff from scratch. But generally more was stuffed like they've already had the guitar part in the vocal and that kind of thing. And yeah, there's no stigma behind any of IT. You know there's a bigger stigma, I think right now with using full samples, then there is using uh, any kind of A I tool where if all of my drums are from one like drum sample loop, people are like, oh, you could have been more creative than just go on spice and drag that in. That's more staging than .

like using an A I tool at this point. That's really interesting. So and what about the like? I was just thinking this with that vocal that has got to feel weird for you uploaded your voice to a piece of software that spit back your singing in somebody else's voice.

And I feel like I wonder about that creatively with all of this stuff. Obviously, there's big copyright questions about who owns a voice and can you make a song with fake straight that counts. But I wonder, like it's gotto feel weird to hear that out in the world, whether you're drake or you like listening to someone else, seeing your song. That was just your voice, thirty seconds. What does that feel like?

I mean, for me, I like my voice, so i'd rather just stick with my voice. But coming from I work with so many uh, vocal producers and producers in general, top eline writers that do not like their own voice at all and they have to manipulated tune a lot to go to the point they would like to get IT to.

So if you're not a fan of your vocal tones, but you can get your point across in a recording, then you can change out your voice with something like this. And a lot of the work I do is i'll create a fop e, i'll put on the top line myself, the lyrics, mity and everything, and now send IT to an artist with the pitch. And if they like the song, they're remove my top line and put there is on and keep everything else. So essentially, you know, you don't have to keep the AI generated voice, but IT gives a reference .

for a pitch situation, and people feel uncomfortable their voice. There have been hacks that we've used for decades, whether that's river and compression or often times, in fact, when you were in the booth, the very common thing to do when you're trying to improve SE Melody in top line over a beat is you just put on auto tum almost a max and IT lets you be loser and freer. And so I think there's actually is something liberating about being I don't feel good about ice, but I know I can make song and I can make IT sound Better if I just knew work in massage with these .

tools I had you feel like you're singing voice, yeah.

Two, three, four.

Know I was in the pink in college. Tish, straight driggs son did IT ministry and i'm going to do IT too and that I was the road was, you know, you said those computer issues, they are aren't though that's actually the thing, right? That your voice is is not protected in that way.

There is like a hand full of laws at the state level that might protect IT, but none has ever been tested. And the real question is not, can I sign into a computer and habit sound like whoever, so I can send IT to someone else and I can it's, can I distribute that and tell everyone IT was drake right? Or tell everyone that that sound like to drake?

I am precious. We can release any part of what we made more because of a licensing issue is rather than copyright issues because some of these tools you use probably have some kind of license that needs purchase to be able to then you use some of their sounds. And and we did not do all that perfectly.

I promise you that I would bring up the song. Song is a sort, the version. what? What's fascinating about the music in the street now, charland, I have talked about this lots of times, is that the norms inside the music industry, about sample usage, about interpretation, about all the stuff, have almost nothing to do anymore with copyright law.

So I know this fact about thongs song, and I will come back to IT over over again. Cisco is not owned the publishing to the songs song because he said, live in in love to yoka in that long one time in us and rick Martin song or came and took and makes all the money return. That song is place that's ridiculous to me. Tea pain, I think that just this week revealed the heels, almost none of the publishing to buy you drank because there's only little quotes in IT and all of those people .

came from and they took us publishing .

are just like we're going to we've built this other system. And if you just describe that to you, it's like if you just whisper the phrase live in my to look like Ricky mart appears and that takes your money away is that's not right? Dos IT doesn't sit with me anyway. And I think this A I stuff is going to lead to like a supercharged version of that work, like the computer is automatically giving Ricky Martin money because been trained that seems like IT will fall apart. Well.

IT seems IT seems similar. He goes one of two ways where either those norms become really, really, really aggressive and careful, and everybody becomes very teachers about everything like you talk you about or IT close the other way. And we end up in this place where IT sort of nobody owns anything. It's just like pure anarch and cases because you don't know. But we're going to get .

to this point now.

I mean, everyone is going to really, at the beginning.

describe a cruel and shallow money trench like we want to.

This with ChatGPT here right now, right where it's like they are leg. Oh, this sounds like the book that I read or that I wrote and open a eye is just like, who's to say and IT just just like we're putting so many black boxes between I made something and something else exists that is kind of similar to the thing that I made that I wonder if it's just going to get harder and harder to understand experience and where all this stuff came from and what counts a sample and whose responsible and where I need, just like I I suspect.

But you can do this is the thing that I that gives me the most uncomfortable feeling because they're not gonna not try and they going to they're already trying really hope that you to, as a seal universal, which chemosis terrifying to me. And we've already built this bizarre system. Where truly can we talk to a Olivia reggy as handing up publishing credits on epo, where Olivera is like, fine pair, more going to have a credit, even the Price right?

Or like the Taylors .

of the tailor really shaking. And it's like the industry is decided, they don't inside the family, they're back going to fight, right? And the famous people will just like collect the money from new artists and you just keep spinning that up with a and like, oh, actually the Richard just can get richer here. And what ways that I think distance centilibres anyone from trying to make anything new like you might as well in that case, then just try to flip samples as creatively as possible and hand the money back out, right? And that that's the feeling here that it's like the music industry is response to A I is to become even more corporate in a way that just makes me like I got an old punk rocker like that seems like not what you should do yeah, you should like the kids should revolt against all of that. And like Olivia era, that should be like definitely paying you.

But in the same way the industry is, i've known this is getting a lot polymer and some ways, and I realized when we think about that, I might not look that way. But you know, when I have writing section with people now theyll be four people in a room, and lets say three of us to ninety percent, not ninety nine percent of the work, and the other person lays one day snowdown. That's four equal split on publishing.

And I can see you the same way with you know, you're anticipating the lawsuit that is going to have to be a payout regardless. And like all of this stuff, just to make IT go away, like there's definitely that side of that's why you add the credits initially. But it's more so just like A I know a peace offering of kindness to be like here take this and IT is cool seeing people like you know hire up artists that are handing out to like lower level artists, these publishing credits and that kind of thing to so I don't know the way I think about IT is getting polite ter, but yeah, when we thinking about A I in the industry is corporations.

yes, and then it's automated. That's the thing that gets me. It's like, okay, some artists are handing out some credits as they go through a writing session.

Okay, like, I don't know how you feel about Ricky Martin, but like, yes, to know that happened right? On the flip side, it's like, okay, I made a sign using A I apply into youtube. Youtube is like drake gets a piece of this.

I don't make switch on pop video versions for youtube because the content ID sym is such a pain I don't want to do with that, because I will demonology everything if to fight everything. Yes, even for journalist purposes, if you use any corporate material, which is absolutely fair, use youtube, which just as its own government, right with its own set of I is not actually a copyright issue, which is a set of private contracts between corporate holders with youtube that has a system you have to go through that is its own court. Yeah and it's just such a pain that I don't deal that and i'd rather .

just take talk truly you are watching before like you didn't do this process of making all this stuff in the most sort of like upstanding pay everybody who should weigh uh but like you left a trail that every one of these services knows about.

Right and and to your point, as they get Better at doing things like having deals with record levels and stuff like IT may be true that that money just like slowly starts to disappear every time you open a new APP. And right now, this this is happening like in discords. And like one of the most popular things is like it's in a google drive and you just upload your file to a google drive and then download IT from a different google drive.

And it's like that is fine and gonna a be hard for anyone to figure out how to make money off of. But eventually, if this stuff gets Better as quickly as people think it's going to, it's going to get CoOperates to they're gonna these same deals. And then all of a sudden, as you make music, you're just going to leave these .

like red drums. And the claim to have waterMarks within them so that they could identify automatically with with systems if you have properly licensed.

Do you believe them?

You know.

I like the abc used to drive around london with a truck that can detect TV tennis if you didn't pay the fee. And I think the question .

is how good do A I get a tracking those things down for them because it's a paint to to enforce. But I think enforcement of copyright will get significantly easier. I mean, there are people making very effected D R M tools that can basically track every mission of copyright on instagram.

Um people just because instagram is basically a one giant copyright cluster, right? People are taking people's in electrical property all the time and reposing IT without permission. And no one is really enforcing IT because it's difficult. But there are companies that can help you .

do so if you want to. But is also my naming because so I I put out the on there was one hundred percent or I wrote IT. I did everything on IT. I had one hundred percent of master, hundred percent of publishing. I put a tiktok video out using the audio, and the audio got .

removed .

for copy rate.

Ah but this is showing all these .

auto systems .

have some err.

And just take, did you have any? Did they tell you? What .

did you do raw?

Stay this.

This is why, actually, like music, we can't make music anymore because .

it's so little ous build these systems of this weird understanding of who gets paid in, why inside of IT. And the answer is, because you exist and you might to us and then the air rate in the system makes its a new artist, can not put their own music and it's like that's something that's just definitely that the wrong outcome you make. I'll give me the the blood lines example like you open an A I drum program and you know give me a Marvin gaye yeah and the state of Marvin gay is like that sounds too much .

like any song .

right now where you could prove that A I made IT and that you like like counter .

soon I just think like that's the that's the feeling I get with all the stuff is once you just add this much software to the creative process and the pressure on the software is to do automated enforcement or automated credits or to not do things to protect you. It's like, oh, we've just pushed creativity in the one tiny little box. I honestly throw .

this conversation and so wondering, like what is even the point of using any these tools? Because in music this point, there's just no scarcity. If you want to sound IT exist, you can get IT for a free or cheap.

If you want professional l level tools, you can use them with a decent computer. Uh, there are free tools available to make very high quality music. Like if you access to go to this process again, using only one hundred dollar guitar and elegance that we're free off the internet.

we were making much Better. So just band lab. So the ban lab docotor tirely free. And anyone can use IT.

I get a just pick loops and you drop up in and manipulates, so makes them fit together. I've taught ban lab to eight year old children, and they had IT like that. So so easy. Use so and it's free and everything is yours. It's entirely royalty free to .

why we don't need these tools to make music for us unless there is nothing like the amateur who's trying to learn or wants to express something I think is certainly interesting. But as working professional, it's kind of like if you want the high quality sound, you're not getting IT from these things. So why even like deal with the future headache, but like discussing put yourself in that world?

Yeah, yeah. This is just at the bottom of the curve though. I mean, this is a example like, I didn't work for that workflow and then the stuff got discarded. People who not part of the gate cap system, like we're going to use of her thing and I became a dominant sound like, right, that's the procure here.

There is also the like, this idea that culture radical shifts and that all we want is completely individualized art, which doesn't seem very human. But perhaps that happens. And then like that, we all make our own songs that are in our own perfect little world.

The thing is, right now, like already, there is so much high quality library vary music, like like Better pharma, a sounding so you could go listen to the, which is like your own special personalized players. And actually just what's up, what people usually want, they want to like, be in conversation with culture and what other people are doing. And so that that world doesn't really make something.

something you are saying at the very beginning, which is like if you if what you want is an easier way to make, like a music bed for your youtube video tools about and they're getting Better very quickly if you want something that is like good and high quality and will make you feel things and care about things and like beyond radio.

we're to know where. And I I think so pretty jie, an episode with Jimmy buff recently died. And so we did a little tribute episode switch down pop, and I had to make a promote for that episode.

And I was like, can I just find a Jimmy buffet? Ask music and I couldn't find anything good on spice. And I went to some A I tools and was like, making me Jimmy buffet ts on and I was just like, crude, this is so annoying. I brought up my guitar and I just drummed some cords .

way Better or well, when Jimmy buffett, that eye launches, we're having you all back. And but until then, thank you all for being here. This was unbelievable fun.

I really appreciated. Charly you play this out? ah.

right? That's IT for the show. Thanks to charley in and new ee for being here. And thank you as always, for listening. A I, David, you wanna have a credit again if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or other songs you'd like to hear.

A I David, you can always email us at verge cast at the verge dot com or keep calling the hot line eight, six, six verge one one we love hearing from you. And the metta verge cast episode is coming soon. So if you have questions about the verge or the verge and quickly, this show is produce by Andrew marino and liam James.

Rooke miners is our editorial director of audio. The verge cast is a verge production and part of the vox media podcast network will be back on wednesday with some more apple talk and with plenty of new news on friday. See you then rocks and roll.

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