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Can a computer in 2020 write poetry with the literary mastery of William Shakespeare? Can it create art that takes our breathe away the way seeing the Taj Mahal does, hearing a shamanic folk (song sung by the most soulful of singers) or watching the ending of a cinematic masterpiece does?
Probably not. But don’t stop reading yet! An Ai powered computer could help us architect a beautiful and structurally solid skyscraper (and likely faster than a human) and in our case, it helped us create a 100 track powerful symphonic tapestry filled with epic twists, turns and beats. As you watch/listen to the music of iDragon, you can also see the opening screen that shows the color coded key explaining who did what.
GREEN – AI Generated content
PURPLE – Human Composed Computer Sounds
BLUE – Human recorded instruments
A good friend recently said during a conversation about cameras, imaging and graphics, “You cannot beat physics; unless you cheat.” He was referring to the quality of images that you get when you have a large piece of glass in a perfectly crafted camera lens. It simply lets in more light and is shaped to give the clearest image, especially when compared to the much smaller lenses and processors/sensors of today’s mobile phones. However, it’s not quite that simple of a comparison to make. Today, a digital camera and a mobile phone both have many components that which modify the quality of their image, and with today’s technology, artificial intelligence (Ai) powered software and guided hardware can, in fact, create images that improve upon the limitations of the hardware alone.
My goal is to maximize the use of Ai in order to accelerate some of the most tedious parts of my job as a composer.
Knowing this, I decided to take advantage of the strengths we know about Ai. Ai can:
1) Do something easy and a lot of it: categorization of files, creation of templates
2) Do something difficult in less time: in my case, orchestration
When you notate a piece to be played by one musician, for example “Happy Birthday”, it usually is pretty quick and easy. However can you imagine being in charge of writing “Happy Birthday” for 100 musicians in a symphony orchestra? Each of the different sections of instruments require sheet music that is in a different key and register, so even a simple short song could require the orchestrator or arranger to spend a considerable amount of time.
I was pleased to find that the AIVA.ai, the web-based Ai composer, was both easy to use and surprisingly fast at creating. When given a midi score of my TEKTONIK Music Electronic Symphony arrangement of the Chinese folk song “Heirs of the Dragon” (龙的传人), the Ai identified the chose instruments extremely quickly and with a few clicks, it created 7 full orchestral stylistic renditions in less than 10 minutes!
My role as the human collaborator is to take those stylistic renditions, pick them apart, weave in musical melodies and rhythms of my own and finally re-assemble it all as a new tapestry. I am a fan of lush melody and powerful rhythm so I enjoy mixing traditional symphonic elements with electronic sounds and beats!
The process was as such:
1) Feed TEKTONIK Music Electronic Symphony version of “Heirs of the Dragon” into AIVA 7 times, yielding 7 completely different results
2) Pick favorite segments
3) Using the hip-hop approach of breaking the phrases down into smaller segments/loops similar to musical “Legos” that can be rebuilt in the shape of my liking.
4) Create rhythmic framework, (at the time of writing, AIVA did not have comprehensive options to create powerful drum rhythms) as a frame for my melody.
After completing this Human + Ai collaboration, I can say that this type of workflow was enjoyable and interesting since the Ai did cut about 5% of the work time down out of a 200 hour project and it created some unexpected options for sounds that I, otherwise would not have composed by myself. This kind of creative option could be quite suitable for:
– creators who do not have substantial musical training but still want to create soon
– those who need original music in larger quantity but don’t want it to be repetitive; perhaps filmmakers and game designers.
– Those who wish to gain further perspective on a particular composer’s style and have help recognizing a composer’s compositional patterns
ENJOY!
Dana Leong
