I've played guitar for 23 years, and there is something just off-putting about most of the music on that page, but particularly "Yellow Bus Jam".
The guitar solo sounds very unnatural, especially the phrasing, which is totally random. Blues musicians are actually attempting to say something through their instrument. This was just a random number generated solo played by a 6 finger three handed robot. No thanks, lol.
I think it has to be. It's very similar to others[1].The channel has a SoundCloud link in it's description but this song isn't there.
[1] often being 'modern song lyrics set to a historical style of music'. I don't know how to describe them exactly but they feel 'wrong', in the same way AI text is hard to critique but feels wrong.
I think we're just going to have to get used to it. That is, just drop worrying too much about whether something is AI and just stop at whether you like it or not.
It doesn't work like that, art is a package. At this point it's interesting that AI can do these things but the momen it wears off it stops being worthwhile. Artist + AI as a tool is working fine I believe but stuff produced by people who don't have taste shows.
I was making the opposite point — if you hate it, you hate it — regardless of whether it is AI or not.
You're having a problem with liking it only to find out later it is AI?
Again, live music is the way to go then. Also, artists I like the most have a body of work that I like. If AI can fake that — create a body of work I like, cam relate to ... well, I guess I have to give credit to the machine.
An interesting take. I guess I'm more shallow than that. I have to like an artist first to even be bothered to delve into the artistic merit behind their work.
I'm not sure there's a point to doing that with a lot of pop music, which is often written by committee to give to a pop star whose personality and looks are likewise crafted by other committees to attract a particular audience. The point is to make a successful product. It's romantic to imagine a tortured composer who creates music to express their damaged soul to the world and the like, but that's not what most music is.
Every time something comes along like this there's a revolt.
Photoshop.
First Analog synthesizers and then digital synthesizers.
Multitrack audio recording.
Digital Recording.
Autotune.
Vocaloids.
These things change the nature of the game and invalidate the labor of the people who used to be winners, and I get it.
If you take the money and the fame out of the equation, though, the point of art is not to become rich and famous, it's to communicate.
Eventually, we will find artists who are finally able to send in a way that others want to receive thanks to AI.
And there will be people like me and probably you that prefer to only hear what a human had to say straight from their own mouths. And that's fine. There are no walls.
I mean, even the presence of the ability to overdub audio on a record let people cast aspersions on the "genuineness" of artists like KISS:
"“There is a lot of controversy about KISS’ ‘Alive!’ Did they play their own record or did they overdub? News Flash! You’re allowed to overdub! You’re allowed to do that. It’s not a crime. If you’re making an album and you want to overdub one part, that’s completely allowed, and everybody does it. "
Even modern musicians call studio composing "cheating"
"In a way it's kind of like cheating cause you can play stuff over and over again, and be like, no, that's bad, cut this, move it over, and then kind of fit the lyrics to it."
I think there should be a legal mandate for truth in labelling just like there is on food. If I could, I would block all AI generated and TTS-voiced videos on YouTube. I don't want AI-generated anything. the fact that it's being forced on us from all angles is proof that it is no good.
Good point. I'll allow that there is a distinction there to be made.
It's a bit slippery though. I think it was one of the Myst engineers that recently had 95% of a musical piece but was fumbling to come up with a satisfactory bridge. He leaned on AI and it knocked out the perfect bridge — one he was unsure why he hadn't thought of himself.
This comment inspired me to click the link and listen to the song. Wow, that was terrible. It's like it had all the individual components of a fast-paced blues/rock song, but they were put together by someone who had no idea of how music actually worked.
Still makes me want to give up. I just started learning keyboard and playing with synthesizers in the last 6 months or so with the intention of making game music and it's tough to not feel like I'm wasting my time. Game devs will go with what they can afford and who can blame them? The output is not perfect, but if the GenAI can do this now, what will it sound like a year from now? Two? Really takes the wind out of the sails of us newbies.
Same. All this AI art slop has made me get back into making art. I get that trying to copy others is a good way to learn, but what motivates me now is creating something that feels original and unique. Something that an AI would never try to create because it has no knowledge of its existence. You can create your own genre and aesthetic. There isn't a standard way of making art.
> but if the GenAI can do this now, what will it sound like a year from now
(For reference, I'm responding with such a long post because I have a pretty unique perspective to share compared to the hacker news crowd, and also, I wish someone had told me this too, when I was a teenager.)
I heard it five years ago and hated it because it sounds like slop, I heard it today and hated it because it sounds like slop. Game devs (the ones you actually want to work for that aren't just pulling asset flips), by and large hate AI art, and gamers by and large hate it too (There's a whole movement about not using it in games lol).
On top of that, professional musicians are so, so guilty of using music libraries to produce music — Guy Michelmore on Youtube (@ThinkSpaceEducation) has a really, really good video that I can't find right now, where he demonstrates using music libraries to bootstrap a composition. It's really unlikely to be the case that if you're working as a professional musician, that you're going to be producing all of the work of a given composition (even though it is very, very valuable to do that as a beginner because it helps you learn a shitload). Finally adding to this point, there's a cottage industry of people on Youtube who spend time pulling apart world-famous songs and figuring out who they're reusing for the bassline, what bands they sample parts of the audio segments from, etc. Hell, there's a whole browsable library of this: https://www.whosampled.com/
Separately, as a burned out folk+classical musician whose friends and family went on to be nationally recognized musicians (I dropped out of the folk scene due to gender dysphoria and presentation woes lol, but one family member did tour the world playing music when i was a wee bab), music has never, ever, ever been super profitable for anyone other than the very lucky or the very, very wealthy. You are very, very lucky to break even on the amount of time you spend, let along equipment costs. Even the internationally recognized composer John Cage had his main living selling mushrooms to Michelin star restaurants. Everything else I can say about this already has a really, really good write up about this here: https://klangmag.co/lifers-dayjobbers-and-the-independently-...
So between "You're unlikely to actually make money solely off music", "Professionals rarely write the entire piece themselves and will reuse things from other artists, either from a music library, a sample bank, or making their own samples", and "There's a whole slew of game developers out there that want real, human-made music, with all the soul and artistry that that entails", I don't really see a reason why this would take the wind out of anyone's sails.
But even if all of that wasn't the case, the question is ultimately: Why are you engaging in a hobby if it not being profitable, or you not being successful, causes you to lose any motivation? Why is that the main source of motivation for you, such that the possibility of losing that motivation causes you to lose all pleasure from the wonderful, unique experience of writing, composing, and performing music? I think this comes down to like, is your motivation for making music external, or internal. Does your joy of making something come from making the thing, expressing yourself and being artistic (ultimately being human in the process, because Art seems integral to us as a species, and engaging in it is stepping into and pushing forward this wonderful, complex history of self-expression), or some ephemeral possible future reward? Ultimately, it shouldn't matter whether or not you become a professional game musician (Which, by the way, is *absolutely* doable, and a worthy *goal* to have. I really hope you succeed!!), because the motivation to express yourself through a certain medium should ideally come from the joy you doing that and learning how to do it.
Essentially, it all comes back to the age-old, often stated: do you love learning because you love the idea of having knowledge at the end of it, or because you love the process itself. Learning to love the process is always, always going to be a stronger source of motivation and will last you through times when the progress and process are incredibly difficult.
I suppose my next question to yourself and anyone else who listens and says "this is AI slop" would be thus; if it was presented on Spotify or some other platform and not advertised as AI generated, would you still be able to tell the difference? Would your target audience?
This is where it gets fuzzy, for me. Lets say I make an album with 10 tracks of low-fi hiphop and want to sell it for $15USD with a liberal license that allows for use in commercial product. Let's also say that Bob uses GenAI to make a low-fi hiphop album that sells for $8USD assuming the same license. Which do you think the solo unpaid game dev who needs vibe music for her new cozy urban farming game is going to go for?
It's not just about consumers being able to tell the difference between GenAI product and human product, which they have proven pretty terrible at when we look at code, visual art and writing. The HN crowd is perhaps more adept at it, but as much as I enjoy this site, the HN crowd represents a tiny fraction of the available market despite what certain egos around here may think.
That is what takes the wind out of my sails; not that the GenAI can easily produce electronic music that sounds like mine, but that it can do it on a speed and scale that renders me not competitive.
To clarify, I never intended to make it my full time job. I like electronic music, saw a lot of artists on Bandcamp selling albums and doing music for games and figured hey, I think I can do that and maybe supplement my primary income a wee bit...you know, because here in the US, rather than fixing the predatory economy, we just push everyone into turning every hobby into a side-hustle. To your point about why I am engaging in a hobby where motivation is so easily lost, well...I will need to chew on that a bit. I am the type of person who enjoys trying different things to learn what I like and what I don't before investing in it more. I also wonder if there's a difference in the fact that I make electronic music with, well, electronics (into a bit of circuit bending, as well), versus someone who plays a guitar or oboe, which takes significantly more dedication and practice than what I enjoy doing.
Was I relying on making money off music? Nah. I am not even remotely close to that level, yet. But would it have been nice to put up a few albums to sell on platforms like Bandcamp? Sure! But the advent of GenAI makes me wonder if my limited free time would be best spent on other hobbies that stand a better chance of both satisfying my desire to create and putting a few extra bucks for lunch in my pocket once in awhile.
> if it was presented on Spotify or some other platform and not advertised as AI generated, would you still be able to tell the difference? Would your target audience?
These are all fair questions but this one is a good bouncing off point to circle to the whole of it.
So, I can yes, because the instruments sound wrong. I would expect an audience of people who mostly listen to stuff I make to also catch this vague "off" feeling with the music. But regardless to that there's kind of, two things to this, which is that - someone who is making AI-generated music is fundamentally too lazy and too broke to bother with a) paying an artist for the cover (i.e. the cover is likely to be also AI generated and weird), and b) building any kind of audience or relationship with other artists in the scene (it would be very, very difficult to do that without giving up that you're also using AI, and subsequently getting shunned in the industry, too).
Like something I perhaps failed to communicate in the last message but, ok so context is- I used to move in indie dev circles (notably the Ludum Dare IRC and indiedev twitter) as a wee bab -and although I wasn't like, great at networking or whatever, and frankly wasn't very good at producing anything of merit because I was a dorky little teenager with ADHD lol, I still managed to build personal connections with people in those spaces because I just, like, interacted with them.
The majority of sales that you see right off the bat for any artistic product are likely to be not from your own audience -- if you're new to it you probably don't have an audience yet -- but instead from the audience of other artists who you have vague relationships with, who look at your work and go "wow, holy shit, this is so cool" and then share it. Like, realistically Spotify isn't going to be a fantastic moneymaker because of both visibility and how stingy they are with paying out. What can become an incidental money maker are the relationships you build with artists, game devs, etc. in the scene, and eventually the relationship you build with your audience. It's literally just "talking to people" and going "hey i fucking love that piece of music" and having a cool enough profile / website / whatever that eventually someone gives it a click, that's your foot in the door, and it's enough to build from.
In addition to bluesky/mastodon/soundcloud/bandcamp/etc. there's also specific subreddits for people to advertise themselves to game developers, and for game developers to go "hey I am looking for xyz type of music". That's another foot in the door. It's very, very slow "work", but making friends is always slow -- and like, because we're on the VC-brained hacker news I feel I have to explicitly say -- don't approach it like Networking(tm), approach it like making friends. Join communities, find people whose art you appreciate, post about your own art (everywhere you can think of). All the shitty WIPs and whatever, that's still usually interesting enough for people to go "wow this is interesting" and follow you over it, and interact with you over it.
The trick to the modern web is literally "authenticity", and nobody making something with AI has that. The difference between someone who pops off on tiktok and someone who doesn't is often literally how authentic their video feels, and ""consumers"" are getting increasingly good at spotting someone who just wants to get clicks and views, versus someone who is passionate at creating and wanted to share something they made. Between all the weird AI slop, all the corporate-produced shit, everyone on the web right now are absolutely starving for unique, "cool" people who just do what brings them joy.
You don't want the people who click on something on bandcamp and go "eh it's free might as well use it for my game", you want the game developers who are even slightly discriminating about their tastes, who have a set idea and want to hire someone who makes music that fits that taste, and who is respectful and "gets" the themes, subject matter, and artistic expression of their game. Someone typing "dark moody music guitar bass punk rock short loop" into an AI-generator isn't that, and can never be that. Art tells a story, and AI has no perspective from which to make that, it's the same problem with AI writing.
> To clarify, I never intended to make it my full time job. I like electronic music, saw a lot of artists on Bandcamp selling albums and doing music for games and figured hey, I think I can do that and maybe supplement my primary income a wee bit...you know, because here in the US, rather than fixing the predatory economy, we just push everyone into turning every hobby into a side-hustle.
Honestly I absolutely understand that. My first internship was around twelve years ago now, and I fell out of it due to health problems, I recovered from those a little and was lucky enough to get another tech job while I was homeless in 2022, and I gradually became so, so ill in the place I was staying that just like the first job, my performance cratered about 6 months into the job. So now I'm kind of stuck here being incredibly capable at my job, but unmedicated (with the NHS refusing to diagnose me) and probably the single worst CV in the entire world. I've spent like, 3 years recovering from all of that and now I'm at a point where it's like- shit, what do I do now?! and it looks like the answer to that is making art and primarily Writing, which... lol, I always tried to avoid art being my primary money-maker because getting to a point where you can sustain yourself off it is very, very difficult, if impossible.
> To your point about why I am engaging in a hobby where motivation is so easily lost, well...I will need to chew on that a bit. I am the type of person who enjoys trying different things to learn what I like and what I don't before investing in it more. I also wonder if there's a difference in the fact that I make electronic music with, well, electronics (into a bit of circuit bending, as well), versus someone who plays a guitar or oboe, which takes significantly more dedication and practice than what I enjoy doing.
This is great!! Being discerning and discriminating about what you're investing your time into is a great quality to have IMHO. And nah, I can do music with physical instruments, but I've been poking at electronic music for like ten years and never really got anywhere satisfactorily because you have to come at it from a completely different direction lol.
Reminds those early youtube days shredding overdub videos.. These were funny, but the Yellow Bus Jam seems just hollow and wrong. Feeling there's something from Steely Dan in that song..
Would it be physically possible to play? Yeah, probably. But it sounds terrible, and if I heard a band do it live, I would genuinely consider walking out of the venue.
Get used to it, because it's much cheaper than a musician, and to the average person "attempting to say something through their instrument" and "random number generated solo" are largely the same thing.
I'm not anti-AI, but I strongly believe the human element of music can be imitated but not fully replicated. Listening back to that song I can hear the attempt to stylistically play slightly off-beat to get the feel of a band playing without a metronome. The auditory illusion is there, but it still sounds off. Playing behind the beat is a feeling; it's not a calculation.
As a drummer keeps time, the band reacts by looking at the drummer’s hands and the sway in their posture. A drummer intensifies their playing as they respond to the feeling of air being pushed from guitar cabinets. A lead guitarist looks back at their friends and smiles when they are about to play that sweet lick that the bass player likes to play along with.
These are just simple examples that make all the difference when you listen back. I also can't imagine paying hundreds of dollars to go see an AI "perform" this solo at a concert. When I listen to music, I'm remembering the moment, the feeling, what the artist was doing to create their art. So still... no thanks!
Anthony Marinelli (guy behind MJ's Thriller synth jams) and Tim Pierce (accomplished session guitarist) riff on this https://youtu.be/OzuADujnEhQ?t=1205 recently. This whole video is a treat, as are most of Marinelli's.
When I see AI salesmen thinking they can attack into art, I think they naively see it as inherently imprecise or arbitrary, and they think because their technology has these properties it will easily cross over. This is going to lead to a lot of faux pas (remember NFTs?); it would be prudent to attack problems where some kind of correctness can be mechanically judged... OCR and software development are reasonable verticals at opposite ends of complexity to focus on, and pursue artistic rendition in a more experimental way letting artists approach the technology and show how it is useful.
These things won't replace rock stars, they will (or at least want to) replace the vast majority of the industry which is tv shows, movies, ads, etc, which the disclaimer as the end alludes to.
The thing I notice time and again in all this is they want you to believe technology is displacing labor at one end but there's usually a lot of retraining consumers/society to accept something qualitatively different to cover up or re-conceive what was. That's not a moral judgement, just an observation. But the end result is usually the same, some group of current or wannabe oligarchs playing musical chairs at the top without regard for the rest of the system.
That feeling of connection with other musicians while playing is something else.
I was live-reading lyrics sheets to some songs I’d never heard while jamming with a big group. Hit a chorus with some really great phrasing and bungled it the first time through. But the second time, the other guy singing and I just automatically made eye contact and had a whole conversation through body language.
“I’ve got it this time”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah”
“Oh fuck yeah”
“Fuck yeah indeed, my good fellow”
> Get used to it, because it's much cheaper than a musician, and to the average person "attempting to say something through their instrument" and "random number generated solo" are largely the same thing.
it's okay to just say you're not that interested in music
The "Don’t Let Me Go" and "Yellow Bus Jam" examples made me laugh out loud. This kind of thing would be great for a cyberpunk game that dynamically generates a reality, with (unintentional?) faux pas and jank.
If you are an artist you could always slice, embellish, or otherwise process outputs into something so I guess it's not totally silly. But I get at best real estate video vibes, or unironic early '90s clip art and Comic Sans vibes and presumably some team of expensive marketers worked hard to select these examples, which is doubly hilarious.
As a non-music person, can confirm - if someone tried to tell me something through their instrument I would probably tell them it should have been an email.
I can generally understand that music has moods, but don’t think I could distinguish human-generated music from silicon-generated music at this point (unless I recognize a specific artist, of which there are vanishingly few I’m capable of)
The guitar solo sounds very unnatural, especially the phrasing, which is totally random. Blues musicians are actually attempting to say something through their instrument. This was just a random number generated solo played by a 6 finger three handed robot. No thanks, lol.