When one takes a look at the art and music industry, it is difficult to imagine the role AI will eventually play in it. Music is a form of art, and this makes one wonder if automation and machine learning is conducive to it. The same is true of painting, creative writing and any other artistic endeavor. However, with the rapid growth in Artificial Intelligence and robotics the gap is slowly narrowing between machine creativity and human creativity.
Music and technology convergence
A lot of people venture into music, but only a few are professionally successful. Many people can play a simple tune on a piano, strum a guitar, or maintain some semblance of beat on a drum set, but only a few are truly talented artists. The Michael Jacksons, Frank Sinatras, and Adele of this world only come along every so often. Truly, music is a form of art and that is why people show a lot of respect for it.
New education platforms: Virtually all musicians in the world need some type of online music courses for them to hone their craft. Although most all great musicians have trusted instructors who they work with,it still helps a lot to have several resources available so that you can have different options to choose from when you need them. This is where the new AI-powered education platforms come into the picture.
For example, there is an AI program known as the Ultimate Picking Program on the market. The program was developed by Allen Van Wert, and it is one of the world’s fastest guitar pickers. The program listens to the way you play the guitar and then gives custom feedback depending on your progress and where you should improve. The picking exercise is neither too simple nor complex but tailored to your current skills.
New musical instruments
Another area in which the AI technology is also making an impact is in musical instruments. These AI driven musical instruments are designed for people who are interested in playing music but have no patience or time for learning a conventional musical instrument.
Kurv is a new music technology on the market which is a combination of AI, sensors, and music. The Kurv is a wireless device that you can hold in your palm and play music with it even if you have no prior experience.
To play music with the Kurv, simply use your fingers to press one of eight different spots on the device, and at the same time using your right hand to stimulate playing the strings. Kurv makes playing the guitar very simple by learning your behavior while you’re playing music with the device, and pointing out ways in which you can improve.
AI in arts
Artificial intelligence is becoming better and better at more and more things, and the field of art is no exception. One example is Google’sDeepDream program, which learns how to identify objects by scanning millions of photos pixel by pixel. The program first learns how to differentiate between all shades and colors, and then it scanned for border areas between objects. With time, it learns how to separate between objects and build up a catalog for them from every picture it had scanned. The program then learns how to arrange and categorize objects with similar features and recreate random mixtures of those objects. Lastly, when prompted, Google DeepDream displays a random set of those images over a landscape template.
Google has another program called Magenta; the program will teach AI systems to generate music and art. Magenta is a product of Google’s Brain AI group just like DeepDream, which is responsible for many uses of AI in Google’s product, such as Photos, Translate, and Inbox. Magenta builds on existing efforts in the cloud by using TensorFlow, which is Google’s open-source library for machine learning, to teach computers to create art. Magenta seeks to answer the question: “Can we use machine learning to create compelling art and music? If so, how? If not, why not?”
Just like Deep Dream, Google will be working on Magenta in the open, sharing its code and findings via developer resources, such as GitHub.
What does the future hold?
Just like most fields that are already affected by AI, the art and music industry isdefinitely going to be influenced by it. With the advancement in technology, we are going to experience a new generation of artists, musical instruments, which will influence consumer’s tastes.