It’s music that matters, not the method or material of its construction. Therefore, if AI can produce music that rivals or betters the considered geniuses of human composing, I would still desperately need to experience that sublime human pleasure regardless.

However, I doubt very much that AI will ever produce anything as innovative as say, Picasso, for two very human traits.

AI relies on instruction.

Musicianship is merely a trade, learnt to a degree, so it’s not a creative force, it’s artificial intelligence, it’s someone else’s knowledge that you’ve been programmed with. Being a virtuoso musician doesn’t necessitate composing music, but it does provide an excellent knowledge of the various components of musical composition, interval, rhythm, harmony etc, so the prerequisites are firmly in place, should the musicians’ urge to compose arrive.

Could AI ever become a virtuoso muso? Perhaps not, but AI already produces coherent, harmonically sufficient music, as intervals can only reproduce what the nature of harmony predicts/dictates. This is the fundamental ‘written in stone’ part, all it requires is an ability or knowledge, to adhere to the written rules of harmony, the physics in fact, no ‘rule breaking’ here, regardless of popular opinion. AI is similarly equipped as the rules are easily learnt, ‘monkey see, monkey do,’ (to a degree of course,) so favourable competitive output will depend on the ‘degree’ of the AI tool being consumed.

AI will falter here too though, as all intervals are not equal in their function within a musical work.

I often mention when asked about composing music that, in a way, it self-replicates, it does itself, it’s preordained, as there’s always an optimum next interval available for use depending on opinion. 

AI has no opinion.

Instruction not needed.

I’m a self-taught musician, Bert Weedon’s - ‘Play In A Day’, being my only ‘instruction’, nether the less, just by hearing music throughout our daily life we’re all unconsciously absorbing the intricacies of musical composition, hence, if the desire is there, people can, like myself, self-teach, as we’ve all been surreptitiously pre-programmed by ‘harmonic intervals' to amazingly accurate precision, I can testify to that, so we are all already ‘AI’ primed or infused. RAI in fact, Real Artificial Intelligence.

Songwriting is an Art, not a trade and Art can only be experienced, not taught. Learning to draw &/or paint, is, like musicianship, merely a trade, it’s what you paint, (Van Gogh was self-taught) not how well.

This is where AI will again falter as, ‘You can’t be ‘instructed’ in genius.’ When you write and produce an original piece of music, there are no ‘instructions’, no templates to follow suit, to keep the whole production on a steady, organic, ultimately successful path, it’s all about you and your take on it, your acquired opinion on what constitutes an enjoyable piece of memorable music. AI has no opinion.

Make it up as you go along.

But what will really stump AI is the humble producer/engineer.

I’m a writer/producer, I mention this because production is an integral part of a musical work, even a solo instrument recording or performance needs producing to some degree, the space, the mic, etc, this is also the domain of the audio engineer, so when I mention producing, engineers are integral to that too, so I’m a, writer/producer/engineer then eh.

And, like songwriting, producing music can’t be taught, only learnt, but unlike composing, there’s no ‘chiselled in stone’ rules, so once again it’s down to you & your expert opinion, there’s no instructional guidebook.

So, producers then?

Well, AI can easily (re)produce musical compositions to the required technical standard as the information required to do so is easily ingested, ‘monkey see monkey’ do eh.

Even so, production is where AI will falter even more because production is opinionated. AI has no opinion.

A single example should suffice.

Yesterday I was working on my next release titled ‘TikTok’, ‘as good as there’ already but, being a lengthy Club track I decided it needed some more ear candy during a particular 16 bar section to maintain interest, so I swiftly found a patch on a mono Roland SE-02, fed it thru several guitar pedals while intentionally overloading its capability by playing polyphonically, then purposely edited the ‘overloaded’ midi note lengths to further improve the already perfectly adequate riff, listening intently ‘til, ‘it sounded right’, all in the space of a few minutes. Can AI operate like that? Can it listen?

The whole speedy operation stemmed from a fleeting single thought on the fly, this type of crucial aesthetic manipulation will be repeated hundreds of times while simultaneously ‘producing’ and composing. 

Can AI think like that? Can AI even Think?

My whole reasoning or ‘opinion’ before committing to action was improving what was already more than acceptable, the method I chose to execute it was exquisitely human, could AI ever think like me, or maybe you for that matter? I don’t think so.

And I wasn’t finished yet, I then rendered that midi to audio and fed that audio thru a few of my favourite plugins, Moogerfooger’s ‘til it sounded right' to my liking. Can AI ‘like’ something.

In summary I would mention that being self-taught is as much about ignorance, or more suitably perhaps, ‘not knowing’, than it is about knowing. It’s this not knowing that ‘know it all’ AI will be unable to muster. It’s so important to me that even after decades of writing I’ve still managed to intentionally continue to ‘not know’, often helpful things, because ‘not knowing’ anything about scales intervals or composing beforehand, didn’t prevent me from writing competent, harmonically perfect, music while gradually gaining the know-how. And perhaps more importantly, the uncertainty of not knowing creates useful sparks of ‘finding,’ that may not have flown otherwise. 

As people no doubt discover when first attempting the Art of musical composition, the knowledge they require to accomplish their desire cannot be gleaned from instruction.

Speaking empirically, any Art can be conquered ‘ignorantly’ merely by passionate devotion to, and general appreciation and experience of.

So, listen up, what’s your opinion so far?

No not you, AI, only it doesn‘t seem to be able to answer me?

So, AI’s biggest stifler is the traits mentioned earlier which are, AI is unable to ‘listen’ or offer an ‘opinion’ it will never, ‘Look at Its Meters but Trust In Its Ears’ or mention, ‘If It Sounds Right It Is Right’.

© LdashD