When Machines Make Music

They say it’s faster, cheaper and versatile. And that’s what we all want. It sums it up, doesn’t it! We want good music, new music and cool music. When you figure this out, it seems pretty simple. But when one digs deeper in to the world of music, trust me, it’s not as simple as it seems to be. Making music with the help of machines is exciting and new. But the way I look at it, it’s always debatable. A music-bot will roll out an album every week. Against that, a human composer will roll out one or may be two albums at best per year. The Music-Bots are opening up as computers grow stronger and databases larger. The bots are a form of artificial intelligence known as “deep learning” that makes them work in a similar way to the human brain and they learn from databases to compose the music.
Interestingly, the Intellectual Property in all of the music that the bots compose rests with the developer of such bots and not the bot itself. Having said that, I also believe that the human composer will put something in to the music she creates and a music-bot will never be able to second that because music is a deep mix of art and emotion and bots will never be able to feel the way a human does. The composer/artist felt a particular zest of emotions while making the music she put out. Hence, a human composer’s creativity, ideas and innovation will never be supplemented by an algorithm. But then, it’s a fact that Artificial Intelligence in music is going to be everywhere, from the keyboard to other instruments. Musicians are going to just be there, in front of their instruments being blissfully guided by the Music-Bots.

“Let’s not replace Human Composers. Let’s use bots to stimulate Creativity.”