Chris Mench, writing for Complex:
Scientists at Sony’s CSL research lab unveiled a new track called “Daddy’s Car.” If that sounds bizarre to you, you’re not wrong. Although the song sounds like any run-of-the-mill track, it’s actually created by the artificial intelligence software Flow Machines. The software draws from a massive database of songs to compose its music, combining small elements of many tracks to create new compositions. All someone has to do to create a song is choose a style of music or artist from the database and the software will make the score for them. The most represented genres are jazz and pop, but all types of music are represented. In this case, a musician named Benoît Carré wrote the lyrics and arranged the music.
The song is embedded below. Take a listen. Even if this style of music is not your cup of tea, set that aside and listen to the changes and harmonies. There’s a lot of derived musical techniques at work, all playing very softly together. No edge, no instrumental expression, but lots of vocal shifts. I’m hearing Beatles and XTC.
To me, this is a harbinger of things to come. Our robotic overlords have their sights set on our music streaming revenue.
not bad for a retro-y light pop song.
Agreed. My immediate reaction was “Beatles,” but the whole song reminds me more of XTC’s Dukes of Stratosphear project.
“The software draws from a massive database of songs to compose its music, combining small elements of many tracks to create new compositions.”
In other words, just like many modern pop groups. Mission accomplished.
The only performers that have to be scared are the pop lip sync performers!
Definitely like XTC. But the vocals remind me even more of Ben’s from The Sugarplastic who were heavily influenced by XTC.
BTW, 10 more up votes.
I got about a minute in and decided time was better spent elsewhere. I am pretty sure the next 2 minutes sounds exactly the same.
Excellent. This will come in handy when most artists are put out of work by lack of real payment from streaming services and the expectation by everyone today music should all be free.
Yes, I’m that cynical.
+10 for the Dukes of Stratosphear reference. Love the album!
One thing machines will never do is: get an idea.
The more humans slide into the machine-like apathy of “liking” this kind of schlock and/or generating this kind of schlock, the more machine-generated “music” looks feasible.
But machines will NEVER be creative nor cause anything. They can only respond to input or prior programming—by live humans.
Very kind!
Well now, that’s just silly.
Wait.
“Wait.” That’s what machines do—wait for input! It’s called stimulus-response.
Many humans with attention spans do it, too.