Artificially Intelligent Thoughts on A.I. Music

00:00:04:22 – 00:00:15:04

Chris Hayzel

Welcome to Orchestrating a Musio podcast where we discuss the past, present and future of music creation and to explore exactly what it means to be a musician in the modern era. I’m Chris Hazel.

00:00:15:06 – 00:00:16:00

Mike Patti

I’m Mike Patti.

00:00:16:04 – 00:00:17:11

Steve Goldshein

And I’m Steve Goldshein.

00:00:17:13 – 00:00:45:05

Chris Hayzel

And we’re glad to have you all with us. So it’s the first week of 2024 and we’re kind of getting all of our ducks in a row to do some big things with Musio in the New Year. And as we continue to explore the latest technology to add helpful tools for music creators, there’s sort of one exploding area of tech that we don’t really know what to do with, but it looms large enough that it’s unavoidable, and that’s artificial intelligence.

00:00:45:07 – 00:01:06:13

Chris Hayzel

AI is kind of a hot button topic, especially in the world of music and arts, and for good reason. There are a ton of questions about it from like, you know, how it will impact the way that people learn music to how it affects music professionals all the way down to things like copyright issues regarding the existing music that it’s trained on.

00:01:06:15 – 00:01:40:01

Chris Hayzel

But despite all of that, it’s it’s coming. And in a lot of ways it’s already here. It’s sort of like the further integration of AI into the world of music is is inevitable. So as a music tech company, it’s an especially pertinent and nuance thing that we’re kind of obligated in a way to consider. So today we wanted to have a hopefully equally nuanced conversation about it, and it’s actually kind of becoming a bit of a theme for the content this month.

00:01:40:01 – 00:02:00:16

Chris Hayzel

So like Mike, you’re going to do a vlog later on this month that sort of talks about our thought process around integrating AI into MUZIO. Right? But like before, before anyone gets all up in arms about it, I’m just going to go ahead and reiterate, like, we’re not sure if we’re going to do it or even how we would do it.

00:02:00:18 – 00:02:04:09

Chris Hayzel

So it’s definitely like not a foregone conclusion. Yeah.

00:02:04:11 – 00:02:39:11

Mike Patti

So, Chris, why don’t I maybe it gives some context as to the reason why we’re doing this podcast. So, yeah. Last last year, November 28th, I posted a video on X mostly just to see what people would say because a buddy of mine just made a web app for MUZIO. Basically what it is is it’s a mid-engine radar that takes a prompt, you know, gives you meaty data that you can then drag it to your door and perform the instruments from MUZIO.

00:02:39:13 – 00:03:09:09

Mike Patti

So it’s like what? It already is possible with the newest tools that open air. I made it accessible to non-technical people like myself, and I was able to build this using the there’s like an assistant API. And so my friend and I just made it really easy so that you could just have it as a web app. And I made a video just typing in like, you know, you know, a piece for flute and harp and like for a fantasy video game or something.

00:03:09:11 – 00:03:30:11

Mike Patti

And then it generated the Mitty. I showed the video of it playing the music back with the instruments and MUZIO was like, Okay. I mean, it’s kind of cool. I was like, That’s I’m impressed that this was even possible so easily without having to hire some big team. Right? So I put it up there to see, like, what would people think?

00:03:30:12 – 00:03:59:13

Mike Patti

And I literally I wrote, we whipped up an air medi generator web app from MUZIO. So I posted and I got like a ridiculous amount of comments. Yeah, there were a lot, like, airs and bookmarks and retweets and all this stuff and I would say mostly people were cordial, I think, trying to have productive conversation. Some people said you’re going to single handedly destroy the music industry.

00:03:59:15 – 00:04:27:13

Mike Patti

Some people said, Don’t do this, Mike. This is horrible. Some people said, I think this is really exciting. I want this now. So it’s like a real mixture. But it definitely was a heated and I think I launched I put it out there exactly at a very heated time where everyone was talking about music. And I and, you know, that’s the best kind of feedback you can get as the owner of a company because you don’t know you do stuff in a vacuum.

00:04:27:13 – 00:04:47:04

Mike Patti

Most of the time. So it was really good to put that out there because it allows us to be like, okay, what should we actually build if we just put this out there? Are we just going to piss everybody off or is it going to be something that’s actually useful that people want? So that’s where we are right now is like this technology is is coming for for better or for worse.

00:04:47:04 – 00:05:04:08

Mike Patti

There’s going to be pros, there’s going to be cons. And I think that’s what we’re going to discuss today. Yeah. And how do we navigate that? And we’re seeing, you know, a lot of other companies navigating this as well. Some are doing it kind of right. Some are making big mistakes. So, you know, this is this is why I wanted to have this conversation.

00:05:04:09 – 00:05:21:04

Chris Hayzel

Yeah. I mean, it’s such a it’s such a new sort of like Wild West type of tech, just like a lot of tech has been really over the last maybe decade or two. But this one’s so new and it’s developing so fast that it’s something that we kind of have to like talk about where music tech company. Right.

00:05:21:06 – 00:05:29:03

Chris Hayzel

And if we don’t consider it, everybody else is. So it’s something that’s on our plate and in front of us. Yeah. Yeah.

00:05:29:03 – 00:05:31:02

Mike Patti

It needs to be a transparent conversation.

00:05:31:04 – 00:05:32:00

Chris Hayzel

Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:32:00 – 00:05:54:14

Mike Patti

Because it is a there’s a truth to this that’s really uncomfortable. And yeah, I think we need to address that. That big change is coming. And look, I don’t like change and I’m the owner of a company, which is probably a bad combination. You need to change and you need to adapt in order to because you can’t just rest on your laurels, especially if you’re creative and can’t just think the things that it worked for the last five years are going to continue into the future.

00:05:54:18 – 00:06:05:03

Mike Patti

So yeah, that’s, that’s kind of part of the discussion. And I it’s just one of those things. It’s, it’s going to be a big change. I don’t think it’s going to ruin our lives, but we have to adapt.

00:06:05:07 – 00:06:26:10

Chris Hayzel

So yeah, there are a lot of different ways that it could go. But like so before we dive into the conversation here, just to kind of level set, why don’t each of us go around and just give a brief overview of our own personal feelings about A.I.? Steve Why don’t you start us off?

00:06:26:12 – 00:06:51:08

Steve Goldshein

Sure. So my role with MUZIO is I’m dealing directly with the customers. I run the customer service department, and we are getting the feedback, the same kind of feedback that Mike is getting from his his post on all types. You know, we’re hearing the full spectrum of, of opinions and ideas and wants and hopes and dreams and wishes that things could happen or things that wouldn’t happen.

00:06:51:10 – 00:07:24:21

Steve Goldshein

And we take it all in. And my perspective on this is heavily informed by that. And you know what what we’re hearing from other people and as far as my own personal feelings, I, I agree with a lot of the hype. I think that technology is something that’s incredibly cool, incredibly powerful, incredibly fun to play with and to explore and can do all kinds of crazy things that we couldn’t do with with, you know, the kind of language models that we had a few years ago.

00:07:25:00 – 00:07:56:23

Steve Goldshein

I think that there is a lot of fear around what it might do for creative industries, like composing and all of that which may or may not be warranted. My, my, my take on this is that for people who need music for media and want to work with a composer are going to work with a composer because they already have other options to get their music for free or for low cost or for or through some other way.

00:07:56:23 – 00:08:21:23

Steve Goldshein

They can work with a student who’s going to do it for peanuts. They can work, they can license music from a music library. They can get music that’s public domain. You know, one of the best examples of this is Always Sunny in Philadelphia, one of the greatest one of the longest running series of all time now has very famously used public domain music in their in their early seasons because they couldn’t they didn’t have a music budget.

00:08:21:23 – 00:08:58:08

Steve Goldshein

And so it was all all for free. And now it’s you know iconic that that public domain music that has become their theme and that that those options have always existed for for filmmakers and game developers and animation producers and people who need these need music for their projects. One thing that I think I will never be able to replace is the type of relationship that you develop as a composer working with a client and working with a director and getting inside each other’s minds and helping bring the creative vision to life.

00:08:58:10 – 00:09:14:11

Steve Goldshein

If you get a composing gig and you get hired again for the sequel and you get hired again for more projects by the same people, that has more to do with your relationship with those people than it does. I mean, obviously the quality of your work has to be has to be up to snuff for the project too.

00:09:14:11 – 00:09:21:08

Steve Goldshein

But ultimately, if you’re getting hired and rehired by the same people, it’s because they like you and they want to keep working with you. Yeah.

00:09:21:10 – 00:09:26:16

Chris Hayzel

Yeah, definitely. How about you, Mike? What what’s your what are your baseline feelings about?

00:09:26:21 – 00:09:44:06

Mike Patti

I, I think it’s cool, but will we all thought it was we thought it was going to help us do our taxes. But the first thing that’s come after there is is the artists, which is that, you know, we thought that would be the last thing you know it’ll never replace, you know, the visual arts. I will say music, maybe I’m biased.

00:09:44:06 – 00:10:04:03

Mike Patti

I don’t know. This could be a biased opinion being a musician myself. But music is is kind of unique as far as the arts are concerned. When people listen to music, this is at least how I do. When I listen to music, I’m thinking about the creator of that music. I’m usually thinking, this is this is inspired, you know, or, you know, you’re thinking about what that person was going through when they wrote it.

00:10:04:03 – 00:10:31:01

Mike Patti

You know, there’s a there’s a human component to it that I think is not really you can’t really achieve with with I get close I think there could be approximations that can simulate. It’s going to be that’s what it is. It’s a it’s a what do you call it, an imitator. It imitates really. Well, yeah, but we all know, like as film composers and Steve knows because he’s he’s done this to you have to be an imitator.

00:10:31:01 – 00:10:49:11

Mike Patti

And I know that like a lot of the stuff that I’ve written for projects is kind of has been found in Don’t Tell anybody that, But like, sometimes you got to crank it out real fast and it’s not always inspired. You just got to, okay, we want something to sound like this and you know, it needs to sound like from this movie or it’s temp with some other score or whatever.

00:10:49:13 – 00:10:52:00

Mike Patti

You got it. You’re kind of duplicating it and that it.

00:10:52:04 – 00:10:53:13

Chris Hayzel

You got to do like a sound a like.

00:10:53:13 – 00:11:11:15

Mike Patti

Yeah, yeah. And it does the job, but it’s not, it’s not affecting people’s emotions in a deep way. You know, every once in a while you get a chance to write something that really comes from the heart and you know, so maybe I will be useful for those times where you just need to crank something out that isn’t, isn’t.

00:11:11:17 – 00:11:20:12

Mike Patti

It’s just sort of utilitarian music and that’ll be that’ll be useful. But yeah, I mean that’s, that’s where the rub is I think is yeah.

00:11:20:13 – 00:11:45:16

Chris Hayzel

I kind of come from a like my, my initial position on A.I. has always been pretty staunchly anti. I, you know, I have a whole YouTube channel that’s called the Art of Sucking at Music that’s all about like not taking shortcuts and understanding that learning how to play music or learning any skill requires work, and it requires time and effort and those kinds of things.

00:11:45:18 – 00:12:21:02

Chris Hayzel

However, lately, especially like working with skin samples and and doing those kinds of like doing the, the video stuff and thumbnails and all of that stuff, it’s like I’ve been using a lot more AI and there are I’ve been seeing it integrated in certain ways that that support the creator. They don’t replace the creator. And I, I am actually kind of like in favor of continuing to build tools that support creators.

00:12:21:02 – 00:12:42:11

Chris Hayzel

But I also have to realize that that’s not exactly the world that we live in. Like it’s it’s available to everybody. And just as much as, you know, smaller creators like you or me might want to have AI tools that support our process. There’s also, like big corporations that want to have AI tools that support their bottom line.

00:12:42:12 – 00:13:04:05

Chris Hayzel

And so it could go in a lot of different directions and it probably will go in many different directions at once. Some of them will be positive for music in the arts, some of them will be negative for music in the arts. And we’re just going to have to see which one of those wins out. But I’m I’m I’m wary of it.

00:13:04:05 – 00:13:30:23

Chris Hayzel

But I’m also understanding or beginning to understand the benefits of it, too. But yeah, let’s, let’s get into it in the spirit of of a discussion about I thought it would be kind of a fun little twist to guide our conversation using questions that were written by AI. So I logged into Chat DVT and I wrote it this prompt, and I’ve got the questions right here.

00:13:31:03 – 00:13:53:18

Chris Hayzel

I wrote, Can you give me ten questions to help spark and guide a thoughtful conversation about the nuances and implications of artificial intelligence in music? And I actually got to say, like that the questions that it gave me were pretty, pretty good. So I figured maybe what we can do to guide this podcast is just kind of go through these questions one by one.

00:13:53:18 – 00:13:59:19

Chris Hayzel

We’ll take them one at a time, and then we’ll just see how far we get, like how many of them we can get through, how you guys feel.

00:13:59:19 – 00:14:02:18

Mike Patti

About perfect merging of AI and humans. Here we go, Right?

00:14:02:23 – 00:14:20:04

Chris Hayzel

Yeah, right. So how do you think artificial intelligence is reshaping the creative process in music and the arts, and what potential benefits or challenges does it bring to artists? We kind of already talked about this a little bit, but let’s we can continue that discussion.

00:14:20:06 – 00:14:52:19

Mike Patti

I would say in terms of visual arts is definitely changing a lot of things with Mid Journey and Photoshop obviously has all its built in stuff that can extend the canvas where you can have things added to it. Music seems to be the last thing to have been to have adopted or adapted to A.I.. My friend Greg Lerman over at Output, they just released a really cool tool for their product arcade, which is kind of what they call co-producer, which generates a sample pack for you, which I think is a really clever way of doing it.

00:14:52:19 – 00:15:06:12

Mike Patti

You know, you type in a, a, a prompt, anything, and it will go through their catalog of sounds and generate a unique combination of things, and it gives you several options. And then you can kind of choose the starting point that you want to go with.

00:15:06:14 – 00:15:15:00

Chris Hayzel

So it doesn’t it’s going to create the samples for you. It sort of aggregates a unique sample pack from preexisting samples for you.

00:15:15:01 – 00:15:32:18

Mike Patti

That’s that’s what I understand. Yeah. I don’t want to speak at a term like, I don’t know technically what’s happening, but it’s something that you. Yeah, it’s all there because they have so many sounds. Right. Right. You know, I applaud them for, for taking that approach. I’d like to pay you. You got to wear two hats. You’re the owner of a business and you’re also a music creator.

00:15:32:22 – 00:15:52:09

Mike Patti

And so you got to like, weigh both of those things. And so that seems to be the right, well, a right way forward, I think. Sure, it’s not replacing music creators. It’s it’s actually inspiring them. You know, it’s helping you. And like, if you think about you’re working with a virtual instrument or a plug in or something, you’re you do have a starting point.

00:15:52:09 – 00:16:00:02

Mike Patti

It could be something like really inspiring sound. It’s just like, that’s really cool. That’s that’s the start of my cue. Let me just put that down first.

00:16:00:04 – 00:16:16:12

Chris Hayzel

Yeah. And then there’s that and then there’s like sequencers as well and stuff like that to where you can kind of, you know, or arpeggiated is where you can kind of like play a chord in or maybe give you a little bit of an idea. Those starting point tools have kind of been around for a really long time for sure.

00:16:16:13 – 00:16:55:06

Steve Goldshein

Yeah, drum loops and all that. Yeah. Because there’s yeah, so many ways to come up with a musical idea and you can use so many different musical ideas as the foundation of an entire piece. So whether you’re starting from a rhythmic perspective with a drum beat or a drum loop or, or even a ostinato pattern on a melodic instrument, or if you’re starting with a melody or if that’s, you know, played on a flute or a violin or a human voice, or if you if you’re playing through chord progressions and, you know, find a chord progression that you like and then starting from any of those places, you can build a whole composition based on

00:16:55:06 – 00:17:32:15

Steve Goldshein

that starting idea. And where I think there’s a really cool opportunity with AI is in developing those ideas. There’s there’s a book by Aaron Copeland, the composer who he wrote a book for the layperson as a composer called What to Listen For in Music. And it goes through chapter by chapter explaining how to hear rhythm and melody and harmony and tone color and different instrumentations and all of the different ways that composers view these things and use them as the basis for what they do to create and develop a theme.

00:17:32:21 – 00:17:50:19

Steve Goldshein

And he talks about how a composer starts with a musical idea, and sometimes that inspiration strikes without warning. There’s no, you know, sometimes we’ve all we’ve all had this experience as music creators where we come up with some of our best ideas when we’re in no way near our studio or in a.

00:17:50:21 – 00:17:52:13

Chris Hayzel

Like, the most inopportune time.

00:17:52:13 – 00:18:17:05

Steve Goldshein

Yeah, exactly. In the shower or driving home and stuck in traffic or something and, you know, saying thank goodness for voice memos and being able to record, you know, Hammond idea and to that and but as a foundation and now in the world of you know with electronic production and sample libraries and virtual instruments we have so many cool sounds at our disposal that never existed in Aaron Copeland’s time.

00:18:17:10 – 00:19:05:06

Steve Goldshein

So we you can get inspired by a sound effect or a musical idea or a, you know, an arpeggiated synth preset. You know, anything that that you have at your fingertips can be the basis of a track. And so an idea that I’ve had that that I think that could be really cool for an AI integration is hey, here’s my here’s my melody, here’s my here’s my theme re rearrange this or re orchestrate this as a 1940s jazz ballad or as a and you know, a classical ballet style piece or in, you know, in the style of a modern film score for an action cue and get a bunch of different options for how to

00:19:05:09 – 00:19:26:11

Steve Goldshein

further develop that theme. Because sometimes we get stuck in an eight bar loop and we love that eight bar loop, and then when it’s time to go to something else, we ruin the entire the entire track and give up on the project and maybe come back to it later and Frankenstein it in with something else. But that’s one of the ways that I think that there’s a cool opportunity to turn.

00:19:26:13 – 00:19:27:23

Steve Goldshein

Yeah.

00:19:28:01 – 00:19:57:09

Chris Hayzel

Yeah. I mean, like in terms of, you know, how, how we’re seeing it reshape the creative process currently, right? I gave the example of, of some of the tools that I’ve been using. So like for instance, when I was working on the Iceland video, I had all of these different interviews that I had conducted with like Mike and Santi and Vega and, and it was, you know, each interview was like an hour hour and a half long.

00:19:57:09 – 00:20:28:16

Chris Hayzel

So they’re these big, you know, conversations where I had to go through and and pick out soundbites and stuff like that and build a story. And normally the way that you would do that is you would print out the transcripts and then you would go through manually looking at actual paper with transcripts on it and you would highlight the soundbites that you want, and then you would take those, put those on a piece of paper, you know, and then arrange them sort of in a way, you know, maybe in your computer or in a word document, arrange them in a way that tells a story.

00:20:28:18 – 00:20:59:06

Chris Hayzel

And then you would have to make sure that you had the time codes for everything and you knew where everything was within the interview. And then you would go through and you would use the time codes to find those bits in the interviews and then put them together in a timeline. One of premiere’s new features is its it’ll, you know, automatically sort of like construct a transcript of each interview for you, which is really cool.

00:20:59:08 – 00:21:26:13

Chris Hayzel

It’s not always, it’s not always perfect, you know, sometimes it gets where it’s wrong, but for the most part it’s really good. But then they also have this new feature now that’s like called text based editing. So if you have the, you know, the raw interview open and you have the transcript open and you’re going through and you’re reading through it, looking for something, you can like say, you know, I wanted to have a soundbite of someone saying something about the culture of Iceland.

00:21:26:15 – 00:21:51:08

Chris Hayzel

I could type in culture, and then it would highlight all of the times that, you know, Mike said culture or cultural or something like that. And then I could find the soundbite that I wanted and I could highlight from the word that I wanted him to start at to the word that I wanted him to end at and then grab it from the transcript so the text and drag it into, into my timeline and it would populate.

00:21:51:10 – 00:21:56:16

Chris Hayzel

Yeah. And it would populate the, the appropriate in and out points for the, for the footage.

00:21:56:16 – 00:21:58:21

Mike Patti

I was wondering how you make these videos so fast.

00:21:58:21 – 00:22:00:09

Steve Goldshein

Chris that was.

00:22:00:11 – 00:22:20:09

Chris Hayzel

So that the the Iceland videos, the only time that I’ve done that was the first time that I, that I’ve used it. That’s a brand new feature and premiere and it’s really, really cool. So that’s one way that I see it reshaping the creative process where I’m like, That’s super useful, right? Because it’s it takes a process that’s usually extremely tedious.

00:22:20:09 – 00:22:34:12

Chris Hayzel

It’s not like it replaces the need to learn how to edit videos. It just makes a certain process of it that’s usually very tedious, a lot easier and faster, but you still have to be a good video editor too.

00:22:34:12 – 00:23:20:00

Steve Goldshein

You still have to write. And I think that that brings up an interesting point about how with people talking about how everything is going to change with I the the misconception in my opinion that it replaces the need for technical skill or knowledge that is a misconception. You still need to understand the concepts and the fundamentals of what makes a well-edited video, what makes a good piece of music, what makes a good script with a good story structure that makes these things applicable and pleasing to the human consumer who’s at the end of the day, the person who’s going to ostensibly be paying for this thing that makes makes it worth putting, you know, effort

00:23:20:00 – 00:23:50:08

Steve Goldshein

into creating that. That’s still that’s not something that’s something that you can use AI to learn about. And that’s something I mean, I’m probably getting ahead of ourselves in the next nine questions that we’ve got coming up. But one of the best applications is for learning how to how to understand these things better. It’s not going to be able to teach you how to play piano because it can’t it can’t move your hands for you and develop the dexterity and the rhythmic control and the physical motor skills required to do that.

00:23:50:10 – 00:24:16:20

Steve Goldshein

But it can explain the history of of how a piano that we know as as we know it came to be built and the construction of it. And one of my favorite ways to use chad and technology for learning is you can ask it a specific question and get a direct answer. And, you know, it used to be you had to Google something if you had a specific question, you Google something and then it gives you a bunch of articles and then you have to comb through the articles.

00:24:16:22 – 00:24:37:12

Steve Goldshein

And most of the information in those articles goes over your head. Because the reason I ask the question in the first place is because I don’t know anything about this. And so I’m just kind of reading through the article and my eyes are glazing over and I finally see, okay, cool. There was the answer to the thing, but now I have like ten other questions that came up and I don’t have the wherewithal to go back through and Google all ten of them.

00:24:37:18 – 00:24:58:05

Steve Goldshein

But I asked Chad GPT a question. It gives me an answer and I can go and say, okay, cool, I don’t understand this, this and this that you said, explain more about it. And so that’s that’s been a useful feature. So using that for things like what makes a well-edited video, you know, I asked it to describe you know what what describe a perfectly tailored suit.

00:24:58:05 – 00:25:14:03

Steve Goldshein

You know, all these, all these things that you can can have it do to explain these things because it’s trained on material that humans have put into it about how to describe these things well and simplify them and make them understandable.

00:25:14:03 – 00:25:53:03

Chris Hayzel

When these these are sort of all examples of of ways that we’ve seen I more or less positively impact or reshape the creative process. But there are also ways, I think, you know, that it can and in some ways maybe has negatively impacted the creative process, right? So like graphic design would probably be the most immediate example for me right now because, you know, especially since I’ve been I’ve been spending a lot of time in mid journey lately because thumbnails are something that take a lot of time to do and sometimes it can be helpful to go on a journey and just type in a few prompts and see what it spits out to see

00:25:53:03 – 00:26:16:12

Chris Hayzel

if you find anything cool. And generally like the way that I use it is, is in a in sort of a, a more baseline way. So like the cover image of this podcast, you know, what I did was I went into mid journey and instead of going through like Adobe Stock to to find an image of a woman from a side profile that I could use and then, you know, put in a Photoshop and do that kind of thing.

00:26:16:17 – 00:26:38:07

Chris Hayzel

I just typed it in and it gave me one that that I didn’t have to pay for from Adobe Stock or something like that. And then I took it and I put it into Photoshop and I, and then I did my thing from there. But a lot of people can use and will use and are using things like Mid Journey and Image Generation to replace graphic design, right?

00:26:38:07 – 00:27:13:00

Chris Hayzel

Or having to learn graphic design chops, having to learn photography. I don’t feel like that has necessarily bled over into music quite yet, but it sort of inevitably will partially, you know, in the ways that we explored with that web app, right. Like how do you how do you see it reshaping the world of music? Like, are there other examples that you guys have seen of how it’s reshaping music or the creative arts in a negative way?

00:27:13:02 – 00:27:37:23

Mike Patti

No. I mean, I think that there’s some things out there that are just simply music generators, like, you know, Google has one as another one called Sudo, which just came out. I mean, I personally I don’t understand how that how that will work because who’s going to list? I mean, gosh, I sound like like an old person here, but like, who’s going to listen to like, hey, I just need something that’s just the certain style of music and just play.

00:27:38:01 – 00:27:43:11

Chris Hayzel

But Mike, we’re kind of already there. I mean, if you if you listen to pop music and stuff like that.

00:27:43:12 – 00:28:01:01

Mike Patti

Are people listening to this stuff? I mean, like my kids don’t or maybe they’re just because they’re my kids and they have good music taste and they’re like, Yeah, it’s not some of these ads for this stuff where you just type in a prompt and you get like, I just want like I’m walking down the street and I need like a hip hop groove or something.

00:28:01:01 – 00:28:06:18

Mike Patti

I’m like, Yeah, but I would rather listen to something that’s been produced than like, thought.

00:28:06:20 – 00:28:35:12

Chris Hayzel

Thought through. Well, one of the things that that comes to mind with me and this has been sort of one of my gripes with it for a while, is looking at the industry, the music industry. And this probably goes more for contemporary music, but it could also go for composing and things like that. But one of my main gripes has been if you look at sort of the landscape of contemporary music today and what’s popular, so much of it is mechanical, right?

00:28:35:12 – 00:29:03:05

Chris Hayzel

Yeah, it’s all formula, it’s all, all of these things. And that that’s what sells. Because I think that when you look at the broader culture of music consumption over the last couple of decades or few decades, music has kind of become more of a secondary thing. You know, it used to be like a primary activity. You would put on a record, you know, you’d, you’d put on side of a record, you drop the needle and you would sit and you would listen to the music.

00:29:03:05 – 00:29:33:19

Chris Hayzel

It was a primary engaging activity. Now music has become something that it’s like, I just need a good beat in the background while I, you know, put on my makeup and brush my teeth and get ready to go to the club or, you know, things like that. And so when I look at that aspect of popular music today, especially me, I could see a world in which, you know, record labels cut out the artists entirely and they’ve already tried to do this right?

00:29:33:19 – 00:30:13:16

Chris Hayzel

Like, there are some air artists that have been signed to record labels. Yeah, I don’t know where all that landed. The ones who have the power to sort of dictate where it goes are the ones who stand to gain the most money from it. Right? Right. The corporations and the record labels and stuff like that. So that’s so, Megan, you know, in in terms of what you were talking about there, it’s like I think you and I can say, yeah, when we listen to music, we really listen to the artists and we think about where they were coming from and, and we hear the, you know, the arrangement and the orchestration and all of those

00:30:13:16 – 00:30:21:04

Chris Hayzel

things. A lot of people don’t. And that’s not what’s selling super, super hard these days either, right? Yeah.

00:30:21:05 – 00:30:43:07

Mike Patti

No, I think there’s room for all of it. I don’t want to disparage it. I just personally wouldn’t listen to it. I don’t know. There’s room for all of these kinds of things, but I think like, I don’t know, there’s there’s this thing called music that withstands the test of time and will air generated music like, become iconic in that like 30, 40 years from now become classic hits, you know?

00:30:43:09 – 00:30:51:14

Mike Patti

And it’s the question will we will we listen to it the way we listen to like, well, heads up, Led Zeppelin or, you know, some of the Beatles or something?

00:30:51:15 – 00:31:19:16

Chris Hayzel

Well, I have a question for you, Mike. In the last since the nineties, late nineties, early 2000s, this isn’t an air based question, but since the late nineties, early 2000s. Are there any artists that you can identify that have created music that you think will last the test of time and that we’ll look back on in, you know, 50 years in the same way that we looked back on Led Zeppelin or The Who or the Beatles and things like that.

00:31:19:18 – 00:31:24:18

Mike Patti

Yeah, I think it’s definitely a small list, you know.

00:31:24:19 – 00:31:31:13

Steve Goldshein

Are you saying since the nineties and 2000 is like excluding the nineties into the because I’ve been on the nineties and twins kick lately and there’s.

00:31:31:13 – 00:31:44:01

Chris Hayzel

Yeah it’s a loading you know I think yeah. My my personal opinion is that the nineties in 2000 were sort of the last era of the legendary I bands are music creations. No you’re right you’re right.

00:31:44:01 – 00:32:14:03

Steve Goldshein

I mean I agree with that assessment Chris because I think there’s I think it comes back to something you were saying earlier about how music, listening to music was kind of a primary activity when you would put on the record and listen to it. And then the evolution of that was then I guess it came first. But the radio but that I mean, nineties, 2000s, the radio was one of the primary ways that people listened to music and the, the advent of streaming with Spotify and Apple Music has really changed the way that music is created now.

00:32:14:03 – 00:32:44:14

Steve Goldshein

And and then, you know, Tick Tock has, has further gone down that hole because in in the nineties and 2000, the ideal song lengths to be played on the radio was about three and a half minutes. So most of the music that was being produced and written by by bands similar sounds, similar instrumentations, similar types of beats and chord progressions and, you know, guitar tones and vocal effects and things that they were using.

00:32:44:16 – 00:33:12:23

Steve Goldshein

And part of the reason for that was the radio stations like that, because that was what kept people listening so that then they could get them and get the commercials in front of them. And that’s that was the driver there. Then with streaming and the monetization of being paid per play, but being paid an extremely small amount of money per play, that that was the the beginning of shrinking of people’s attention spans.

00:33:12:23 – 00:33:52:21

Steve Goldshein

You know, you can’t write, you can’t, you know, you don’t see many, many prog rock bands putting out eight and a half minute tracks on on Spotify anymore because it’s really hard to get someone to sit and listen to that and get paid point of $0.02 for four one stream all the way through. So now we’ve seen things get down to, you know, 2 to 2 and a half minutes or and and you see bands releasing the same track as a single and then they’ll release two more tracks and then put them together on a single and it’ll be a different album so that you can stream all three of them differently and then

00:33:52:21 – 00:34:14:08

Steve Goldshein

they’ll put out an album of songs, and all three of those tracks from the two singles will be on that album. So they’re getting basically triple income streams out of the same the same songs, and I can’t begrudge them for that. I listen to a lot of bands that do that and it works and is what they kind of have to do to make it and, you know, make it work for them.

00:34:14:08 – 00:34:40:00

Steve Goldshein

And now we’re in a in a in a social media environment where people are scrolling through at a rate of about 10 seconds per video or less of things that they’re watching. And so songs are literally sped up and shortened and, you know, made to be as easy, easy to digest as possible and not just kind of attention grabbing.

00:34:40:01 – 00:34:53:04

Steve Goldshein

Yeah. So yeah, I think that part of what the I changed there is you know it’s they can generate ten of of something just to quickly throw on to your TikTok video or your Instagram reel.

00:34:53:04 – 00:35:16:19

Chris Hayzel

Which I think is that to me that’s fine. Like, you know, if you just need 1010 seconds of music to throw under your tik tok will go for it. But if if a record label wants to create 3 minutes of the next hit single right, or if a production company wants to create, you know, a two and a half minute queue, that fits their scene perfectly right.

00:35:16:19 – 00:35:19:06

Chris Hayzel

And that’s where it starts to get a little tricky, right?

00:35:19:07 – 00:35:28:11

Steve Goldshein

Yeah, I don’t see them putting out now. That’s what I call music. 237 is just 145 second tracks.

00:35:28:13 – 00:35:29:13

Chris Hayzel

my God. I remember those.

00:35:29:13 – 00:35:32:04

Steve Goldshein

CDs. Right.

00:35:32:06 – 00:35:59:17

Chris Hayzel

The next question and it’s this this question is sort of like the one we just answered. It’s in what ways have you observed A.I. being used in the creation of music or artistic expressions? And how does it compare to the two traditional methods? And I feel like we kind of talked about that already. So I’m going to I’m going to rephrase this a restructure this a little bit for people who are just getting into music with these tools available.

00:35:59:18 – 00:36:09:06

Chris Hayzel

How is that going to sort of impact their musical journey? And how do you think that that contrasts with sort of the more traditional way to learn music?

00:36:09:07 – 00:36:38:18

Mike Patti

Yeah, well, I think overall we’re we’re seeing this trend from, you know, going back to the nineties where most people were just consumers of music and creators of music were sort of a very small subset. You know, you needed a proper studio and all of this stuff and a budget to, to create music. And it’s been democratized with technology where there’s some incredible music just being written today in home studios.

00:36:38:20 – 00:37:01:02

Mike Patti

The downside, obviously, is there’s no big machine behind it all to to get it out there. But I think we’re going to see even more of that sort of where music creation becomes more accessible to more people. And I think AI is just part of that. I mean, it’s I think people are still going to want to compose and write music, you know, the old fashioned way.

00:37:01:04 – 00:37:28:20

Mike Patti

By old fashioned, I mean with a sequencer and with a door. Yeah. And with and midi and sample libraries, because there’s something really enjoyable about just composing. I mean, you, you, you creating is a, is an act and it’s something that we just really love as humans. And I think AI is just there to be the assistant to help us and you don’t get that experience if you’re just typing a prompt in and then you’re getting something.

00:37:28:20 – 00:38:00:13

Mike Patti

I don’t feel that when I’m working with Mid Journey, it’s more like it’s like this fun magic trick that’s cool. But I don’t feel like I’ve expressed that creative gene, you know? Sure, that’s something that’s going to be true in ten years, 50 years, 100 years from now. Humans are creative by their nature. And there’s something about that process, sort of even the painstaking process of making minute decisions about, in this case, what your velocity should be on the C-sharp or whatever.

00:38:00:13 – 00:38:14:02

Mike Patti

Like that kind of stuff is always going to be something that people want to do. So I guess to answer the question, more people are going to be making music. There’s going to be just more of that.

00:38:14:04 – 00:38:41:05

Chris Hayzel

Do you think it’s that like more people will be making music but less people will be learning how to make music? So like, guess, let’s say, let’s say prompt, prompt based music generation or MIDI generation becomes a thing and that becomes, you know, a way that people start to interact with music. Do you see that as a as a road to more people playing music who don’t actually know how to play music?

00:38:41:05 – 00:38:45:06

Chris Hayzel

Or do you see that as inroad for people to get here?

00:38:45:06 – 00:39:06:14

Mike Patti

You said it, you said it. I see it more as an inroad, a gateway drug, if you will, to music creation, like, for example, there’s a great company. They’re doing something called where it’s called Web tool, and they have a door that’s an AI door. And you can just you can know nothing about how to work with a sequencer, but you just type a prompt in and it could do everything for you.

00:39:06:16 – 00:39:28:09

Mike Patti

But I still think that you still want to dive in. You’ll be like just being here. Just out of curiosity. You dive in and edit things or maybe change the cue and all this to make it your, your own. Yeah. So I would say to answer the question, Gateway drug, that’s what I see AI is yeah. Like humans aren’t there’s just like this, this desire.

00:39:28:11 – 00:39:36:02

Mike Patti

I mean I’m getting philosophical here, but I think that there’s something, there’s a driving force inside of us that wants to be creative.

00:39:36:02 – 00:39:37:05

Chris Hayzel

And yeah.

00:39:37:06 – 00:39:56:23

Mike Patti

That AI alone won’t satisfy. Sure, there’ll be people that get beat up, you know, just type of prompt and get the music back and yeah, that’s cool. And then they go on with their lives. Not every human on earth wants to make music. That’s that’s a false thing. I think that there’s like a lot of these tech companies are saying we’re going to make everyone on Earth make music.

00:39:56:23 – 00:39:58:08

Mike Patti

And that’s silly.

00:39:58:12 – 00:39:59:14

Chris Hayzel

That’s, you know.

00:39:59:16 – 00:40:08:21

Mike Patti

People just don’t want to do it like that. They just want to listen or that maybe music is not something that, believe it or not, there are people that walked the earth that don’t like music. Can you believe.

00:40:08:22 – 00:40:10:12

Steve Goldshein

That? You know, it’s a very.

00:40:10:12 – 00:40:11:10

Chris Hayzel

Strange study.

00:40:11:12 – 00:40:11:20

Mike Patti

That is.

00:40:12:00 – 00:40:33:05

Steve Goldshein

But yes. Yeah, I was just going to say I agree completely that it’s a gateway, because I think with prompt with prompt engineering, you need to know to an extent what you’re doing. And even if you are just completely flying blind saying, give me some music that sounds like this song, it may do it, but but everyone hears music differently.

00:40:33:05 – 00:40:59:01

Steve Goldshein

Everyone has different things that they latch on to in music, even people who are highly trained and highly knowledgeable and can can identify people with perfect pitch. You can hear exactly what notes are being played and are accomplished orchestrators and arrangers and know exactly what instruments are being used and producers who know exactly what, you know, compression settings are being applied and all of that.

00:40:59:03 – 00:41:24:18

Steve Goldshein

There’s there are so many nuances and so many aspects to music that that people can latch on to and that they hear differently. And it’s informed by so many things. It’s informed by what instruments we first learn to play. Like, for example, I’m a saxophone player. That’s my primary instrument growing up, so playing monophonic woodwind instruments, I can identify chords, I can, you know, I know all my music theory.

00:41:24:18 – 00:41:52:05

Steve Goldshein

I can I can hear, you know, play a chord. I’ll tell you what it is. But I’m I can’t transcribe things harmonically on the piano. My keyboard skills aren’t quite there, you know, I don’t have the two handed ability that that, you know, someone like Mike or, or one of the one of the other pianists on our team can can do or that you know you as a guitar player Chris can can I’m sure identify you know and go through chord progressions.

00:41:52:07 – 00:42:19:19

Steve Goldshein

So I relate more to the melody and the rhythm aspects of music because those are what those are. What I first learned to identify through my own musical training. I, I know that other, you know, drummers can have have a more perfect sense of time. Violinists and string players have a have a an unbelievable sense of pitch and vibrato and timing and melodic shape and structure.

00:42:19:19 – 00:42:42:08

Steve Goldshein

Same with vocalists. You know, keyboard players have have a great sense of harmonic rhythm and voicings and being able to hear multiple musical parts going on at the same time. The layperson who who’s just kind of messing around with a text prompt, they may not have any idea they get they get the result back from the prompt that they enter.

00:42:42:12 – 00:43:04:12

Steve Goldshein

They may not know how to get it closer to what they actually want because the AI engine sort o you want to you want a song that sounds like this. You must want something that sounds like this vocal melody. But what the what the person really had in mind was, no, I want something like this drumbeat, but they might not not even know how to how to express that or dial that in.

00:43:04:14 – 00:43:30:22

Steve Goldshein

They may be able to use that as a learning avenue to figure that out and to dig more deeply into that and to identify and to start to recognize, that’s what people mean when they talk about chord progressions. That’s what people mean when they talk about vocal harmonies or things like that. You know, when they start to recognize all these different thing, you know, a lot of people, you know, many people have trouble identifying different instruments.

00:43:30:22 – 00:43:44:16

Steve Goldshein

They don’t know the difference between an oboe and an acoustic guitar if they hear it, you know, I mean, they if you pointed out they could, they’ll they’ll they’ll know they’re different sounds, of course. But, you know, not everyone can just hear an instrument.

00:43:44:19 – 00:44:04:09

Mike Patti

Yeah, exactly. And I think that that that’s exciting. Know that someone will start on that journey. Yeah. Like harpsichord. I didn’t know what the difference between an oboe and a and a guitar was when I was ten years old, you know? No, exactly. I learned. And I just think that people are going to want to learn. People want to dive deeper and grow and improve.

00:44:04:11 – 00:44:21:20

Mike Patti

And instruments will always be around for like forever people, their pianos, a wooden piano will always be around, a cello will, and people will want to learn to play a cello, even though, you know, you can just, you know, in the future, who knows, 100 years from now, why would you need to know how to play the cello?

00:44:21:20 – 00:44:35:11

Mike Patti

Because it’s just there’s something awesome about performing and learning how to do something. I just started getting into cubing. Why learn how to solve a Rubik’s cube that’s seem like the way. But it’s it’s fun.

00:44:35:11 – 00:44:39:13

Chris Hayzel

It’s an algorithm like it’s an algorithm.

00:44:39:15 – 00:44:50:05

Mike Patti

It’s like it’s a weird art form. You know, these super nerds who can do this stuff, but a computer can solve a Rubik’s Cube faster than any human. Why should humans learn how to do that? You know? Well, I.

00:44:50:05 – 00:45:09:19

Chris Hayzel

Think, you know, I think it’s, you know, just like everything else, including music, tech and AI and all this stuff, that’s pretty nuanced, right? Because if you go back to, like hip hop and the introduction of of sampling, using using sampling other people’s music in your music, Right. Would that be like the beginning of the eighties? Kind of.

00:45:09:23 – 00:45:30:17

Chris Hayzel

A lot of people were saying, that’s not playing music. That’s not that’s not music making. Right? Right. When sequencers and synthesizers came out, that’s not music. That’s not music making. That’s programing. Yeah. Today, today we have people that started out or got into music by literally using a mouse and keyboard, not a music keyboard, but a computer.

00:45:30:17 – 00:45:31:12

Mike Patti

Keyboard.

00:45:31:14 – 00:45:50:11

Chris Hayzel

And penciled in midi notes into the piano, roll. And some of those people may have gone and learned the piano and may have gone and learned an instrument. And then some of those people might still just be or are still just, you know, penciling in many notes into into a into a piano role. So I think it’s like.

00:45:50:13 – 00:45:55:20

Steve Goldshein

Most mind and I do know I do know how to do it, but I.

00:45:55:22 – 00:46:26:10

Chris Hayzel

Like anything else, it’s going to be, you know, a spectrum, right? And there are and there’s going to be a whole new sector of like professional musicians that come out that are text based, prompt musicians. Right. If that’s if that’s the form of AI in music, that that emerges. You know, just like there are deejays who perform large, large concerts for thousands and thousands of people who didn’t play a single musical note in their lives.

00:46:26:10 – 00:46:34:12

Chris Hayzel

Right, right, right. That’s a big assumption is your find. I’m not judging you. It’s okay, but it’s a different.

00:46:34:12 – 00:46:38:00

Mike Patti

Yeah it’s become an art form. It used to be disparaged, but now it’s like.

00:46:38:02 – 00:46:53:14

Steve Goldshein

My alma mater, Berklee College of Music, has. They now recognize laptop as a principal instrument. You can you can go and learn how to use Ableton Live and other software as your primary means of relating to and creating music.

00:46:53:16 – 00:47:07:05

Chris Hayzel

So yeah, isn’t that wild? And then so think about that. You know, ten years from now where Berklee College of Music has a class that’s text based prompt music writing. Yeah.

00:47:07:06 – 00:47:08:16

Steve Goldshein

Like that teaches a class.

00:47:08:16 – 00:47:35:20

Chris Hayzel

It’s more of a it’s more of a writing class. Yeah, it’s more of like a literature class than it is a music class. That’s pretty wild, guys. It’s like we’re we’re two questions in, right? And we’re already 53 minutes into this, so. So maybe we’ll do maybe we’ll do one more question from from chat GPT and then I have a question of my own as well.

00:47:35:22 – 00:47:54:03

Chris Hayzel

Do you think that I could truly understand and evoke emotions in art and how does the emotional, the emotional aspect, how does the emotional aspect of artistic creation change when AI is involved?

00:47:54:05 – 00:47:55:11

Steve Goldshein

talk about philosophical.

00:47:55:17 – 00:47:57:13

Chris Hayzel

That’s what podcasts are for, man.

00:47:57:15 – 00:47:58:20

Steve Goldshein

Exactly. Yeah.

00:47:58:22 – 00:48:19:07

Mike Patti

Yeah, that’s a tough one because it can create it can create a chord progression for you which can evoke a certain emotion. There’s your emotion. But like, gosh, I don’t know, like when you think of what film composers do or game composers, their job is basically using music as a way to manipulate emotions. And this is just sort of like, there’s this bag of tricks.

00:48:19:07 – 00:48:47:19

Mike Patti

You can go, you know, there’s like 86 different things can do using chord progressions, using instrumentation, using melody to achieve certain or to evoke certain emotions. And I think that I can certainly learn that bag of tricks. But yeah, I don’t know. This is like, who the heck knows what? Is there a limit to that? You know, I could recreate something that like John Williams could create.

00:48:47:21 – 00:48:49:01

Mike Patti

I don’t know. I don’t think so.

00:48:49:01 – 00:49:14:11

Steve Goldshein

Well, that’s yeah, because I mean that that bag of tricks, that’s the training that composers undergo. We we describe those things to each other. We express this is what you know, this is how you evoke a feeling of dramatic suspense or, you know, romance or joy or, you know, this is a sound that that makes you feel at peace or fired up for action.

00:49:14:11 – 00:49:44:16

Steve Goldshein

I think that I can can understand how to take that in and then regurgitate it, basically. And because as you said earlier, Mike, it’s an imitator. It can it it understands the X means x, Y means y. Are these are the things that it can take in with that that information that it’s given and and retain that and find you know, and put it back out with similar patterns.

00:49:44:18 – 00:50:13:02

Steve Goldshein

I don’t think that what we describe as human emotion and feeling, it’s a physical experience. It’s it’s a psychological experience. It’s something that has so much to do with with physiological factors that computers just don’t have and that that A.I. language models don’t they don’t have the hormones and brain chemistry and, you know, psychological experiences that we do.

00:50:13:04 – 00:50:44:11

Steve Goldshein

But it can it can imitate it. And yeah, the going back to the idea, the musical idea that someone like John Williams can come up with, that’s something that that comes from an unknown place. It doesn’t really there’s no way kind of predict it. There’s no way to to make it happen when you need it to happen. And that’s why the concept of talent and all of that is so, you know, prevalent.

00:50:44:11 – 00:51:05:01

Mike Patti

And yeah, I think we’re touching on the difference between originality and imitation. And I remember one of the first, like when I was first starting out as a composer and I, I got my first project and I basically like scored it and it sounded like Alan Silvestri Back to the Future. And I was using all the kind of tricks that Alan Silvester uses in that movie, mostly octave tonic scales and, you know, all these things.

00:51:05:03 – 00:51:26:15

Mike Patti

And we actually recorded it with a live orchestra. I was super proud of it, and I sent it to a composer, John Joe McNeely, who was somebody I was kind of working with early in the early 2000, and he gave me really very direct advice and he says, Don’t be an imitator like he didn’t because he he thought it was very well written and everything, but he’s like, this is just an imitation.

00:51:26:17 – 00:51:48:16

Mike Patti

Do something original. And that’s probably why I never won an Academy Award. I’m not like a famous composer because I got really good at imitating. That’s I did right. And but the guys that have really succeeded, I’ve found, had a voice that was original. And so that’s the question. Can I be original without just being an imitator?

00:51:48:18 – 00:52:21:10

Chris Hayzel

Well, I think too I think too it like the subject of human, of the human quality of music and art and stuff like that comes down to even a more granular level than arrangement or chord structure or things like that. Like, or originality, right? Like coming down to the idea of how somebody plays an instrument. So to use in example, here, like you can take a solo cello from one of music goes like from synth strings.

00:52:21:10 – 00:52:47:07

Chris Hayzel

One of the strings libraries, or you can take a solo cello from Tina goes Cello, right? And they’re going to sound very different because of the way that Tina plays her cello. That’s what makes her library unique and just in her style, unique the way that she plays. And I remember watching this some this YouTube video. Do you guys know who Rick Beato is on YouTube?

00:52:47:09 – 00:53:10:08

Chris Hayzel

He’s like one of the one of the biggest music YouTubers. But he was he was he did this video where he was analyzing John Bonham’s drum tracks from for When the Levee Breaks. yeah. And what makes it so unique. And then he takes it and he quantized does it. And as soon as it’s quantized, it no longer sounds like John Bonham, right?

00:53:10:13 – 00:53:42:11

Chris Hayzel

Because the thing that makes a group of people playing together human is the imperfection is the the the imperfection that you can’t you can’t fabricate. You know, it’s the things that happen in a moment when you’re playing together that you can’t replicate you can’t plan for it. You know, things like when you’re when you’re a bunch of people playing together, you have all of these different elements going on and everyone’s going to make mistakes, like things are going to go wrong or something’s going to change.

00:53:42:11 – 00:54:06:02

Chris Hayzel

Someone’s going to slow down or someone’s going to speed up and you’re all listening to each other and you have to kind of like, it’s this dance that happens between people. And even as good as the technology gets, I don’t think that it could ever get to the point where it’s emulating that breath of movement that happens between people playing music, right?

00:54:06:04 – 00:54:34:11

Chris Hayzel

There’s even even when it comes down to like, how good sample libraries have gotten, how good digital recording has gotten, you know, and you can make something that sounds like professionally recorded in your bedroom. I scored an Emmy Award winning ESPN documentary in my bedroom at my dad’s house. That’s that’s how you know, that’s how good tech has gotten.

00:54:34:13 – 00:55:01:01

Chris Hayzel

But even with all of those advancements in technology that we’ve seen over the last 20 years, you still kind of can’t supplement putting five people in a band in a room and having them play live together. Even the process of tracking, tracking separately radio changes the way that something sounds. And it’s different than if you have people in playing live together.

00:55:01:03 – 00:55:29:07

Chris Hayzel

So I don’t think that we’ll ever get to that point. I don’t think that I think that those are the parts of of music, you know, that lightning in a bottle that happens, whether whether it’s Soundgarden or, you know, Nirvana and I’m on this nineties kick now because we were talking about it but like it’s capturing lightning in a bottle and that’s the piece that human element of it That’s the piece that, that moves people emotionally when they listen to music.

00:55:29:09 – 00:55:46:18

Chris Hayzel

And so at least from my perspective and so like, I don’t think that that technology and computers will ever get there. I don’t think that will ever be able to fully emulate the organic nature of of musicians playing instruments.

00:55:46:23 – 00:55:48:20

Mike Patti

I hope you’re right, Chris. I mean.

00:55:49:00 – 00:55:50:00

Steve Goldshein

I think that’s, you know.

00:55:50:06 – 00:55:50:16

Chris Hayzel

That’s.

00:55:50:18 – 00:55:52:08

Mike Patti

So I hope.

00:55:52:10 – 00:56:22:00

Steve Goldshein

It’s I mean, it’s what you were saying earlier, Mike, about the fun, the in the moment, the creativity, the part that we enjoy as humans we don’t want. I don’t think anybody wants computers to take that part away from us. But as you were just talking, Chris, I did I did have a you know it would be fun to see people put five laptops in a room together and create some system where they’re generating and listening to each other and, you know, an air jam band going on.

00:56:22:01 – 00:56:28:10

Steve Goldshein

I think you know that that’s that I’d watch I’d watch that once for the novelty.

00:56:28:12 – 00:56:40:16

Chris Hayzel

I think actually you know what, Mike? I think that’s a good idea. Maybe we should use that web app and try and figure out a way to like Daisy chain our computers together and we can, like, do an AI in the air in real time.

00:56:40:16 – 00:56:44:12

Steve Goldshein

And it’s just it’s just feedback is just an AI feedback loop.

00:56:44:17 – 00:57:12:23

Chris Hayzel

It’s yeah, well, we’re coming we’re coming up on the hour here and we’ve gotten through three questions. So I think that’s that’s that means that GPT did a very good job of writing questions to prompt a thoughtful conversation about it because it was so thoughtful that we could only answer three of those questions. But I do have one question of my own, and it’s it’s maybe like less of a question and more of a discussion.

00:57:12:23 – 00:57:40:21

Chris Hayzel

You know, as we said sort of at the top of this episode, we’re a music tech company. We’re focused on providing tools that help music creators create music. And being that AI is such a big direction that things are going, you know, we have to consider it at the very least. We don’t know if we’re going to implement it, and if we do, how we would implement it.

00:57:40:23 – 00:58:05:16

Chris Hayzel

But it’s something that we have to talk about and that’s sort of what this whole discussion is about. So I just wanted to like talk about, you know, ways that we think we might if we do implement AI, what are the considerations that we have when talking, when having that discussion in terms of our own product, in terms of MUZIO, what could those things look like?

00:58:05:21 – 00:58:09:14

Chris Hayzel

And what we want to make sure that we do right with it.

00:58:09:16 – 00:58:38:19

Mike Patti

I think that it’s more of a figuring out what do people want and keeping that open dialog. The thing is we’re building something for people. We’re not going to just build something totally in a vacuum and just be like, This is what you’re going to use. Good luck. And right. That’s one of the best things about MUZIO is that there’s all this like feedback, there’s a feedback button in the app that you can just know you talk to the team and then we respond and apply, apply the feedback pretty quickly.

00:58:38:21 – 00:58:48:06

Mike Patti

But yeah, no, I think that there should be something. I just don’t know. There’s also limitations. I mean, MUZIO is a plug in that runs in a door.

00:58:48:07 – 00:58:49:00

Steve Goldshein

Right?

00:58:49:01 – 00:59:31:09

Mike Patti

So there’s like limitations right there with what you can do. For me, like when I was just trying to figure this out, I think that having some kind of a mini generator would be could be useful, one that could, you know, basically take the information that’s already being played and then offer you something that you can has like, hey, can you add a staccato string line to this or could you add a drum loop or give me a eight bar drum loop for this using you know and then it can pull up one of the many drum kits that we have and just drag it in, have it actually listen to the Mini because it

00:59:31:09 – 00:59:49:09

Mike Patti

could do that. It’s performing the Mini, so there’s no reason why it can’t listen, just like have it listen to a section and then say, Hey, could you make the strings a little bit more emotive, you know? Right. And it could draw hairpins in there, or it can just fix the metal and clean it up so it’s a little bit better.

00:59:49:09 – 01:00:08:17

Mike Patti

Or hey, could you revoice these low strings so that they sound a little bigger and better, you know, stuff like that, that just takes time that no one wants to sit and mess with. I think that there’s something there. If it saves composers times that they could focus on being creative. I think that that were that were being helpful helpful.

01:00:08:18 – 01:00:17:18

Mike Patti

But if it’s something that’s just generating something out of nowhere and the composer is a secondary thought, that’s probably not the right direction.

01:00:17:19 – 01:01:01:09

Chris Hayzel

When how do you guard against that? So like, what are you know, if you, if you create a text based prompt MIDI generating AI program and we include it in museum, what are some things that you can put into place, you know, that encourage it to be more of a tool like you’re saying, whether it’s for an idea or a starting point or to sort of like help move things along, like with Premiere and the text based editing, what are some things that you put in place or can put in place that can guard against it becoming just like something where people are just generating stuff for commercial use and just relying on it as

01:01:01:09 – 01:01:06:05

Chris Hayzel

a, as a creative, as, as the thing creating it and replacing the composer.

01:01:06:10 – 01:01:26:11

Mike Patti

I think that’s the touch point. That’s the point that makes people concerned, you know, that’s why we hit the pause button on it. Yeah, you know, just seem like, this is nuts. Yeah, I don’t know. Because if you have if you have a mini generator, people are going to want to just be like, give me a piece of music that does a thing and then drag it in and play with it and add something to it.

01:01:26:13 – 01:01:33:05

Mike Patti

And I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to limit it. I would just say, Hey, if you want that, here it is. It does that functionality. If you don’t, don’t use it.

01:01:33:07 – 01:01:56:12

Chris Hayzel

I wonder if there’s a way to like, you know, because like MUZIO, it’s a tool for musicians, that’s what we that’s what we’re giving people, right? And and we’re trying to support people in their creative process. And one of the things that can be very supportive in the creative process is finding ideas because like the days of creating something original, truly original are over.

01:01:56:12 – 01:02:16:14

Chris Hayzel

You can’t you can’t write anything without plagiarizing somebody because it all comes from somewhere. We’re all ripping each other off to some degree, you know? And when you’re composing something, let’s say you hit a roadblock or some, you know, writer’s block, which is inevitable, you’re always going to do that. What do you do? You go for a walk.

01:02:16:14 – 01:02:46:04

Chris Hayzel

Maybe you listen to something to and get an idea from somewhere too, for somewhere to start. And having a I as a tool to sort of supplement for that instead of instead of getting your idea from a John Williams piece, you’re typing something into I and it’s generating something that’s an idea for you. And then you can take it from there that the risk is people start composing with purely, you know, or the majority of things being text based prompts, right?

01:02:46:09 – 01:03:10:20

Chris Hayzel

So maybe, you know, like what if there was a way to watermark anything that was generated with AI and to say, you know, somewhere in there like this cannot be used for commercial use, you know, it’s purely here to be an idea generator or something to help you start an idea shape something a little bit better or something like that.

01:03:10:22 – 01:03:34:03

Steve Goldshein

I think those legal guardrails already exist in a lot of in a lot of ways. And in my in my view, I think the the limitations are kind of automatically created by the fact that people need to know what they’re doing with a text prompt in the first place. You know, they could they could just say, write me a cue that sounds exactly like this piece by Hans Zimmer or whatever.

01:03:34:05 – 01:04:03:21

Steve Goldshein

But but by its very nature, they know that they would know in that situation that they are directly ripping someone off and that, you know, I’m not, you know, a legal scholar. I don’t know the details of all it, but my understanding is A.I. generated work can’t be copyrighted. And that’s you know, that’s a, you know, the legal basis for being able to to properly monetize something in the first place.

01:04:03:23 – 01:04:12:10

Steve Goldshein

And I think that as far as guardrails that we drew, yeah, it may not be don’t know. Again, I’m not I think I.

01:04:12:10 – 01:04:40:12

Chris Hayzel

Think it might not be. I mean that the like the whole writers strike in the whole act of strikes that just ended in L.A. those were all about AI generated scripts And then like for actors, they just wanted to bring in background actors and scan their faces to be able to use them in perpetuity. Right? So I think that there are very few legal guardrails against against AI right now because it’s so new and we’re sort of trying to figure out our way with it.

01:04:40:12 – 01:04:45:23

Mike Patti

Yeah, well, the copyright law and it’s going to drag way behind any insistence that, yeah.

01:04:46:01 – 01:04:50:18

Chris Hayzel

Yeah, we still we still haven’t figured out how to regulate Facebook. How long has that been out right.

01:04:51:00 – 01:05:16:07

Steve Goldshein

Now, Right. Yeah. I mean, as far as guardrails that that we could put on it. Like I agree with what you said, Mike. You know, we don’t there’s not really any and there’s not really any that we that we need to you know, we’re kind of we’re kind of expecting people to act in good faith anyway, because people could already use a lot of our products to make make a cover of something that that is technically a violation of a copyrighted piece of music and all of that, you know.

01:05:16:07 – 01:05:32:00

Mike Patti

Yeah, I wouldn’t put I don’t think you’d put any guardrails on it because like, you would just say, Hey, if you create something with this using the AI generator, you own it and you can monetize it to your benefit. You know, and I think that’s more for like pro composer.

01:05:32:03 – 01:05:52:06

Chris Hayzel

Then how do you how do you speak to, you know, the concerns of other composers like, say, you know, because the composer, the composer market as we all know is, is pretty it’s pretty competitive. There are a lot of people trying to be composers and you do have to currently know how to compose something in order to compete in that market and find work.

01:05:52:08 – 01:06:17:09

Chris Hayzel

So what if you, you know, now you’re opening the door? This is just me playing devil’s advocate here, just to just to spice up the conversation in this in this area. Currently, it’s it’s probably that, you know, no text based generation of music will be very competitive in the space of film composing. But as the technology develops, you know, you never know how good it might get at these things.

01:06:17:09 – 01:06:46:22

Chris Hayzel

And copyright aside, Steve, like maybe you’re not saying you know compose me something that sounds exactly like Hans Zimmer, but you are composing something using entirely text based prompts. You know, how do we speak to the creative people who are, you know, using MUZIO or who want to use MUZIO to compose music themselves? How do we speak to their fears?

01:06:47:03 – 01:06:53:09

Chris Hayzel

Yeah, of, you know, the market becoming more competitive because it’s more saturated with people.

01:06:53:11 – 01:07:21:02

Mike Patti

Yeah, I think that’s going to what we’re seeing actually is from companies, game companies. I’ve seen contracts now where they’re, they’re putting in clauses and clauses saying you can’t use any AI generated music because as a company we’ve hired you the human to make it and I’m paying a particular premium to have you. So I don’t want you cheating and using A.I. like I want you.

01:07:21:02 – 01:07:44:22

Mike Patti

So I think that’s probably if that if that expands, that could be really good. I could I could use AI and just do it myself. But if I want a human, I’m going to put that clause in there. So maybe that’s not part of the I mean, but like this idea and I see this a lot on on X where people are like, we need to do like start a movement and we need to change things and like cause some kind of big thing to happen.

01:07:45:00 – 01:07:48:03

Mike Patti

I don’t think that’s that’s possible. You know what I mean? Yeah.

01:07:48:05 – 01:08:30:18

Steve Goldshein

For me, for me, it comes back to what I said at the top of the discussion of the options for that have already existed. You know, the options for for not using a computer, using a composer and getting the music from something that is now equivalent, you know, A’s and equivalent, those have already existed. And if you want to get work as a composer, it’s about the relationships that you develop with filmmakers and content creators who need who need human generated music and human and want to work with you and want to have your unique imprint and your voice and your your contribution as as a person to the project and to the collaborative effort.

01:08:30:20 – 01:09:05:18

Steve Goldshein

And I think that that’s something that’s not really going away. I think that even with how starved the streaming services are for content now, they’re just greenlighting everything and, you know, and trying to trying to get as many movies and shows and things out there as possible. There are still tons independent game developers, independent filmmakers, independent web series creators who are looking to create art for the sake of creating art and to make movies and games and animated content and things that they that that are important to them.

01:09:05:18 – 01:09:32:06

Steve Goldshein

And part of what makes it important to them is the fact that other humans were involved in it. And, and people came together to create something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. And I think that that’s something that, you know, it’s the same kind of same kind of concerns that people had when when sample libraries came onto the scene and people said, this is going to put orchestra musicians out of work.

01:09:32:06 – 01:09:40:03

Steve Goldshein

No one’s going to no one’s going to want to record live musicians anymore. And that’s not that that hasn’t really been the case. I mean, sure, maybe there’s been the.

01:09:40:03 – 01:09:41:01

Mike Patti

Opposite has happened.

01:09:41:01 – 01:09:43:06

Steve Goldshein

Yeah, exactly. Because people because.

01:09:43:08 – 01:09:46:00

Mike Patti

There’s more orchestra recording now than any time in history.

01:09:46:01 – 01:09:51:14

Steve Goldshein

Yeah, right. Yeah. People, people, them mark up and they show it to the director and they say, we need to get this recorded.

01:09:51:18 – 01:10:11:16

Chris Hayzel

Yeah, I think, I think that there’s, there’s something to be said about that for sure. And, but I also think that there is, I think it would be wise to be a little bit cautious about comparing the types of technology that we’re playing with now to the types of technology that we were playing with in the past and things that have come out.

01:10:11:21 – 01:10:32:18

Chris Hayzel

I think that there are a lot of things that we can learn from that. But like a prime example is, you know, in the conversation of social media, a lot of people compared social media and the worry that people have about it to television when television first came out. Right. But there’s a big difference. Like, you know, people were really worried about TV and how it impacts society.

01:10:33:00 – 01:11:01:17

Chris Hayzel

And the truth is, is that a lot of the ways that they worried it would, you know did happen. But like there’s a really big difference between social media and television, because television, you know, was something that you still had to go to. Right. Social media is an entirely different technology with an entirely different, powerful attention holding algorithm behind it.

01:11:01:17 – 01:11:30:15

Chris Hayzel

And it has the ability to get you to pick it up when it wants you to. Right. And that’s totally different. When we when social media first started coming out, like everyone was like, this is great. It’s going to connect everybody. It’s going to help everybody get connected around the world and and bring everyone closer. And then there were all of these implications that we could not foresee because it was a technology that we did not understand fully.

01:11:30:18 – 01:11:59:03

Chris Hayzel

Right. I think the same can be said about I like I don’t worry about A.I. becoming sentient or anything like that, but we’ve already seen, you know, again, in the world of of social media, we’ve seen how A.I. and deep learning algorithms and things like that have negatively affected society as a whole, right? Yeah, in a lot of different ways, in ways that we never would have thought.

01:11:59:07 – 01:12:29:19

Chris Hayzel

I’m not saying that that’s the exact same thing as the way that it would interact with the arts. But I think we have to take into account the fact that we there are ways that this is going to play out in the arts, inevitably, that there’s no way for us to know that now and that there are going to be because we’re all human, there are going to be negative and negative ways in which it’s used in music and the arts.

01:12:29:21 – 01:12:59:08

Chris Hayzel

The reason why it’s important for us to have this conversation is because we are actually in a position, you know, Mike, back to what you were saying about people on Twitter, you know, saying we need to do something. You know, maybe they don’t, but we we certainly do. We need to decide like how how are we going to implement it to sort of be the ones to maybe show the ways that it can be used positively to support creative people and not replace creative people?

01:12:59:08 – 01:13:00:04

Chris Hayzel

Right. Yeah.

01:13:00:06 – 01:13:22:00

Steve Goldshein

I think the social media analogy is a really good one because it’s it’s about the egalitarian nature of it. It’s it’s accessible to everybody. And it was I remember when social media first came out, you know, I remember before smartphones when the computer was there was one computer in the house and the Internet was a place that you went and you were there when you were there.

01:13:22:00 – 01:13:44:22

Steve Goldshein

And then you left and you were. And it wasn’t it didn’t follow you around in your pocket. And you’re you’re exactly right that with the widespread availability of technology and all the different ways that anyone can can think to to use it and to interact with it, there’s a lot of implications that we can’t foresee and can’t predict and a lot of things that people will use.

01:13:45:00 – 01:14:11:22

Steve Goldshein

But I want to go back to touching on the how we could use it and how we can we can implement it that that I was thinking about when you were describing it as, as an assistive tool. Mike One of the things that that come to mind and this is probably a discussion to have in a meeting and everything, but one of the ways that, that it could be cool is, hey, here’s this melody that I’ve written water, I’m just using the, the sustained patch.

01:14:12:00 – 01:14:34:12

Steve Goldshein

Here are the notes that I have what are the best articulations to use instead of instead of just, you know, having it be sustained notes? You know what? Which of these notes should be Picado or staccato or Marcato instead? Or what are the you know, what, what are the best ways to get the most realistic performance based on the samples that we have available?

01:14:34:12 – 01:14:55:04

Steve Goldshein

Because we recorded all those articulations and and the process of going through and changing the, you know, each one to each node in your sequence to be the right articulation and then shifting it a little bit to fit the, the timing. It’s tedious and this time consuming and it’s important to do if you want a really high quality result.

01:14:55:06 – 01:15:09:07

Steve Goldshein

But it’s also the kind of thing that could be effectively replaced or not replaced, but augmented and finessed by technology. So but again, it’s something that you have so cool, right? It’s kind of kind of it would be kind of neat.

01:15:09:08 – 01:15:18:23

Chris Hayzel

That’s it’s it that’s it’s both. It’s both assistive and educational. Right. Right. Because maybe it would teach you something that you never would have thought of before. Yeah.

01:15:19:01 – 01:15:34:08

Steve Goldshein

Because a lot of people would. You know what is what is colenso even mean? You know, what is what, when, when, when would I even use it? What is. How do you even pronounce for Tondo? You know, all these all these Italian words all over our software.

01:15:34:10 – 01:15:55:03

Mike Patti

Now, that’s good. I think it’s about. Yeah, it’s like building the technology, but meeting people where they where they’re at already in their workflows. Like when self-driving cars came out, they didn’t like, remove the steering wheel. They didn’t. There are things just like humans that just drive around. It’s an actual car still, you know. Yeah, it has this added feature to it.

01:15:55:05 – 01:16:03:00

Mike Patti

I still think we need the steering wheel, like the door and plug ins and things like that. That’s not going away anytime soon.

01:16:03:02 – 01:16:04:19

Steve Goldshein

Well, they’re also getting more powerful too.

01:16:05:00 – 01:16:20:10

Mike Patti

Yeah. Yeah. So meeting people where they’re at and integrating it into the workflows that we’re all familiar with already. Yeah. Until the next generation, the kids that are 12 years old right now are going to learn whatever’s new.

01:16:20:12 – 01:16:30:10

Steve Goldshein

Yeah, but then when when, when the neural link actually gets really good and then it can just transcribe the musical idea right out of your brain and and orchestrate it for you there.

01:16:30:12 – 01:16:47:08

Mike Patti

I think it’s an exciting time. It’s overall very positive. I mean, there’s a lot of negatives, but I think that there’s I don’t know, it’s it’s what’s difficult think is just based off the last hour and a half we don’t know what the future is. Right. It’s just kind of we’re speculating and no one on earth knows what the heck’s going to happen.

01:16:47:13 – 01:17:08:12

Mike Patti

But we’re in this place where. We’re just kind of like we’re very alert and like aware of where things are going. And we just, you know, everyone has to be ready to adapt. If you’re a music creator listening to, it’s like, just be on guard and get ready. Like, you know you because I think you could benefit from whatever big change is going to be coming, you know, absolutely.

01:17:08:14 – 01:17:32:01

Chris Hayzel

Well, guys, this has been this has been a really a really kind of interesting conversation. And I think it’s interesting that we all we all have our sort of different perspectives on it. And, you know, as as a music tech company, I think it’s it’s great to have these discussions and bring all of those ideas together. So thanks for sitting down and having this conversation.

01:17:32:01 – 01:17:36:17

Chris Hayzel

Is there anything that you guys want to say, any parting words or anything like that before?

01:17:36:18 – 01:18:07:23

Mike Patti

Well, anyone that’s still listening, I mean, I basically we’d like to hear what your opinions are about this and what you would like to see from a company like us, because this is something we want to we want to do this right. And and so put it in the comments. What’s Apple? I don’t know. Wherever you what listening comment or just paying us on on Twitter or something because I think that’s really going to be very important here so that we can see where people at.

01:18:08:01 – 01:18:12:19

Mike Patti

We want to navigate this carefully and not do anything too, too rash.

01:18:12:21 – 01:18:40:01

Steve Goldshein

We read every single feedback submission and we make we make a lot of the decisions that we do about what what are our priorities, for example, implementing new things into music. A lot of the the the feedback tickets that we get from users carry a lot of weight in those discussions. So if you have ideas, if you have things you’d like to see, if you have concerns, things that we shouldn’t do, share them with us.

01:18:40:03 – 01:18:46:07

Steve Goldshein

Tell it, let them know. Hit that submit feedback button. MUZIO And my team and I will take all in.

01:18:46:09 – 01:19:09:11

Chris Hayzel

All right, so you guys, if you have any ideas about this, if you’re watching on YouTube, comment below. Like Steve said, send us a feedback ticket. Reach out to us somehow. We really, really would love to hear your thoughts on it. We know that’s a super, super nuanced conversation and there’s no black or white. It’s all gray. And so we want to make, like Mike said, that we’re that we’re navigating this in a thoughtful way.

01:19:09:12 – 01:19:23:13

Chris Hayzel

So thank you guys so much for sticking with us through this conversation and listening to us blab on and on. But thanks for tuning in and we’ll catch up on the next episode. Talk to you later.