Comment by yantrams | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yantrams | Hacker News Reader

I'm just weirded about the fact that conversation about something AS EPIC AS THIS is so boring and rudderless here on hacker news of all places.

I mean like YESTERDAY I did not have this superpower to summon something as majestic as say https://fb.watch/l4ssOD40M4/ with a simple 'A quirky and skronky Aphex twin sample that just hits you'

Edits:

I woke up to this news delivered from Yann Lecun himself in the morning on facebook[1] and my gaped mouth can still be found for onlookers to witness I suppose!

LIKE THIS IS IT FOLKS!

Edit 2

All those back in my days muzzak folks lamenting about the quality of contemporary music can fuck right off because you clearly havent explored enough of the modern music landscape.

Dont you dare blaspheme saying modern music has stagnated or some drivel like that. It is outright offensive to folks who are pushing the boundaries like say for example The Ex from Netherlands https://www.facebook.com/theexband https://www.theex.nl/news.html

Just because you and the other soulless people you fraternize with are ignorant of all the innovative stuff thats going on, we have to suffer through your opinion on the state of pop culture?

Because we like music for the fun of making it, and the shared emotional connection felt with the artist (whether it's real or not, knowing a human wrote and performed a piece allows you to imagine this connection).

I don't know what the point of machine generated music is. Just destroying one of the few remaining ways for people to make a living doing something creative, I guess.

The promise of automation was to have machines do the things we don't want to do, so humans could have more time to do things we enjoy.

Instead, we are automating the things humans enjoy, and still leaving humans to figure out how to feed, house and clothe ourselves through the sweat of our brow.

You said it for me. Muzak lives on.

> I don't know what the point of machine generated music is.

One point is that music fans can now make their own music. I think it's great that people can express themselves and it's not limited to those who put in 10k+ hours to master a single instrument. More people creating is a good thing.

That probably is a good thing, but the road to mastery is a great thing. I can't describe to you the feeling of being in the zone while making music, but I'll try.

Things will erode and decay, things will come into being, things will change. This flux is so constant that in truth there hardly are any things, just the changes; for as soon as you step in the river a second time, neither you nor the river are the same as you were. Epictetus, maybe? One of those guys.

Likewise, music is inherently fleeting, yet it still makes sense. You can't hold music, yet there's still a sense of it being a thing that exists. Yet when it stops, it still somehow hasn't ceased to exist. The act of musical performance, even at a basic level, especially with others, brings us one step closer to something fundamental about the universe than other forms of expression.

Like I said elsewhere, if you could ask the machine to pray or meditate, it wouldn't be fulfilling for anyone. It would be hollow.

The idea that creating music has had a huge technical barrier is laughable. It has not existed for ~20 years. Artists like Tinashe have learned to produce music themselves with programs like ableton, not a lick of mastering instruments or graduating from this and that art school. Just a general sense of what sounds good to you. Unlike visual art, there's no mechanical barrier either, no mastering of techniques. You can genuinely fiddle around with knobs and buttons and create something that sounds great to you - soundcloud is filled with these.

So there isn't going to be an increased level of profound self expressions because of this. Quite the opposite, more pure noise for the purpose of farming ad revenue.

What's worse, and an aspect many proponents of AI generations ignore, is that by ushering people into this specific channel of caring more about prompts than all else, we are doing a real disservice to potential people who could have become serious masters of their realm. After all, "why learn how that music program works when I can just generate it?"

>> After all, "why learn how that music program works when I can just generate it?"

That's how many of my friends in the music biz are thinking right now.

Also the same applies to Code and anything that could be generated by AI. I honestly lost the joy of learning a programming language with the advent of GPT.

The future is dark.

For me GPT allows me to explore more ideas quickly, and can help you learn languages more efficiently. More importantly, you don’t have to use it

Chat GPT still can't do visual programming so if you use something like Unreal Engine - you still have to figure out everything yourself. Sure - GPT can generate algorithms, but it can't playtest the game. I can't ask ChatGPT to implement something like wall climbing or object throwing in Unreal. It will probably generate something, but it has no way to playtest it and check if it actually feels good to play.

Not until the next version, at least.

people can express themselves...

Is it really an act of personal expression if you've narrowed the "vocabulary of creation" to the stable Diffusion equivalent of "hyper realistic, unreal engine, 8K, masterpiece, intricate details"?

At that point would not the act of creation feel rather hollow?

Tbh, since the invention of DAW software you don't actually have to learn to play any instruments.

I can create something that sounds decent in software like Ableton Live or whatever, but I can't play anything on a piano or a guitar.

> Because we like music for the fun of making it, and the shared emotional connection felt with the artist... I don't know what the point of machine generated music is.

Bingo.

This is a fun toy, but in terms what it means, you may as well ask an AI to pray. It's completely hollow in terms of the actual experience.

This could make suitable filler for idle games, ads, aquariums, and elevators. Not much else. Perhaps at best, a producer could use this to fill in the instrumentation behind a singer, but I have a feeling it's not there yet.

> The promise of automation was to have machines do the things we don't want to do, so humans could have more time to do things we enjoy... Instead, we are automating the things humans enjoy.

Damn. Never looked at it that way. It's still enjoyable to do these things, but perhaps less lucrative. I don't know, do professional musicians like arranging elevator music? I'm strictly an amateur who has never made a dime performing, so I really don't know if that would be joyful, soul-crushing, or somewhere in between. I just know what it means to me, and like I said, you may as well ask the machine to pray for all I think this amounts to.

> but in terms what it means , you may as well ask an AI to pray

The generative process is based on a combination of learning and randomness. The random part doesn't mean anything, but it's clear that it is far from just random notes. Do you think human music always starts from a meaning? It's just lucky accidents that sound good. We even retrofit explanations post facto to our actions, we can certainly compose music first and assign a meaning later.

Around 150 years ago classical music had a big dilemma - should music be related to concrete things or abstract? Should we put a story to music? So everyone wanted to know "what was the program?" (program==original author's meaning) sometimes composers would just hide it in order to instigate people to use their imaginations. It didn't matter what meaning the author originally assigned to it, better to try to hear it with beginners ears.

You've misunderstood. I'm not talking about the meaning of the inputs and outputs of a creative process. I'm talking about the very experience of doing the thing. Hence the prayer comparison.

> I don't know what the point of machine generated music is.

Exploring the latent space of human music. It's a cultural mirror.

But at the risk of aligning mirrors to other mirrors and hollowing out the essence of it. Computers have been essential to the evolution of modern music, AI won’t evolve it anywhere because it needs to mirror the human work, and without people to do that it’s a sad dead end. But I doubt people will stop learning instuments and stop making music the old way because it is too fun and meaningful to do that. But there’s a possibility it will shift in magnitude in either direction. Hope to go the way chess did and not press a button and a few faders and call it music.

> The promise of automation was to have machines do the things we don't want to do, so humans could have more time to do things we enjoy.

But why exactly should that happen? By which mechanism? Every single company automates in order to increase their monopolies and profit, to generate more shareholder value. There exists no other mechanism, so obviously we will never do anything other than that.

> Because we like music for the fun of making it, and the shared emotional connection felt with the artist (whether it's real or not, knowing a human wrote and performed a piece allows you to imagine this connection).

Speak for yourself. I like music if it sounds good, regardless of who made it.

This feels like a straw man to me. We are continuing to automate feeding, housing and clothing ourselves as well. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

I would like to make music, video games and movies, too, and AI lets me do that. I don’t need millions of dollars or years of training to make something creative anymore.

> I don’t need millions of dollars or years of training to make something creative anymore.

You never did... You just needed to get creative.

You can go a long way with LMMS or Ardour and free sample packs. Most big sample production companies provide royalty-free samplers. The free stuff from Sonniss (GDC freebies) and Black Octopus Sound could last an entire career. Throw in the free Komplete Start (or Helm and Surge if you prefer open source) and you have all your synthesis needs covered: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bund...

> I would like to make music, video games and movies, too, and AI lets me do that.

In what sense is that still you doing the creating?

Yep. The way commissioners react when I deliver the files and they hear what I made for them for the first time tells me AI has a long way to go. I'm not sure it can replace that human connection. There's plenty of solid, cheap, and sometimes even free library music out there if you just want music of some sort for a project, and no generative music I've heard comes close to it.

> we are automating the things humans enjoy, and still leaving humans to figure out how to feed, house and clothe ourselves through the sweat of our brow.

Have you been to a farm before? Have you seen a textile factory? Have you seen a construction site? How could you, with a straight face, suggest we are not automating those things? There are vastly more people working on automation in those fields than are working on AI-generated music. Automation in agriculture, construction, and textiles are massive industries. There are a lot of people in the world working on a lot of things.

I mean that I still need a job to get access to those things. Housing prices go up and up, whatever automation is happening in that market is not helping ordinary people who need a place to live.

Food is a different problem. We have access to very cheap calories, but the overall quality of nutrition is way down in advanced economies, leading to an epidemic of obesity.

Textiles is pretty much a solved problem. We have so many clothes, we give them away en masse in developing countries. I think there are very few people in the world without access to adequate clothing, and if there are I suspect it's a distribution problem.

These soulless beatboxes will never have the heart of a real drummer

It's not rudderless, there's just a large amount of angst surrounding AI/ML ranging from "more ways to feed the copyright trolls" to "what should I raise my kids to do for a starter career?" and a lot of interpolated points in between.

You're totally okay not feeling this angst. But so are the folks who do.

I think it's really neat, but I also kind of go "meh". I've been into generative music stuff for a long time, but whenever I get to the end of the project I go "meh", and I don't really feel any different about this.

As I've watched the evolution of music generation with LLMs I feel like I just keep hearing drivel at greater fidelity. If you like it then by all means listen to it, but this is average or below. In some ways I think I prefer the more chaotic less coherent predecessors. They're a bit more interesting to my ear.

And as other posters have said: that doesn't really sound like Aphex Twin to me at all.

Because that doesn't sound a bit like Aphex Twin and sounds like some generic filler music.

That is straight garbage.

If I'm being honest, i have to agree. This is like, the least interesting sound I've heard today. It's just a beat, like i bet some things could sound cool eventually but it's just ridiculously generic and kinda derivative. As well i can tell it's ai generated, it's got the same kind of stilted, just holding on to tempo, that most voice generation sounds like. Like it's mere moments away from entirely falling apart into machine screeching and creepy whisper sounds. Maybe there's better examples but being introduced with this clip has really put me off the whole idea

I get the same feeling every time I buy into the AI hype and try it for myself.

On stuff like art it's hard to judge objectively, but in things like code it's much simpler. Don't get me wrong there are cases where I find generative AI useful - but the hype machine and the unedited whole solutions are just straight garbage.

because it doesn't sound like aphex twin, isn't particularly quirky, isn't skronky, and doesn't just hit me.

It sounds like output not resembling what you requested, and you're celebrating because for some random reason this particular prompt didn't sound totally horrible today. But it isn't intentionally making music, and it isn't particularly interesting music either. It's basically baby's first drum machine sort of stuff.

It's basically baby's first drum machine sort of stuff.

PRECISELY! And I find that magical. Better prompt fidelity, model zoo etc will follow soon.

that's cool but also sounds nothing like aphex twin. sort of four tet-ish maybe

I may get down voted for this but it somehow reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fboNTcjJ8bo

Reminds me of his "Change" off of "26 mixes for cash": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecHLSoJeAAA

However, that's from a sampled drum beat. I generally agree though that this generated snippet doesn't remind me of Aphex Twin much at all.

Eh, could fit into a busier "Acrid avid jam shred", I think

Agree. I'm still blown away by the fact that we can summon this level of coherent output with text. Absolute black magic sorcery that!

When it comes to music, the meme at this point is that "discovery is the problem." There is already so much music being made by so many people that the difficult part is connecting listeners to music they enjoy. It's tiring to see endless takes of "finally! we don't need artists anymore! we can just stand on their shoulders by training models on their work and then generate our own art instead!"

There's already so much art being made. Why have so much joy in ignoring all of it and focusing on generative AI instead?

Furthermore, there's another work posted on that FB account that has the caption:

"While I'm concerned about the possible impact on society - especially on the jobs front, I cant help but grin as the edifice of human exceptionalism is shred apart with every passing day."

Is that you? Why the misanthropy? "edifice of human exceptionalism"? As it applies to... making music?

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture

This quote always makes me wish someone would give dancing about architecture a good try.

Every week now there is a new AI thing and we are all worn out from trying to continually ascertain what to think about them.

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