If you need a.i. to make music you’re not a musician

You’re a technician! And that’s okay!

Welcome to the techofuture! Where a.i. companies are inking deals with record labels!

It’s here and there’s no stopping it, so let’s lay some ground rules.

Rule number one: there’s nothing like the real thing, baby.

I think a very important question we (or inevitably some tech executive) will have to answer is this: what is music? The simplest definition?

mu·sic

/ˈmyo͞ozik/

noun

noun: music

vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.

Let’s break it down…

It’s easy to argue that a synthesizer is considered an instrument, so if an a.i. prompt produces a fully synthesized song it is still technically an “instrumental sound”. The not-so easy to prove but bullshittable argument is that a.i. makes a “vocal sound”. Whose vocals it is will be debatable—artists like Jorja Smith are already fighting back to regain autonomy of their sonic likeness—but one can argue an a.i. prompt can produce a voice-like sound.

The real debate if a.i. is considered music lies here: according to the dictionary, music is an “expression of emotion” and a.i. cannot “produce an expression of emotion” because a.i. cannot feel.

You can pour decades of your feelings into a chatbot and train the program to respond in a simulation of love. But a program can never truly love you. A program cannot feel the ache of desire, or the pain of abandonment. A.i. cannot pull up on you for the rebound… That’s the perk of it all, no? Human ingenuity sans human neediness? The Industry wants a songwriter to pump out the hits without the mental illness and trauma dump artists lowkey require to write a great song. But most importantly, a.i. prompted music cuts production time in half. Think of how much money will be saved not booking months of studio time— think of all the DoorDash expenses successfully avoided!

Time = Money. And art has now become indistinguishable from commerce in our post capitalist society. But I’m a big, juicy, emotionally unstable artist first and a businesswoman second. And I believe what I do will always have value.

I predict a rise in A.R. concert experiences, where thousands gather (from the comfort of their home) and wear headsets to watch their favorite prompted pop stars perform their favorite prompted hits. I foresee chart dominance from a.i. generated artists and labels battling over who can get the first Grammy for their beloved prompts.

Some people may mourn this reality, but I don’t.

Because at the height of a.i. I still see Us. I see the small clubs, packed shoulder to shoulder with humans hungry for an imperfect vocal. I see an open garage with rebellious teenagers tearing blisters into their fingers while learning guitar. I see the art of songwriting—story telling, prose, iambic pentameter—being consumed as a rare luxury. Humans will always win.

So Xania Monet and all of the other prompts that follow in her digital footsteps(?) may be able to replicate sounds… but a synthesizer is still a sound pretending to be a sound. The vibrations that form the waves that make the a.i. songs that bounce off of your eardrum and penetrate your body are already ultra processed, like a hot Cheeto.

There’s nothing like the sound of wind moving through a horn from exhaled human lungs in an old room soaked with songs from decades of jazz shows. It’s pure. Raw. Uncut. Organic.

I wear the badge of songwriter and musical composer with the pride of an old craftsman. I am a milliner pricking my finger on a needle in the middle of the night whilst the factory across the street zips out a million fedoras a minute.

But when it’s time to innovate and the envelope needs pushing, the machine will always turn to humans. Because we have what cannot be prompted, a divine connection to Source. Bad ideas. Errors. We dare to suck! And every great songwriter knows that’s where great music lives. In the post suck.

I, human am not afraid of being replaced because I am irreplaceable.