[tlaverdure]

I've played guitar for 23 years, and there is something just off-putting about most of the music on that page, but particularly "Yellow Bus Jam".

The guitar solo sounds very unnatural, especially the phrasing, which is totally random. Blues musicians are actually attempting to say something through their instrument. This was just a random number generated solo played by a 6 finger three handed robot. No thanks, lol.

[mrtksn]

I know right? AI is in the uncanny valley still. But every now and then I stumble upon something made with AI.

I have no proof but I'm convinced that the song here is AI made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1Fg1QnDig

I liked it but it still feels like AI to me.

[snypher]

I think it has to be. It's very similar to others[1].The channel has a SoundCloud link in it's description but this song isn't there.

[1] often being 'modern song lyrics set to a historical style of music'. I don't know how to describe them exactly but they feel 'wrong', in the same way AI text is hard to critique but feels wrong.

[JKCalhoun]

I think we're just going to have to get used to it. That is, just drop worrying too much about whether something is AI and just stop at whether you like it or not.

[LambdaComplex]

This comment inspired me to click the link and listen to the song. Wow, that was terrible. It's like it had all the individual components of a fast-paced blues/rock song, but they were put together by someone who had no idea of how music actually worked.

And those guitar solos were terrible.

[benchly]

Still makes me want to give up. I just started learning keyboard and playing with synthesizers in the last 6 months or so with the intention of making game music and it's tough to not feel like I'm wasting my time. Game devs will go with what they can afford and who can blame them? The output is not perfect, but if the GenAI can do this now, what will it sound like a year from now? Two? Really takes the wind out of the sails of us newbies.

[tshaddox]

The good news is that is was nearly impossible to make a living playing a musical instrument long before generative AI was widely available.

[canogat]

Chess players still play chess.

[archagon]

Human art will become bolder, more dynamic, and a lot more weird to keep ahead of the GenAI digestive tract. Forever avant garde.

I'm actually a little excited to see what happens.

[fao_]

> but if the GenAI can do this now, what will it sound like a year from now

(For reference, I'm responding with such a long post because I have a pretty unique perspective to share compared to the hacker news crowd, and also, I wish someone had told me this too, when I was a teenager.)

I heard it five years ago and hated it because it sounds like slop, I heard it today and hated it because it sounds like slop. Game devs (the ones you actually want to work for that aren't just pulling asset flips), by and large hate AI art, and gamers by and large hate it too (There's a whole movement about not using it in games lol).

On top of that, professional musicians are so, so guilty of using music libraries to produce music — Guy Michelmore on Youtube (@ThinkSpaceEducation) has a really, really good video that I can't find right now, where he demonstrates using music libraries to bootstrap a composition. It's really unlikely to be the case that if you're working as a professional musician, that you're going to be producing all of the work of a given composition (even though it is very, very valuable to do that as a beginner because it helps you learn a shitload). Finally adding to this point, there's a cottage industry of people on Youtube who spend time pulling apart world-famous songs and figuring out who they're reusing for the bassline, what bands they sample parts of the audio segments from, etc. Hell, there's a whole browsable library of this: https://www.whosampled.com/

Separately, as a burned out folk+classical musician whose friends and family went on to be nationally recognized musicians (I dropped out of the folk scene due to gender dysphoria and presentation woes lol, but one family member did tour the world playing music when i was a wee bab), music has never, ever, ever been super profitable for anyone other than the very lucky or the very, very wealthy. You are very, very lucky to break even on the amount of time you spend, let along equipment costs. Even the internationally recognized composer John Cage had his main living selling mushrooms to Michelin star restaurants. Everything else I can say about this already has a really, really good write up about this here: https://klangmag.co/lifers-dayjobbers-and-the-independently-...

So between "You're unlikely to actually make money solely off music", "Professionals rarely write the entire piece themselves and will reuse things from other artists, either from a music library, a sample bank, or making their own samples", and "There's a whole slew of game developers out there that want real, human-made music, with all the soul and artistry that that entails", I don't really see a reason why this would take the wind out of anyone's sails.

But even if all of that wasn't the case, the question is ultimately: Why are you engaging in a hobby if it not being profitable, or you not being successful, causes you to lose any motivation? Why is that the main source of motivation for you, such that the possibility of losing that motivation causes you to lose all pleasure from the wonderful, unique experience of writing, composing, and performing music? I think this comes down to like, is your motivation for making music external, or internal. Does your joy of making something come from making the thing, expressing yourself and being artistic (ultimately being human in the process, because Art seems integral to us as a species, and engaging in it is stepping into and pushing forward this wonderful, complex history of self-expression), or some ephemeral possible future reward? Ultimately, it shouldn't matter whether or not you become a professional game musician (Which, by the way, is *absolutely* doable, and a worthy *goal* to have. I really hope you succeed!!), because the motivation to express yourself through a certain medium should ideally come from the joy you doing that and learning how to do it.

Essentially, it all comes back to the age-old, often stated: do you love learning because you love the idea of having knowledge at the end of it, or because you love the process itself. Learning to love the process is always, always going to be a stronger source of motivation and will last you through times when the progress and process are incredibly difficult.

[electrondood]

I had the same sentiment, but also recall what generated human hands looked like a year ago vs. now.

The solo was pretty funny though.

[ilvez]

Reminds those early youtube days shredding overdub videos.. These were funny, but the Yellow Bus Jam seems just hollow and wrong. Feeling there's something from Steely Dan in that song..

[freetonik]

Reminded me of Steely Dan as well, but somehow off.

[aatd86]

Have you tried suno? How does it compare?

[Freedom5093]

I thought it was pretty rhythmic

I would've believed he's real, just passionate about music on his big yellow bus.

[jofzar]

I really wonder if it's the singing are the reason, it's like amazingly off beat it's so jarring.

[resist_futility]

Does it sound like something a human could play? You're not attacking how it sounds but what it's playing.

[LambdaComplex]

Would it be physically possible to play? Yeah, probably. But it sounds terrible, and if I heard a band do it live, I would genuinely consider walking out of the venue.

[stronglikedan]

Get used to it, because it's much cheaper than a musician, and to the average person "attempting to say something through their instrument" and "random number generated solo" are largely the same thing.

[tlaverdure]

I'm not anti-AI, but I strongly believe the human element of music can be imitated but not fully replicated. Listening back to that song I can hear the attempt to stylistically play slightly off-beat to get the feel of a band playing without a metronome. The auditory illusion is there, but it still sounds off. Playing behind the beat is a feeling; it's not a calculation.

As a drummer keeps time, the band reacts by looking at the drummer’s hands and the sway in their posture. A drummer intensifies their playing as they respond to the feeling of air being pushed from guitar cabinets. A lead guitarist looks back at their friends and smiles when they are about to play that sweet lick that the bass player likes to play along with.

These are just simple examples that make all the difference when you listen back. I also can't imagine paying hundreds of dollars to go see an AI "perform" this solo at a concert. When I listen to music, I'm remembering the moment, the feeling, what the artist was doing to create their art. So still... no thanks!

[GuinansEyebrows]

> Get used to it, because it's much cheaper than a musician, and to the average person "attempting to say something through their instrument" and "random number generated solo" are largely the same thing.

it's okay to just say you're not that interested in music

[kev009]

The "Don’t Let Me Go" and "Yellow Bus Jam" examples made me laugh out loud. This kind of thing would be great for a cyberpunk game that dynamically generates a reality, with (unintentional?) faux pas and jank.

If you are an artist you could always slice, embellish, or otherwise process outputs into something so I guess it's not totally silly. But I get at best real estate video vibes, or unironic early '90s clip art and Comic Sans vibes and presumably some team of expensive marketers worked hard to select these examples, which is doubly hilarious.

[rogerrogerr]

As a non-music person, can confirm - if someone tried to tell me something through their instrument I would probably tell them it should have been an email.

I can generally understand that music has moods, but don’t think I could distinguish human-generated music from silicon-generated music at this point (unless I recognize a specific artist, of which there are vanishingly few I’m capable of)

[JKCalhoun]

It's live music for the win then.