Nahuel, Francis, we're finally doing this, we're doing this, we've been discussing about amongst ourselves AI and music yeah for a couple of times now, yeah and you know we thought we put this together on tape so to speak, yeah we can share some of our personal thoughts and conversations a little more openly, yeah fantastic, why don't we introduce ourselves, sure I am Nahuel Bronzini and I'm a music producer, audio engineer, musician and just a lover of all things creative really and yeah we're here in my studio in Berkeley and I'm here with Francis yes and please, yes and I'm Francis Phan, I'm a music producer as well and I am also head of product design for a fairly prominent music tech company but at the heart of everything we're both music producers, that's right yeah, and I'm also in the Bay area as well yeah so we thought making music with people in the Bay Area and since this is also the mecca of you know of tech and technology and development why not to discuss these things that intersect right here so why don't we just jump right in, let's do it so I'm gonna put you on the spot and I'm gonna ask you a question all right and just maybe just to demystify and give a little bit of background what is this AI thing, Francis? what is AI? wow, we've been hearing a little bit about it lately haven't we that's right essentially AI it's simply a technology and it's driven by massive amounts of data and what AIs are really good at is finding patterns in the data in ways that you know we can't do as humans and when you do things in a particular way AIs are very very good at doing like predictive modeling and so really at the end of the day AIs use the data that it's you know the data is used to train it and there are some particular type of outcomes that it can produce in a way that reflects you know the data set that has been trained on, Wow it sounds, when I think about it sometimes I think of a person that's really taken a deep course in music appreciation but at a large scale somehow, super large scale but in a way it's not too different about if you think with you know us you and me we are shaped by our own experiences right and our experiences are in a way defined by you know by what we've lived through where with AIs you know, it essentially you know can scrape anything through Humanity that's been like a you know digital record and so course if you could imagine you know if these AIs have access to you know to what Google has access to that's a very staggering amount of data that's right yeah I mean it makes me think of all the years that I've been listening to music since I was a little child and even without realizing what things I was hearing just from my parents from the communities I was part of and, and I think sometimes people ask me so Nahuel what are your influences why do you, or what are you writing right now and I might not even be aware of the things that I've that I've ingested right aesthetically and the things that kind of shape our taste in a way so I can see the parallel in that between our human experience and how a machine may take impulses, sure however there is one major difference is that you know for us our musical influences are very tied into our life experiences right like things we've been through breakups right new loves right things that Inspire us things that you know that makes us emotional you're talking about emotions attached to a certain to a certain art appreciative a moment In time perhaps something like a song a song that reminds us of certain time or place yeah smell yeah taste that's right and so really we can't separate like our when we write or produce something I mean it's it's all intertwined in terms of yes we have our musical influences but then we also have our life experiences that will certainly impact how we write yeah how we make these those expressive or creative decisions, correct so in a way so this is one important difference between us as humans and and AIs where AIs pulls from its you know a lot of I guess human references or experiences so to speak like what it doesn't have is a particular context where for you and I when we write you know there's some type of experiential context associated with what we do that is true that's true and if these models are being trained by human created-first data or arts, or let's say a painting I'm curious to what will happen when we'll get to a point where models will be trained upon things that were not created by humans perhaps in a longer run it will be derived from a human creation right at the very core but like maybe the iterations will be so many that at some point things will be very far away from a human source, so that's so that's really interesting it reminds me of years ago you know as AI was really starting to hit kind of like the mainstream you know there's that ancient game of Go and you know I think there was this Deep Mind team you know create this AI to compete against the world champion in Go which is like considered the most difficult game in terms of complexity and kind of the takeaways from that from this this whole event deep Go by the way you know won overwhelming against this world champion but what happened there was out of the five matches in one particular match AlphaGo did something that was considered really unorthodox right and then in another match Lee Sodol did something as well that was relatively speaking pretty unorthodox and so really what's interesting with these AIs is that it learns from itself and it doesn't have a notion of oh it can do this or it can't do that right it'll just try things almost the concept of right or wrong yeah there's no self-judgment or anything like that oh just blindly do it you know and and it will come up with like interesting ways of doing things only because it's not been constrained over you know pre-predefined notions of what's right or wrong or things that are accepted within a particular genre or just how our human mind works maybe there's, sometimes rule out specific things just out of the picture completely before yeah, and I heard a commentator lamenting that after you know after this match this world champion just you know essentially gave up wow and and you know this commenter was saying that perhaps it could have been an opportunity for the world champion to see you know what this AI does and perhaps like learn from that AI and you know and then doing so like up leveling you know up leveling himself so there could be opportunity there and that these AIs may offer or potentially offer just a you know out of the boxing, an unthought point of view, yeah right yeah so so that could be interesting and I think certainly there's there's implications for us as far as you know getting ideas or you know different inspiration right that's interesting yeah I mean I always think of this idea of, I love to take walks around Berkeley and I see things that happen around me and almost like a photographers I think sometimes it has to do with how we perceive, how we capture a moment in time but it could be a new idea spit off of an AI generator machine, it might, and but as long as we find this new thing that came out something appealing or something that it's worth exploring I think that's that's an interesting avenue right it's I think new impulses and new yeah new points of view even wherever these points of view are coming from could be a spark for inspiration so I have a, yeah I could see it possible outlook in that way many times we struggle with this blank page situation where oh yeah where do we start yeah and there's I've seen some models that are able to kind of do like a on the spot brainstorming of ideas and just present us with possibilities yeah, maybe for our audience this might be a good opportunity to kind of give an overview of various different ways AIs is used in the music industry or you know for us as music producers yeah that's right well as a mixing engineer there's there's certain tools that are able to analyze the audio spectrum of a signal and kind of identify patterns that might sound harsh or might not be as pleasing to the ear and then kind of auto equalize or auto shape things and you know these things are very they're very kind of case specific at points so sometimes they might be help you to achieve something faster although there's always the necessity to at least in my experience to adjust and that mix-knob and how much of that comes into effect and you know it's always context dependent you know that's true so Nahuel, you are a Grammy-winning engineer and so you know I certainly you know engineer makes my own productions but I suspect that you know, you have a just a ton and wealth more intentional knowledge than I have for me I might use this similar tool not to sculpt into like you're you're basically sculpting where for me you know there are these tools where I can essentially upload some reference tracks like these are the sonic characteristics and I like to have my mix sound like you know this particular artist you know and and it's really really helpful for me because it gets me roughly the ballpark you know I still need to you know you know finish things up but the you know to get to that 80 or 90 percent point like before I would spend an incredible amount of time and still not necessarily you know get to that 80 percent you know 80 percent point and which at which point I would need to hire someone like you, sure, and so now you know these tools are getting more and more powerful that maybe instead of getting me 80 percent there maybe it gets me 95 there and you know for me since producing's not my day job I might be like you know I think this might be this might be you know good enough and you know I save save a few bucks and so for I mean what's your what's your take on technology being able to enable someone like me and really you know for you know as far as like disruptive technologies like what is your your viewpoint on that well you know as technology advances I think we have to accept that it's coming and that's what's happening and I think I always go back to see well what's my what's my human intent and what's my what is it that me as a sentient being creative person bring to the table in that way yeah and I think I was showing you a few weeks ago when were opening some mixes and listening to them I think it was a Chad Blake, very famous and engineer that I really like how he works, I think her's very unique in what he does and I think the things that I always point out that I was really fascinated about were not the things that were technically correct but the things that were actually unpredictable or out of the box or just left turns that you're like oh wow that that really took me in a new direction that's really those are I think the things where an artistic standpoint really takes place when because we can I don't think art perhaps has to do with striving for perfection, right, but it's in between those imperfect beautiful moving things and moments where we get really captivated, absolutely and I think you're touching upon something where because you mentioned like art and and I think you know for me the art is just basically in an outcome of me trying to express myself or as a producer me trying to channel the artist in terms of what they're wanting to express and for me you know I absolutely love that process you know I love I'm a very collaborative person like I get energy when I work with others and there's nothing for me there's nothing quite like the feeling of when you work with someone else or a group of other people and when it works out well yeah like you you have this this this outcome which is really really magical and I think the process is also a magical thing too that we as creative need to experience and I think going back to the tools AI being another set of tools that can facilitate a certain task I don't think there's a way that it can replace the process if anything is just it could be an ally and aid to maybe help realize some tasks but still the thing where really the magic really sparks is out of that human connection yeah and it's it's about interpreting human emotion and I think that's what humans are best at and then they craft and and how some things can get you know especially the more technical things, I use some softwares that allow me to do dissect sound and really get in there and take and even recreate parts that have been lost because of a faulty recording or noise or a click or pop or there's a ceiling that's noisy and it cracks yeah and then there are AI based too softwares that take the data that's around the parts that are missing and then recreate based on these other signals that they learn from yeah and that to me is an enormous you know yeah because yeah and these tools are extremely valuable because you know say you have like this incredible like vocal performance right and then somehow there's like you know some environmental noise comes in like you know car honks or something sure and you know but there's you only had that one moment in time to capture that and so really you know a lot of times it's hard to reproduce a particular performance so to have this tool go in and just you know essentially fit like fix it oh incredible amazing yeah I have through different projects I've been able to save these magical moments, like this I always talk about the demos and the pre-production and I always try to record things as good as I can from the get-go because it's really hard to reproduce an emotions absolutely yeah yeah and sometimes there might be guitar bars or you know a click or pop you know it's like you just said and having these tools at disposal is quite yeah to give you the options so you know we started about like okay examples of AI music so we talked about on the mix end how about AI in terms of actual musical content there's quite a few things happening out there right, that is true yeah and you know this is where I feel like the blank page kind of idea starter can be interesting yes yeah you get suddenly you're presented with with the bare bones of an idea that then we can interact with and then create upon that yeah so I mean I guess I'm not gonna kid you, you know I like I'm sure a whole bunch of other creators you know we have writer's block yeah from time to time like literally you sit down it's like I'm gonna write today and you know you have this blank canvas in front of you and so there are definitely tools that are out there where you literally could specify a particular genre and you could you know spit something out which actually sounds you know potentially could sound pretty pretty good they actually yeah they do sound good yeah like like oh my God and and a lot of times it's like wow like what this thing spit out in seconds would have taken me way longer than that perhaps hours to get to a similar point and it's like oh wow this is an efficient launch pad it is true yeah I think that launch path can be really useful but at the same time I don't think that we as creatives will put aside that initial brainstorming as a practice as a means of expression and just exploration I think we always will carve the necessity right or we'll have the the need for being and doing and grabbing the guitar and being really yeah really in the moment, yeah what is creativity what is creativity okay I would take a stab at that it's to be being able to synthesize a particular type of outcome based on intent to create something novel or novel in its own way I think the notion of novel whatever that means or how it manifests itself to me is kind of a criteria yeah I'm always on the romantic side of things but I like the the word intent and and I think there's a sense of honesty also that is attached to creating something of deeper meaning in a way where we almost are making something because we need to in a way but perhaps creativity and art don't always have to fully you know be in the same space they could be perhaps separate things or they can intertwine or not so okay so what is you know I took a stab at defining what creativity is you know what's going to put myself on the spot what is what is art? I think art has to do with and need to express something through a highly refined craft in a way I think there's craft meets the need for expression and then when things align there's an outcome that comes from that intent from that necessity yeah and then there's the work itself that's this self-contained universe of sorts that has its own rules its own boundaries and its own possibilities and then there's the other side of things that's whoever is viewing it or hearing it or experiencing it and then there's all sorts of other associations and ways of interpreting and feeling from that that sometimes match the intent of the creator of that piece and sometimes they don't and that's okay and that's where we all different individual humans connected but also unique, so I want to dive in a little bit about you know how to define art to me like would it be fair to say art is a particular type of outcome? where creativity is the intent and so with regards to the outcome it may fall into say various different categorizations like say for music it's like a genre or a particular style so from that standpoint humans create art and AIs can create art as well because you know AIs are generating like these artifacts as humans we create these artifacts so it's fair to say that these AIs do generate art? I selfishly would like to reserve perhaps the word for when there's a presence of an emotion that comes from a need from expressing something a feeling in words or in a language that other that words cannot express or what words could express in prose or in literature but it's almost like creating a new language that it's out of the ordinary to communicate or to say this is how I feel therefore this is what I create I I think for for myself right there's there's kind of like I don't you know think when I'm writing something what my intent is and then what well I do actually think about an outcome as a music producer right like I work with an artist and you have to make some you know you have like a creative discussion which is okay like what kind of it could it could be not necessarily but it could be what type of audiences do we want to reach you know what type of genre like is this record gonna fall into right and so that's that's kind of like an outcome right and and so you know so the intent and outcome things are closely like intertwined I guess the point I'm trying to make is that AIs can also generate a particular type of outcome that conforms to a certain type of expectation right for form like for for a genre and things things that right yeah which was ultimately initially a programmed by human being correct points yes yes and it's done always it's constantly changing too it's and I guess it can self-learn based on but initially at the very seat of it there's a certain prompt or a certain parameter that was said by by a human with I'm gonna get metaphysical even with the soul but I mean intent and outcome it's yes they're related and we're creating a work of something but perhaps I guess if it doesn't matter so much if it's art or not that's another question right because we can create things and and there's plenty of human generated things where one could argue yeah you know if it's hard or not right I could get in trouble for this but yeah I think there's plenty of of a lot of heartless music out there that didn't need a machine to be created right and it's just I think that's just the use and abuse of craft as I mean for creating stuff more more things that come out of it you know it it's so interesting that I think you and I we we certainly value the notion of craft right we we're we're both musicians it's taking time for us to learn how to play guitar or or piano right oh yeah and then of course if you think about you know you being like let's say when you put on your mix engineer hat right like that's that's craft as well it's taking taking a lot of time for you to get to to to where you're at yeah I mean I personally this this puts me makes me wonder why is it that I do the things that I do do I do them because of the outcome that desire or because I enjoy the process of of doing it so there's all that this entails to to be professionals and craft yeah it takes a lot of time and but yeah I wonder why is it that we do these things well there I think we established earlier that you know for you and me we find joy in in expressing ourselves or helping enable others to express where things get interesting is if we start doing things in a commercial commercial context right right and there's an intent and there's a desired outcome that's very specific in there as well yeah that may have to do with a need for expression or not and sometimes we find ways to to perhaps it's not so linear or so you know it doesn't come right away from an expression but sorry for my sentiment or a feeling but I think it's almost impossible to not put ourselves in the process and how are we are feeling impacts what we're doing yeah and I think I think the talent that we work with will feel that and I think you know or hopefully our our audiences our listeners would feel feel that as as well and I think certainly when we think about like producers and really really great producers that we like admire and stuff right they have this ability this way of working with the talent to bring the best you know out of them so I think that you know I don't think that's I don't think technology is going to change change that at all I don't think it can change I think the things that that we enjoy the most are those things that we cannot quite put our finger on that we can't the things that really make impact us the most in a work of art or in a process are the things that they're really hard to explain it's really hard to define what makes us happy or what brings you joy or makes you feel sad and and I think when we're talking about AI and all these tools they help with all the other stuff right and maybe help us get closer there but then that that final person that final percent that wrapping of things and that the magic touch I think it comes from the emotional world right and to kind of dig into a little bit we just said they're about tech technology like helping us I mean if we take a look history like historically in terms of how you know technology has evolved into music production process I mean that we think you know the advent of synthesizers right and then samplers and then you know digital audio workstations I mean even going way back I'm seeing a guitar right there that has frets the middle metal and that help us have a certain intonation and play chords in a way that before perhaps would have been able to there's all these tools that have to do with technology right right the ultimately our source of inspiration for creating new things and what I didn't mention earlier is that when each of these like the technologies I just mentioned earlier you know at the time it was introduced and started coming into the mainstream there's always like a little bit of a pushback there's definitely a lot of pushback right I think I think we always threatened by what's what's unknown and what we don't fully understand yet well I think also if you think about who is doing the pushing pushing back whenever you have some disruptive technology and this is across all creative fields just very generally speaking new tech tends to democratize things to the masses where the masses are able to do things that prior was only able to be done by like these specialists who invested a lot of time and money and so all of a sudden you know you have these tools and now it kind of negates the value of these these former specialists and then kind of you know over time you got like these steps going on but I always like to say cream always rises to the top and so for a given population right everyone who has access to the same types of tools there will always be those who you know perhaps make something and then there will also be a smaller percentage of folks that can actually do something really interesting or like subvert the technology in a way that it wasn't intended and come up with really really like interesting and the pioneers yeah how the curve in a way yeah yeah that's true and again I think looking at through that lens it puts human intent and just human expression at the forefront again which makes me happy personally and so there are you know as before they're some folks that are saying yes AI is a tool and we've we feel that it's just just a tool like oh it's pretty you know disruptive predecessors but some are saying that you know it's different this time because now the AIs are are capable of generating things that are in many cases indistinguishable from from human creation I mean how do we feel about that it's an interesting question yeah is it and is it really different like or is it is this just yet another another tool and it might seem you know pretty crazy but I mean I think we we are yet to discover and I'm curious yeah to to how we will develop in time how we will you know how we'll developing time and and how close you will get or maybe maybe we'll just take another turn where it doesn't strive to get closer but to be a thing of its own that's different that perhaps even humans cannot even create or or perform or realize and then and then it becomes another novelty yes yeah which could spark inspiration back to humans taking as inspiration for for new creations yeah let's talk about novelty for a second I mentioned before that for me you know one of the criterias of creativity is that you're you're introducing some form of of novelty right you're you're bringing something into the world that essentially differentiates you in some way and so what I the reason why I feel like really quite optimistic about like you know where where AIs fit in in terms of our creative processes is that for me I always strive to find a way to differentiate myself yes of course I'm going to produce something that will fit into a particular particular genre oh you might not or may it may not but certainly let's just say for argument's sake that that I am trying to fit a particular genre they're still and our genre is like you know some set of agreed upon parameters right that that makes a genre but there's still something that I'm going to do that is going to be my signature my differentiation and for me that's my desire that's like my my intent and so I want to be using tools to help essentially expedite like that that process or maybe along the way may even be you know creatively inspired but it's still up to me at the end of the day to determine like what is that secret sauce or what is that unique thing that sets me apart I mean if you end up having just a bunch of newly generated content it might take you even as long or just in a different way to find that secret sauce afterwards right because it's still I bet that the tweaking and the retouching and even the curating of all this because when you have a lot of something you have to still go through it and find what you like that's right so there's this curation part of it yeah the curation it's not this different than going through a preset of setup presets of a synth and like until you find the one you like and do you I usually don't really like keep the preset as you know I will use it as a starting point yes and it's same as having a bunch of images coming out of a of a software and then finding which ones you like first and then well but how can I make it mine also exactly and and and so what's interesting here is we're describing a process of intentionality where we will put in our time and energy to do particular things to to make it make it our own and then there's going to be a segment of the population where it could be you know hobbyists or new people coming in where you know they might just press that easy button and and what you put in is what you get out because the AIs again are are trained on on data right and more of some like whatever's like popular right it's going to be indexed to be biased towards that so you know it could very well be that you could press this magic button it's things sound cohesive to sound it might even sound great but it's going to sound like everyone is going to sound like everything else and so what what happens then is and this would this would happen to tools that democratize right you have this this kind of this initial layer where everything is kind of samish well I think that's where it's important to involve folks that are really active in the creative field from the beginning too into this into this new projects so there could be some sort of curation or even making sure that we are trying these models with with content that's really exciting that's that that one like at some point like you say standardize and and perhaps wear down the amount of diversity in ways of expression and that we can ultimately just create beautiful things because I think that's what you know we benefit from if we can create beautiful compelling things ultimately how we do them that's another question well I think we're I think we're early like the collective humanity we I think we're early in this process of understanding you know where these AIs you know this AI technology you know takes us I think like I'm incredibly excited about it I think when I think about where AIs would really help me are areas that to me used to be like really really tedious right and I think that's where in general tech is really really good at and so then like for me like basic mixing is kind of tedious right it like making sure you know my low end is fitting in everything I don't have the room you know and so to have a tool that gets me into the ballpark that's awesome because now I could shift more of my energy into what I considered a more creative the creative aspects like you know melodically like what am I trying to do or when I'm arranging something like or even if you want to get creative with the mixing side of things you can you know just what delays what textures and that you will have to I think you'll have to definitely put your own touch to it yeah to think outside of the box sonically what things will make it like we say unique or or different how can we spark a flavor but yeah it's interesting because creativity comes in many ways and you say melodically with the chords but it could be in a sound design manner too well it feels like that you and I we're we're feeling kind of bullish about about the technology I mean it's you know ultimately yet another tool you know it made to be seen like from a disruptive standpoint what that exactly means but I mean I think certainly for myself things always start from my inside from the core like I'll sit down at a piano and I would start doing things that's never going to change technology won't do anything for me there yeah I think you're always gonna look for that joy of of having that organic feel right that's yeah I think we have to be curious and eyes and ears open to see what what comes next what comes next and and react to it from there yeah well I'm looking forward to continuing on this journey with you Nahuel I think that maybe we can you know I mean we already are leveraging a lot of these AI technologies maybe you know in the future might be interesting if we we share like how we leverage these tools in a way where we feel we could still maintain you know our own identity in humanity as musicians maybe we'll get to showcase some new music that might come out of those interactions I think that sounds great okay well I guess till next time until next time all right awesome [Music]
2023-01-03