The other day I pulled up Meg Myers' version of “Running Up That Hill” on Spotify for my wife. I had just heard it playing in the store I had just returned from, and couldn’t wait to share it with her. It’s a really good cover of the tune. When the song ended, she said, "hey why don't you put on “Down With The Sickness”?" I assumed she was just trying to push my buttons, as I’m not a Disturbed fan by any stretch.
So in a turnabout-is-fair-play spirit, I opted to play the second search result for that song title in Spotify, which was from someone named “The Professor” Nick Harrison. It turned out to be an absolute and total win: Here was a song I didn’t particularly care for rearranged with a gospel soul feel into a seriously grooving song that I immediately did like. I immediately wondered, “Who the heck is Nick Harrison? And why have I never heard of him?” Regardless of the tongue-in-cheekiness inherent the juxtaposition of styles along the lines of Postmodern Jukebox and other throwback reworks of later pop hits, the resulting track was shockingly good and seriously worked.
Intrigued, I put on another track of Nick’s, Lightning Crashes. OMG, the vocals, his range! I played another, Dragula (Rob Zombie). Wow! What a cool groove. He's even covered Would? by Alice and Chains. I then looked at his discography- This guy had been busy, with 4 or 5 full albums in the last year or so. Seriously, why had I never heard of this guy?!
So today, I figured I would google him and see if there were any live videos or interviews. Nada. Zilch. He’s got a YouTube channel, but there are no videos of him performing or singing any of this music… So I started reading some of the search result and realized why: Apparently, it’s all freaking AI generated fake music.
Queue the Sad Trombones (real ones preferably)
My first response was disappointment. I’ve still got several of these tracks stuck in my head. I thought I had stumbled onto a fantastic new artist who was doing things that I found not only very musically entertaining, but inspiring and uplifting. But calling it disappointment is truly shy of the mark. Disheartened, disgusted, distraught and demoralized are more like it. I’m a musician after all, if only by moonlight. But this could be why it stings so much to realize I’ve been played by AI: my day job is in IT, which of course we all know is under a rapidly growing assault from AI. Music has always been my refuge which restores balance and sanity to my world, and the robots are coming for that too.
In a world with so much fakeness, did we really need to add fake music?
I know some would say pop music has been fake for a long time. But not this level of fake. The Swedish House Mafia, for instance, is – as far as I know - actual people, who possess at least some musical knowledge or skill, actually creating tracks. Maybe it’s a whole lot of button pushing, cutting and pasting, and sequencing, but it’s conceived, ‘performed’ or programmed and produced by humans, not just a few words entered into a prompt. Despite the deep suspicions, fears and warnings of some, the drum machines, synths and sequencers never replaced all human drummers, horn sections and orchestras. However none of these technologies ever took ALL of the musicians out of the equation. These were merely tools which extended the reach and capabilities of musicians, and even if it was different and new, it was still music, and the creators were still artists. It was evolution of sorts, not a full blown revolution, the old ways still had plenty of merit, intrinsic value and indeed demand.
But when the humans have been completely taken out of the conception and production of what sounds like music, what the heck is it? Do we really call "The Professor" Nick Harrison the artist for conceiving the AI prompt which netted the resulting track?
The result is revolting, if you ask me. I’m not amazed or impressed by the supposed technological achievement. The urge to apply AI to absolutely every aspect of our lives possible and to refine it's capability to create images, audio and film which are indiscernible from human endeavor seems like a sickness - one I refuse to get down with, especially when it comes to music.
Don't fake the funk.
Jeff Hall
P.S. I could have linked the AI produced tracks I mentioned above, but decided it would be morally wrong to do so. If decide to seek it out and listen for yourself, it’s your choice. I am aware several other supposed human artists posting AI generated tracks on Spotify of, but chose not to risk promoting them as well.
Disclaimer: I'm not hating on what Nick Harrison has done here, her clearly stopped me in my tracks and got my attention. Heck, it even entertained me for a day or more. I did say I thought it was good when I first heard it. I've read the sticky about posting hate or troll threads about modern music. But should we really call this music? How should we treat it? I really do feel like we've entered a different realm from using loops, samples, sequencing and automation to produce music.
So in a turnabout-is-fair-play spirit, I opted to play the second search result for that song title in Spotify, which was from someone named “The Professor” Nick Harrison. It turned out to be an absolute and total win: Here was a song I didn’t particularly care for rearranged with a gospel soul feel into a seriously grooving song that I immediately did like. I immediately wondered, “Who the heck is Nick Harrison? And why have I never heard of him?” Regardless of the tongue-in-cheekiness inherent the juxtaposition of styles along the lines of Postmodern Jukebox and other throwback reworks of later pop hits, the resulting track was shockingly good and seriously worked.
Intrigued, I put on another track of Nick’s, Lightning Crashes. OMG, the vocals, his range! I played another, Dragula (Rob Zombie). Wow! What a cool groove. He's even covered Would? by Alice and Chains. I then looked at his discography- This guy had been busy, with 4 or 5 full albums in the last year or so. Seriously, why had I never heard of this guy?!
So today, I figured I would google him and see if there were any live videos or interviews. Nada. Zilch. He’s got a YouTube channel, but there are no videos of him performing or singing any of this music… So I started reading some of the search result and realized why: Apparently, it’s all freaking AI generated fake music.
Queue the Sad Trombones (real ones preferably)
My first response was disappointment. I’ve still got several of these tracks stuck in my head. I thought I had stumbled onto a fantastic new artist who was doing things that I found not only very musically entertaining, but inspiring and uplifting. But calling it disappointment is truly shy of the mark. Disheartened, disgusted, distraught and demoralized are more like it. I’m a musician after all, if only by moonlight. But this could be why it stings so much to realize I’ve been played by AI: my day job is in IT, which of course we all know is under a rapidly growing assault from AI. Music has always been my refuge which restores balance and sanity to my world, and the robots are coming for that too.
In a world with so much fakeness, did we really need to add fake music?
I know some would say pop music has been fake for a long time. But not this level of fake. The Swedish House Mafia, for instance, is – as far as I know - actual people, who possess at least some musical knowledge or skill, actually creating tracks. Maybe it’s a whole lot of button pushing, cutting and pasting, and sequencing, but it’s conceived, ‘performed’ or programmed and produced by humans, not just a few words entered into a prompt. Despite the deep suspicions, fears and warnings of some, the drum machines, synths and sequencers never replaced all human drummers, horn sections and orchestras. However none of these technologies ever took ALL of the musicians out of the equation. These were merely tools which extended the reach and capabilities of musicians, and even if it was different and new, it was still music, and the creators were still artists. It was evolution of sorts, not a full blown revolution, the old ways still had plenty of merit, intrinsic value and indeed demand.
But when the humans have been completely taken out of the conception and production of what sounds like music, what the heck is it? Do we really call "The Professor" Nick Harrison the artist for conceiving the AI prompt which netted the resulting track?
The result is revolting, if you ask me. I’m not amazed or impressed by the supposed technological achievement. The urge to apply AI to absolutely every aspect of our lives possible and to refine it's capability to create images, audio and film which are indiscernible from human endeavor seems like a sickness - one I refuse to get down with, especially when it comes to music.
Don't fake the funk.
Jeff Hall
P.S. I could have linked the AI produced tracks I mentioned above, but decided it would be morally wrong to do so. If decide to seek it out and listen for yourself, it’s your choice. I am aware several other supposed human artists posting AI generated tracks on Spotify of, but chose not to risk promoting them as well.
Disclaimer: I'm not hating on what Nick Harrison has done here, her clearly stopped me in my tracks and got my attention. Heck, it even entertained me for a day or more. I did say I thought it was good when I first heard it. I've read the sticky about posting hate or troll threads about modern music. But should we really call this music? How should we treat it? I really do feel like we've entered a different realm from using loops, samples, sequencing and automation to produce music.
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