
AIVA – Music Engine - ZeljkoS
https://www.aiva.ai/engine
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zozbot123
Note that the orchestration on the available AIVA tracks is (at least as far
as one can tell) entirely manual. Even the music itself may well be more like
the result of a process involving both the 'AI' and the human producer, than
something truly generated 'end to end',[1] free of manual intervention! (Not
that there's anything wrong with the former; it might be the best way of
ending up with a truly compelling and impressive end-product!)

(I don't quite recall off-hand if it was these folks or someone else who
claimed to have fed their AI a corpus of tens of thousands of classical pieces
in "digitized sheet music" form as part of the training process - something
that would be a treasure trove for academic music corpus studies, if it
existed!)

[1] End-to-end systems _do_ exist, and their output is quite interesting, but
in a "quirky, weird but it actually sounds nice" way - sorts of like the
musical analog of the DeepDream doggie pictures. Arguably the most successful
(of the ones that are openly available) is "Hexahedria"/Daniel Johnson's
"biaxial music composition" (aka "tied parallel networks") project, which was
featured here before. The "BachBot" and "DeepBach" projects also deserve
mention, but their scope is rather limited as their names suggest.

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byproxy
I'm sure you know about it, but IMSLP
([https://imslp.org/](https://imslp.org/)) has quite a few scores from which
they could pull.

~~~
zozbot123
These are not "digitized" in the relevant sense, though. The OpenScore project
([https://www.openscore.cc](https://www.openscore.cc) ) makes it quite clear
what is meant by that. And it's hard work, though in principle some AI engine
of a very _different_ sort might be able to help with it.

~~~
byproxy
Ah, I see. So, some kind of OCR for sheet music, then?

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maximp
I spent 5 minutes going through your website, and am still confused about what
you do.

> Music Engine / AI at the service of Composers

> The most ambitious composers create memorable and uniquely personalized
> scores. Our Music Engine was built to scale and supercharge your creative
> process.

This made me think that your tools would help me compose. However, the demos
seem to show music just being created at the click of a button. Is this a tool
for composers (and if so, how?) or a tool for users who'd otherwise go to
stock music libraries?

~~~
pierreb-aiva
Hi! I'm Pierre, one of AIVA's cofounders :)

The tool we are developing is indeed aimed at composer. Have you seen this
video which walks you through the interface?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuU3UI7iJSo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuU3UI7iJSo)

Basically, you can select an influence (either stylistic, like Modern
Cinematic, or using an existing piece of music), create a piece, and download
the MIDI file generated by AIVA.

The value we are trying to add for composers is by giving them an original,
2-3 minutes long theme in seconds, that they can modify however they want in
their own creative workflow (Digital Audio Workstation or Notation program).
You could think of this as a composition assistance that gives you a sketch,
as opposed to starting out with a blank slate, and potentially having to face
writer's block.

FYI, our closed beta is going live in early January, and we'll be on-boarding
new users on a regular basis from there.

Hope that clarifies!

~~~
zozbot123
> The value we are trying to add for composers is by giving them an original,
> 2-3 minutes long theme in seconds, that they can modify however they want

I actually like this a _lot_ compared to AIVA's most obvious competitor
(Jukedeck). Jukedeck promises a _finished product_ in seconds, and their
output _always_ ends up sounding really, _really_ tacky as a result. And I
actually mean that it sounds really, really tacky _for royalty-free music_ ,
so that ought to tell y'all something! Now, say anything about AIVA's existing
output, but tacky it is not. In fact, it seems to show quite a bit of the
"true", weird, serendipitous creativity that also occurs in openly-available,
verifiably end-to-end systems (and that makes _their_ output musically
interesting), so there's clearly some real achievement here.

~~~
pierreb-aiva
I think that’s a great summary of our competitive advantage. We spend a lot of
time making sure that we get the right balance between quality,
personalization and serendipity, to ensure that we’re actually helping
composers write interesting music

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Wlodzislaw
I understand that we have to wait till January for beta version to be able to
do any experiments oneself. A pity as some simple experiments with Christmas
carols could impress my friends and January will be more busy ...

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cronix
Does the AI get the music award now? The art is then the AI algorithms and not
the human. I wouldn't value an "artist" who "created" their "art" this way.
It's not really them.

~~~
zozbot123
> The art is... the AI algorithms ...

To the extent that this is a common POV, it _is_ a bit of a problem for AIVA,
in contrast with open systems. Because how do you _assess_ the "art" that
might or might not be embodied in AIVA's algorithms, when those algorithms are
not in fact available for scrutiny? Where's the compelling expression, the
impressiveness, that is supposed to be a defining feature of "true" art? It's
nowhere to be seen, really - all we have is some "magic" and we can at best
surmise about what it might be doing under the hood. The developers of, e.g.
BachBot, DeepBach and other open systems seem to be in a rather more enviable
position as "true" artists!

~~~
cronix
It's basically like Antares Autotune in music, to correct "singers" who can't
really actually sing, which is most in the top charts today. There are few
current top-chart artists who can truly sing (Gaga, Sheeran are some who can
actually sing - with 0 effects). I'm not talking about using it as a vocal
effect, but as it was originally intended - to correct pitch of singers who
can't really sing. Although I think many using it as an effect also can't
really sing and hide behind the effect to mask that fact. It's just a crutch
for sub-par singers.

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phmagic
I love this tech!

However a more painful problem it was solve for me is putting non-copyrighted
sound tracks in my videos. I'd pay for royalty-free music generated on-demand.

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byproxy
I consider myself a music creator. I signed up for the beta.

I'm ambivalent about the idea of "AI"-assisted creative production and the
trend toward homogenization.

