A.I.? No Problem!

By Mike Vaccaro
(from Mike’s Musings #43, our newsletter)

I was watching a movie called Stanley and Iris that was scored by John Williams who has scored well over 100 motion pictures. It occurred to me that A.I.—artificial intelligence—could never have composed the music for this picture nor, perhaps, any other. The score to Stanley and Iris was so perfect, so tender, and so poignant that I realized that while a computer might be able to write some notes for it, the resulting score would never be so sensitive.

A.I. is OK for television commercials or in situations in which music is not that important or is being used in places where the audience is pretty ignorant and might not even notice the music. Where I live we call it the “dumbing down of America.”

It’s important to realize that we already have a twenty-year history of something like A.I., except that it’s taken the form of a musician entering sounds and rhythms into a computer. Thus, the composer is the programmer. With A.I., the computer is the programmer. Even here, though, something must be fed into the computer to give it a clue about what’s wanted for output. It basically changes the job of the composer who tells the computer where to put the music and what kind of music to write. Then, afterward, the composer fixes the parts that aren’t quite right.

At least 20 years ago, a friend of mine, who is a very good pianist and composer, decided to start video taping weddings when things were a bit slow for him. The video editing program had a music program that came with it. After editing the visual aspects of the video, he would then tell the music program which style of music to use and it would automatically compose the music to the time frame. If the bride or groom wanted to change the video and, say, cut 23 seconds out of the film, the editing program would automatically recompose the music instantly.

He was a full-time composer and could have done the composing on his own, of course, but it wasn’t worth his time to compose the music for a client who didn’t know the difference between composed music and computer-generated music. They likely could not afford composed music anyway. So it seems we have had something like A.I. for at least a couple of decades, though it wasn’t very sophisticated.

So A.I. can now compose more sophisticated music and perform it as well. But, if you ask me, there is no humanity in it. I have to admit that I have heard some music in which it is very difficult to tell if real musicians are playing or just the computer pumping out sounds.

After the experience I had with Stanley and Iris, I feel that the computer is likely never going to be able to have subtlety. If corporate bosses think that they will “just tell” A.I. to write a score for a motion picture or a TV show, they will be sorely disappointed. A composer is required in every scenario.

The presence and sensitivity of professional musicians is just superior. I am glad that the trades are fighting it. I understand artificial intelligence will be used to save money or make more money for the decision-makers at the studio where a film or a show is being made.

I think the users of A.I. are going to be very disappointed in the outcome of the score that A.I. creates.

And although most of the listening public continually needs to be better educated about what the art of music brings to media, if they are paying attention at all, I think they will nevertheless innately understand that what they are hearing in scores composed and played by artificially intelligent machines is inferior to the real thing that actually intelligent composers and musicians produce.

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