In summary: Dr Dré used AI/Artificial Intelligence as a new tool, and appreciated it as such, claiming people opposed to it are just afraid of the “new”, like before people feared drum machines or synthesizers, and dismissed them as people who “have trouble creating”. He more or less implies that creative artists can still use it well, without loss of artistic integrity.
Dr Dré did not use the term “artistic integrity” (I do), and maybe the term “integrity” is not so liked by someone like Dr Dré from the “Gangsta Rap” scene, not so long ago lyrically still celebrating a life of crime, rather than of Black consciousness, even though that last “conscious” aspect was (opportunistically and insincerely?) imitated/adopted.
DJ Quick, by contrast, recently stated that he’d rather have bad human material than good AI material, calling AI – besides not ready for missing nuances as not human - further a violation of culture, and as appropriating from artists still active. A “violation of culture” is here strongly yet eloquently put.
To be honest, I did not know very well who DJ Quick was. This is not meant as subtle “diss”, but he just escaped my attention. DJ Quick was born in Compton (Los Angeles), where Dr Dré also grew up, and was (again like Dr Dré) influenced by Funk from young, ending up also in the “West Coast” G-Funk scene, with also connections to gang life. Like Dr Dré, he was influenced by George Clinton-led bands like Parliament and Funkadelic (which also influenced what became known as “G-Funk”), and appreciated live instrumentation over (solely) sample use in this brand of composed and produced hip-hop, characterized by slow, Funkadelic-like grooves.
And yes, Dr Dré and Dj Quick actually knew each other and worked together musically on occasion in the West Coast Rap scene, though some present them as rivals. That rivalry was assumed because of a supposed “diss” of Dré’s NWA in an early mixtape by DJ Quick.
Similarities and both active in the same scene (West Coast Rap, G-Funk..), yet an opposed stance on AI in music: that makes the different opinion all the more interesting. Both rap vocally (Quick a bit better, in my opinion), but are also are “beatmakers” and producers, so are more in the realm of AI than, say, a seasoned acoustic musician, not so in that “technology” and “digital world”. Many creative musicians I know are against too much AI in music, especially when as persons not so involved in technology.
Interesting to take this discussion broader to all kinds of music, though AI comes of course most in play when “digital production” is concerned. However, to degrees this applies in this digital and Internet age to many music genres.
TECHNICAL GUYS
I compose and record myself, but play instruments a lot with other musicians (different genres: soul, pop, funk, blues, jazz..) as well, such as on jamsessions in the Amsterdam (Netherlands) area. I play mainly percussion then.
My experience is that there are a lot of “technical guys” in the music scene, also among instrument players. Usually indeed “guys” (or: males) who tended to excel in exact sciences since high school (maths, electronics, etc.), so they might have less that reserve against non-human AI in music creation. Many might thus fall for it, I fear, and not just “non-musicians” or money sharks smelling an opportunity. The risk of AI is even bigger than that, also internal.
Those “technical guys” in the music scene might be reasonably more susceptible to “digital tricks” like AI, being less focused on the cultural/artistic/humanities side of making music that that AI downplays, but it probably differs per person.
Both Quick and Dré are active as “beatmakers” and song makers in the same music/hip hop subgenre, using modern technology like synthesizers, and in more or less the same time period (same “generation”), and geographical area (LA, USA). However: they have different/opposed stances on Artificial Intelligence in music.
Why? The differences between the two must neither be disregarded. DJ Quick is much more a musician and instrumentalist as such than Dr Dré: Quick plays from young several musical instruments, specialized in drum, but also guitar, keys, etc. He played such instruments himself for his “beats” too, and used his musician’s skills and experience for his production too, besides programming or synthesizers, with which Quick also worked. He stops short of AI, though, apparently. In an interview, he stated he in fact uses AI too, but for “educational” purposes, not creative ones: that comes after.
Dr Dré has many fans – and probably some musical talent – but is known to have less musical knowledge instrument-wise, certainly on a less deep musical level, than Quick. Case in point: Dr Dré called on DJ Quick sometimes for production “improvement” on some songs and albums.
Though interesting for me to learn something about DJ Quick – and he has some nice songs and productions - , this post will further not be about that West Coast Rap/Hip Hop scene. I am open to all kinds of genres, but I was never really a big fan of that subgenre of Rap – save some songs -, being personally more a Reggae fan myself. The Hip Hop I was once more into (around 1990 a bit more) in periods was more East Coast (Public Enemy, PRT, Slick Rick, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J.)..
This post is however about AI in relation to music composition, playing, and production. A useful and timely debate, I find.
Many in the music industry have chipped in on this debate – in the US and elsewhere -, of course, and now it’s my turn.
SYNTH AND AI
Is the rise of AI really comparable to that of Synthesizers (or: e.g. drum machines) in Pop music since especially the 1980s, some back in the day also deplored as “artificial” or “fake” somehow? Not really.
A Google search using AI (oh, irony) on this got as response:
“The primary difference between a synthesizer and AI music is who makes the creative decisions. A synthesizer is a manual tool that generates audio signals a human must actively sculpt and play, while AI music relies on machine-learning algorithms that can autonomously write melodies, generate lyrics, or compose entire songs from scratch.”
Those “creative decisions” are crucial in my regard in this discussion. It also contradicts Dr Dré’s dismissal by equaling AI-critics to those in earlier epochs also fearing “the new” like synthesizers or drum machines/programming. That is in my analysis a “false contradiction”.
Not everyone likes synthesizers or “digital-sounding music” - preferring e.g. real musical instruments - but at least such technology or programming has degrees of quality and creativity which are ultimately “human-made”. AI – with those machine-learned algorithms – is artificial (but not intelligent, ha!). The same applies to drum or other music programming: ultimately it is human-made, albeit by looping recorded bits. Sure, easier and not the same as actually drumming with sticks on an actual drum kit for the length of whole songs – or even concerts -, including handling breaks and such – as skilled trap drummers can - , but still: you get out of it what a human being puts it. Humanity is simplified, but not lost or absent.
In AI – I would argue – humanity is often actually “lost” or ignored, which is maybe a sign of the times. It contradicts – moreover – the meaning of “culture” and “art” as essentially human. Worse still, it might detach music - as “organized sound” as some called it – from other “art” and “culture”, not so easily “digitized”. Also a trend I deplore.
TECHNOCRACY
A worrying trend which I am even willing to relate to broader, troubling philosophical dimensions. I am talking about further steps of taking away agency from people toward an economic elite-friendly system (for the 0,001% wealthiest in this world), triggered by technology, thus with dehumanizing results, toward some kind of “technocracy”. Each human being has a value by itself, and even in international human rights legislation, this is acknowledged. Technology overtaking human creative expression is a step too far. AI should be limited to the quantitative and educational: in dealing with a lot of data. Then it aids us as humans.
In my opinion, humanity stands above that, if we want to keep the world livable for all people, rich and poor. Folk culture is what you get when people are left alone (by economic or political forces, at least temporarily) and to their own devices. It’s through own creations that man withstands dehumanizing or unnatural “robotizing” amid omnipresent and dominant external forces making you a “wage slave”.
The hypocrisy among world elites is stunning. The “climate” hype is presented as environmentally concerned, yet is held up by the same people (that 0,001% wealthiest elites) detaching humans more and more from naturalness.
Precisely because that “climate” hype is just that: a hype, to distract from – not solve - actual environmental, and polluted nature, problems. These are caused by big multinationals and powerful economic parties, or governments, and not by common citizens wishing to take hot showers daily without minding the clock, as the propaganda criminalizes. Human activities (on a larger scale) can influence the natural environment, but hardly the “climate” (or global warming).
That’s another issue, but somehow related, as AI in creation strays away from “natural” behavior.
AI in creating music (or other art forms) encroaches on that naturally human base of individual expression. The right to be unique, to be different, is the same as the right to live and breathe. And: to be free on your own terms.
The “naturality” of humans making music is also that the same hypocritical “powers that be” keep attacking, despite the vague “climate” rhetoric, lacking (non-manipulated) scientifical evidence. Food production in the West has many artificial, non-organic elements, standard in most products in regular supermarkets.
The artificiality of “food” has become so common that you don’t even know what you eat, with negative health effects.
Artificiality in music creation destroys this purity or “organic nature” likewise. Here the health effects might be more mental.
OTHER WRONGS
For better or worse, as this does not mean that there are no other types of wrongs or corruption within the music industry, even without or before the advent of AI: selfish, slick money sharks - studio owners or producers (or REducers as Peter Tosh called them) - exploiting naïve artists and their songs (occurred e.g. in Jamaican Reggae since the 1960s), commercialization in general, stereotype (gender, race, national) confirmation, racial prejudice, swollen ego’s, jealousy, money greed, hard drug use and addiction.. etcetera etcetera.
Plus I have not even mentioned nepotism, favouritism, partly through gatekeepers. You need to know people, especially those influential ones lacking jealousy enough to want to give you a chance. This nepotism tends to mix with other problems, such as racial preference and greed.
All things - good and bad – of people interacting in company or as different individuals, compatible or not. Working out or not. Pleasant or not. These relate to morality and social interactions and its dynamics, and present inequalities.
Quality-wise, - the end-products - , there always have been problems too: some self-declared artists’ songs are of course not everyone’s cup of tea. A matter of taste, and tastes are personally shaped, which is also psychologically interesting.
Some clearly lack original talent: their main talent seems to imitate a “success formula”. Some are not as good as they think, at least in the style of music they want to make, but even this lack of quality – or imperfections - can be inspiring to do better. They themselves, or others hearing it. Again: social dynamics, or in cases healthy competition, as you also have in sports.
Some artists have nonsensical or even negative (violence promoting, women degrading) lyrics, yes that too.
Others with actually good songs or talent often are ignored. That’s also part of social dynamics, like I said: for better or worse.
At least - despite all these possible flaws and inequalities - we are dealing with real humans, creating freely, making individual choices with their own agency. That is simply real life, among real people. Real freedom.
Real (non-artificial) “intelligence” shows in you maintaining your “soul”, own personality, and morality within all that, while - as an artist of the creative type - making original art as an individual.
I recently read an interview in a Dutch Psychology magazine with a Dutch psychiatrist specializing in treating musicians, as she herself was one too (strings): she knew their issues. These issues go well beyond “stage freight” – which some have and some don’t -, but also toward stress, psychological trauma, and various neuroses among musicians. Composing and performing musicians deal moreover with the highs and lows of human emotion, so tend to be more often neurotic, this lady interestingly said.
AI is a cold and “sanitized” way to escape this, as you keep your own emotions or psyche out of it. But it’s not “creative art” anymore then. Art is, after all, the result of pain. Like “soul” is “can’t”, as James Brown once said.
AI is also certainly also less individualistic, as you draw on what others did..
INDIVIDUALISM
That “individualism” is seen as typically Western by many, also when applied to artists. Devoted or professional artists in e.g. Africa – like the specialized “griots”: travelling musicians and storytellers/singers – in parts of Africa (Guinee, Mande-speaking areas and around) clearly still have a “community” role, sharing a people’s cultural stories and historical accounts. Walking repositories of culture of a people, you can say.
Artists in the West have the image of sole, detached individualists, apart from “common” people or society, with idiosyncratic, self-involved personalities, and not seldom problematic addictions or vices. That is a simplified image, however.
GRIOT MODEL
In reality, or in essence, the difference with the African cultural “griot” model is not that big, functionally. As another psychological article on music (in that same Dutch Psychology magazine) pointed out: music – and a shared music taste – has various human functions, also for “fans” of some styles or genres in the Western world, a “social” bonding function, albeit now often in self-made or “looser” modern communities than historically shaped, traditional ethnic ones.
This links it in the end more to humanity than to “cold” and lifeless technology, however “collectivist” a society might be (compared to Western ones). Griots, like many singers/artists, even in “pop”, keep traditions alive though their personal creativity.
Another “soulless” and “lifeless” element before AI already damaged the music industry, encroaching on human creativity: being: money. Commercial considerations often mix(ed) up with racist or stereotypical considerations, under the guise of adaptation to markets. To differing degrees.
Again, maybe objectionable, but also done by humans with their own agency.
INSECURE MEN
A healthy individualism of course requires self-confidence.
I heard several experienced people in music conclude that there are many “insecure men” (and less women) among musicians, which might relate to neurotic behavior as the mentioned psychiatrist found commonly among them.
I assumed this too, although I did not immediately notice that this insecurity could hide behind “over-confident” or authoritarian outward behaviour. I just thought those fools had bad, selfish manners that had never been properly contradicted or corrected. In time I learned authoritarian manners also stem from their insecurity.
In recent times, the “Freudian” psychological term “neurosis” came more into disuse – especially by non-Freudian psychoanalysts -, but was used more in Sigmund Freund’s own times. Neurotic traits maintain a touch with reality, while the term “psychosis” relates to worse conditions, when even that touch with reality is lost. The recent Covid “p(l)andemic” was a good example of an (irrational) “fear psychosis” of a mass nature.
Insecurity can do many things among men, even make them wicked, authoritarian, and immoral, just like they always say that the biggest “bullies” of other children in school classes tend to be insecure themselves. In my experience and memories of school days, bullies tended to be overly extrovert, like the proverbial empty barrels mainly insulting and criticizing. These might end up in music too.
Some stay like that until old to some degrees, also because –very Freudian! – the “bully years” usually includes adolescence as peak period, including often first sexual discoveries and first personality formations that were (in one’s own psyche) “rewarded” thus continued. The “bully” mindset is perhaps too superficial for the “highs” and “lows” of musical creation, but in facilitating or organizing (with nepotism) – or gatekeeping – functions in the music industry, they tend to thrive.
More introvert insecure guys – also among the technical guys in the music industry, but also found among skilled, driven instrumentalists – may be in another way too insecure to trust their own inner voice and creativity, preferring playing instead just what’s told or required.
These “insecure” personality types might fall perhaps more easily in the trap of AI, since not creating themselves extensively and having a disdain for all-too-human frailties, and as Google/AI responded to my search: saying that AI takes over human creative decisions.
“Nuff said” to me as a songwriter and artist to dismiss it, and I’m curious how Dr Dré thinks he’s using it creatively, if that can at all be done..
At most, I imagine, AI uses can be combined with creativity (adding other music or vocals), and even that tends to have mediocre results, in my opinion.
WHERE I COME FROM
This is thus my stance on Artificial Intelligence (AI), but who am I?
Since I delved (broadly) into Dr Dré’s and DJ Quick’s musical background in this post, saying something about mine seems reasonable.
I sometimes think I was born to be a songwriter, but at least it is a fact that I made and released many songs publicly (on Internet) by now, often singing on instrumental music also created by me.
I always liked writing songs, and since young idea’s for “tunes” came into my head. People more openly spiritual than me called this a “divine sign” of sorts: musical and lyrical ideas popping up in your head, in response to things around.
Anyway, I tried to record own songs often. I started with MIDI, keys, and some percussion, only in a later stage I really studied playing percussion, preferring hand drums also as counterpoint to increased digitalization. I liked that Folk and World music vibe, being besides in Reggae since my teens, also in African music, Afro-Latin music (e.g. Cuba), as more traditional African music with hand drums soon appealed to me.
I never used synthesizers or drum machines, but was neither a “technophobe”: I used MIDI and what are called Digital Audio Workstations (DAW), like Cubase, Reason, Logic, and other such programmes. Ironically also to record multiple acoustic instruments sometimes, and for the Internet (like YouTube). Double irony there.
MIDI sounds of instruments I did not own - or knew well enough - to play (but note-wise enough) I also used, being samples of the “real thing” (e.g. a saxophone, trumpet, accordion, organ, jazz guitar, name it..). As these were samples, sounds came often quite close.
My song making bears a strong Reggae influence due to my love for it, but I try different genres out, being further influenced by funk, jazz, Flamenco, Latin, African, and other genres I liked.
Is this (MIDI samples instead of real instruments) as fake and artificial as AI? Not in my opinion. Like I said, I invent and create the notes on a keyboard, just like you can do on the instrument itself.
Yes, actually playing a saxophone is a totally different story and requires more skills than playing sax notes on a MIDI keyboard, I know. Yet, there is my creativity involved and with that open humanity behind such compositions – of whatever quality -, that is at most “simplified”, but not “denied” as in AI.
As songs came to my head, I wanted to do something with those recurring melodies/rhythms, liking also the “building up” of songs with layers of instruments, chord-wise, rhythmically, etcetera. DAW Midi sets have percussion and drum sets, but in time I played for my compositions more often the drum part on a real drum kit (with sticks in my hand, so to speak), most percussions (of course!) – as I live in a virtual “percussion museum” -, and sometimes a “real” guitar, harmonica, or flutes, I have.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) replacing all that, would for me kill all the joy, for me as someone of the “creative type”. Both of making music and expressing myself through it. My personality and worldview are in all this, without a question. Fame is dangerous, but some ego or pride is in all this inevitable. A sense of humour, and not taking myself so seriously - which I don’t – makes this bearable, I hope, and perhaps even interesting. At least it is how I musically express myself, after receiving several influences.
Personalities can be interesting, if you’re at least a bit a “people’s person”, as they say, and are interested in human variety. This need not be equaled with caressing some fool’s fake ego.
That is however to the listeners, the people “out deh”, to judge or evaluate if they like a self-declared musician’s “style”..
REAL KNOWS REAL
Regarding AI in individual music creation I’m therefore more on “DJ Quick’s” team in being skeptical of AI’s creative use in it, more than on Dr Dré’s. Like DJ Quick also said in an interview: he was almost never tricked with AI-generated songs, he always heard it was AI, and I have experienced the same.
I immediately sensed it with AI-generated Reggae, I heard sometimes. There’s no humanity, no “soul”. With this came fake/nonexistent “fictional” artists with AI songs online, - Sienna Rose a known example - and other such nonsense or scams, sometimes able to trick listeners. Some recognize the AI, some don’t, it seems.
Real knows real, I guess.
DEHUMANIZING
An important point I want to make - but hinted already on - is also that AI creative use in music goes too far because it continues a globalizing “dehumanizing” historical trend in human history, triggered by technology and economic globalism, such as capitalism: mechanization, robotization, and in a general sense: the fear of elites that common folk start "thinking for themselves".
Of course, slavery and warfare – groups dominating others – is all historically as old as organized man, including structural inequalities. Now it’s however more sneaky, hidden, and at the same time generalized, taken for granted, like the clock.
The own agency of individual people must remain not only free, but even expanded toward in today’s world oppressed peoples: modern slaves/exploited labourers, the poor, often hungry lower classes, women and girls who in some cultures and states are second-class citizens, other discriminated groups in some societies (racially, socially, culturally). They need to express themselves, or at least be spoken for.
Great musical artists, like Bob Marley, Fela Kuti, James Brown, PE, Stevie Wonder, and others, have always spoken for them and to them. Others – with less “political” lyrics – still expressed an own culture or artistic need. Paul Simon’s album Graceland gave Zulu music more exposure, for instance. This is still necessary. The confusion of AI with “the real” in musical expressions disturbs that, might weaken that “improving the world” spirit.
There is a parallel with other current (political) trends among the (0,001 % wealthiest) élite or “powers that be” now incorporating/appropriating “Left-wing” rebellion, to pacify and weaken their impact. The “climate” policies and “woke” nonsense are examples of that, at the same time serving as distraction and scapegoats for equally foolish “right-wing” commentators, neither very interested in social justice or cultural variety.
This unequal world in which we live, and the funds required, makes AI being pushed from the top-down by wealthy entrepreneurs, often aided by politics, as common in modern neoliberal capitalism.
The masses of the people should “pick sense from nonsense” and develop wisdom and caution to use AI in their own benefit as free persons. It is handy for retrieving information (like a Google Plus), put order in a bulk of data and information, and helps in that sense in an educational sense. It assists “information-wise”.
Then, but after this and without AI, comes “knowledge” in individual minds, followed (hopefully) by “wisdom”, and then “creativity”, possibly artistic. That is the naturally human way of “finding your way” in this world, since the stone age, aided by inspiration from all around.
