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Comment by bluefishinit | Hacker News Reader

> I don't know what the point of machine generated music is.

One point is that music fans can now make their own music. I think it's great that people can express themselves and it's not limited to those who put in 10k+ hours to master a single instrument. More people creating is a good thing.

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The idea that creating music has had a huge technical barrier is laughable. It has not existed for ~20 years. Artists like Tinashe have learned to produce music themselves with programs like ableton, not a lick of mastering instruments or graduating from this and that art school. Just a general sense of what sounds good to you. Unlike visual art, there's no mechanical barrier either, no mastering of techniques. You can genuinely fiddle around with knobs and buttons and create something that sounds great to you - soundcloud is filled with these.

So there isn't going to be an increased level of profound self expressions because of this. Quite the opposite, more pure noise for the purpose of farming ad revenue.

What's worse, and an aspect many proponents of AI generations ignore, is that by ushering people into this specific channel of caring more about prompts than all else, we are doing a real disservice to potential people who could have become serious masters of their realm. After all, "why learn how that music program works when I can just generate it?"

>> After all, "why learn how that music program works when I can just generate it?"

That's how many of my friends in the music biz are thinking right now.

Also the same applies to Code and anything that could be generated by AI. I honestly lost the joy of learning a programming language with the advent of GPT.

The future is dark.

Chat GPT still can't do visual programming so if you use something like Unreal Engine - you still have to figure out everything yourself. Sure - GPT can generate algorithms, but it can't playtest the game. I can't ask ChatGPT to implement something like wall climbing or object throwing in Unreal. It will probably generate something, but it has no way to playtest it and check if it actually feels good to play.

Not until the next version, at least.

For me GPT allows me to explore more ideas quickly, and can help you learn languages more efficiently. More importantly, you don’t have to use it

That probably is a good thing, but the road to mastery is a great thing. I can't describe to you the feeling of being in the zone while making music, but I'll try.

Things will erode and decay, things will come into being, things will change. This flux is so constant that in truth there hardly are any things, just the changes; for as soon as you step in the river a second time, neither you nor the river are the same as you were. Epictetus, maybe? One of those guys.

Likewise, music is inherently fleeting, yet it still makes sense. You can't hold music, yet there's still a sense of it being a thing that exists. Yet when it stops, it still somehow hasn't ceased to exist. The act of musical performance, even at a basic level, especially with others, brings us one step closer to something fundamental about the universe than other forms of expression.

Like I said elsewhere, if you could ask the machine to pray or meditate, it wouldn't be fulfilling for anyone. It would be hollow.

people can express themselves...

Is it really an act of personal expression if you've narrowed the "vocabulary of creation" to the stable Diffusion equivalent of "hyper realistic, unreal engine, 8K, masterpiece, intricate details"?

At that point would not the act of creation feel rather hollow?

Tbh, since the invention of DAW software you don't actually have to learn to play any instruments.

I can create something that sounds decent in software like Ableton Live or whatever, but I can't play anything on a piano or a guitar.

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