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by Juliate 476 days ago
You're not composing music with an AI generator either: you're pushing a button with a few, limited instructions, and expect something that rewards your perception of what makes good music for your intention.

If you don't enjoy composing music, just don't do it, and give it to someone who does, and has the experience/knowledge/culture/practice/gut to do it.

2 comments

> If you don't enjoy composing music, just don't do it

This supposes that the music is the end goal, and the very point of my comment is that it doesn't always have to be, and in those cases "just don't do it" also means not doing whatever comes after.

Just as you state below, this doesn't replace creating music for the creation's sake. I don't believe it will, or should. It merely replaces having nothing at all, or having the 100,000th video with the same upbeat stock sound.

What an incredibly elitist, smug attitude. You're basically saying people only have the right to hear the music that professionals think they should hear.
That's not smug at all. That's not what I'm saying either.

It's just that.. you can't master something you don't practice and understand. It's true in every single thing in life you do, sports, literature, maths, music, cuisine, kindness, etc.

If you don't like to compose music, why suffer this and even submit to the randomness of some computer program, rather than giving the opportunity to another fellow human to open your ears and your mind to what they appreciate doing?

You can generate your music if you like. It just cannot compare to something a human really did on her own, and invested of her desire, time, practice, research, even a beginner.

It's not a matter of being professional or not. The best musicians I know are not professionals, they all have a day job.

For every famous star for one given instrument, you have 10s of undiscovered/local better musicians that just are carpenters, cooks, painters, drivers, factory workers.

I don't understand the "give it [the task?] to someone who does" part. Obtaining a hobbyist composer who is available at short notice and obeys instructions for free is not usually an option. Maybe there's a website for this, but it would have to be humming with idle composers in order to offer quick and satisfactory results.

I think "stop not enjoying it" is a better line to take. Like with AI illustrations (where I'd much rather see a blog author's crappy biro drawings instead), terrible amateur efforts with some online 808 emulator or whatever would be more entertaining and interesting than AI output.

"Stop not enjoying it" is indeed a way better take!

"Giving it someone who does" is also an opportunity to socialise and grow a mutual understanding of said music desire. That's sometimes even how collaborations start. But that's not on short notice...

Perhaps generators could be also seen as some kind of introductory instruments to wet the appetite of becoming musicians?