I’ve found the process for this EP has run across the entire spectrum of emotions. From dread to happiness, and everything in-between.
At the start of the process, there was the initial fear that I’d taken on a project that may fail. This was due to hearing the initial output of the AI generated midi. It sounded clunky, and I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to get anything sounding good from it. However, there were a few reasons for the clunky sounds. One, the velocity and the timing were all over the place. In the end I learnt that I was fighting against the output. And two, I couldn’t work out if the output was an issue with my training data, or the way I made the model, or both. It was very stressful, and I didn’t want to be stuck doing development work when I should be focusing on music production.
The other issue, and it was a big one, was the amount of data I needed to create to get this working. I thought I had a handle on it, it was going to be a lot. What I didn’t realise was just how much (Figure 1).
To get these all working I created a master Logic file (Figure 2) with all the midi files in there. Then had to export them one at a time. It was a tedious process to get it all completed.
I wanted the midi output to be more structured and considered. But try as I may, it just was not working. After I embraced the nature of what the AI was producing then I started to think more like a music producer and less like the AI would solve issues for me, this way of working, led me to the first track that I liked.
To me, this highlights what a music producer is and does. You work with artists to capture, edit, manipulate, arrange, and preserve (Slade, et.al., 2020) their ideas and make them better. The keywords here are: manipulate and arrange. By taking the generated melody and modifying the chunks into phrases, I found that I could get something – not only great – but amazing.
From taking raw material and working with an artist to create something that captures the feeling that the artists is trying to achieve.
I think that the main reason that I was having issues initially not seeing my role in that way in the early part of the process. Once that changed, I was easier able to create work that feels right and works with the methodology created for this project.
Bibliography
Slade, S., Thompson, D. Massy, S., Webber, S. (2020) Music Production: What Does a Music Producer Do? Available at: https://online.berklee.edu/takenote/music-production-what-does-a-music-producer-do/ (Accessed: 27 February, 2025)