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Composer Life in the Modern Age?

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Something I said recently about being a (Commercial) Composer and how to manage the possibility or likelihood of people (companies, projects, productions) choosing to use A.I sound and music over hiring someone (making the thing for the thing) with an actual musical skillset to work on films, games, etc.

I am aware the industry or let’s call it the commercial industry, you know, when you get approached to make music or sound for something could shift into using A.I media much more than human composers in the coming years, thinking about it, my mind went through its process and seemed to come up with a logical overview for how I felt about it (my mind is good like that, thanks brain!)

If you end up working for someone commercially who wants to prompt or automate the musical and sound design elements for a project due to budget or other reasons, then they also miss out on that collaboration process to refine it for the best experience for the audience with someone that knows what they are doing. it’s likely not a bad thing that you don’t end up working for someone or something like that because they would see the data output verse creativity being easier, cheaper, and faster. but in my experience, it’s a case of time and money, it always has been, A.I music offers an instant quick fix but at the cost of possible better long-term creative outcomes.

Unless it’s for a documentary about A.I music, then sure, prompt away! “Computer, Film Soundtrack, Award Winning!” 🤣

But The last thing you wanna do as a professional creative is to emotionally invest your time into a project or form a working relationship where what you do is considered secondary to the data output of a computer or trained model…No thanks, I will pass on that!

I felt the same way when stock music was an issue for a while there because it was so cheap, and was just good enough, but missed that refinement. it just devalued the possibility of doing something really cool for that kinda work. It’s totally fine for lower-tier projects where you are limited with what you can do or who you can hire, most of its not bad, there’s some really good stock music out there, but having a custom musical experience is always going to be better and thats always gonna be paying someone for their time and skill to get that.

I am not against A.I content, in fact, I kinda don’t care tbh, It doesn’t affect me, and if the general public wants to listen to A.I music more than things created by human beings then that’s totally fine. but for me personally, there are too many things that happen as a Musician to quantify into a singular emulation, the moment, the emotion, the random choices during composing, how things evolve over time, sometimes years, and how you feel in the moment your in, it’s not all just patterns and notes and sounds. It’s the human mastery over it all to create an emotional or contextual moment for yourself or for others to experience, that’s the value of music or the value of the process which always leads to the result in one form or another.

Music is an expression of many things, but that said if people prefer A.I data mimicry over human interaction expressions, then that’s entirely up to the audience and people making those creative choices in that commercial creative industry, so all that’s left to do is remain true to yourself as a creative which as a value within itself, is priceless.”

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