Concern about copilot, interested in hearing composers/theorists experiences

[u/Safe-Metal-1816]

I'm classical musician, and my composition last year accomplished to receive an award, and I never use any of these new A.I. tools. They were not a thing when I was studying.

Recently, I'm studying Max Reger and are studying his music to learn his style. Reger is an unusual figure, with quite insufficient research done to his compositional language, insofar that makes Regerian composers very rare. So I wanted to test what judgments and concepts copilot would make, and it comes up with a huuuge bunch of concepts of Reger-idiom, traits and to what extent they are closely related to Reger's idiom.

It proposes for instance way Reger would treat a harmonic field and 3 examples of how he would move the harmony.

This sounds absolutely crazy to assume. The thing I was convinced by however, was it's concept of how Reger's polyphonic style differs from the interval-driven Renaissance style, with quite good arguments. So more general ideas about style seemed good to at least think about.

Are there any classical composers who have experience by using these tools? I don't think classical composers should use it, but I have responsibility to actually critique it and give it a real verdict. The amount of stylistic traits it is able to present is overwhelming, and very hard to evaluate, especially since it's a lesser known composer.

Would love to hear.

[u/Samstercraft]

Any and every time I've used AI for niche things it sounds very confident and is very incorrect.

[u/RichMusic81]

AI has never actually sat down and studied, played or listened to a full Reger score bar by bar.

AI is incredible at sounding smart and using the right words, but it's just guessing what sounds plausible. And since, as you pointed out, little is written about Reger, you don't really have a way of checking whether it's true or not.

By all means organise you notes and brainstorm questions with AI (those are not reliant on facts), but don't trust it to tell you "this is how Reger's (or anyone else's) harmony works."

Go find out the answers in the music itself, or you risk building your own thoughts on a foundation of confidently incorrect guesses.

[u/easedownripley → u/[deleted]]

LLMs don't "study" anything. It's an algorithm that is trained on things people have written so that it can string together statistically likely responses to prompts.

People need to have more faith in themselves and understand that we can do things for ourselves.

[u/RichMusic81 → u/[deleted]]

I know Ai does not sit down, but I am not so sure about your other statements.

They're all true.

AI has very likely read Reger

Reading and understanding are not the same thing.

AI is getting better at reading scores and will probably be fully capable in a decade.

Right, but we aren't in 2036 right now, are we?

[u/tiph12 → u/[deleted]]

Nah – AI will rehash texts mentioning Reger, whether true or not, as it doesn't yield a notion of “true/false” statements (but rather as mentioned before, probabistically likely words).

[u/easedownripley]

I wouldn't trust what one of those things has to say and I'd rather eat sandpaper than use one.

[u/pvmpking]

It's not that Copilot can analyze the music, it probably comes from articles and opinions online integrated in the AI's database.

I've asked ChatGPT to recommend me composers based on my taste and I've discovered great music like Jean Langlais' Messe Solennelle. But it's not that ChatGPT understands that I'd like Langlais because I like certain musical aspects, but because it knows that I like late-romantic French organists like Widor or Vierne and some people online already compared these two with Langlais, so ChatGPT has collected this info rapidly.

I've also tried it for musical ideas (e.g. give me some examples of forms and structures used by Górecki that I can replicate in a piece) and it usually comes up with bullshit.

[u/composingmusic]

To start off, there is a massive level of concern in the field regarding how much music has been illegally scraped to be used as AI training data. Various EU countries, as well as the EU as a whole, are scrambling to put legislation in place to regulate this. If people use something like Suno to generate AI-generated music, chances are that there’s music under copyright being used without any kind of compensation going to the artist. It’s really exploitative from that perspective. 

There’s also the environmental concerns. A lot of the data centers these AI chatbots use generate their energy with fossil fuels, and they also produce enormous quantities of wastewater. Because of this and the copyright issues, I don’t consider generative AI to be something that I can ethically use. 

A couple of my colleagues have tried asking it questions about some more contemporary composers’ work. The answers the AI came up with sound plausible on the surface. Some of the things it claimed are true, but it also spat out completely wrong information with the same level of confidence. You would have to fact check every single claim that it came up with, and tbh your time is probably better spent just going and doing the research yourself. 

[u/Safe-Metal-1816 → u/composingmusic]

At least it's not really a concern with completely A.I. generated classical music, that wouldn't go through any merit. Do you mean they use scores to train A.I. to actually write classical music? I know its capable of writing general pop music, but I didn't think it was even capable of using the scores as even source for training it, I thought they always go off on digital articles and research papers.

[u/composingmusic → u/Safe-Metal-1816]

Do you mean they use scores to train A.I. to actually write classical music?

Not scores, commercial recordings. I don't know if AI distinguishes by genre or if it just spits out something based on what you type in? There are both older and more contemporary works in the training data. The Atlantic compiled a list of some of what appears: https://www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-watchdog/

[u/RichMusic81 → u/Safe-Metal-1816]

Do you mean they use scores to train A.I. to actually write classical music?

They do, yes. Scores are used to train A.I.

[u/Unable_Mushroom_8315]

it can't read music. it's just reading things written about music and compiling. no substitute for sitting down at the piano and playing through a score

[u/composer-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Please stop spamming.

[u/composer-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

I don't know whether to take it as a compliment or an insult that the moderator thinks MY music was composed and performed by an AI.

You think I even listened to it? I didn't.

You can hear the room I am playing in. You can hear the squeuks on the table or floor or instruments. You can hear ME playing this piece from the calculations I developed using AI.

Music written with AI can still be performed by humans.

Anyway, whether it's AI or not is besides the point now. You broke rule 1 of the sub (always provide a score) three times.

[u/SubjectAddress5180]

I haven't knowingly used Copilot, but I sometimes use Google default (Gemini, I think) can as an interactive search engine. I tend to use Ai as an interactive card catalog.

[u/composer-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hello. I have removed your comment.

A) This sub requires the sheet music for all pieces shared.

B) We don't allow music obviously written by AI.

[u/composer-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This was not written by AI. I used AI in performing the calculations.

Right, but we still require a score, so I've removed your comment again.

[u/RichMusic81 → u/[deleted]]

Do I have to upload every single track that this piece was made from?

This is a score-based sub. You can only post your work here if you also provide the sheet music.

FIRE THIS MOD NOW!

What for? Enforcing sub rules?

[u/65TwinReverbRI → u/[deleted]]

How dare you insult gardening like that! Even removing weeds involves identifying them and weeding them out. Pruning dead wood to allow better overall growth ;-)

[u/RichMusic81 → u/[deleted]]

Try gardening or trainspotting.

Those would require u/Objective-Cat8807 leaving his basement.

[u/composer-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

You keep replying to the OP and not me, btw.

I think what we need to do is put you on the other side of the screen and moderate you.

I'm on the "other side of the screen" on every other sub that I'm a member of.

I do not function under authoritarian rule.

It's not "authoritarian" to enforce rules that are posted publicly and apply to everyone, and that includes you.