Celemony Music has introduced Tonalic, a subscription service for Mac & Windows users that promises to put guitar, bass and drum session musicians into your DAW.
It’s based on performances by session musicians that the Tonalic engine can then adapt to any song – whatever its chord sequence, tempo or groove. With its Melodyne engine as the basis, Celemony has developed a new technology that makes it possible to adapt performances to any song and integrate them organically into any production.
Here’s an example of Tonalic in action:
Pricing and Availability:
Tonalic is available now:
- Tonalic arranger costs 14.90 €/USD monthly or 149 €/USD for a year’s subscription.
- Tonalic studio is available for 24.90 €/USD monthly or 249 €/USD by annual subscription.
Check out the demo and share your thoughts on Tonalic in the comments!
I feel some mix of sadness, numbness, and nausea. Though I understand that a thing like this might have been summoned into being with the best of intentions; there’s a kind of bleak aspect as well. Musicians not getting hired for recording, artists and aspiring artists finding a path-of-least-resistance around the joy of learning to play an instrument, the excessive ease and inexpensiveness of super-imposing that high level of finesse onto uninspired material.
My other more faint reaction is to be a bit impressed. Celemony is naturally positioned to extend their tuning & timing tech into the world of artificially rendered backing tracks– and I expect they are probably capable of doing it well. But I sort of don’t care.
Hard to tell if I’m just stuck in “old ways” and/or if this little rant is some equivalent of “Get off my lawn!” It’s like artists are finding ways to BE less and less impressive as they create sounds that are more impressive.
SO COOL!! I just wish, that I could have Jeff Porcaro on some of my tracks……and maybe with Mike aswell
I agree with the above assessment. The way I feel about AU generated music. is that it can be useful as a study/improvisation tool, but you’ll get much better results if you use real musicians in the actual finished mix (even if those musicians use the AI generated arrangement as a template).
What’s ironic is that the start of the video shows a studio owner working with one of the session artists. He’s a friend of mine (Paul Fig), and recently had to sell the studio (Dave’s Room in LA) since no-one was booking!
Really sucks.
I liked seeing jg type in “AU.” I immediately thought “Yeah, artificial UNintelligence.” Bean counters are vital to any business, but when they take over 100%, the beans turn rotten. It seems lately as if people who will screw you for a nickel are winning out too often.
I worked my way through learning to use a computer as a music tool. A lot of people have done likewise and we’re better for it. AI, though… that’s the means to weaponize them, cutting a lot of creative things off at the knees far too easily. That’s why I want it off of MY lawn, so far.
Being able to write a piece from beginning to end through homemade sweat, I’m waiting to see AI help that instead of adulterating it. This feels less like creative help and more like automating laziness. If you find it helpful, go for it, but also… don’t be fooled.
There‘s no AI in Tonalic.