Can AI Be Funky?
That’s the question raised by Funkastic – a new A.I.-powered plugin that generates funk parts for clavinet, electric piano, organs, and bass.
Funkastic generates new parts, based on your specifications, including the following parameters:
- Style: Creative, Flat 5th, Major 7 or Pentatonic.
- Mode: Minor, Major, Dominant
- Root note: C to B chromatic.
- Feel: Straight, Swing.
- Notes amount: Dense, Middle, Sparse
- Velocity Strength: High, Middle, or Low
Funkastic EP Demo:
Funkastic B3 Organ Demo:
Funkastic Bass Demo:
Can AI Be Funky? Check out the video demos and then share your thoughts in the comments!
Pricing and Availability:
Funkastic is available with an intro price of $29 USD (normally $49).
Answer: No. Everything A.I. is just a copy of a copy.
‘Everything A.I. is just a copy of a copy.”
While that might be your opinion – it’s not accurate at all.
Generative AI creates original content that meets the requirements of the prompt. This is exactly what a person would do, if asked to make a funky loop.
A person would do it based on their personal take on a genre, though, where AI would do it based on what statistically meets the requirements of the prompt.
At the end of the day, though, it’s not the tool, it’s what you do with it.
There’s no escaping that AI copies.
AI does not have a human means to interpret its output.
It was not born nor has it experienced emotions.
It has not felt hunger or gravity or dreamt of going to school in its pyjamas.
AI has never had a hangover.
It has zero, I repeat, zero means with which to interpret novelty in a human way.
What AI creates is a facsimile with some randomisation that meets enough criteria to be interpreted by humans (and human-guided AI systems) as sufficiently meeting the prompts.
I have no doubt the selection process has some similarities to how a human would produce a funky groove: essentially, does it sound like other funky grooves.
If you think AI creates original material, it is simply because you haven’t processed the same amount of information that AI has.
The amount of randomisation that AI is allowed is limited because it would stray too far from the prompts, but it’s enough for a hopeful human to view it as original.
Humans generally don’t really like too much change, so AI’s dependable blandness is intrinsically digestible.
But let’s not get carried away though, with fears of sentience. It’s not like humans don’t have a fundamental issue with anthropomorphising everything from paperclips to turds, is it? Such talk of sentience is hyperbolic marketing.
But why does it matter?
Because other humans will use AI to take power from other humans.
The relative peace and stability we enjoy right now is fundamentally based on accountability and democracy. AI is being used to make some people more powerful and less accountable, and society less democratic.
But you’ve got to ask yourself: are there enough supermarket shelves to cope with the next generation of musicians?
And ofc most importantly: AI sucks because it’s forcing RAM prices through the roof.
Klang includes a big point. Seeing AI & crypto-mining pick up speed so fast means that sooner or later, RAM will come a lot closer to being unobtanium. Making electronic music of any kind will eventually crash into that wall. Superior CPUs + crippled access to storage = a big old “F you” from mega-companies who are building power-sucking data farms. So long to cheap SSDs, hello to a probable resurgence of cheaper spinning disk media.
Many were against sampling at the start, and it sometimes sounded untasteful and embarrassing. It was because of humans, not AI. AI is just a tool.
RAM prices are high now, but it’s because of companies who prefer to make money with AI-related tasks. It is because of humans, not AI. AI is just a tool.
you act like humans don’t make bad tools, they do all of the time.. the code of these crap Ai plugins is just one example…
to the OP’s question… no Ai cannot be funky, I wouldn’t even give it a 3.
I don’t see how your reply is related to what I wrote.
That’s what she said.
I’ll see myself out.
The videos pretty clearly demonstrate that AI can be used to generate loops that are pretty funky.
Is it what you or I would come up with? No – but does that matter? If so, why?
whoa.. i love AI but this sounds ugly. why do they even call that AI? it’s an arpeggiator with a note randomizer for minor chords. logic has a better and more flexible one built in. why choosing MIDI if it is supposed to sound funky?? i don’t get it. shouldn’t it generate one pattern and endless swing variations instead of endless patterns and one swing variation – that’s not how funk works and kind of misses the point. the only thing that is so-called-“AI” is that degrading voice in that cringy “promotion” video.. urgh.
AI was used to generate a funk version of Rush’s YYZ instrumental:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWw6qtGHx48&list=RDdWw6qtGHx48&start_radio=1
What a terrible day to have ears.
AI is proving useful for intense mechanical purposes like cross-comparing potential drugs, but when its employed for creative ones, I just cringe. So far, its been rather embarrassing. It’ll stay that way until the method learns to scrape well enough to completely replace us as musicians. Very few in the music BUSINESS give a damn about anything but their bottom line. If they have to give Music a colonoscopy with a cargo ship to get there, put in your ear plugs, ’cause here comes the fog horn. I’m keeping my instruments, but I also have to be realistic.
BT nailed it: “The music business is a den of sin and inequity, but there’s also a downside.” 😛
How could you ever write a good song if you’ve never gotten your heart broken?
When AI sees the price of RAM?