Subj : Google's Instrument Playground offers a taste of an AI-generated To : All From : TechnologyDaily Date : Tue Dec 05 2023 05:15:05 Google's Instrument Playground offers a taste of an AI-generated musical future Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2023 05:00:37 +0000 Description: Google's latest experiment offers rudimentary editing tools and can establish a certain mood to help create simple beats. FULL STORY ====================================================================== Google has opened the gates to its latest experimental AI called Instrument Playground which allows people to generate 20-second music tracks with a single text prompt. If that description sounds familiar to you, thats because other companies have something similar like Meta with MusicGen . Googles version adds two unique twists. First, its claimed to be capable of emulating over 100 instruments from around the world. This includes common ones like the piano to more obscure woodwinds like the dizi from China. Secondly, the company states you can add an adjective to the prompt to give it a certain mood. For example, putting in the word Happy will have Instrument Playground generate an upbeat track while Merry will create something more Christmassy. Its even possible to implement sound effects by choosing one of three modes: Ambient, Beat, and Pitch. For the musically inclined, you can activate Advanced mode to launch a sequencer where you can pull together up to four different AI instruments into one song. Live demo The Instrument Playground is publicly available so we decided to take it for a spin. Upon going to the website, youll be asked what you want to play. If youre having a hard time deciding, there is a link below the prompt that opens a list of 65 different instruments. We said we wanted an upbeat electric guitar, and to our surprise, the AI added backup vocals to the riff sort of. Most of the lyrics are incomprehensible gibberish although Chromes Live Caption apparently picked up the word Satan in there. The generated song plays once (although you can replay it at any time by clicking the Help icon). Afterward, you can use the on-screen keyboard to work on the track. Its not very expansive as users will only be given access to 12 keys centered around the C Major and C Minor scales. What you see on the page is directly tied to the numbers on a computer keyboard so you can use those instead of having to slowly click each one with a mouse. (Image credit: Future) You can use the three modes mentioned earlier to manipulate the file. Ambient lets you alter the track as a whole, Beat highlights what the AI considers to be the most interesting peaks, and Pitch can alter the length of a select portion. Users can even shift the octave higher or lower. Be aware the editing tools are pretty rudimentary. This isnt GarageBand . Upon finishing, you can record an audio snippet which you can then download as a .wav file to your computer. In the works If youre interested in trying out Instrument Playground, keep in mind this is an experimental technology that is far from perfect. Were not musicians, but even we could tell there were several errors in the generated music. Our drum sample had a piano playing in the back and the xylophone sounded like someone hitting a bunch of PVC pipes. We reached out to Google with several questions like when will the AI support 100 instruments (If you remember, its only at 65 at the time of this writing) and what the company intends to do with it. Right now, Instrument Playground feels like little more than a digital toy, only capable of creating simple beats. It'd be great to see it do more. This story will be updated at a later time. While we have you, be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best free music-making software in 2023 . You might also like Report: Google delays its biggest AI launch of the year, but it's still coming soon Google's AI editing tricks are making Photoshop irrelevant for most people The Google Pixel 8 Pro just got a big AI update the AI Core app explained ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/software/googles-instrument-playground-off ers-a-taste-of-an-ai-generated-musical-future --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .