A longstanding Carnival tradition in Eindhoven is the Lampegats Liedjesfist, a music festival where the best Carnival song of Lampegat is chosen every year. This year there is a special participant in the song festival: a song written by AI.
The Masked Dutchman makes music with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is participating in Liedjesfist in Lampegat (the name for Eindhoven in Carnival time) this year. He says he has made a “massive Carnival hit” with which he hopes to blow the Carnival audience away.
Prompts
According to the AI artist, making an AI song requires some creativity. “Before you start with such a song, you first have to have a concept in your head. You have to think about what kind of song you want to produce and what it should be about”. If someone has a concept, an AI programme can be used in which prompts, a kind of keywords, are entered. These prompts are a kind of assignments that are given to AI and, for example, determine what the song is about or in what style the song is.
‘It’s not real’
Former winner of Liedjesfist, Auntie Loes, still misses something when she listens to AI music. “It’s fun, it has atmosphere, but it’s not real. I dare to call it a song, but whether it’s a Carnival song is another matter”, she says. “It’s kind of crammed together. You give some formulas, you give some words. It’s actually a can of sardines; everything wants to pop out and sometimes that is the only thing you really hear”.
Limitations
The Carnival singer sees that AI still has many limitations. “Making a joke in between, singing live and doing the conga, those are things that an artist can do, but AI cannot”. The Masked Dutchman agrees with this point of view: “It is an enrichment for musicians, but they do not have to fear competition from AI”.
Nevertheless, they both think that AI does have a place in the music world. “Eventually, people no longer know what to think of. AI then gives you a few suggestions and says: can you do something with this? If you can do something with it, then you use it. You no longer have to think for hours about things like tempo and rhythm”, The Masked Dutchman says. Auntie Loes adds to this by saying: “If you want to write a Carnival song, let AI help you, but make it yourself; make it something of your own, create the feeling, because a computer cannot do that”.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
