DiS005: How music can embrace the power of AI with ChatGPT expert David Boyle

02/22/23 • 54 min

“If you start out and it doesn't do something that you're very impressed by, your assumption should be that your prompt wasn't very good,” this summarises the advice from music industry veteran David Boyle, who specialises in understanding audiences, and over the last few months has become an expert in using ChatGPT (if you've not already, give it a go here). So much so he's co-written a book called PROMPT about, you guessed it, writing prompts to get artificial intelligence to give you better answers.

This conversation is aimed at musicians and people who work in the music industry, but the takeaways should be fairly obvious whatever you're trying to achieve. Our host, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams, shares some of the ways he's been using ChatGPT to get movie recommendations based on the songs that are on the soundtrack and using it to better understand the complex legalese in a contract.

This conversation has also inspired David and his team to write a new edit of PROMPT for musicians, taking in some of the elements and workflows we discussed. Drowned in Sound listeners can grab it at a special rate using this link.

We hope you will find the practical examples and advice in this episode useful, and we would love to see screenshots or hear about how you've used it. Tweet @seaninsound and @beglen if you get chance. Actually, a sneaky tip, there's also a Twitter bot that you can send Qs to here.

Previous Episode

DiS004: Tune in, AI Out - the co-founders of Endel on music's potential futures

The robots are coming, and people are fearful and excited about the potential for AI and music to collide. It's hard to escape the discourse surrounding artificial intelligence, with various projects launches or low-level things reaching critical max in 2023.

As someone who is pretty cynical and emo about everything, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams is oddly optimistic about some of AI music's potential futures, especially surrounding the collision of science, technology and more 'functional' strands of music. As a lover of Sigur Ros, side two of Bowie's Low and contemporary composers like Poppy Ackroyd and Grouper, he's been a heavy user of the Endel app, which composes/generates music in real time, using sounds, textures, samples and frequencies, to create a soundscapes to listen to whilst you focus, relax, walk, sleep and more.

In this episode, two of the co-founders Oleg Stavitsky and Dmitry Evgrafov (listen to some of his non-AI music on bandcamp here) discuss everything from circadian rhythms to their love of Brian Eno. They also explore the science and tech behind the launch of an 8-hour Sleep Science playlist (listen here) with Amazon Music, which opens with an Amazon Original track featuring electronic duo Kx5 (Kaskade and deadmau5) that was produced using the hit EDM track “Escape”. The source material, including synths and chill vocals, was processed by Endel Pacific to create a high-quality, relaxing soundscape activating the parasympathetic nervous system and getting the listener ready for sleep.

Using this link, you can get a free month trial of Endel to better understand what we're talking about: https://code.endel.io/?code=drownedinsound (worth getting it just to hear the James Blake soundscape)

Also mentioned in the intro to this episode was Bronze Format, Max Richter's groundbreaking SLEEP album, and toward the end Oleg encourages you to join Endel's Discord community, which is here.

As always, if you have any thoughts or ideas, contact our host @seaninsound on your social platform of choice and subscribe to our mailing list here.

Next Episode

DiS006: Women's Equality in Music & Glastonbury's pipeline with Vick Bain from The F List / ISM

In case it wasn't obvious, this a music podcast that hasn't had enough of experts and to mark International Women's Day 2023 we spoke to Vick Bain the founder of The F-List and President of ISM (the independent society of musicians), to her PhD research into inequality in the music industry.

This episodes covers everything from her research into the Ivors songwriting awards having a pitiful amount of women winners to setting up the F List database of female+ musicians.

In recent days, Vick Bain has appeared on the BBC's flagship programmes Woman's Hour and Newsnight, as well as spoken to The Guardian about what Glastonbury's Emily Eavis called a "pipeline problem" in trying to secure festival headliners that aren't male.

This is the first in a series of conversations about inequality and the future of the music industry.

If you've been impacted by harassment within the music industry, visit WeAreMusic for a selection of links.

For more about Drowned in Sound, join our Substack newsletter and follow our founder and podcast host @seaninsound.