Claude is excellent at a few things, decent at quite a few more. Art and music are not one of these things.
Ar they good as tools to aid in the creative process if you know how to use them and have some restraint? Oh absolutely. As replacements for actual art? Oh absolutely not.
Same goes for the entire genre of tools.
Do I need to read further? Seriously, everyone has talent. If you're not reaady to create things, just don't do it at all. Claude will not help you here. Be prepared to spend >400 hrs on just fiddling around, and be prepared to fail a lot. There is no shortcut.
(Most of it isn't.)
Art is on a sliding scale from "Fun study and experiment for the sake of it" to "Expresses something personal" to "Expresses something collective" to "A cultural landmark that invents a completely new expressive language, emotionally and technically."
All of those options are creatively worthwhile. Or maybe none of them are.
Take your pick.
This song was generated from my 2-sentence prompt about a botched trash pickup: https://suno.com/s/Bdo9jzngQ4rvQko9
It is clearly plain to anyone who is a musician or hangs out with a lot of musicians that the independent music world is livid about this stuff. Everyone I’ve talked to, from acoustic songwriters to metal singers to circuit-bending pedalheads are united in their absolute hatred of this technology.
(Yes, follow-up commenter, I’ve seen the Timbaland interview)
I could listen to music by real people being vulnerable and expressing themselves, or I could listen to a computer soullessly regurgitating a stock "blues" melody with inane lyrics about a trash can. Why would I ever pick the latter?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=atcqMWqB3hw
From the author:
> The instrumental and vocals were both generated using Suno with a lot fiddling around with the prompts. The video was edited by a human in kdenlive :-)
> For complex AI generated music, tools like Suno and Udio are obviously in a different league as they're trained specifically on audio and can produce genuinely impressive results. But that's not what this experiment was about.
It's not just good at producing complete songs though, AI has made it trivial to take garbage and make it sound good.
I largely stopped making music because imo unless you're in the top 5% of musicians AI is probably able to write better music than you.
I guess it's the same with visual artists. Unless you're really, really good it's hard to understand why anyone would produce art by hand these days.
The idea that you'd stop trying to express yourself because you're comparing your own artistic voice to the output of an LLM and somehow seeing it as less valid, or less worthwhile, is just sad.
I don't mean that as an insult, I mean it's genuinely sad for you and for all of us as a species.
I do enjoy making music, and I don't do it "by hand". I use lots of tools (instruments, electronics, a computer for recording and mixing, the internet for distribution). As long as I'm the one directing the tools, it's still art and it's still my music.
It won't be long before this becomes:
> I largely stopped making _____ because imo unless you're in the top 5% of making _____ AI is probably able to make _____ better than you.
Especially where _____ is anything that can be created digitally.
Especially with Ableton and something like ableton-mcp-extended[1] this can go quite far. After adapting it a bit to use less tokens for tool call outputs I could get decent performance on a local model to tell me what the current device settings on a given track were. Imagine this with a more powerful machine and things like "make the lead less harsh" or "make the bass bounce" set off a chain of automatically added devices with new and interesting parameter combinations to adjust to your taste.
In a way this becomes a bit like the inspiration-inducing setting of listening to a song which is playing in another room with closed doors: by being muffled, certain aspects of the track get highlighted which normally wouldn’t be perceived as prominently.
It can also just make sounds with tone.js directly.
It double-tracked the vocals like freaking Elliott Smith, which cracked me up.
https://strudel.cc/#Ly8gImFtYmVyIGRyaWZ0IiBAYnkgYW1wCi8vIEB2ZXJzaW9uIDEuMApzZXRjcHMoLjU1KQoKJDogbihgPAogIFswIH4gMiB%2BXSBbNCB%2BIDMgfl0gWzIgfiAwIH5dIFs0IDMgMiB%2BXQogIFswIH4gMiB%2BXSBbNCB%2BIDUgfl0gWzMgfiAyIH5dIFswIH4gfiB%2BXQo%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%2BIH5dIFt4IH4gfiB%2BXSIpLAogIHMoIn4gW3JpbToxLCBzZDoyXSIpLmdhaW4oLjgpLAogIHMoImhoKjgiKS5nYWluKHNhdy5yYW5nZSguMiwgLjcpKS5wYW4oc2luZSksCiAgcygifiB%2BIH4gb2giKS5tYXNrKCI8MCAwIDAgMT4vOCIpLmdhaW4oLjQpCikuYmFuaygiUm9sYW5kVFI4MDgiKQoucm9vbSguMykuc2hhcGUoLjIpCgokOiBuKCJ%2BIDxbfiA2XSBbNCB%2BXSBbfiAzXSBbNSB%2BXT4iKQouc2NhbGUoIkQ1Om1pbm9yOnBlbnRhdG9uaWMiKQouc291bmQoImdtX211c2ljX2JveCIpCi5yb29tKC45KS5kZWxheSgiLjU6LjE2Oi43IikKLmdhaW4ocGVybGluLnJhbmdlKC4zLCAuNikpCi5wYW4oc2luZS5zbG93KDgpKQ%3D%3D
It layers a pentatonic guitar melody with filter sweep, a saw/triangle bass, warm e-piano chords, TR-808 drums, and a sparse music box that drifts across the stereo field.
I do acknowledge the possiblity that it might be heavily plagiarized from an original composition in the training set - I wouldn't know.
Then go pay someone to teach you to play <instrument>, and you'll get a life skill that will be satisfying to watch grow, instead of whatever this soulless crap is.
edit: Oh god after listening to those samples, send Claude to the same music teacher you choose...