Anyone who knows me knows that I am a great believer in using anything that can create, inspire, stimulate and expand on my songwriting ideas and turn them into a finished song.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in our day to day lives has just exploded over the last few years and the world of songwriting has not been immune to this phenomenon. 

It seems that “AI” is the newest buzzword around and there’s a huge demand for AI to be involved with any and every part of the creative process. 

It’s easy to come to the conclusion that any human involvement in the creative process will become obsolete. I don’t think this will be the case at all.

Now I myself have used AI songwriting/musical tools to expand, embellish and enhance my own songwriting ideas and to get myself out of writer’s block. 

I do this because I’m truly fascinated by the promise of AI and what it can do for songwriters and musicians alike. The promise being a never-ending flow of randomly generated songwriting ideas.

Of course these ideas are not going to be perfect but that is the beauty of working with AI songwriting tools. These AI generated songwriting ideas will still need (and will probably always need) the discernment filter of a human brain that’s been trained by years of experience to steer those song ideas to completion.

Are songwriting ideas generated by an AI tool less relevant than if they were 100% generated by a human? 

As far as I’m concerned, no way because at the end of the day an AI songwriting tool is just that… A TOOL. 

It’s a means to an end and when you think about it, any tool that can generate a songwriting idea is a good tool in my book.

Recently, I updated my most popular blog post The BIG List Of Songwriting Prompts And Lyric Generators to now include a list of AI powered songwriting and lyric writing tools because whether we like it or not, THIS is going to be a big part of the future of songwriting.

Whether they’re created by a computer program or, through machine learning, these songwriting ideas and prompts are just there to help stimulate creativity within the human mind.

They exist to merely take your creativity to places you’d never go. For me, it’s like a mate giving you a tip on a great fishing spot but there are some advocates against AI in songwriting who talk about how using these tools is tantamount to cheating. 

Yes, I suppose you can technically “cheat” if you really want to, but having AI write a song for you and then claiming it as your own work is a hollow victory (if you can just watch the film Yesterday and you’ll know exactly what I mean). 

Just letting AI do all the heavy lifting would simply take all the fun out of creating and besides, is a guitarist who uses a capo a cheat? No, not at all.

I personally want to be on the forefront of these developments rather than be lagging behind to play catch up. I’ll continue to use AI songwriting/lyric writing tools in my songwriting process and if there’s anything that I can share with you all in the future I will.

So, in conclusion… As long as we control the technology within the process rather than the other way around, I think songwriting as a craft is not going to diminish in its humanity.

What do YOU think about the role of AI in the songwriting process?

The role of AI in songwriting has already launched some robust discussion and will continue to be an interesting conversation topic now and into the future so let me know what you think because I’m always up for a good chat.

Peace,

Corey 🙂