The State of Goa has now evolved into a brand for live music. Thousands of live music venues spanning the tourist belts stand testimony to this. Goan bands have never had it better with weddings as well as corporate events across India and even around the world. This is good news monetarily but bad news creatively. Goan bands are happy playing covers and simply plagiarising music rather than creating music. Some artists do create music irrelevant of whether it generates income but those are few and far between. Joshua Costa is one such artist who is probably the only Goan musician to release an all original smooth-jazz album.
Colin D’Cruz is another who released seven all original albums on CD Baby that generates some income through online streaming. His music also plays at the new Mopa airport and it’s the first thing visitors hear on arrival in Goa. Elvis Rumion, a local rock star has been writing some great originals too. Aileen Carneiro, a writer by profession and singer/songwriter by passion has composed songs that were online chartbusters. Minelli Pinto recorded an original album at the age of seventeen. Sherise D’Souza’s originals were released to international acclaim, Akshada Bandekar has been writing originals from a very young age, currently based in Florida, she continues creating music as a sound engineer. Even though the majority are cover artistes, the silver lining shines brightly and hopefully Goa will have the first Grammy winner sometime soon.
The trend of applying Artificial Intelligence to music is also catching up. This is not happening only in Goa. This is a trend that is taking place in the international music scene too. The Beatles recently used AI to isolate John Lennon’s voice from a 1978 demo, stripping out the other instruments and ambient noises in order to build a new, pristinely-produced song. AI is also ingrained in many peoples’ listening experiences: streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music rely on AI algorithms to suggest people songs based on their listening habits.
Colin D’Cruz says, “There has never been a better time for musicians than today. AI and the internet have opened global avenues and I didn’t waste time getting onboard. Today, I sit behind a tiny studio desk in a small village in Goa and collaborate with musicians around the world. This has helped me outdo myself. I am a much better musician and music producer thanks to today’s technology that is so easily available to everyone. The big difference between a pop musician doing covers and a jazz musician doing standards is a jazz musician is free to create his/her own interpretations of a jazz standard. This is not the case with pop musicians who are expected to cover a song like a parrot.”
Joanne da Cunha says, “Sometimes, when working solo or collaborating with other musicians or music producers on a music track, I have used AI just to add some special effects to the music or my voice to make it stand out a little more. I like my natural singing voice, but it’s pretty cool and exciting to incorporate AI sometimes to just add a new layer to it. I enjoy experimenting with AI audio tools as long it doesn’t take away from the main essence in the music. In the recent past, I have worked on making parody tracks and music covers using some online tools to separate drums, vocals and instrumentals. These tools save me the trouble of googling and searching for instrumentals when it comes to making a track. When I’m collaborating with a music producer, we use AI sometimes to make wave tables that are a core concept of sound design when making new sounds in the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).”
She goes on to say that she finds AI to be a big help in sample finding and to help identify and break down complex chords of tracks. She says, “I use AI tools to master my tracks since it saves me time and makes music composing and production more budget friendly for me.’
Another Goan band using AI extensively is Merak a sibling duo, Belinda and Brandon Mendes. They are multi-instrumentalists and make music that transcends boundaries. Their compositions include a bit of jazz, rock, orchestral, all made more fun with an electronic touch. Brandon confirms that they use AI in the music. He says, “I use certain tools of AI to augment the composition. I sometimes use software to strip down the music to the individual instruments and work on them individually. Then, I also use AI to transfer music for noise cancellation from outdoor to indoor.”
Joshua Costa who has composed several original songs as part of an album is categorical when he says he would never use AI while composing. He says a computer would never be able to do the creative work that would come out of a human brain.
Sherise D’Souza who also composes originals which has met with much acclaim is categorical when she says that she would never use AI. She says, “I compose songs myself, I write the lyrics and I use human producers to do whatever is necessary on the album. The human review system will continue to persist. It is like having a computer with you. AI will be part of the process but it will never be the complete process. The soul can never be replicated by AI.”
The use of AI by international musicians is growing and is generating much comment. Bad Bunny emphatically rejected rumors that he was about to release a new song with Justin Bieber. “That’s fake,” he said in an interview for his meteoric rise. “You never know what I’m going to do.” But last month, a song featuring what sounded like his and Bieber’s voices started circulating on TikTok, garnering millions of likes. Bad Bunny hadn’t lied in the interview, though: the song was created with AI.
An artist named FlowGPT had used AI technology to recreate the voices of Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber and Daddy Yankee in a reggaeton anthem. Bad Bunny himself hated it, and discouraging his fans from listening, and the clip was removed from TikTok. But many fans of all three megastars loved it all the same. The song and the polarized reactions to it are emblematic of the fraught ways in which AI has stormed the music industry. Over the past couple of years, advancements in machine learning have made it possible for anyone sitting in their homes to reproduce the sound of their musical idols.
This is a challenge which will be faced by musicians all over the world who will have to make their own decision with regards to their creative freedom and the ethics involved. This is going to be a very long road which will generate much comment and heartburn in the years ahead.
