Apparently ChatGPT can generate a tab for a song. What does this mean for regular musicians?
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For years and years, the grind for musicians has been no joke. Music was one of the ways that even some people in the 30s and 40s could deal with discrimination. It’s been nothing more than a constant struggle; they grappled with their surroundings for ideas, which would take them hours, days, sometimes even weeks. Even after the evolution of the process of songwriting meant that musicians could write songs more efficiently, it was still nothing but a rigorous process.
Fast-forward into December of 2022, where newly-founded company OpenAI releases a new Chatbot called ChatGPT, for which can answer any question, with restrictions of profanity, of course. Its suggestions vary, and it soon became the enemy of teachers and professors; students constantly kept writing essays that were written by ChatGPT.
Only problem? Teachers weren’t 100% sure. The newly released language model can also translate the essay into high-schooler language, making it less profound, which often stumped teachers.
Recently, I myself (a fluent Spanish speaker; my mother is from Spain, my dad from Argentina) decided to translate the incredibly famous Latin-American song Despacito, by Luis Fonsi. Obviously, I knew all the lyrics, and I could translate them perfectly. But what about ChatGPT?
To my surprise, but only just, ChatGPT did in fact succeed, translating it with an abundance of perfection, meaning the job of a translator was already taken successfully by a language model, and exquisitely so. Sadly for some, translating is not the only thing ChatGPT is freakishly good at.
Coming on the way home from school, my dad showed me a video he found on Reddit. Somebody asked ChatGPT to write them a guitar solo, yes, a guitar solo, by using tab. What would be incredibly hard for any amateur guitar player ChatGPT was able to do in just five seconds.
Apparently, it can write out tabs for a whole band, and if it truly satisfies the audience, boom, you have a one-hit wonder that was written in just fractions of a minute.
It’s not only the creativity that blows people away from this Language Model, it’s its consistency. It can write any song in any way, in any genre, in the style of any artist. That means that it can partially (but not fully) copy a single musician.
This basically means that unless AI is rapidly put to a halt, musicians are in dire straits (no pun intended).
Especially today, the circumstances for street musicians is cruel. Despite having a glut of talent, they yet only make a meager amount of money. The music industry is getting harder to succeed in day by day, week by week, and the positive progression by ChatGPT doesn’t improve the situation.
The music industry is incredibly challenging to break through; a career in music takes many stages, and regardless of the talent that one possesses, their future in music only gets them $50.00 a day, just by hanging out on the New York subway. Despite having a plethora of talent, the repay is only a meager amount, definitely not enough to live on.
That’s why most street musicians, despite playing gleefully, have a depressing backstory: the majority of them are homeless, and live on barely anything, with their only talent being music, but with nothing to show.
On a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, I learned a lot of things, plenty more than I actually would have liked. Las Vegas, a lot like Los Angeles (which is the birthplace of Rock N’ Roll), is teeming with musicians who failed to find the big stage.
Our Uber driver on the first day, as cordial and talkative as he was, his backstory was none other than dismal.
Him, being a lover of Eminem, was a ‘decent rapper’, he said, who even made it on America’s Got Talent.
America’s Got Talent, even while seeming fun to watch, incredibly entertaining and comical at times, is the place for either middle-aged failed musicians, or middle-aged musicians whom are on track of failing, as well as kids heading into the same direction.
Although they don’t mention it, America’s Got Talent either desperately tries to revive a musician’s career (and fails), or they are responsible for the musician’s latter downfall. Of course, this is all if you do get rejected.
Despite him considering himself a ‘decent rapper’, he wasn’t ‘decent’ enough to impress the judges; he was rejected, and had no other direction to move towards.
So, he quit rapping, and instead took a career in being a Uber driver in Las Vegas, which surprisingly is a high-paying job.
You can at least be grateful that he didn’t end up on the road, like many other Las Vegas musicians.
You’ll be fairly lucky to rake in $100.00 in one night; people in Las Vegas will like to keep their money in their own pockets rather than giving it to some street musician.
The situation is the exact same in Los Angeles, California, as well.
The world is a tough, tough place, and if ChatGPT can write out a song, in 20 years, we’ll see human-like robots perform them in concerts as well.
Now, AI can steal people’s jobs, but they can’t steal talent. Talent is to be kept to yourself, and at the end of the day, if you don’t want to risk your entire life walking that rigorous path of a musician, you can keep your music to yourself, and perhaps share it with others.
AI isn’t THAT powerful.