January 3, 2025 In News

CreaTeME at Generative Music AI Workshop in Barcelona December 2024

The Music Technology Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and The Sound of AI recently organized a five-day Generative Music AI Workshop in Barcelona. It aimed to bridge software engineering and creative music practice.

Thirty participants attended: 20 had backgrounds in music tech and AI engineering, while 10 were musicians. Each was expected to follow lectures from the free Generative Music AI Course on The Sound of AI YouTube channel prior to arrival. During the workshop, participants formed teams of two technologists and one musician to develop AI-based musical projects. Since CreaTeME plans to host a similar workshop, Steinar Jeffs joined as a musician to gain practical insights, network with peers, and explore how to organize such an event in Norway. 

 

 

Day 1 

 

Prof. Xavier Serra, director of the MTG made the workshop introduction, and participants received an overview of the workshop’s goals and a short project management session from director of the Sound of Ai, Valerio Velardo. They then engaged in brief presentations and rapid idea exchanges, forming teams composed of two technologists and one musician before moving into initial brainstorming and project ideation. 

Day 2

 

Frederic Font from MTG introduced relevant tools for generative music AI. Participants spent most of their time working on their projects, meeting with mentors for guidance, and sharing interim results to receive feedback and refine their approaches. Each team was also assigned one or more teacher assistants consisting of master and phd students at the University. 

Day 3

 

PhD student Roser Batlle led a group discussion on ethical issues surrounding AI in music and then the teams continued developing their projects under the supervision of mentors and teacher assistants. In the evening, a concert took place at Niu in partnership with Thunderboom records.

Day 4 

 

Xavier Serra lectured on the legal and practical challenges of AI in the music sector, with regards to themes such as copyright, intellectual property rights and streaming. Teams spent further hours fine-tuning their work and preparing for a demo concert, where they presented their near-complete compositions and prototypes to fellow participants and instructors.

Jeffs’s team made a Jazz Chord Generator that suggests new chords based on the chords you input and references a large corpus of tunes from RealBooks to make an educated suggestion for a continuation. The output of the generator is chord symbols that can be played as MIDI. The team’s two guitar players, Steinar and Manuell, improvised over the live-generated chord progressions for the demo-concert. 

Day 5 

 

Participants tackled broader questions on challenges and expectations in generative music systems with Valerio Velardo. They then made final presentations of their projects, after which the workshop formally concluded with a networking session and informal dinner.

Credits

Photos by Steinar Jeffs and participants at the workshop.

Graphics made by Jeffs and Dall-E.

Illustration made by Ingrid Stevens.Â