Is "AI" generated music finally useful? [for Indie Game Devs]
Tags: webdev, machinelearning, discuss, gamedev
Published: 2021-10-10 17:52:10

A short post about a service I stumbled across called AIVA.

I have been working on systemising my processes for content creation. 

One thing that I want to do is to create some YouTube shorts (1-2 minute videos, same as TikTok / Instagram stories type videos) and I was looking for some subtle background music that wouldn't be copyrighted.

While searching I stumbled across https://aiva.ai/ - a service to generate AI music.

As with anything new and interesting, I had to have a play!

## First impressions
It was easy to use, even for a dummy like me!

You just select a few things such as what style of music / instrumentation you want, duration (up to 3 minutes for free tier), tempo, key and time signature and then select how many tracks you want the AI to produce (up to 5 at a time).

![Screen allowing you to set the instrumentation, duration, tempo, key that you would like AIVA to generate](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/err1f9febjvtvhpgagtk.jpg)

Then you press "Create Your Track" and wait for a minute or two.

You can then listen to the AI masterpiece...or disaster!

## Consistency / results
From about 100 tracks I generated I would say that 1 in 15 tracks are decent enough that you could possibly use them, a lot of them end up with too heavy a drum beat or some weird transitions etc.

Despite that I am impressed with the results.

## Good enough for Indie game developers?
They aren't perfect, but if you have next to no budget for sound tracks they will probably be good enough! 

I found about 6 tracks that I think would work for a low budget Indie game, which isn't bad considering I did no editing on the tracks (other than removing some weird bits from the end of the first example below).

With a bit of work and tweaking I imagine you could make them feel like high quality pieces composed just for the game. 

Or at the very least use them as inspiration pieces to make the ideation part of music design a lot shorter (and therefore a lot cheaper!).

## Examples
Here are three examples I downloaded of tracks that I think are pretty much good enough for usage.

I have given them some fun names and the sort of game I think they would work for, enjoy AIVAs work!

### Example 1 - DrAIgon born
{% jsfiddle https://jsfiddle.net/75dm9bjo/1/ result %}

### Example 2 - PAIrates Adventures
{% jsfiddle https://jsfiddle.net/75dm9bjo/3/ result %}

### Example 3 - In SpAIce, no one can hear you scrAIm
{% jsfiddle https://jsfiddle.net/75dm9bjo/4/ result %}

## So what do you think?
Do you think Machine Learning has come far enough to generate some useful music / sound tracks?

Could you picture a game with one of these sound tracks in it?

I personally think some of the Hip Hop, Low-Fi and Easy Listening stuff it produces would make great background music for streams and videos (the main reason I am exploring the service) with a very slim chance of a copyright strike! 

I would encourage you to have a play yourself and see what you think!

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## Quick Poll
{% codesandbox n4dpo initialpath=/mVI1C_cFsibjD0kNayrE1/embed runonclick=0 %}

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