Insights on Harmonic Tones from a Generative Music Experiment

TL;DR

This study explores how generative music AI produces harmonic tones, revealing insights into musical perception and creativity through a studio-lab experiment involving researchers, producers, and an AI model.

Contribution

It demonstrates that AI-generated harmonic complex tones can convey multiple pitches and offers new perspectives on harmonic perception and AI's role in music creation.

Findings

AI model learned to generate structured harmonic complex tones

Producers used output to convey multiple pitches simultaneously

Results suggest AI can enhance understanding of harmonic perception

Abstract

The ultimate purpose of generative music AI is music production. The studio-lab, a social form within the art-science branch of cross-disciplinarity, is a way to advance music production with AI music models. During a studio-lab experiment involving researchers, music producers, and an AI model for music generating bass-like audio, it was observed that the producers used the model's output to convey two or more pitches with a single harmonic complex tone, which in turn revealed that the model had learned to generate structured and coherent simultaneous melodic lines using monophonic sequences of harmonic complex tones. These findings prompt a reconsideration of the long-standing debate on whether humans can perceive harmonics as distinct pitches and highlight how generative AI can not only enhance musical creativity but also contribute to a deeper understanding of music.