Author | Kaka Editor | Fan Zhihui
Shanghai Spring International Music Festival is the oldest music festival in China and a symbol of Shanghai's music culture. This spring, a special music picture is slowly unfolding at the Shanghai Spring International Music Festival:
Sheng players are born, the sun rises and dawn breaks, and the oriental wind blows, and the eyes are full of spring. This is called "The East is White". The flute and the harp, the orchestra and the strings sing in harmony, as light as the golden dust falling from the pine flowers. This is called "Pine Flowers". The guzheng has a clear sound and a moving sound, and the bright pink and delicate red blows all over the ground. This is called "Jiao Hong". Ruan is divided into big and small, and there are young and old lotuses. If you want to know the color of lotus, please look at hibiscus. This is called "lotus".
From the sun rising to the flowers blooming, who said music has no color? The design of the
performance stage is also impressive - the 1862 Fashion Art Center was transformed from an old shipyard. The uniquely designed glass curtain wall reflects the performers and the audience sharing Chinese music, whether it is the evening show or the afternoon show , all have their own beauty. Here, traditional Chinese music, national beauty, heaven and earth, nature and modern cities are integrated.
But maybe you don’t know that such beautiful music and colorful music pictures are created by AI.
"Why can't we let AI assist our artists?" A spark of inspiration led to the cooperation between the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra and Tencent Music Entertainment Group (tme), and this concert titled "Zero·One|Chinese Color".
This is also the first AI-composed folk music concert in the country. It is jointly hosted by the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, tme and 1862 Fashion Art Center for the first time. It is also the "big model of piano music" jointly developed by Tencent Music Tianqin Lab and Tencent AI Lab. The first stage”.
Tradition and modernity, nationality and technology are harmoniously blended together to present a high-level audio-visual feast to the audience. It makes people curious about what happened in front and behind the scenes of this concert - how the "marriage" between folk music and AI was born. What new sparks are generated in the collision of "ancient and modern"? What significance and impact does this cooperation have on the music industry?
Let us turn back the clock and go back to the moment before everything started.
When did the butterfly flap its wings?
is like a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest, causing a storm that swept across the United States. The hand in hand between folk music and AI stems from the artist’s curiosity and the romance of techies.
"Chen Shanni trained ai Chen Shanni to make fake films to look like real ones", "Stefanie Sun faced ai Stefanie Sun and responded that human beings cannot surpass ai"... There were many topics about ai music last year. Faced with the roaring of new technologies, the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra chose to take a step forward , proactively embrace new changes.
"This is not a matter of who replaces whom." Luo Xiaoci, head of the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, has always been a person who likes to "break the rules." "We cannot avoid the impact and envelopment of AI on human life, and it is difficult to imagine where the future will go. , In this case, why not go a step further and see what can come from the collision between liberal arts students and science students?
With curiosity, excitement, and perhaps a little fear of the unknown, the liberal arts students took a step forward; , science students have also been fascinated by this cooperation for a long time. Zhou Wenjiang, vice president of music technology at
qq and head of Tianqin Lab, has been working in computer and Internet-related fields for more than ten years and is an out-and-out technical guy. He has never believed that technology and art are mutually exclusive. "We have never thought about AI completely replacing creators . Instead, we use AI to improve efficiency, replace a large amount of labor in the past, or improve platform operation efficiency to assist our creators. Better to create excellent works instead of completing higher-level and more difficult works on behalf of the creator. "
tme and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra announced the launch of a strategic cooperation in February this year. The hands of liberal arts students and science students finally held hands together.
Since it is the "marriage" of folk music and AI, concerts are naturally the best way to cooperate. But how to perform the concert and what theme to choose are confusing.
On the one hand, there is no such precedent in China, which means there is no reference object; on the other hand, neither the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra nor tme want ai + folk music to become a gimmick, but want to use this concert to To prove more possibilities for the integration of the two.
Faced with these two major problems, the artist's romance has become the key to breaking the situation.
"Once the main creators were having a meeting in the rehearsal hall on the second floor. We had just finished eating and everyone was a little drowsy. I happened to be facing the window and saw the green and yellow leaves outside, as well as the chirping of birds. That I felt very comfortable and relaxed for a moment. So I was thinking, can I use music to express the colors? Let the touch of green, the touch of yellow, and the relaxation and comfort of that moment be conveyed to more people.”
Luo Xiaoci. She said that she thought of using music to express colors, because folk music and traditional Chinese colors are both manifestations of ancient Chinese wisdom and a carrier of expressing nature. Moreover, many Chinese colors are obtained by dyeing plants, and there is a dynamic change in time. Inside, this natural rhythm also fits well with the rhythmic feel of the instrument. So, the theme of the concert was decided - uses music to show traditional Chinese colors.
has determined the theme, and the next step is the specific design. Each color should correspond to and be related to the instrument. At the same time, she proposed that it should not only be related to the timbre and quality of the instrument, but also hope to highlight the personality of the performer. The technical experts at
are responsible for making this romance come true and making everything more concrete and executable.
"Our large music generation model is customized according to the style and performance needs of the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra. Whether it is traditional ethnic instruments such as pipa, ruan, flute, guzheng, etc., or modern popular instruments such as keyboards and jazz drums, after a rich and diverse Through training on music forms and creation rules, and then through style optimization, it will be possible to directly generate high-quality music by inputting description instructions, that is, 'text into music'" "
" And we are not all science students," Zhou Wenjiang laughed. He added: "More than half of our team has a musical background and are not programmers who can only write code as everyone thinks."
In March this year, [Qinyue Large Model] generated music scores, and the artists immediately went into intense rehearsals, while technical experts were on standby to make further adjustments and corrections based on feedback. Although adequate preparations had been made and even a small-scale audition was conducted in advance, everyone's worries were not relieved until the concert was officially unveiled.
started with the Sheng music "The East Is White" and ended with the instrumental music group "Se Ya". The audience's intoxicated expression and warm applause were the best affirmation of "Zero·One|Chinese Color". The concert may be just the beginning. With the flapping of butterfly wings, more new attempts will surely be born.
People who build bridges for dreams
"Zero·One|Chinese Color" is undoubtedly a success. The harmonious blend between AI and folk music left a deep impression on people. But such a wonderful performance was presented by technical experts and artists working together to overcome countless difficulties. The
music model has been widely used in real life, but it is still different to use traditional folk music to train an AI music model. Teacher Zhao, head of audio technology at Tencent Music Tianqin Lab, revealed that the difficulty of folk music training is that there are many types of musical instruments and few finished works.
"This is mainly due to the magnitude of the millions of songs learned by AI, and the overall number is relatively small." Moreover, folk music has a long playing time and a special playing method, which also makes the overall algorithm different.
"In view of these characteristics, the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra gave us some song content, and we fine-tuned the original generation model for folk music, and finally obtained a large model base with folk music attributes, and then generated folk music." This is The [Qinyue Large Model] we mentioned earlier.
[Qinyue Big Model] has rich AI composition and arrangement capabilities. is based on text input of Chinese and English keywords, descriptive sentences or audio. [Qinyue Large Model] can provide the general public with the ability to "directly generate audio" - text-generated music, and can also provide musicians with post-editing needs. "Simultaneous audio and score generation" capability - score generation.
It is understood that [Qinle Big Model] has been launched on the "Tencent Music Venus Platform", a music production service platform open to music creators in the entire industry.
Moreover, the technical staff of Tianqin Laboratory told us that the results of large-scale double-blind listening tests showed that in the pure music generation task, the multi-dimensional subjective ratings of [Qinle Large Model] stably exceeded the musicgen 3.3b stereo in the industry. .
Although last September we had the experience of using a large model to generate the AI composition song "Magic Characters", the technical experts still felt a little uneasy when it came to folk music. Teacher Zhao said, "National music is so unique, and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra has a long history as the earliest Chinese orchestra in China. We are very worried that we cannot technically demonstrate the uniqueness and tonality of folk music well."
To untie the bell, one must tie the bell. After the prototype of the [Qin Yue Large Model] came out, Teacher Hu from the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra went to Shenzhen to see the demonstration effect. After that, everyone sat together and openly discussed the technical advantages and problems.
"I feel much better after talking about it. Our general direction is correct, and we found that Chinese music and ethnic music are indeed our advantages, and they are also different from those overseas technology giants."
Guan Guan is sad to pass. However, after the lowest level problems are solved, new problems arise.
Whether you are singing or playing, people's emotions will be reflected in the performance. Luo Xiaoci gave an example. When different people play the same melody, the audience will feel the tone and breathing differently. "It's the same 4 bars, played by the AI and the actual player, and the audience will feel different emotions and speeds."
People will have moments when their true feelings are revealed during performance. This subtle difference caused by emotions constitutes a charming moment of artistic performance. However, technology is considered to be cold and always consistent, so how to solve " "AI has no emotions" problem?
"This problem can be solved through technology," Zhou Wenjiang said. AI can learn a large amount of creative rules and music theory knowledge to create works that meet the listening taste of ordinary music fans. As for how to simulate the emotions of humans playing music, we can label emotions on related works and let the machine learn the correlation between different emotions and music.
He further gave an example, "Writing a cheerful folk music for the AI next is just a preliminary instruction. Later, more data will be needed to reflect the performer's emotional expression and other personalized characteristics, so that the AI composition works will have richer musical emotions. ", and this is also in line with the need put forward by Captain Luo to "express the characteristics of different instruments and the different personalities of the performers."
How about the smooth integration between artists and [Qinyue Large Model]? Compared with the trepidation of technical experts, artists are quick to accept new things.
"For the music it handed over, if I thought it was good, I would say yes. If I thought it was not good, I would just call it over and redo it. If you are communicating with people, you also have to consider the way of speaking. With AI, you don't have to think about these things. Communication is very fast." Luo Xiaoci She said that the process of training the big model made her feel "very happy".
Several other teachers felt that they were a little unsure before seeing the actual work, fearing that the things made by AI would be weird. “When I got it, I found that the overall quality was pretty good, except for some details and the musical instruments. The arrangement needs to be readjusted."
As Zhou Wenjiang said, AI is not meant to replace artists, but to make the creative process more efficient and faster. [Big Model of Qin Music] Join hands with the musicians of the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra to make this romantic dream about music and color a reality.
is the answer sheet and reassurance
Luo Xiaoci and Zhou Wenjiang both said with a smile that their cooperation was an adventure and a test, and "Zero·One|Chinese Color" was the answer sheet they handed over.
But from the perspective of industry development, it is not only an answer sheet, but also a reassurance.
Faced with the constant emergence of new things, blindly avoiding them will not solve the problem. Just like Luo Xiaoci said, since it is unavoidable, why not take a step forward? After real cooperation, the artists found that for them, AI was more like a handy tool, liberating them from some repetitive work and focusing their energy on more important things.
As a person who likes to "break tradition", Luo Xiaoci said frankly that both she and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra are very willing to try and accept new things, because for them, the biggest bottleneck of folk music at this stage is creation, "Many times I feel "The most difficult thing for the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra is not the funding, but the lack of creativity. If we don't have creativity and curiosity, there will be a real bottleneck in artistic creation."
And a person who is surrounded by repetitive work every day still has a lot to do. Will you maintain a strong imagination? It's hard to say. As Zhou Wenjiang said, technology is to assist artists and liberate artists, not to compete with others for jobs.
Of course, because repetitive work is done by AI, those "music posters" will naturally be eliminated. "AI may replace some of the more mediocre or mediocre ones, but I firmly believe that great artists can do it in a short time. It’s hard to replace.”
Through this cooperation, the artists also discovered that AI can not only assist them, but also stimulate their reverse thinking and open up different perspectives.
"Breaking through the limitations of human thinking is our original intention in cooperating with AI," Luo Xiaoci said. At the same time, she also feels that AI is forcing artists to continue to have better creativity, have more unique methods, and be able to produce better works and high-quality products for the audience. "In this way, we can be replaced later, right?" .
More importantly, we all know that during the development of folk music over thousands of years, some things have been passed down authentically, some things have passed away with the long history, and some things have already happened due to the passage of time. Earth-shaking changes, and technical means can realize the "digital rebirth" of traditional art.
For example, last year, qq Music used the AI technology of "qq Music Galaxy Sound Effect" to create AI-related tracks according to different emotions and artistic conceptions, and completed 12 guqin healing music, allowing the thousand-year-old guqin to travel through time and space and take on a new life in the digital world. For artistic creation, especially folk music creation, this "digital rebirth" can help them more comprehensively understand the sound quality and characteristics of ancient musical instruments and apply them in their future creations.
At the beginning of 2023, qq Music also invited Chinese music master Feng Mantian to take the lead, cross-border pioneer musician Zhu Xuzhi, 3D healing musician Qin Yi, and young composer and pianist Chang Le. Based on the timbre sample of a 1:1 replica of Zeng Hou Yi’s chimes, Make new creations in multiple styles. The sampling of ancient music + diverse creation will undoubtedly attract more young people's attention to traditional music, and cultural inheritance will become a smoother matter.
Conclusion
"Zero·One|Chinese Color" is a performance, an adventure, and an answer sheet. It allows us to see more possibilities of technology + art, and also see the courage and responsibility of practitioners.
It is reported that the long-term strategic cooperation between the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra and tme will continue to deepen. On April 27, "Zero One | Chinese Color" will be broadcast online on qq music and qq music video accounts, and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra area will also be launched simultaneously. , looking forward to experiencing this audio-visual feast where modern technology and contemporary Chinese music complement each other and resonate harmoniously with more audiences.
looks forward to more such cooperation in the industry in the future, and also hopes that with the support of technology, our traditional music will once again expand into new areas and shine with a more charming light.
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