Every reporter: Song Meilu Every editor: Wen Duo
During this year’s May Day holiday, performances have become a hot topic, with concerts, music festivals, dramas, etc. blooming everywhere. According to Fliggy data, two concerts by Ren Xianqi and Xue Zhiqian in Taiyuan led to a 105% year-on-year increase in hotel orders during the May Day holiday, of which foreign tourists accounted for 90%.
It can be seen that performances have become an important way to promote the local economy. Nowadays, with the application of AI, performances have also taken on new forms of expression, and their commercial value has been further increased.
In mid-April, the "2024-2025 Shanghai Chinese Orchestra Performance Season" kicked off, and the orchestra's original new work "Zero One | Chinese Color" was unveiled at the 39th Shanghai Spring International Music Festival. It is worth noting that one of the composers behind this concert is the generative music model "Qin Yue Model", which made the entire performance an innovative integration experiment of AI technology and folk music.
"Perhaps this group of young people - computer engineers and folk music performers, themselves did not expect the miracles they are creating! The Shanghai Chinese Orchestra is not playing with the concept of AI, but is practicing high-tech AI and ancient folk music. It has been organically and colorfully integrated locally," literary critic Mao Shi'an said after watching the performance.
In order to gain a deeper understanding of this cross-border cooperation, "Daily Economic News" recently interviewed Zhou Wenjiang, vice president of QQ Music Technology and head of Tianqin Laboratory, and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra to decode the "Chinese color" AI music journey.
Image source: The interviewee provided
ai to generate fragments, and the performer injected soul into
. In early March, suno, known as the "music version of chatgpt", was opened for free. It allows ordinary people to generate a complete song and music in a few seconds. The creative threshold is greatly lowered. But then, more than two hundred world-renowned musicians jointly issued an open letter against the abuse of AI, asking technology companies to promise not to develop, destroy or replace AI for human artists.
At a time when the industry is hotly discussing whether AI music will confront traditional musicians, the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra and AI music have joined hands to enter the palace of elegance. Preparations for the 39th Shanghai Spring International Music Festival began in February, and it went from concept to reality in just two months. This is the first time that the "Qin Music Model" jointly developed by Tencent Music and Tencent AI Lab has cooperated with the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra. Based on deep learning, this model can generate music through "text into music" instructions.
Zhou Wenjiang said in an online interview with a reporter from "Daily Economic News" that the cooperation between the two hit it off.
The Shanghai Chinese Orchestra was born in 1952 and is one of the earliest large-scale Chinese orchestras in the country. It has been committed to exploring contemporary expressions of folk music and seeking innovation in traditional culture. Unlike the concerns of many musicians, the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra is open to cooperation with AI. The relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra responded to the reporter's interview letter from the "Daily Economic News" and said: "Artificial intelligence has penetrated into all aspects of our lives, and music creation is no exception. We hope that we can jointly explore a more professional and balanced approach through artistic creation and orchestration. , a more practical new picture of artificial intelligence music creation. "
During the cooperation process, Tianqin Lab is responsible for generating corresponding music clips by inputting prompt words. Although the model generation speed is fast, the real challenge lies in the in-depth running-in of human and machine and the delicate polishing of the music. "The current large music model can generate complete tracks, but the requirements for performance-level folk music works are extremely high." Zhou Wenjiang explained that the large model outputs individual music fragments. The creation of
ai provides the prototype of the music, and then the performers need to continuously adjust and optimize the score based on the actual performance techniques and changes in the emotional level of the music. The Shanghai Chinese Orchestra introduced: "This is the first time for everyone to perform music composed by AI. During many attempts, they have continuously fed back modification suggestions to AI, and explored the infinite possibilities and optimal processing of music through interaction."
faces AI The musicians in the orchestra were also very curious about the melody they composed. Each time the large model generates a musical score, they will rehearse in groups with a sense of novelty, constantly giving feedback and adjustments, and striving to inject life into the AI musical score.Zhao Zhen, chief of the Sheng Department, shared: "This requires us to constantly practice adjustments and provide modification instructions to AI to broaden the listening and aesthetic feeling of the work."
Image source: Provided by the interviewee
In order to rejuvenate the personalized characteristics of national instrumental music , the performers invested heavily in arranging the music during the creation and arrangement process. During this second creation process, they continued to generate inspiration, broaden their imagination, and combined their previous performance experience to study different expression techniques of musical instruments. For example, in the Ruan duet "Han Li", the fresh and refined music style is combined with Ruan instruments of different voices (middle Ruan, large Ruan, bass Ruan, etc.), and a group of girl performers perform a Chinese-style and The beautiful melody fused with jazz elements arouses the audience's resonance and imagination. This unique creative process not only inspires artists, but also broadens the innovative boundaries of national music.
Imitating musical instruments and capturing artistic conception is the biggest problem.
During the running-in process, the musicians of the orchestra also felt the fun. Flute and flute player Zhao Yunmeng said: "When we played this work over and over again, we gradually discovered that music can bring AI closer to people. AI combines the expression techniques of national instrumental music with the musical elements that contemporary young people like, creating a variety of The same musical color. "Yu Bing, the principal of the pipa section of the
orchestra, also said: "I didn't expect that AI would retain the original charm of pipa and incorporate popular elements into it, and the melody it writes would be very suitable for the listening taste of today's young people."
However, as an industry precedent, the road to exploration is not easy. How to accurately capture the profound artistic conception of "Chinese color" and how to accurately present the timbres of different musical instruments are all challenges faced by the team. In a concert with the theme of "Chinese Color", the biggest difficulty is how to accurately express the unique artistic conception and emotion of each song. For example, the artistic conception that combines pipa music and blue is named "Loulan", which requires the creative team to deeply understand and convey this unique cultural atmosphere and emotional expression.
In addition, playing national musical instruments is also a big test. According to Zhou Wenjiang, the 9 pieces of music performed this time correspond to 9 types of musical instruments, and the creation of each piece of music must highlight the characteristics of the instrument. However, national musical instruments such as sheng and suona are relatively unpopular and have less data, and the learning and training process of large models is also more difficult.
Image source: Provided by the interviewee
To this end, Tianqin Lab has fine-tuned the model, inputted a large amount of classic folk music data, and conducted detailed annotations of emotions and techniques, striving to allow AI to understand subtle emotional changes in music.
In order to better express emotions and artistic conception, in addition to the previously trained basic large model with millions of data levels, Tianqin Lab has also made a targeted fine-tuned model, inputting a large amount of classic folk music data, and conducting emotional and The meticulous annotation of techniques strives to allow AI to understand the subtle emotional changes in music.
"We are as precise as what kind of emotion should be poured into at a certain performance time point, and the correlation between this emotion and playing skills is manually marked for machine learning." Zhou Wenjiang explained, but it is worth noting that, AI can only summarize the rules based on past works but it is difficult to create something that has never been done before. This is the limitation of AI and the uniqueness of top artists.
Image source: Provided by the interviewee
But for performers, AI creation breaks the inherent thinking mode and provides artists with greater, faster, and more possibilities for secondary creation. As Hu Chenyun, the orchestra’s suona performer, said: “AI gives us a fresh structure, giving us performers more room to perform. In this process, we use our brains to add more emotional expressions, and this new collaboration The model is also a kind of exercise for us. "The person in charge of
Shanghai Chinese Orchestra said that the long-term strategic cooperation with tme will continue to deepen in the future. "We look forward to the AI composition system radiating rich and diverse musical emotions and exploring more new possibilities in the field of national music creation. We believe that through the second creation and diversified interpretations of the orchestra players, the works can be personalized and convey rich emotions. and artistic appeal, allowing the audience to more truly feel the unique charm of the intertwining of skills and emotions.It can be said that the charm and emotion of music are what our hearts aspire to and are also the true soul of music. "
The current cooperation between AI and concerts is an exploration, and it may be applied in various fields such as concerts and pop music in the future. Zhou Wenjiang said: "The commercial prospects of AI music are still being explored, and currently we are working on offline venues. The value of providing customized background music and short video soundtracks is gradually emerging. ”
Daily Economic News
