Image this: It’s 2023 and I’m 26 hours into what would turn into Supernova, the world’s longest improvised piano live performance.
My psychological and bodily acuity is fading and the Gold Coast solar is thrashing down on the HOTA outside stage.
However right here’s the factor that blew everybody’s thoughts – after I wanted these treasured micro-breaks for a fast nap or a chew to eat, my AI didn’t simply preserve the music going. As an alternative chAImusic continued improvising in my type, seamlessly selecting up musical phrases and growing them as if we had been having a dialog throughout time and house.
That second – watching my AI collaborator maintain the musical fort whereas I stretched my legs and fingers – felt just like the end result of a 40-year love story with music know-how, a romance that started at a time when most individuals thought computer systems and creativity may by no means co-exist.
When synths had been spaceships, I used to be their teenage pilot
Let me take you again to the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties, when the music world was electrical with chance. As a teenage product specialist for Yamaha, I spent my Thursday nights and Saturday mornings promoting moveable organs and keyboards at Brashs legendary retailer in Melbourne’s CBD.
It was heaven for this younger keyboard nerd, with six flooring of devices together with the beloved “Little Wonder” collection, together with the Yamaha PS-3 Portasound. These compact, inexpensive keyboards had been revolutionary in their very own proper, placing professional-quality sounds and rhythms into a light-weight package deal that anybody may afford and carry round.
Working with these Little Wonders taught me one thing profound: that know-how’s biggest energy isn’t in its complexity, however in its skill to democratise creativity. All of a sudden, each musician taking part in of their bed room may entry sounds that beforehand required costly studio gear.
Children may create music on the kitchen desk.
Having a employees cross to the keyboard ground at Brashs was like getting access to a spaceship hangar – each new synthesiser obtainable available on the market was on show there. The Moog had already blown everybody’s minds within the ’70s with these fats, analogue sounds that might make a single notice really feel like an earthquake. Now we had been witnessing the delivery of digital tone creation with the DX7’s crisp, metallic FM synthesis that screamed “the future is now.”
Due to my affiliation with Yamaha, I used to be launched to the DX7 and given a crash course into how one can use it and reveal it. I saved each greenback I earned promoting different devices so I may purchase one, together with a Prophet 5 and ultimately a Jupiter 8 – again then these had been the Steinways of synthesisers.
However right here’s what made that point actually magical: After hours, when the shop closed, I had the complete synthesiser universe all to myself. This was a journey into the musical stratosphere, and it’s now a reminiscence of creativity that I actually cherish. Having the ability to experiment on all that gear acquired me near one thing I deeply loved. I may make small sounds BIG and orchestrate on a scale I’d by no means imagined earlier than, with a synthesiser orchestra at my fingertips – it was luxurious, quick and as thrilling as a experience in a spaceship.
And right here’s what actually launched me full thrust into hyperspace: the Fairlight Laptop Musical Instrument.
At 19, whereas touring Europe with the New Wave acts du jour – sure, I had the haircut to match – I used to be diving deep into the Fairlight’s sampling capabilities and sequencing energy.
These weren’t simply devices; they had been impossibly costly, revolutionary computer systems that occurred to make music. Loading samples right into a Fairlight felt like making magic occur – capturing real-world sounds and remodeling them into musical constructing blocks.
This wasn’t nearly making music – this was about instructing machines to know music. People hear music, computer systems hear code: Each pattern I loaded, each sequence I programmed, was like having a dialog with the long run.
The protest that modified every thing
Nevertheless it was what occurred in 1994 that actually opened my eyes to new tech’s revolutionary potential. There was a nationwide protest brewing at Parliament Home in Australia’s capital about web regulation and copyright – a variation of the identical argument rages at the moment in relation to copyright theft by AI.
The night time earlier than the protest, with Triple J radio hurriedly organising a makeshift studio to broadcast dwell on the garden the next day, somebody in an Apple retailer confirmed me how one can construct an internet site. Again then I’d seen netscape and mozilla for shopping the net, and I’d run a bulletin board, however this was totally totally different.
The chance was about sharing photos and sounds – albeit very lo-fi samples again then due to restricted bandwidth; out of the blue I may share my music with a brand new viewers.
So there I used to be, frantically constructing my very own web site, loading up all my music, studying this new know-how on the fly, concurrently I used to be loading my Fairlight to play protest songs for Triple J.
I felt considerably conflicted the next day: Whereas my artist pals and I had been railing towards the web dwell on the radio, I watched in actual time as my very own tracks racked up downloads from my makeshift web site.
By day’s finish there’d been some 5,000 downloads within the US, the place the bandwidth was higher than different international locations on the time, and my candy little Compuserve e mail inbox began getting fan mail.
The web had related me to extra listeners in a single day than conventional report firm promotion had in 4 years, and I used to be signed to Sony Masterworks alongside Mr Miles Davis – no slouches when it got here to world domination.
That second marked my conversion on the highway to Damascus – delivered not by gentle, however by bandwidth. I realised the web wasn’t simply going to vary how we talk – it was going to basically rework how artists may attain audiences instantly.
The web wasn’t simply coming – it was right here, with music main the cost
Quick-forward to 1995 and I did one thing that now appears apparent however was completely radical on the time: I based Martian Music and have become the primary Australian to promote music instantly from the net.
The music business thought I used to be nuts. “People will never buy music online,” they mentioned. “Physical CDs are forever,” they insisted. In the meantime, I used to be constructing Australia’s first on-line music distribution service, pioneering digital downloads and music e-commerce whereas everybody else was nonetheless determining what this World Broad Internet factor even was.
The next 12 months, I narrowcast the primary ever dwell Australian live shows on the net – Charlie Chan and Mates – webcast from a number of venues utilizing know-how I developed myself. Think about making an attempt to clarify dwell streaming to individuals in 1996. “So you’re saying people can watch a concert… on their computer screen… while it’s happening… in real time?”
Sure! Precisely!
I continued to innovate in tech, in addition to make music by the late 90s, working on the computational coalface with Apple, Casio and Yamaha. In 1998 my third album Wild Swans was the primary Australian CD to function multimedia extras; until then CDs had solely ever contained music information.
By the early 2000s, I’d bought over 500,000 particular person monitor downloads through my web site on to followers, most of them offshore. This was earlier than iTunes, earlier than Spotify, earlier than anybody actually understood that music could possibly be efficiently distributed digitally.
Then I made Martian Music open supply and 1000’s of Australian artists used it to derive higher revenue from gross sales and instantly attain their very own audiences proper world wide.
You actually acquired paid as quickly as somebody downloaded your music, utilizing one thing like an EFTPOS system. I referred to as it MEFTPOD, Music Digital Funds Switch on the Level of Obtain – totally exceptional then and nonetheless at the moment.
It turned very clear the web wasn’t simply going to vary how we talk – it was going to basically rework how we create, share and expertise music.
When robots joined the orchestra
However when you actually wish to perceive my lifelong love affair with music know-how, it’s good to meet my mate Baxter.
In 2017 on the Sydney Opera Home one thing magical occurred, a sense of unimaginable connectedness to one thing analogous with a digital inventive mind which, to this present day, fills me with emotion.
As a part of the Interactive Orchestra – a collaboration between my International Orchestra Basis and Accenture Liquid Studio – we launched the world’s first AI robotic orchestra member.
We’d taught him to play the marimba after rescuing him from a lifetime of servitude sorting apples on a manufacturing line at a fruit-packing manufacturing unit in Pakenham, Victoria – and no, I’m not making this up.
Baxter, the marimba-playing robotic, didn’t simply comply with a programmed sequence. This wasn’t some participant piano trick: Baxter truly improvised. In entrance of a dwell viewers, this mechanical musician joined gamers in a 30-piece jazz orchestra, listening through midi information because it sat of their midst. Bax then processed the harmonic progressions in real-time and contributed melodic concepts that genuinely shocked everybody within the room – together with me. He even performed a solo!
Watching Baxter’s robotic arms dance throughout these marimba bars, creating music that was each mathematically exact and emotionally resonant, I realised we’d crossed a threshold. This wasn’t know-how changing musicians – this was know-how becoming a member of the band. The robotic wasn’t making an attempt to be human precisely; it was simply making an attempt to be musical. And in some way, that made all of the distinction.
AI that goals in music
Which brings me to chAImusic – my biggest technological achievement and most intimate inventive partnership.
For eight years I’ve been growing an authentic synthetic intelligence that doesn’t simply generate music – it truly composes the way in which I compose, thinks about concord the way in which I take into consideration concord, and approaches improvisation with the identical intuitive leaps which have outlined my musical voice for the previous 4 a long time.
This isn’t about changing human creativity: That is about amplifying it.
When chAImusic and I carry out collectively, one thing extraordinary occurs. We’re not human versus machine – we’re two several types of musical intelligence having a dialog. chAImusic has analysed each notice I’ve ever recorded, studied my harmonic preferences, discovered my rhythmic tendencies and in some way captured one thing ineffable about how I strategy musical storytelling.
Throughout that 26+hour Supernova live performance on Queensland’s Gold Coast, chAImusic didn’t simply play whereas I rested: It continued growing new musical themes we’d established collectively, taking them in instructions that shocked me after I returned to the piano. It was like having a musical dialog with a future model of myself – as if the concepts had already landed and I used to be simply catching up.
Expertise that loves music again
Right here’s what 40 years of music know-how have taught me: One of the best improvements don’t simply serve music – they love music.
The Fairlight didn’t simply pattern sounds; it remodeled how we take into consideration the connection between acoustic and digital. The web didn’t simply distribute music; it democratised who could possibly be a musician and who may attain an viewers. Streaming didn’t simply make music handy; it made the complete historical past of recorded music immediately accessible to anybody with a smartphone.
And what of AI? How will Synthetic Intelligence affect how we make and share music?
It’s been greater than 30 years since that protest towards the web, and nonetheless our rights as creators of mental property – to regulate and license our work – stay below risk. This week, the Australian Productiveness Fee floated a textual content and knowledge mining exception to the Copyright Act, which might successfully give AI corporations authorized cowl to make use of copyrighted works with out permission or fee to coach their giant language fashions (LLMs).
Revive, the Australian Nationwide Cultural Coverage, urges us to develop IP as an asset and guarantees stronger protections for creators, together with laws to safeguard Indigenous Cultural and Mental Property. However these guarantees ring hole if our work could be scraped and exploited with out consent or compensation.
This isn’t nearly creativity – it’s about commerce. My music is a enterprise. So why is my skill to earn from it valued lower than a tech firm’s proper to mine it?
And let’s be clear: I’m a tech firm too! I’ve constructed instruments, platforms, and programs to create and distribute music. The concept Huge Tech deserves authorized privilege whereas artists are left unprotected isn’t simply unfair – it’s truly indefensible.
My music is out there to coach LLMs – I simply count on to be pretty recompensed through a licence settlement. This week music writer Kobalt and AI firm Eleven Labs entered right into a pilot framework settlement permitting Kobalt members to decide in to micro-licence agreements with Eleven Labs that recognise worth for coaching and different makes use of within the Generative AI house. That is what management appears like – a mannequin primarily based on the concept that financial progress and IP safety aren’t opposing forces; reasonably they’re mutually reinforcing pillars of a good and future-facing inventive financial system.
The longer term feels like collaboration
Whereas governments in Australia and the world over ponder whether or not and how one can regulate AI, I discover myself trying again to the historical past of music tech to anticipate the implications of this newest seismic shift. Disruption, sure, but in addition reinvention and chance.
I don’t imagine AI will exchange musicians, any greater than electrical guitars changed acoustic ones, or digital recording changed the emotional fact of an incredible track. As an alternative, AI goes to present us new methods to discover the infinite prospects of musical expression.
As I write this, chAImusic might be composing one thing lovely within the background – growing musical concepts we’ll discover collectively in our subsequent efficiency. The know-how that started with me backstage, loading samples into Fairlight computer systems, has advanced into an AI that goals in music. And I couldn’t be extra excited – or extra intentional – about the place this journey leads subsequent.
The synthesiser revolution taught us that digital sounds could possibly be simply as emotional as acoustic ones. The digital revolution taught us that ones and zeros may carry the total spectrum of human feeling. And now, the AI revolution is instructing us that machine intelligence and human creativity don’t should compete – they’ll dance collectively in unison.
As a result of on the finish of the day, whether or not it’s a Moog synthesiser from 1970, a Fairlight CMI from 1985, a streaming platform from 2005, or an AI composer from 2025, the magic isn’t within the know-how itself. The magic is in what occurs when know-how falls in love with music, and musicians fall in love with chance.
And belief me – we’re simply getting began.
Charlie Chan is an AI inventor, inventive technologist, composer and pianist with a 40-year profession on the intersection of music and innovation.
This put up first appeared on Charlie’s Substack, chAImusic. You possibly can learn the unique right here.
