Google Arts & Culture has launched a new experiment as part of their move to more AI-based programming. Instrument Playground was developed by the Arts & Culture Lab Artist in Residence Simon Doury, and according to the disclaimer on the Instrument Playground landing page, the program uses MusicLM, which allows users to generate synthetic music from prompts. The page mentions that prompts featuring specific artists won’t be generated.
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The program draws on samples from more than 100 instruments, from the humble clarinet and guitar, to the Veena from India and the Mbira from Zimbabwe. Instruments from all over the world are represented, giving users a vast library to choose from. As for the foundation of the playground, MusicLM was introduced to the market by Google in February, and was trained on 280,000 hours of music to be able to create clips from text prompts, according to a report from Digital Music News.
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In the race to create the most cutting-edge AI technology, Google seems to be relatively on the forefront. Instrument Playground features a simple design with a prompt reading “I want to play…” where users then fill in an adjective and an instrument. The program then generates a 20-second clip based on those inputs.
Once the clip is generated, users can then create music using the result of their input. There are keys to press to craft music, which also correspond to number keys on a keyboard. There are also options to change the beat, pitch, or ambient sound. According to the program, the Ambient option uses Granular Synthesis to break the clip into smaller samples. Pressing the keys then navigates through the audio file and creates new textures. Beat mode also breaks up the audio file, but does so by finding interesting points in the audio. Each key then plays a different break. Finally, Pitch does just what it says on the tin: changes the pitch of the audio.
Advanced mode opens a sequencer and allows users to add up to four instruments. In addition to the actual generative mode of Instrument Playground, users can also learn more about the chosen instrument with photos and sources from across Google.
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