Will Henshall, musician, composer, and entrepreneur is a master of self-reinvention.
He carved a path of innovation first through the London music scene, then Silicon Valley. He helms the global men’s entrepreneurial group METAL, and now finds himself staring into the swiftly-morphing digital mirror of AI – and sees a fascinating future.
“There is a general sense that AI-generated art is going to be everywhere, and that we're all doomed. Effing doomed! The fear is that there will be no more artists, no more writers, no more musicians.”
But that’s not the future Henshall sees. Rather, he thinks there's going to be a renaissance of human-made art.
“There's an extraordinary upside to all this generative art. There is so much quality music and art being made right now, it’s dizzying.”
Henshall reminds us that these technologies are still in their early days.
Watch Will Henshall at METAL
And that live music is something unique.
“If you go to [AI music-generator website] Udio, it says, ‘Make your music!’ But it's not ‘music’. It's a music file. It's a music recording. Tech has co-opted this term, as in ‘Apple music’ and ‘Spotify music.’ But that's not music.”
Music, he says, “is actually a living language. Music is what you do. Music is what happens when you put your fingers on the strings and you sing along with what emerges. That's music. Music is alive.”
That said, he recognizes that extremely high quality AI-generated content is being created every day. He points to a privately-made Volvo commercial, created by a civilian, who wanted to see whether he could make a broadcast-quality commercial “done completely with AI, with no CGI teams, no musicians, no people involved, and just a bunch of AI prompts.”
Impressive as it is, this flourishing of AI-generated content reminds Henshall of the overproduced, airbrushed aesthetic of the 80s.
“It was a time of the glossy magazine look. Everything seemed a little too true, a little too shiny to be real. A lot of AI content has this ‘inauthentic-ness’ to me personally, whether I'm looking at or listening to it.”
By contrast, Henshall sees a “jaw-dropping” cascade of new young talent on YouTube, TikTok and elsewhere.
“These kids could be on their phones or hanging out with friends. But they choose to make music and art. There is a generation of new kids coming through who are absolutely extraordinary, playing at a level different from anything we've seen before.”
It’s not just kids who are creating innovative new kinds of music. Veteran master musician and METAL member Marcus Bell, who has played 12 instruments across multiple genres, from rock to k-pop, to hip-hop and beyond, feels practically “reborn” with these new tools.
“I’m so excited by what’s happening,” says Bell. “I feel like I'm nine years old again, like when I was first shown the blues scale and how to play jazz. I felt like I could do anything. All of a sudden the world opened up. These AI-generative music tools have gotten more and more easy to use and sculpt and prompt and it’s opening up again.”
Bell is the creator of a completely AI-created, luscious, “Spanish-born” musical artist named Ravyn Lyte.
In “her” first week, she has cleared over a quarter of a million Instagram followers with her breakout song, “1111 (Just Be the One).” Bell says “I imagine Ravyn Lyte as an extension of my creativity as a character, just like Barbie and Mickey Mouse are characters.”
Amid this dizzying mix of AI tech and human musical creativity, Henshall offers a daring, if retro, vision.
“I predict there is a music genre which is going to come back: doo-wop, which is vocalizing with hand claps and no electronics at all. I think it's inevitable that someone is going to bring this back. But before that, I think the lovely Miss Raven Lyte may have a number one hit. In both cases, I don’t think the musical future has ever been more exciting.”
METAL will be holding a special AI Conference on October 21, capping off METALPALOOZA weekend.
Raven Lyte: https://www.ravynlyte.com/
Written by Adam Gilad
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