Tag Archives: electronic music

AI-powered synthesizer lets you create tailored music just by pressing buttons

Posted on by

AI has become a powerful and controversial tool that’s being applied to the creation of many things in different industries. The most well-known are, of course, images and text, but these same technologies can also be applied to other fields, even ones that are considered to require more human creativity than others. Music, for example, is believed to be an art that’s hard to master and difficult to quantify in a way that would be of use to AI, but that’s exactly what’s happening here with this “artifact from the future.” That said, the suitcase-sized synthesizer doesn’t completely wrest the act of creation away from your hands but turns it into a creative collaboration between man and machine.

Designer: Arvind Sanjeev

Imagine having to only press a few buttons and you’ll have tunes that are specifically crafted to suit a given mood or genre. Most synthesizers simply give you the raw controls to mix and match to your heart’s content, but you’ll have to draw from your own creativity to actually come up with a pleasing harmony tailored to fit that situation. SPIN, the name for this AI-powered music synthesizer, actually helps you in this creative journey by serving ready-made ingredients to put into your mix without taking anything away from your freedom. It’s like the difference between buying a can of tomato sauce for a recipe versus making your own from scratch.

SPIN has buttons for different moods, genres, and sounds that you can mix and match to your heart’s content. How does happy death-metal disco sound? Why not try some dark jazz opera to really turn heads? Not every combination is going to work, of course, so you’ll still have to step in and fine-tune it to your tastes, no pun intended. And with sliders for BPM or duration and a turntable to scratch, you also have the tools to make your own style shine, with or without AI’s help.

The synth is just as much a work of art as it is a demonstration of the power of AI. A variety of off-the-shelf components are assembled to provide the brains and muscle behind the scenes, almost literally. You won’t see any of these while using SPIN, as all are hidden behind an interface and a design that’s meant to encourage playfulness and experimentation. Even the choice of bright yellow and white colors, unusual for most synth designs, emphasizes that rather jovial character.

Generative AI has been receiving a lot of flak, in no small part thanks to abuse and misuse of the technology rather than anything inherent. SPIN is an attempt to reverse that perception and present AI not only as something approachable but even fun to use. Given how it works, you won’t even have to worry about infringing on anyone’s copyright or intellectual property, leaving you free to explore that harmony between human creativity and machine learning.

The post AI-powered synthesizer lets you create tailored music just by pressing buttons first appeared on Yanko Design.

The “Willy Wonka” of musical instruments created this oddly appealing portable MIDI guitar

Posted on by

Nobody has destroyed, rebuilt, and reimagined the notion of synthesizers as much as Love Hultén. The maverick synth-maker is credited with designing some of the most incredible-looking electronic music machines out there (we’ve covered a fair few), from synths and loopers to modular electro units and even some record players and arcade games on the side. The Sweden-based music aficionado and synth-builder kicked off 2024 with a new project in collaboration with ‘catbeats’. Although this particular device doesn’t have a name yet, Hultén mentioned that it’s a unique-looking MIDI guitar that has a NESpoly synth on the inside, and a detachable fretboard that makes the entire apparatus easy to travel with.

Designer: Love Hultén

The unconventional design of the MIDI instrument is just about as much of a hat top to a guitar as possible. It does have a fretboard that triggers notes, and a dedicated strumming section for chords and such, but you’ve also got a variety of knobs and buttons that loop, modulate, play/pause, and increase/decrease the gain of what you’re playing.

The entire design can be disassembled for travel, and features a few quirky details made specifically for the user. Given catbeats’ obsession with felines, the guitar has a cat avatar in the bottom corner underneath a removable clear dome. Reminiscent of those cat backpacks that have the pet behind a clear plastic structure, the dome can be removed to access the tiny avatar underneath, and the avatar is made to be replaceable too, allowing you to swap out cats based on mood. Hultén also details that the guitar’s strap is made from ‘extraterrestrial skin’, although that’s just fancy wording given that the strap’s crafted from a clear flexible plastic sheet (or maybe aliens have better skincare than I do)…

MIDI guitars are unusual to come by, although if I did expect them, it would probably be from Hultén. The Gothenburg-based artist has worked on some rather unique and inspiring electronic products, from a circular Game Boy to a synth made from plastic dentures. Sure, this guitar doesn’t feature too high on Hultén’s weirdness scale, but it’s a remarkable representation of how his brain works.

Close-up view of the avatar area and the removable plastic dome.

The post The “Willy Wonka” of musical instruments created this oddly appealing portable MIDI guitar first appeared on Yanko Design.