For a long time, making music has involved instruments and — more generally — technology. Technological advances can profoundly transform music-making practice, as shown by synthesisers, samplers, sound effects, and Digital Audio Workstations. Recently, artificial intelligence (A.I.) has found more and more applications in music production.

To develop relevant A.I. technology that will have a lasting effect on music production, we must spend time understanding how music is made and conceived. We can’t rely exclusively on Western classical music theory, as today’s music is different in both production methods and results.

In our series “Understand music differently!”, we explore music, production, audio, music information retrieval, and artificial intelligence in music from a different perspective – to better understand the music of today.