Imagine a world where songwriters, instead of wrestling with writer’s block and emotional turmoil, could simply prompt a computer to create their next hit. A future where inspiration is instantly available, just a few keystrokes away, allowing creatives to relax while robots handle the emotional heavy lifting.
That future, it turns out, might be closer than we think.
With the recent buzz around conversational AI like ChatGPT, the potential for artificial intelligence to permeate every aspect of our digital lives is becoming increasingly clear. Intrigued by its capabilities, I decided to experiment and see if ChatGPT could venture into the realm of music creation – specifically, songwriting. Beyond casual queries and playful story requests, I wondered: could this AI actually write an Ai Song?
So, I posed a direct challenge to ChatGPT:
Prompt asking ChatGPT to write a song in the style of The Decemberists
Alt text: A screenshot showing the prompt given to ChatGPT: “Write a song in the style of The Decemberists.” This illustrates the initial request for AI songwriting.
And within seconds, ChatGPT delivered its lyrical creation.
Alt text: Image displaying the AI-generated song lyrics from ChatGPT, formatted with verses, chorus, bridge, and outro, demonstrating the AI’s ability to structure a song.
The AI song unfolded with verses, a chorus, a bridge, and an outro. The choice of “Decemberists-y” was an interesting interpretation, perhaps drawn from a superficial understanding of the band’s style – nautical themes, historical references, and a certain dramatic flair often associated with their music. It captured surface elements, like sailors, lighthouses, and sea battles, echoing common perceptions, even if somewhat generalized, of The Decemberists’ discography.
While the AI song looked like a song on the page, with rhyming couplets and a recognizable structure, the musicality remained elusive. Lyrics alone don’t make a song; chords are the harmonic backbone. Could ChatGPT provide those too? I decided to push the AI further.
Alt text: Screenshot of the prompt asking ChatGPT: “Can you give me some chords for this song?” showing the follow-up request for musical elements.
The response was surprisingly insightful. ChatGPT not only generated chords but also structured them in a way that demonstrated a basic understanding of song arrangement. The verse progression followed a classic I-V-vi-IV pattern, a foundational sequence in popular music. It even recognized the need for variation, slightly altering the chord order in the chorus and introducing a minor chord in the bridge to create harmonic interest.
But technical correctness doesn’t equal musical quality. Was this AI song actually good? To delve deeper, I asked ChatGPT to explicitly lay out the lyrics with the corresponding chords, aiming for a clearer understanding of the intended musical phrasing.
Prompt asking ChatGPT to write out the song with chords and lyrics aligned.
Alt text: Image showing the prompt requesting ChatGPT to “write out the song with the chords laid out with the lyrics,” indicating the need for a more musically practical output.
ChatGPT responded with the song structure, verse by verse, chorus by chorus, bridge and outro, detailing the chords for each section.
Verse 1: C – G – Am – F
In a town by the sea, with a lighthouse tall
C – G – F – C
Where the ships do come, and the seagulls call
C – G – Am – F
I met a man with a heart full of dreams
He told me stories of the sea and its schemes
(Chorus, Verse 2, Bridge, Outro followed in the same format as displayed in the original article)
However, the formatting presented a challenge. The chord changes weren’t intuitively aligned with the lyrics, making it ambiguous exactly where each chord should transition. The verses, in particular, felt rhythmically dense, with multiple chord changes crammed into the opening lines. Further attempts to refine this output yielded similar results, suggesting this was how the AI interpreted the song’s inherent musicality.
While ChatGPT can’t inherently “hear” melodies – and attempts to force it to do so are documented online with varying degrees of success – my own musical limitations meant I had to interpret the melody based on the provided chords.
The result of this AI songwriting experiment was a recording, my rendition of an AI-composed “Decemberists” song.
[Play Audio Here – embedded audio player as in original article]
ChatGPT dubbed its creation “Sailor’s Song,” a straightforward, if uninspired, title. And “uninspired” might be a fitting description for the song itself. It’s not objectively terrible, teetering perhaps on the edge of mediocrity. It hits some basic songwriting markers: mostly consistent rhymes (though the final couplet is questionable), a common chord progression (I-V-vi-IV, ubiquitous in countless pop hits). Yet, something fundamental is absent. Beyond minor flaws like awkward rhymes and generic lyrics, there’s a lack of depth.
In performing the AI song, I constantly fought the urge to improve it, to smooth out the awkward transitions, to add emotional resonance where it felt flat. Sticking strictly to the AI’s creation revealed a crucial element missing: intuition. AI thrives on data and patterns, but it lacks the instinctive, often subconscious, decisions that human songwriters make. These subtle choices, unwritten rules of songwriting, are driven by intuition, by an innate sense of what feels right and true. This intuitive element is precisely what AI, at least in its current form, cannot replicate.
So, while AI can generate the building blocks of a song – lyrics and chords – the soul of songwriting, that elusive spark of intuition and genuine emotional expression, remains firmly in the human domain. For the foreseeable future, it seems, songwriters can rest assured that their craft, with all its messy, human complexity, is safe from complete AI takeover.
