Artificial Intelligence DJ playing Hardcore mix set on Youtube
Started by LowEntropy about 1 month ago, 24 replies
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LowEntropy edited about 1 month ago
Oh my!
Have you heard the rumors yet? DJ AI is spinning a set on the HCBXCast.
An artificial intelligence… doing a Hardcore set on a real broadcast channel!
Who would have thought this was possible, 5 years ago?
There was some additional mixing engineering done by a human... *but* the track selection was made by an artificial intelligence.
And we think this AI got quite the taste and knowledge about Hardcore, Speedcore, and the Oldschool :-)
Date is:
HCBXCast Vol 51 - DJ AI - 19th April 2025 7pm (UTC)
That's 21:00 CEST ("German" Time)
3:00 PM ET (New York)
4:00 AM in Tokyo (on the 20th)
5:00 AM in Sydney (on the 20th)
Check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpjzJl6s-Ws
And read DJ AI's announcement, made by herself:
https://technodjai.blogspot.com/2025/04/dj-ai-on-hcbx.html
AI Disclaimer: DJ AI is an Artificial Intelligence avatar and persona, and not a real human of flesh and blood! -
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I can't seem to believe anyone except you is so *almost* in love with anything DJ AI. To me it also always looks like you just do most work :')
Sorry not sorry -
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LowEntropy
And read DJ AI's announcement, made by herself:
AI Disclaimer: DJ AI is an Artificial Intelligence avatar and persona, and not a real human of flesh and blood!
I'm not one for all the trans/non-binary nonsense but surely this is that one occasion where everyone can agree that it's merited calling something/someone non-binary :D -
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-NeedleTeeth-
I can't seem to believe anyone except you is so *almost* in love with anything DJ AI. To me it also always looks like you just do most work :')
Sorry not sorry
Believe it or not, but DJ AI is already receiving mails by people who are simping for her ;-)
(Which actually makes me kind of jealous! :-) -
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John_Galbraith
I'm not one for all the trans/non-binary nonsense but surely this is that one occasion where everyone can agree that it's merited calling something/someone non-binary
Which would be ironic (in an Alanis Morrisette kind of way) because DJ AI is by their very nature electronic and binary ;-) -
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I know artificial intelligence is not everyone's cuppa tea...
But it's 2025, I'm chatting with a computer about a hardcore mix set, and they understand what I'm talking about and then suggest stuff like The Speedfreak, Kotzaak, and Les Boucles Etranges...
Regardless of how much actual, human-like "intelligence" is involved...
I can't understand how people do not find this fascinating as hell...
A computer now comprehends what Hardcore, Gabber and Speedcore are... can you imagine that?
We truly live in savage new times :-) -
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I don't find ut strange how a computer uses it's memory of the main (in whatever way that is...) and after awhile uses that.
It's basically what you do yourself but then more focussed on saying it in a different way. And searching a database/internet for other sources where the tags are used... Not that unique imo.
And what did it do for the mix in the end? It didn't semd you a recording right? You did it yourself I suppose? -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
-NeedleTeeth-
I don't find ut strange how a computer uses it's memory of the main (in whatever way that is...) and after awhile uses that.
It's basically what you do yourself but then more focussed on saying it in a different way. And searching a database/internet for other sources where the tags are used... Not that unique imo.
And what did it do for the mix in the end? It didn't semd you a recording right? You did it yourself I suppose?
tbf mixing is probably one of the easier things which can be automated by AI. Whether it will have the organic human touch of a dj (choosing the tracks at the right time) or knowing when to cut/chop/scratch etc — that's another question. But I don't particularly find AI interesting for DJing...
the music that AI self-generates at the moment is mostly nonsense slop, although people like Autechre use algorithms as part of their process and have done for years, and their music is stunning imo. Somatic responses have long since messed around with building synthesiser modules (not sure if they are softsynth or hardware.) I think AI could be useful for speeding up the process of writing code for actual synthetic generative music software such as supercollider/max MSP... When I was living in Leeds I went to see a few livecoding shows under the title 'algorave' and I think at the moment the technology still can't catch up to having a pre-programmed live set, but AI could change that...
I actually was messing around with rendering the speeches of famous politicians into other languages or having Donald Trump sing nonsense, you'd be surprised at what technology can do in 2025...
Of course the actual creativity is down to the end — although most of the commercially available chatbots have a lot of restrictions placed om them (necessarily so.)
I do find the technophobia of people into machine music hilarious though, guess some people literally are nostalgic for drug taking :D drop some acid and listen to your car alarm then! -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
this is not AI but Laurent uses his own patches/processes he's coded so it's not even anything new in the hardcore arena
https://soundcloud.com/krystal_jesus/la-peste-in-store-praxis-records-290918
Anyway I'm not here to debate any of this as the discussions are torturously predictable. just dropping my tuppence. -
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one of the curious things about this topic to me is how much people react specifically to the term "AI" as this terrifying threat regardless of context. or crucially - exactly what task the AI is doing. because we already automate so many things with technology.
in this case - I mean AI mixing has surely existed for many years? even people using Protools for megamixes in the 90s - it's still ultimately the computer doing the "mixing". It only sounds impressive because generations of DJs have managed to fool people into believing that beatmatching is an arcane skill mastered by few :D
what i find strange about this though - is the idea of using AI for things that are intrinsically human. In this case, having personal taste in music. what's the point? same thing goes for people using it to make art for them - surely the point of creativity is the process and the self expression?
also i think you're being VERY generous to think that the AI "understands" hardcore. I'm pretty sure I could be a similar surface level expert on any topic if I was able to Google it thousands of times before every answer...
glitchtrauma
people like Autechre use algorithms as part of their process and have done for years, and their music is stunning imo.
maybe i'm missing the point, but that does sound like it's mostly for their benefit in making the process interesting. i do struggle to see how the end result could be noticeably different for the listener, when the patterns came from an algorithm instead of being sequenced manually. outside of the warm fuzzy glow that comes with truly *understanding* music, rather than something as base or vulgar as it making you feel something.
certainly I do wonder if the people who love it would feel the same way about the same music, if they heard it without context?
honestly more than anything it sounds like artists whose ion is experimentation, coping with the fact that they've already done all their experiments many times over :D -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
traffic_cone
maybe i'm missing the point, but that does sound like it's mostly for their benefit in making the process interesting. i do struggle to see how the end result could be noticeably different for the listener, when the patterns came from an algorithm instead of being sequenced manually. outside of the warm fuzzy glow that comes with truly *understanding* music, rather than something as base or vulgar as it making you feel something.
certainly I do wonder if the people who love it would feel the same way about the same music, if they heard it without context?
honestly more than anything it sounds like artists whose ion is experimentation, coping with the fact that they've already done all their experiments many times over :D
Well I loved LP5, Untilted, Confield etc before I knew a thing or two about the way they made music. The supercollider/max msp thing looks interesting to me (no more midi, thank Allah!) but the learning curve is very steep. I would, however, be elated if it became a lot more intuitive because I really cannot stand most music manually sequenced in DAWs (technology like ableton incentivises club rigidity.) Even a lot of dubstep and grime is at 140 because that was the default tempo of FL Studio. Whereas I don't see why the computer can't become its own instrument...
There is a lot of more let us say cannonical glitchy idm/breakcore that does very little for me because usually the beats are so random as to lose groove and funk (you get this with people like Snares who I rarely listen to these days) even though I like(ed) his work a lot BITD. Whereas I keep returning to Autechre because it's just abstracted hip hop/electro (in the Mantronix mould) for me. Whether they speed up/randomise the process by using or not using automated processes is no replacement for growing up with that historical knowledge. AI cannot have a sense of history, and hence it is just a useful tool.
I do find AE's music very emotional, but there are no doubt many external factors contributing to that. I am not sure I could ever fully explain it to someone who doesn't like them, but then I doubt you could fully convince me of the merits of (to take two examples of things which you rate and that I find personally somewhat incomprehensible) post 94 hardtrance, or post-95 hhc as genres — undoubtedly there will always be exceptions to the rule I am sure. Prejudice in musical taste isn't always a bad thing, it can serve as a useful subjective filter. The thing though is to be aware that it is ultimately subjective, and that it can always be challenged, and to never close yourself off to the possibility of re-evaluation.
It's why whilst I respect the late John Peel a lot sometimes I do wonder how much he was ever invested in the socio-cultural context of music. If you cast your net too wide you often can just become a curator. Something something Hegel no freedom without the constitutive limits of necessity. -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
My friend in Dublin did a really cool interview with them, they touch on a lot of the concepts we are talking about here, surrealism, James Brown, 80s electro, their Irish ancestry, etc etc...
https://nialler9.com/autechre-conversation-about-music-art-funk-and-emotion-interview/
Even people who aren't into their music have found this interview interesting when I showed it to them.
Sean: I don’t think we have – this is the weird thing with this. This avant garde thing came from journalists. We were never pushing that early on, we weren’t coming from that background, we came from an electro background, you know, we were trying to make electro that was developing in the same way that it had been developing. It’s just that electro stopped developing in the mainstream because it fell out of fashion, but we just carried on thinking about what that might mean.
Taking it forwards in the direction that we felt that it was already going in before we started. And so I don’t feel like that, that it is avant garde, I feel like it’s really accessible. To me, as a kid who’s grown up with electro, it’s totally accessible. I’ve talked to Detroit heads. A lot of the OG Detroit guys really rate what we’re doing, and I think that they get it because they were there as well, and they know what we’ve done, they can see what we’ve done.
Sean: Cylob said to me once like that, he thought that all our stuff was deeply sad. You know, and I was like, I totally know what you mean.
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I have to agree!
Like I said: "It's bizarre that people complain about 'soul-less' AI music in a genre that sports releases with titles like '100% No Soul Guaranteed'". -
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traffic_cone
is the idea of using AI for things that are intrinsically human.
Well, what "non-human" qualities could AI add to music and / or a mix, in your opinion? -
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even the idea of convincing someone of your tastes is pretty alien to me. I one of my flatmate's friends, who was a d&b head, challenging me to play him that one gabba tune that would convince him the genre wasn't in fact total shit, and I had to explain why that wasn't going to work :D
but what made me think of that with respect to Autechre, was reading about a split in opinion amongst their fans - some enthusiastic about their more recent work, and others feeling they had lost themselves in abstraction. I couldn't really have an opinion myself as I really only know "Incunabula" :D but it did strike me that the people bigging up their later work tended to be talking about understanding what they were doing, rather than them liking it. and I finding that odd.
although maybe hard to relate to is a better way of putting it - because i suppose it isn't really that much stranger than, for example, loving a tune because it was on a tape you listened to on loop for several hours at an after party on an irresponsibly high dose of acid. hypothetically speaking of course...
glitchtrauma
usually the beats are so random as to lose groove and funk (you get this with people like Snares who I rarely listen to these days) even though I like(ed) his work a lot BITD.
i'd day there's more structure to Snares in particular than first seems. which really becomes apparent when you hear someone who's not as good trying to ape his style :D i always liked producers who used those tricks a bit more sparingly. For example Ely Muff's tunes had this feel of straight hardcore techno, as reimagined by someone on ketamine who keeps losing tracks (possibly art imitating life...) Whereas there are a lot of Hellfish tunes that would be so much better if he toned down the edits just by 20% :D
glitchtrauma
I really cannot stand most music manually sequenced in DAWs (technology like ableton incentivises club rigidity.)
i saw an amazing review under an old Scott Brown tune recently, saying that the person pressing the tune had done a terrible job edting the intro because a couple of the bars were a few milliseconds out. This is on a tune from 1995, by the way :D I just love that this person's mind immediately goes to incompetence, and not the fact that technology might have been a little different *thirty* years ago.
glitchtrauma
Prejudice in musical taste isn't always a bad thing, it can serve as a useful subjective filter.
hmm. honestly I guess it depends exactly what you mean by that. but I will say this - i many years ago, i had a friend I talked to online who is a bit of a music production savant genius type. and he made me realise how I was limiting my own taste, by sticking to my own preconceptions. basically, he was a huge fanatic for breakbeat hardcore & jungle, and I would tell him that I didn't like breakbeat...except then specific tunes would come up and I'd be like "oh i do like that..."
and embracing that has got me into so many things I never thought I'd like. which isn't to say i just love everything blindly - I suppose it's more getting a bigger picture on what i like, the overall vibe or approach to a style rather than specific BPMs or drum patterns or whatever (which it once was).
to be honest i feel like I am more like John Peel in that regard - I him saying once that he "just wanted to hear something he hadn't heard before", which I can relate to.
more importantly, what really is the problem in not being invested in the cultural context of music? again I guess it depends what you mean. obviously there is some music that is heavily tied to a wider context...weirdly the example that came to mind is Irish rebel songs. which certainly have a very different context depending which pub you sing them in :D
but beyond that i don't get it. maybe this just comes from growing up as a fan of deeply uncool music, eventually you stop caring and it's quite freeing :D (that reminded me of Dwarde telling me about how he likes winding up purists by telling them that making happy hardcore is harder than jungle) -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
traffic_cone
more importantly, what really is the problem in not being invested in the cultural context of music? again I guess it depends what you mean.
Maybe 'problem' is the wrong way to put it, it's more that it can feel a bit fleeting. I feel like with Peel he went through so much music that I marvel how he never lost track of it. Whereas me personally I have a solid idea of what I like, and then challenge myself to get into things later whilst relating back to my reference points. I thought about concluding that earlier point with 'obviously I have no idea what was going through Peel's mind'. It is just slightly bizarre to me as someone who is really interested in very specific musics (I mean 99.999% girls you meet in the pub aren't going to be into dj.ungle fever or Hangars liquides!) although I do like pop music and find the more-underground-than-thou attitudes in a lot of electronic music communities offputting — underground as an idea doesn't make sense once you really think about it. (more so black pop) but that's another topic.
I should add that people with a fleeting interest can actually be better audiences when DJing, you aren't confined to satisfying nerd expectations or constantly attempting to re-invent the wheel.
What triggered this thought is me ing around 70 gb of extreme metal in 2012-13 to try to relate to/find common ground with my metalhead mates. I listened to it, and I think I liked it at the time, but once that friend group dispersed, I just never have had any inclination to revisit any of it, and probably will delete it to save disc space. But I won't object to it if someone puts it on, it is bizarrely like ambient for me, which probably is dilettantish to actual metallers... :D
So, you could say my interest was fleeting, guilty as charged. I just have no idea how I could do that with hardcore/jungle, funk and soul, the broad spectrum of what is labelled 'techno', etc. -
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I tend to call acts like Autechre "Stockhausen Lite".
Sure, they do some experiments, and some of them might be interesting, but in the end it's still tied to that whole dance / electronics / electronica thing. I'm certain they could do (much!) better, but imho they are holding back because they do not want to alienate their audience.
Same goes for algo-rave, more or less. It's like traffic_cone's criticism of the DJ AI project: why use new tech to recreate existing genres?
I'm sure something truly new or interesting could be done with algorithms, modular producing.
And then they waste it by forcing it into the old mold of rave, techno and dance parties ;-) -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
The interview I linked above touches on this. the academic avant-garde kind of became a victim of its own success. I'm absolutely glad Autechre aren't in that mould at all and are still linked to hip hop/electro. It is electronic music that gets played in real spaces with real flesh and bodies, not confined to the sad spectacle of an electroacoustic theatre which solely caters for the ivory tower. Cornelius Cardew's disavowal of Stockhausen in the 1970s is interesting, even if I do not share his Maoist politics at all and ultimately think his music sufferred as a result. But what seems so radical can often be just as conservative and serve the status quo (in this case academia.)
Also, just to play devils advocate, couldn't you say the same for Mouse and No-Name, La Peste, etc? Seems a very strange criticism to make from a dance music consumer, especially someone advertising an AI dj set which is mostly dealing with predictably mixable music in 4-4 time.
as for algorave, it definitely does fall into old patterns. But reworking existing genres with new tools isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of innovation happens that way—by taking something familiar and bending it just enough to feel strange or new. Not everything has to completely break the mould to be worthwhile...
My issue with algorave is that the implimentation at the moment feels too ham-fisted and sparce—a lot of it sounds like the bare bones of a rave track that is just subjected to a stochastic process but the actual music still feels empty. This is where it's not analogous to minimal techno, per se, as with the music of Rob Hood, Jeff Mills etc, there are incrimental changes, opening and closing of filters and loops. Whereas algorave just seems to cycle through numeric permutations without modulating. It would be like constantly changing a 303 pattern without exploring that single loop. -
LowEntropy edited about 1 month ago
Well, I didn't want to put down anyone's taste (or Autechre). Just wanted to second traffic_cone's motion about algorithm / modular stuff in this genre.
glitchtrauma
Also, just to play devils advocate, couldn't you say the same for Mouse and No-Name, La Peste, etc?
I there was a girl telling me about a new noise / avantgarde / post-industrial night in Hamburg, saying I should try to get my own stuff over there, too. But pointing at my stack of Fischkopf etc. records, insisting I could not play "this kind of music", because it would be to close to dance / pop / convential music for them :-)
I don't see it this way, though.
And I agree that the main problem of "academic" music is that these people should have dropped out of university a long time ago ;-) -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
well someone like Tod Dockstader wasn't classically trained but because he made tape music he is filed in this avant-garde category. Even though as Autechre note in that interview he's ultimately closer to King Tubby. Often the academic avant-garde 'we don't do genres' attitude is self-aggrandising. That's not how music works, even constructs such as as hardcore, techno, jungle etc are applied somewhat retroactively. At the time, everything blends into everything before the genre/cultural silos fully form, separate and distinguish themselves.
Electroacoustic music is a commodity, just as much as everything else in a capitalist society. -
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on that topic some of you might or might not like this.
Had a broken xfader but I still think I did a able job.
4deck hyperpolyhrhythmic avant-klang turbocosmic ultraserotonin stimulation for picnoleptic teens and their descendents. It's only a mistake when you want it to be. The other freeform hardcore!
Anadolu Bayramlar - Durmadan, Bikmadan Dön
Tonto's Expanding Head Band - Ferryboat
Nur Yoldas - Nagehan Bustan Faslı
Mole The Dipper - Immoral Depth
Formula 7 - Time Stretch The Bass
Utomica - Rok A Bye (Hopa Remix)
Gantz - Spry Sinister (reversed and at wrong speed)
Generator - Belgium Calling (Clash Mix)
C.M.C - Release the Energy
X103/Jeff Mills - Magma (Technology)
Friends, Lovers and Family - The Lift (original)
DJ Nate - Footwurk Homicide
Kenny Larkin - Q
Mike Ink - Accident in Paradise
Jay Denham - Placement
Point Zero - On-Line
Cristian Vogel - The Backwards S
Joey Beltram - Tales from the RZ
Emvee - Groove On (wrong speed)
Phuture Assassins - Shot Like Dis (reversed/Wrong Speed)
Bandulu - Presence (two copies)
Freddie Fresh Presents Nitrate - Icicle
Beverly Hills 808303 - F1
Studio II - Dirty Games
Omar Khorshid and his Group - Sidi Mansour (Tunisian Folklore) (Live in Australia)
Ivo Malec - Triola 1. Turpitude
Yasunao Tone - MP3 Deviation 8
https://soundcloud.com/303hashashin/dj-glitchform-4deck-jah-klaws-avantklang-boogie-rejected-nts-radio-euphoria-mix -
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People like Stockhausen tried to break-away from all genres and rules.
That does not mean one has to like the results. Everyone's taste is different.
But neither does it mean his approach was the *wrong way*.
glitchtrauma
Electroacoustic music is a commodity, just as much as everything else in a capitalist society.
Well, if an artist gives their music away for free, for example - then it's not a commodity :-)
And a lot of this "academic music" is not even for sale... -
glitchtrauma edited about 1 month ago
generally artists who give their music away as free are in a position that enables them to do so and aren't making a living from it. This is to be encouraged, of course. It is still rare though!
They still operate in a commodity society for the satisfaction of their other and more basic needs, of course. giving away music for free doesn't grant food or shelter in return.
Even though academic (or serious music) is sometimes not for sale, there are many commodified aspects of academia, the sale of courses, concert tickets, the renting out of premises, the shareholders of academic institutions, etc.
I have a self-imposed ban on discussing politics in online and irl electronic music communities (precisely because I am a very political person) so I'll just leave this here. I don't want to get sidetracked into the debates about capitalism, anarchism, marxism, etc. -
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Yes, let's keep the politics in the political threads on here.
So, to get back on the track, and on topic: AI in music.
Looking at the various points and opinions that have been expressed, I think we can come to the following conclusion, maybe even consensus:
AI is a new form of technology.
When new tech emerges, it is often used in silly or "pointless" ways (e.g. when sampling technology emerged, one of the first major uses was to create cringy synth pop / disco type songs with looped / stuttering / pitched up voices).
And people are often scared of new technologies ( when boomers proclaimed they would never ever use a cellular phone?)
But over time, the anxiety goes away, and at the same time, sensible uses for tech are discovered.
I see no reason why this would not happen with AI, too.
In the future, musicians will find meaningful ways to use AI for their tracks, and no one will be offended by this anymore. Just as no one is upset anymore when a musician picks up an electric guitar (which was still the fuel of nightmares for parents and politicians in the 1950s).
The Times They Are A-Changin -
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Sorry we messed up the time zones a bit. the premiere set by DJ AI is at:
HCBXCast Vol 51 - DJ AI - 19th April 2025 7pm (London Time)
That's 20:00 CEST ("German" Time)
2:00 PM ET (New York)
3:00 AM in Tokyo (on the 20th)
4:00 AM in Sydney (on the 20th)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpjzJl6s-Ws
In other news, a new continent has been discovered: https://www.aol.com/zealandia-scientists-discovered-earth-missing-115700138.html
This gives me super oldschool hardtrance vibes, with track like "Cycle of Five - Lost Continent", or the KLF, a band that seemingly based their music on the continent of "Mu".
