It is obvious to me that toontracks developers must be working overtime to train AI on its current ‘sampled’ products an dmore. IMO, unfortunately the music production world is moving heavily into AI tools and or ‘AI generative music’ and the competition is really heating up to develop these types of products. I assume if Toontracks still wants to stay in the game that this is where they are headed. They already have produced some of the best sampled drum kits on the market along with many midi grooves. So it stands to reason that the most recent release of EZdrummer 3 and its ‘bandmate’ feature is just the starting point. With this in mind, I wonder where this will end up taking its current products such as Superior Drummer 3 in terms of updates or new features. The other choice would be to add completely new product(s) that will try and more fully realize this AI revolution (Superior Drummer 4 . . . . . ). Again IMO, there is a big difference using AI in the context of it being a ‘tool’ rather than a self ‘generative’ crutch (aka Suno and others). It remains to be seen how Toontracks will play this out. This road also encompasses Toontracks other non-drum music production products but used the drummer ones as the example. Any Thoughts?
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I assume you mean like a prompt type mixing/dynamics tool? At the moment Toontracks seem to be losing the AI situation in general. Instead they seem to be discounting some of their products like crazy (up to 70-80%). Not sure what that all means but if SD 4 ever comes out it will need serious integration with a AI tools in order to be competitive. The likes of SUNO and other generative AI music sites are diving headlong into the same territory that Toontracks covers but with substantial AI tools now. IMO those companies probably trained AI on products from Toontracks and other virtual instrument companies. Seems like it would be a losing battle using copyright infringement as the legal fight. How would one come up with the evidence? There is no identifier in the data that says what AI was trained on. Drum samples and grooves have been copied forever. Maybe Toontracks will be bought out by some generative AI company? These are just my opinions and have no inside information etc.
The most likely area where they might be able to integrate AI is their midi tools. There is definitely room for improvement to paraphrase certain styles of playing to different chords and rhythm structures. It’s to rigid right now and breaks too easily. Also the controls in terms of the amount of notes and loudness work on a technical, rather than musical level.
I like Logic’s AI midi generation much better. Not necessarily the results but the concept and the controls it gives you using parameters like complexity, intensity and how it’s more resilient if you make structural changes.
For an AI future, I imagine, instead buying midi packs you would buy a style or a “drummer”/“bassist”/“keyboard player” add-on.
“For an AI future, I imagine, instead buying midi packs you would buy a style or a “drummer”/“bassist”/“keyboard player” add-on.”
Yeah, I think the ‘groove’ section could be done better and that the ‘style’ maybe the key. It seems to me that the ‘Bandmate’ feature in EZdrummer 3 is going in that direction. At least for songwriters who do not want to spend much time going thru a whole bunch of grooves via the current options. Seems to me that Superior Drummer 3 has the best sounding library of drum samples but it uses an interface of tweaking options that is somewhat cumbersome to mess with unless you are really into it. I think AI tools could improve that quite a bit and get you much faster to a satisfying end point. Since Toontracks has a infringement clause about using AI training on their products, I assume that the best defense is going on offense and creating the AI tools in their own eco system. Not sure that they can really stop others from AI training of their products unless they have some method of identification of samples and midi grooves etc. To me it would be extremely hard to do this at this point in AI development.
Editing drum and bass tracks is quite slow and tedious process, even with the help of Bandmate. The thing is that the generated grooves are rarely exactly what I want, and I need to use a lot of time for tweaking and adjusting the details (placing individual drum hits, finding right fills, etc.). It would be great to get next-level AI assistance for this. The technology is ready for sure, the solution just should be designed and implemented for Toontrack products.
Approach using AI chat prompts could work.
Example Use Cases (prompts):
1. Control Play Style
Goal: Change style
Context: Groove: hi-hat + snare pattern, Style: rock → funk
Request: “Make the hi-hat more syncopated and add ghost notes on the snare.”
Hey, I would agree that producing really good drum tracks based on song writing or composition can be tedious even using the current ‘bandmate’ feature. The AI prompt idea I think could work in the editing process once you have a basic groove going that fits with the song style etc. I like the idea as long as the human input is in control of the process. This is a great tool for songwriters and such but I would not like it to turn into something like Suno or other similar apps that seem to be somewhat currently popular. Those apps seem more of a novelty item, at the moment, than a serious production approach to music. That being said, it is all changing for recorded music and where it goes is not clear at this time. My hope is that live shows/tours will keep steering the interest in music creativity and such so that recorded music is still driven for the most part by skilled or dedicated human musicians and producers. using in part AI as a ‘tool’ and not a ‘crutch’.
I’d like to see text based Ai commands reflected across Toontrack’s array of instruments. So say you want the drummer to back off on the verse at the 40th measure to allow the soft vocal to cut through, you could just type or speak that command into the Toontrack input portal. Yes?
I assume you mean like a prompt type mixing/dynamics tool? At the moment Toontracks seem to be losing the AI situation in general. Instead they seem to be discounting some of their products like crazy (up to 70-80%). Not sure what that all means but if SD 4 ever comes out it will need serious integration with a AI tools in order to be competitive. The likes of SUNO and other generative AI music sites are diving headlong into the same territory that Toontracks covers but with substantial AI tools now. IMO those companies probably trained AI on products from Toontracks and other virtual instrument companies. Seems like it would be a losing battle using copyright infringement as the legal fight. How would one come up with the evidence? There is no identifier in the data that says what AI was trained on. Drum samples and grooves have been copied forever. Maybe Toontracks will be bought out by some generative AI company? These are just my opinions and have no inside information etc.
AI is most definitely changing the music production landscape. Especially the demo and songwriting production. That is the category that Toontracks generally covers. AI companies such a Suno and Moises are now essentially producing online AI DAWs. These DAWs are not comprehensive yet and are still in the beginning stages of development. I did a song demo on Moises Studio with just a guitar track as the starting point. I was able to separately choose and add a drum and bass track based on AI analysing the guitar track. After several versions it came out better than I expected. I then exported each into my main DAW. I also exported the midi for both the drum and bass tracks. It certainty sounded good enough for a demo. However I went further and as the drum tracks were split out to separate audio tracks I used SD3’s tracker feature and could replace or add to the snare, kick, toms and cymbals with samples from toontrack libraries. The whole process was really fairly quick. If I had done just the drum track alone starting from SD3 only it would have been hours of messing around and probably would not be much better sounding. Toontracks has been really tight lipped about if or how they will address AI tool development in a product of theirs other than the current EZ3 which has the ‘bandmate’ feature. But IMO if they want to stay relevant, they will need to address this soon.
Yes, I think that the actual user (musician) should have manual control over the AI tools. Both Suno and Moises are exploring that in their AI DAW development. Mostly this is done online now and not locally. Toontracks on the other hand is basically all ‘local’. All data sets/samples/grooves are purchased and stored locally on storage devices of the user. Unfortunately that distribution model is now becoming less and less adopted by companies of all kinds. I hate the subscription system model but that is probably where Toontracks may go if they move more into AI tools etc. Generally speaking AI data sets are huge, way more that the average user will have locally at their disposal. IMO this is part of the delima that Toontracks and other audio sample companies will need to deal with. The other thing is that humans including musicians will usually take the easiest path to get where they want to go. Like it or not AI is becoming one of those paths. That being said, hopefully Toontracks and others will keep the ‘musician’ in control of their endeavors.
Rany, ostatnio praca mnie kompletnie wyczerpuje. Kiedy wracam do domu, chcę po prostu wyłączyć myślenie i się zrelaksować. Kiedyś oglądałem telewizję albo przeglądałem media społecznościowe, ale ostatnio znalazłem inny sposób na odprężenie. Zacząłem trochę grać na stronie o nazwie https://spincitypl.com/ Spincity. To całkiem fajny sposób na chwilę wytchnienia. Nie gram o wysokie stawki ani nie traktuję tego zbyt poważnie. Po prostu loguję się, wybieram grę z ładną grafiką i gram przez około pół godziny. To zaskakująco skutecznie pomaga mi oderwać się od stresu w pracy. Nie ma żadnej presji, tylko lekka rozrywka na zakończenie wieczoru. A jak wy oczyszczacie umysł po długiej zmianie?
This post was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by Fluffernutter.
I would love to see Toontrack develop tools like the Logic Session Players. I have been generating drum and keys parts in Logic, then exporting the midi and placing it into Superior Drummer and EZKeys as a starting point, then adjusting them to fit the song as needed. Whether it would be an upgrade to existing tools or a completely new product, I would gladly buy them.
I have been doing something similar using Moises and then replacing the separate midi drum tracks with the Tracker feature in Superior Drummer 3 with varying results in Fender Studio One Pro. It actually seems very convoluted and believe it should be integrated into SD3 or SD4(?) directly. A non drummer songwriter does not want to spend hours figuring out what groove and fills to use for a project. That being said, it is great that one can customise the drum tracks in SD3 or other toontrack products. But toontracks SD still could use a AI groove finder etc.
Guys, to be honest, if you try SD3 in the mix itself, it doesn’t sound any good (from someone who paid for it because there are no better alternatives). Now, I hope that at least a “Make it real” stupid button could enable an AI feature that bounces the performance in a way more realistic audio (you know, there are no big releases with SD3 used as a main drum sound, it’s used more as an additional tool, I think). A “simple” AI dedicated model could make a BIG difference in how it sounds in the mix.
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