Scaler vs AI - thoughts?

Scaler 3 General Discussion
1

Hi there, Scalerites !! Haven’t been out here in a spell, it’s good to drop in. Would like to hear some thoughts about Scaler/AI/“tools”/artistic integrity.

In advance of my 50th high school reunion, I volunteered to compose a two minute soundtrack for a fellow alumni’s photographic slideshow (he cannot attend.) I only had a couple of days to do it, unusual for me since I’m a VERY slow composer.

So I put together something in part using Scaler patterns (ostinatos, arpeggios) and a performance or two, although I hacked at them to change the notes - thin out, change octaves, divisi across different instruments, etc. Probably 80% of the content was personally composed, the rest was Scaler artifacts, and almost all of that was modified by me.

The piece was very well received, even if I wouldn’t count it as one my personal favorites.

One of my reunion committee members mentioned that her son-in-law also did digital music using AI (and gets compensated for it). I replied that I was against using AI and don’t use it at all - but I did mention that I use a program (Scaler) that helps me quickly add notes and phases. “But isn’t that, in a sense, AI as well?” she replied.

AH !!!

I thought, and replied, no - because while Scaler offers me notes and patterns that I could easily drop in to a piece, I was the one deciding to use those phrases, and typically change them anyway once they’re on my piano roll. Scaler has no idea what I’m trying to compose. It’s a tool, completely agnostic as to my compositional intentions. Whereas AI, in its full form, can take a simple two bar melody and create a whole song: chords, accompaniment, melody, harmony. Everything.

But her son in law thinks AI is just a tool also, so is my stance on using AI a bit hypocritical? If Scaler is a tool and AI is a tool, is that a distinction without a difference?

FWIW, I never use the “composers” function, I never use Scaler recommended progressions and almost never use the recommended chord function. I decide my own progressions - all I do is paste and hack notes. In several years of using Scaler, I have probably accessed less than 5% of the pre-programmed functions in the program.

I’m still using V2 of Scaler, in case that matters.

Thanks for reading. What are your thoughts?

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I don’t think it is

But I think that any AI output is just a copy-mix-paste job (or a plain robbery sometimes), so I am unable to consider it a personal creation

This is why I refuse using AI (also in my job BTW), and I re-started using a real guitar
I feel that my creativity can only jump out from my hands on my axe

I still use plugins and Scaler anyway, but I only to make backing tracks quickly

my 2 cents from an ex mousier :mouse_face: :rofl:

3

Nice thoughts mate!

Personally, AI is just computers, a bunch of data, statistics. For me it is just part of a continuum of tools. On one hand, we have software that helps us with music. For example, I use Toontrack’s Superior Drummer to create drum tracks for me. I don’t write or program or even play the drums myself, but I use midi parts that are drum parts played by a real drummer. AI is just further down the continuum of tools than that, but at the end of the day, AI is just computers and data, just another tool.

I agree that AI really does everything, whereas with something like Superior Drummer, or Scaler, we control things and have significant input, but at the end of the day, AI is just another tool.

However, I think that people shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves musicians and flood the market and compete with other actual musicians if AI is used to generate a song from start to finish. The number one song on Apple Music at the moment (or at least in April) was fully AI generated, although the person behind it claimed the lyrics were written by themselves.

I don’t see the harm in using AI to assist with processes. I use Izotope’s Ozone 11 which as I understand it uses some form of AI to assist with mastering.

I even have tried using AI tools to assist in generating a midi part for an instrument, but to date, all my experience with AI is that it is typically no better, and often worse than my own skills, and so I rarely use it. Also, what is the fun in using AI to create music? The fun for me is the process of creating as much if not more than the finished product.

4

I don’t see a problem using AI ethically. I do see a problem artistically. AI is great at creating things that are a synthesis of whatever it was trained on. It isn’t going to create anything really original.

Sometimes originality is important and sometimes not. There is nothing original about using a standard technique such as using a broken chord, arpeggio, Alberti bass, pattern for example. It is still useful. Are you less of a composer for writing something that includes established patterns for some parts? If so, Bach would be in trouble. Look at his Cello Suites. They all include a prelude, allemande, courante, sarabande, two minuets. bourrées, or gavottes, and a final gigue. All standard, established patterns, but with brilliant originality sprinkled in.

Most music is standard fare with originality mixed in. If you think that it what you make is completely original, you are probably lying to yourself unless you are writing some funky atonal stuff. You are sticking to an established style with expected patterns.

Does a musical background loop for a video timelapse or a powerpoint presentation really require a ton of originality? Often, it would be more distracting as it is not meant to be a distraction from the other content.

5

That’s an interesting view. It would suggest, for example, that not a single II-V-I jazz tune written in Bb is purely original, as that’s been done a million times. Broadly speaking, as we all rely on some foundational precedents long established in genres of Western music, very little of what we produce can be called purely “original”. If I’m including an arpeggio in a passage, I’m lifting something someone did for the first time 600 years ago. As you note, even Bach was relying on precedent and tradition. In that respect, if I read your post properly, it’s pointless to claim that we’re operating from a place of “originality” simply by not using AI. I would have to agree in the most broadly encompassing understanding of “originality”. I guess, for me, is whether there’s a difference between borrowing from Bach, or an algorithm telling me I SHOULD be borrowing from Bach. Maybe, from an originality point of view, it doesn’t matter.

I was thinking about this the other day. Andy Warhol became famous for doing things like producing color-scheme variations on a Campbell’s soup can label, which he didn’t originally design. And of course, the now well-established controversies about popping samples into hip-hop tracks. It would seem that “originality” doesn’t align neatly between, or across, artistic integrity or creative ethics.

I don’t know the answer, other than I don’t use AI. And as I pointed out to the lady I was discussing this with, the folks using it probably (almost certainly) produce better and more polished music than I do. If resisting AI is the ethical battle I intend to fight, it may be one not particularly worth winning.

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I agree, 100%. I can still feel proud of my cranky, harmonically dubious creations, even if they will enrich the lives of exactly nobody. Doing them enriched mine. (Most of the time.)

7

Totally seconded!
Apes for example, are able to play some instrument, so I think that humans are forced to perform better than apes, at the bare minimum :rofl:

I started making music with an arranger, but fun disappeared very soon
Currently, I use robots only for things I am unable to use, notably bass and drums
But I have way more fun using my axe and keyboard, for sure

8

100% agree

Unfortunately, AI fans seem really believe that they are “creative”
A friend of mine for example, thinks he is a creative because “AI makes what I want”
disturbing

9

right
my philosopy is indeed: “fun” and “personal satisfaction”

using any robot (arranger, Scaler’s Keys-Lock, loops, MIDIs, AI) to have the “pappa pronta” (EN: to find everything already done) is extremely boring and unsatisfactory, and I cannot understand how a “thinking head” can percepive it “fun and satisfactory”

the most disturbing part is anyway the plethora of folks that buy the streaming of that sub-music :grimacing:

10

By the same token, there are people who feel they are making a creative statement dropping a melody on a i-V-vi-IV progression loop.

I personally don’t use AI because it isn’t fun and doesn’t scratch the itch.

But I can see where it would seem like AI is magically fulfilling if you are at the beginning of the journey and all of a sudden you do “something” and something musical comes out. Even if you are a pro, being able to just write a prompt to generate a proof of concept to see how something would work is pretty cool. I would say that if you consider AI to be real competition, you need to rethink the quality of your own product rather than worry about evil AI.

11

not a problem of mine, because I make music for fun
I don’t sell music

BTW, I am happy to be an amateur, because selling music (or anything else) requires to make what the “public” wishes more, that quite unlikely matches my wishes, nowadays :grin:

12

BTW, I tried now the Summarize robot…

Immagine 2026-05-20 174241
Immagine 2026-05-20 1742411106×233 24.5 KB

Not surprisingly, it skated over my pun about apes
:rofl:

13

Same here. I am retired and it is fun to have something creative to do.

Now, if someone really wanted to throw money at me, I wouldn’t want to disappoint their gesture. My Mamma didn’t raise a fool. :slight_smile:

14

I cannot disagree :grinning_face:

Anyway, I am very happy to see that some forum members are not just technique fans, but they are also interested in ethics, philosopy, and… humor

PC ridens

15

I try replacing the words Artificial Intelligence with Genie in a Bottle, and see how it sounds. If I ask the Genie to make me some music, based on my instructions, then it’s not the same as something I’ve created completely on my own. What do I do if the Genie changes its behavior, or stops working or whatever? Who is the master at the end of the day - me or the Genie?

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Try to tell that to an AI fan :grimacing:
I just tried with a friend of mine with zero result
The more disturbing side is that my friend learnt to play the piano from a master, and he plays the guitar as well, and yet he throwed his skills in the garbage bin to me
And he insists claiming that he is “a creative musician”

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@claudioporcelina - That’s sad to hear. I hope that the world will find a way to use AI to bring people together and improve lives, but it will be up to the humans to do that. That’s one of the things I love about music, the way it builds connection between people all over.

18

For me it’s all about how you use AI.

As an artist there is no point using something like Suno to generate whole songs from scratch but there may be some mileage in AI as a technical assistant. “AI, add a sidechain to duck the bass on the the kick hits” or “AI, mix theses tracks to bring the vocal and piano to the front”.

In a pro studio artists will be surrounded by other people - producer, technicians etc. AI can step into some of those roles for those of us who don’t have the luxury of a pro environment. My weakness has always been mixing, or more particularly, staying interested in a song long enough to get a decent mix so AI mixing and mastering would be a real boon to me. Those things are coming although the current crop of offerings is not quite there yet.

And there are areas where music AI is already replacing real people. We should feel for anyone who is trying to make a living from writing jingles or library music, because AI can already do that pretty well.

AI is here and it ain’t going to go away. We just have to find a way to use it.

19

and it goes to another BIG AI issue: currently AI is still trained with “real music” made by “real musicians”, but if “real musicians” will stop making music because they are unable to make a living with it, AI will be only trained on AI: it means The Realm Of Infinite Boring Repetitiveness

The same happened already with good dictionaries, and with books also, nowadays used by almost nobody, so no more made by publishers

Luckily enough we have still the “classics” to read and listen, but I struggle to find interesting music after the nineties, a few gems apart

“AI, add a sidechain to duck the bass on the the kick hits” or “AI, mix theses tracks to bring the vocal and piano to the front”.

It all depens on your goals…
Do you think that Possum Scratchers will make any use of AI?
:rofl:

We just have to find a way to use it.

Well, I feel myself lucky because I don’t sell music and I don’t want to become an influencer, so I can freely and happily avoid it :face_with_tongue:

20

I also don’t sell music and I am also not an influencer so I feel I can freely and happily pick and choose which bits of AI I use hehe.