Google’s Instrument Playground offers a taste of an AI-generated musical future
Google has opened the gates to its latest experimental AI called Instrument Playground, which will let people generate 20-second music tracks with a single text prompt.
If that description sounds familiar, it's because other companies have something similar, like Meta with MusicGen. Google's version adds two unique twists. Firstly, it is claimed to be capable of emulating over 100 instruments from around the world. This includes common ones like the piano to more obscure woodwinds like the dizi from China.
Second, the company states that you can add “an adjective” to the prompt to give it a certain vibe. For example, if you insert the word 'Happy', Instrument Playground will generate a cheerful song, while 'Merry' will create something more Christmassy. It is even possible to implement sound effects by choosing one of three modes: Ambient, Beat and Pitch. For the musically inclined, you can activate Advanced Mode to launch a sequencer where you can bring together up to four different AI instruments in one song.
Live demonstration
The Instrument Playground is publicly accessible so we decided to give it a try.
When you go to the website you will be asked what you want to play. If you're having a hard time deciding, below the prompt you'll find a link that opens a list of 65 different instruments. We said we wanted an upbeat electric guitar, and to our surprise the AI added background vocals to the riff – sort of. Most of the text is incomprehensible gibberish, although Chrome's Live Caption apparently picked up the word “Satan” in it.
The generated song will be played once (although you can replay it at any time by clicking the Help icon). Then you can use the onscreen keyboard to work on the track. It's not very comprehensive, as users only get access to 12 keys centered around the C Major and C Minor scales. What you see on the page is directly linked to the numbers on a computer keyboard, so you can use those instead of slowly clicking each number with a mouse.
You can use the three modes mentioned earlier to manipulate the file. Ambient lets you change the track as a whole, Beat highlights what the AI considers the “most interesting peaks,” and Pitch can change the length of a selected section. Users can even shift the octave up or down. Please note that the editing tools are quite rudimentary. This isn't GarageBand.
Once you're done, you can record an audio clip that you can then download to your computer as a .wav file.
In the works
If you want to try out Instrument Playground, keep in mind that this is an experimental technology that is far from perfect. We are not musicians, but even we could see that there were several errors in the generated music. In our drum sample, piano was playing in the back and the xylophone sounded like someone was hitting a bunch of PVC pipes.
We reached out to Google with several questions, including when will the AI support 100 instruments (if you remember, it's only 65 at the time of writing) and what the company plans to do with it. At this point, Instrument Playground feels like little more than a digital toy, capable of only creating simple beats. It would be great to see it do more. This story will be updated at a later date.
While we've got you, check out Ny Breaking's list of the best free music creation software in 2023.