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Give your production the benefit of contemporary technology by checking out these forward-thinking software tools.
At sonible, part of what makes our audio tools our own is the integration of artificial intelligence, which we employ to help producers, mix engineers, and anyone else working with audio to achieve professional compression, equalizing, reverb and more in a matter of seconds.
But we’re not the only developers making AI-powered music tools. There’s a plethora of plugins, websites, apps and more, made by a whole host of very creative companies, designed to aid you in your music-making process.
In this article we have gathered some of our favorites.
AI can be used however a developer sees fit. Here you’ll see artificial intelligence tools which perform vastly different tasks – from stem extraction to sample management, mastering, compression, sample discovery and much more.
LALAL.AI is a stem separation tool which uses artificial intelligence to separate full mixes into their component parts. Separate vocals, drums, bass and more from full tracks using ‘the phoenix algorithm’, which LALAL.AI claims can provide better vocal separation quality than any other tool on the market.
LALAL.AI can separate audio and video files and can deliver stems as MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC, AVI, MP4, MKV, AIFF or AAC files.
LALAL.AI’s pricing works in a package format. You can buy a number of minutes of audio processing ranging from 90 to 500 minutes.
LALAL.AI could be a powerful tool for samplers, bootleggers, sound designers or even musicians who for whatever reason don’t have access to the stems of one of their tracks but need them for sync licensing or some other reason.
Jamahook is an AI powered sample searching tool and sample library. It listens to your DAW project, analyzes it and then suggests samples that match your project based on key, tempo, mood, genre and much more.
A Jamahook subscription allows you a certain number of sample downloads per month depending on which subscription tier you opt for. You can purchase samples and download them in the Jamahook plugin interface. From there you can drag and drop the WAV file of the sample directly into your DAW timeline.
Jamahook works well as a sample library. It gets its sounds from Loopmasters so there’s a good range of high-quality material to discover.
However, where Jamahook really shines is as a source of inspiration. Sometimes trying to come up with a melody, or trawling through your sample library, can be an uninspiring task and can quickly lead to writer’s block. The AI-powered Jamahook can act like a writing partner, suggesting ideas you would never have come up with yourself, but that work with your track.
Our ‘pure’ lineup of plugins is a great toolbox of easy-to-use but powerful AI-driven audio processors.
pure:comp, pure:verb, pure:limit and pure:EQ are an AI powered compressor, reverb, limiter and equalizer respectively. Though these four audio tools may be small, they’re capable of professional audio processing, and that’s backed up by our fully featured AI technology which is built into the architecture of each.
By selecting a profile from the dropdown menu at the top of each plugin, you can let each pure plugin know what type of material it’s processing, be it guitar, drums, vocals or anything else. The pure plugins will then listen to and analyze your audio, compressing, limiting, equalizing or adding reverb that suits the source you are processing perfectly.
Each plugin does have parameters you can control as well. The large dial in the middle of each sets the processing amount, then each individual plugin in the series has more parameters to shape the tonality of the effect.
Developed by an alumnus of the Abbey Road institute, Abbey Road Humtap is a powerful iOS app designed for quick demo creation.
The premise is simple: select a music style (this could be 80s, hip hop, rock etc.), hum a melody into your device’s microphone, and tap a basic beat onto the app’s two drum pads.
Humtap will take these three points of input data and use them to create a fleshed-out demo track generated in real time by the in-built AI.
Humtap isn’t just sampling your hummed melody and putting it over the beat you tapped in. Instead it recreates your hummed melody on instruments appropriate for the genre you’ve selected – and the same is true for the drums.
You’re not going to get a finished track out of Humtap, but it’s a creative AI tool which is very useful for quickly fleshing out ideas so you can get on with creating a finished track.
Musicians – and all creatives for that matter – are concerned about the impact of artificial intelligence on their professions. However, AI doesn’t have to be a threat for creatives, it can instead help with less creative tasks, saving time and mental energy and allowing creators to… well… create.
Waves COSMOS Sample Finder is one of these tools. COSMOS Sample Finder analyzes your sample library and uses it AI engine to categorize and auto-tag the instrument, timbre, style, key, BPM, and sonic characteristics (loop or one-shot, dry or wet, and much more) in its database.
You can then use this tagging system to search for samples in your pre-existing library based on keywords – even if your sample has totally useless and non-descriptive file names!
For example, if you wanted a reverb-drenched clap sound that would work well in a techno track, you would simply search for “clap”, “reverb” and “techno”. COSMOS will then find all the samples in your library that match this description, saving you time and helping you to focus on the music-making process.
smart:gate is the latest addition to our lineup of smart interpretations of classic audio production tools. Like the rest of our smart plugins, smart:gate uses AI to drive its fundamental operation, but it doesn’t claim to take over the decision-making side of music production.
Select a Profile for the type of audio you’re working with – be it drums, speech, guitar, etc – and smart:gate will only allow the type of audio you select through the gate. For example, if you select the speech profile smart:gate will only permit speech through the gate, even if background noise or other sounds do cross the threshold.
Traditional gates have always struggled to allow wanted audio through in a natural sounding way, whilst closing for unwanted noises. This is because traditionally gates simply used a threshold to determine when the gate would open or close.
Smart:gate eliminates this problem with its well integrated artificial intelligence. It’s also a well designed audio gate at its core and so can be used effectively even without the power of AI.
Mastering is the final step in making a track ready for release, and it can also be the most expensive. Mastering engineers don’t come cheap and quite rightly so. They have years of experience of getting the most out of a mixdown, and they also often have tens of thousands of euros worth of equipment which they use in the process.
You’re never going to match the quality of a master from a pro engineer, but if that option is out of your budget there are other options.
LANDR is a great AI powered mastering service which can get you very respectable masters for a more affordable rate than a human engineer.