Soundtracks of our lives

0:00This message comes from AT &T. Staying connected matters. That's why AT &T has connectivity you can count on, or they'll proactively make it right. That's the AT &T &T guarantee. Terms and conditions apply. Visit AT &T.com. slash guarantee for details. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?

0:43And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, the soundtracks of our lives. If you are one of the millions of people who saw the movie Wicked this winter, you'll remember the opening lines to the iconic song Defying Gravity. Something has changed within me It's kind of mysterious, suspenseful You can tell the song is going to build and build I'm through with playing by Rules of It's so beautiful and it is absolutely the most wonderful match between lyric and melody I believe that something has changed because of that big leap Something has changed.

1:43I'm like, ooh, tell me more. This is musician Scarlett Keyes. She's a professor at Berklee College of Music, where she teaches the art of songwriting and why a song can make us feel something powerful and emotional. Often, she says, our favorite songs are defined by small and deliberate choices that composers make, like a key change or a leap in octave. So in Defying Gravity, there's this moment where the composer wrote unlimited.

2:21I'm unlimited, right? And so up, high, limit, that's the limit, big, open, wide, right?

2:33So up that big octave. So kind of the craft of songwriting is when you create a big leap, a big distance between notes, it creates a hook and it creates something really memorable. So going up eight notes.

2:51And we've heard that in somewhere over the window. So he included that little Easter egg from The Wizard of Oz in Wicked, which was so beautiful and vast. And so that's a word that we borrow from poetry, and we call that prosody, where everything you're doing melodically, harmonically, rhythmically is all in support of this story being told.

3:26Scarlett has taught many musicians over the years. Some of her former students include Charlie Puth and Lizzie McAlpine, artists with billions of streams on Spotify. And she often encourages her students to start writing by tapping into their deepest feelings. What is the thing you care the most about right now? What is the thing that keeps you up at night? What's the thing you can't stop thinking about? As songwriters, we are repurposing these human tropes into new language for the listener mainly to understand their life in a new viewpoint with new words, with new music over and over again. That's the secret to songwriting.

4:04How am I feeling? What music feels like that? I want you to empathize with me. I want you to understand me. And all of that is in a song. Are you singing it on the downbeat? Are you singing it off the beat? Are you singing something stable? Are you singing something unstable? table. You want the listener to feel what you're feeling. Music is always, for me, it's always an emotional response. It can really change the weather instantly in my body, in my mood. It's soothing and it's comforting. And for some people, that's heavy metal. And for some people, it's classical. And for some people, it's country.

4:39It's all about what you love. From our favorite music to our own voice, we are surrounded by sound all day long. But what do we actually absorb and what do we just filter out? How does all this noise affect our emotions and behaviors? Today on the show, the soundtracks of our lives. a musician, technologist, and voice expert, explain how what we hear shapes us. So back to Scarlett Keyes. In her classes, she coaches students on the techniques they can use to grab a listener. Here she is explaining more from the TED stage. One of the tools we use is tone. That's something we all understand, tone.

5:28Imagine you're sitting in a cold hospital room waiting to meet your doctor. wearing nothing but your underwear beneath your dignity gown, and your doctor comes in. Nobody wants to hear, hello, my name is Dr. Watson, and I'm your brain surgeon. We want to hear, hello, my name is Dr. Watson, and I am your brain surgeon. Because when his tone of voice goes up, so does your heart rate. And when his tone of voice goes down, you feel calm and like, I'm in good hands. So tone of voice matters. So think of melody as the song's tone of voice. How we say what we say is oftentimes more important than what we say.

6:10As Western listeners, we have a relationship to melody, and we have an expectation to that relationship. So I'm going to play something, and when I stop playing, I want you to tell me what you expect me to play next.

6:30There it is. Exactly. So some notes feel stable and some notes feel more unstable, begging for resolution. And that's very powerful information for a songwriter to know. The words we place on those notes make the listener feel certain things. I'd like to take a moment to ruin an Adele song. I'm sure you've all heard her song someone like you in the verse and in the pre-chorus she runs into her ex unexpectedly and she's clearly still in love okay you know the song what if it what if she had sung it like this never mind I'll find someone like you what happened I apologize by the way. In my version, we believe her.

7:24We believe she will find someone like you. No problem. There's plenty of you out there. Because I have paired stable notes in the key and stable chords, bringing a feeling of stability. But that's not the melody she sang. Those weren't the tones that she sang. This is her version. Never mind, I'll find someone like you.

7:51Do you feel the difference? In her version, we know she will never find anyone like you. We know that because she has paired unstable pitches to match the way she's feeling, building empathy with the audience. Go Adele. You use a couple of examples in your TED Talk of musicians, singer-songwriters who do an amazing job of signaling emotion. What is it that these people do that not only connects while you're listening to the song but makes you want to listen to it over and over again? I mean, I think there's a lot of things that go into a good song. And one of the things that I learned was to really pay attention to symmetry.

8:44You know, if everything is expected and everything, all the lines are the same length, all of the sections are the same number of lines, it gets a little boring. So just surprising our listener, number one, is a really great thing to do. There's another thing I talk about, and it's like if people are having a day when they're not feeling really inspired, they're not downloading the muse. They're not writing the next. I'm like, well, hold on. Just play with shapes. You know, there's a Lady Gaga song. If you were to sketch out the first line of her melody, it would look like a straight line.

9:25Uh-huh. That's pretty boring. But it's effective. And so here's her lyric. You've given me a million reasons to let you go. You've given me a million reasons to quit the show So that's like a static, flat melody with mostly, I think it's about 13 to 15 notes of repetition. I kind of love it, though. I don't know. I do, too. Why? Well, because it feels like she's defeated. Like, ugh, I have given you a million reasons. It feels defeated and exhausted. I've had it with you. She could have moved it a little bit. I've given you a million reasons to let you go. Or thirds. Or wider. I've given you a million.

10:16No, it was perfect. You've given me. So sometimes with all of the creative people, I'm like, hey, try a melody that kind of repeats a lot. Just see what happens there. Songs help us process emotion and understand how we feel. Pick a song in the morning to start your day with. Instead of the usual negative thought train that blazes through your brain taking you with it, put on a song you love that has uplifting lyrics that primes your nervous system for a great day. Or the next time you have questionable in-laws coming over, instead of awkward silences and small talk, put on a song you know they love and let the dopamine flow.

11:03I mean, I think we all Spotify and all these different apps that we, it makes it easier to make playlists and find the music that we like and discover new music too. But you have been a real believer in curating the soundtrack of our own lives. Tell me how that you started thinking about that and why you think that's important. Well, so three years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. and I really had to turn back and look at music and go, I'm sorry, music, that I've analyzed you so much because now I really need you and I have forgotten you as medicine. And I had to go through chemotherapy and I would say to friends, send me your best song.

11:46Send me your, you know. And on the way to chemotherapy, I would have a song in the car and it would be a friend would send me, hey, I've got one, Bill Withers, Lovely Day. When I wake up in the morning. I mean, there's so much that happens to us when we listen to music that is beneficial. It boosts our immune system. This is the science that has come out over the past 10 years, the effects of music on our health. So this thing that had saved my life over and over and over again, saved my emotional life, saved my everything, it was now, I was returning to that in a way that I hadn't before. even when we're tired of sound we need at least to go to music a couple times a week and or a day even and just put on one song one song it will change your biology it's a wonderful thing and when you wake up in the morning instead of waking up with the same thoughts that we had yesterday you could wake up and say I've got my morning song I'm going to put my morning song on it's just a great way to start the day that was songwriter Scarlett Keyes her memoir is called What If It All Goes Right and you can see her full talk at TED.com on the show today the soundtracks of our lives the soundtrack of our lives oh yeah I'm Manoush Zomorodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

13:21Stay with us.

13:48The Michael J. Fox Foundation is on a mission to find a cure. Now is a critical time for Parkinson's research, and your support will help drive progress toward a cure. Get involved today. Visit michaeljfox.org slash get involved. This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash podcast. This message comes from Rince, who knows that greatness takes time. So does laundry. So Rince will take your laundry and hand-deliver it to your door, expertly cleaned.

14:27And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up that Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or the daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to Rince. Rinse. It's time to be great.

15:15More at michelinman.com slash y hyphen Michelin slash innovation. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And on the show today, the soundtracks of our lives. Over the past 100 years, technology has had a profound impact on how we listen to music. From records and radio stations, to cassette tapes and CDs, to MP3 players and streaming. But now, with artificial intelligence, technology is shaping the music itself. We're right on the cusp of a Chagipiti moment. This is Pierre Barreau. Where you can generate music and you can generate really good music that's really personalized to your taste.

16:04Today, he is a pioneer in AI-generated music. But Pierre first started thinking about all this back in 2013 as a university student, studying computer science by day, playing music, and watching movies at night. So at the time, I was in my third year of university. And I remember very vividly that I was often jamming on my piano, especially at midnight or odd hours of the morning. And then one day I sort of stumbled upon this science fiction film called Her. Welcome to the world's first artificially intelligent operating system. If you haven't seen Her, it's an indie science fiction sort of romance starring Joaquin Phoenix.

16:50What do I call you? Do you have a name? Who gets close to a super intelligent AI. Where'd you get that name from? I gave it to myself, actually. Voiced by Scarlett Johansson. How come? Because I like the sound of it. And there's this one scene that really jumped out at Pierre. One day, they share this moment together, and Theodore, the main protagonist, asks Samantha, What are you doing? What are you doing? And Samantha replies, I'm just looking at the world and writing a new piano piece. Oh yeah? Can I hear it? Mm-hmm. And she starts playing this very beautiful piece of piano. Been sort of thinking and writing this piece of music for this moment, since we cannot take a photograph together.

17:42Well, I was thinking we don't really have any photographs of us. And I thought that I would call it a musical photograph. It captures us in this moment in our lives together. For Pierre, as a musician and a computer science major, I like her photograph. This was his aha moment. I heard this and I was immediately hooked. Unlike a lot of science fiction movie previously, it pictured a very positive view of what AI could be in the future. It could create these musical photographs that would inspire people, that would capture a shared moment. And so I just started thinking a little bit obsessively about what was the state of the art of AI and how I could achieve this dream of creating musical photographs.

18:32And so over the next three years, Pierre built an early AI-generated music composition tool and made it open to the public. He called it AVA. AVA was trained on scores, some 30 ,000 pieces of classical music. It learned to emulate all sorts of composer styles, moods, themes, and tempos of different musical eras. The goal was to generate music that perfectly fit whatever a person wanted to hear. For Ava, this process is taken from years and years of learning, decades of learning as an artist, as a musician and a composer, down to a couple of hours. Two years after launching AVA in 2018, Pierre went on the TED stage to demonstrate what it could do.

19:20For example, we were commissioned to create a piece that would be reminiscent of a science fiction soundtrack. And the piece that was created is called Among the Stars. And it was recorded with a CMG orchestra in Hollywood and the great conductor John Neal. And this is what they recorded, made by AVA.

19:41For me, this piece of music is the first embodiment of what it means to create personalized soundtracks for people. And so it's a very meaningful piece of music for me. How did people first respond to the launch of Ava? What did people think? So there was a lot of different responses. And as you can imagine, with something like this, there was both extremely positive and, of course, extremely negative for very obvious reasons. Spell out those obvious reasons for us, because maybe someone listening is like, what? This sounds amazing. Fair enough. Well, there's, of course, going to be concerns about how the technology is going to be used.

20:24Is it going to be used to replace humans or is it going to be used to empower humans? From the very beginning, we've had to wrestle with these questions and explain to people that the value of this technology was not to replace creators and just have a computer create music going forward, but instead to create tools for people to be able to create music, to bring down the barriers at entry for creating music. This is like a new technology, just like before the synthesizer was invented or the digital audio workstation was invented. And this kind of technology has helped historically humans. And this is just the next iteration of that, just maybe a little bit more powerful.

21:03There was one example that I read that really struck me that explained the shift that's happening. I read one hitmaker. He compared AI to the introduction of drum machines in the 80s that like suddenly anything could have a beat, right? And professional drummers needed to learn how to use the technology to stay relevant. Do you find that useful, that comparison? Yeah, I think that's a fair comparison. And for those people who maybe are a bit more skeptical or scared, I think it's important to also notice that all music today is not necessarily just made with drum machines. There's still plenty of music that's made with live drummers.

21:44So I think that's a good showcase that technology expands the realm of possible, but it doesn't mean that everything that came before all of a sudden becomes obsolete. Today, the tools to generate music with AI are much more advanced. For one thing, they're not trained on written scores anymore. The tools analyze songs themselves, looking for patterns, and then producing their own versions in a matter of minutes. For example, my producer James used another AI tool called Udio to make this ridiculous new TED Radio Hour theme song.

22:26It's a synth pop tune straight from the 80s. Or, with a few more mouse clicks, he can transform the song into a James Brown-esque jam. First of all, which one did you like better, I have to ask you, Pierre? Were you more for the synth, Pet Shop Boys sound, or were you more sort of deep soul? Deep soul. Yeah, for sure. I don't know. No, it just has a radio vibe that is uncanny almost. I mean, as amazing as those sound, kind of silly. There's a more serious issue here, and that's the debate over these AIs being trained on copyrighted music. You have made clear to people that Ava is not trained on copyrighted music.

23:12But in 2024, the Recording Industry Association of America sued a couple AI music companies for copyright infringement. I mean, the makers of ChatGPT trained it by scanning the entire internet under what they claim is fair use. Do you think training AI with music should be considered fair use? Well, I think that it's important to have space for innovation. And it's also important at some point to recognize that, okay, maybe even if it's authorized or legal to do something, it doesn't mean that there's no grounds to rethink how business models and incentive mechanisms are put in place to reward all the actors of an ecosystem.

24:01I think that AI companies like ours and others should have a right to train on data, but it doesn't mean that we're not willing to work with others to make sure that going forward this technology works for everyone. I mean, we're talking about entering an entirely new era of, I mean, I hate to use the word, but content creation. I guess some people worry about originality. If we are making things based on something that's already been made, where's the human strangeness in all of that? I think that's a fair question but perhaps what this question misses is the fact that AI, at least in my opinion is not going to be used for use cases that say human-made music is going to be used for.

24:56So for example, I don't think that we're all going to listen to only AI music on Spotify going forward. I think that's not really the point. However, I think that there's new use cases for the type of tools that we and others are building. For example, one is music education. So we see a lot of people using Ava to understand how music is created. So music schools are using it to train students on how to create certain types of music that maybe they're not as comfortable creating. Another example is creating interactive music for interactive medias like video games. I think that's not something that's scalable with human-made music.

25:38So there's all these other use cases that are not currently explored or as optimized for human-created music that AI music is perfect for. And that is not going to necessarily compete against human music. and and that brings us back to the original idea you had this idea of crafting a soundtrack to fit your day not not just by building a playlist but by really scoring music to your life so i'm a huge listener of music i listen to probably i don't know three to four hours of music every day. I mean, especially as a programmer, I think lots of programmers tend to listen to music while they work.

26:26Helps magnify certain emotions or certain things that are happening throughout my life. And so there was an opportunity to really get to the next level of that and soundtrack everybody's life and everybody's personal moments with music and get people engaged with music in completely novel ways, essentially. If you personalize music to that extent, I think you can really get more people excited about creating music and essentially turn everyone into a creator. That was Pierre Barreau. He is the CEO and co-founder of AVA. You can watch his full talk at ted.com.

27:11On the show today, the soundtracks of our lives. So we've talked a lot about music, but really, almost all the time, what we hear are voices. Like me, on my way to the studio. Welcome to NYC Now. I've got my earbuds in. Your source for local news. I've got my dog with me. Okay, let's cross. Let's cross. Quick, quick, quick. On the way, I'll stop for coffee. All right, little one. Thank you so much, AJ. Listen to the busy street. Morning. But by the time I sit down to my microphone, I'm often reminded that the voice I hear the most is my own. Most of us use our voice on a daily basis, but have no idea how it works.

28:01And even scientists who've been researching it for a long time, there's still a lot of mystery. This is Rebecca Kleinberger. She is a professor of humanics and voice technology at Northeastern University. And much of her research focuses on the relationship we have to our own voice, what it sounds like to us, and how we think it comes across to others. All of us have some sort of relationship with our voice. And although it's extremely familiar, we're also very much estranged from our own voice. But our voice is with us constantly. How do you see it? Well, you can kind of think about the voice as a gift you give to others.