Kirkland Lake music producer releases rhythm and blues catalogue

The presence of artificial intelligence in our world is wide-ranging and ever-present. From simple internet searches to various professions, A.I. is becoming more a part of what we do and how we do it.

One example where A.I. is becoming more prevalent is the music industry. Simply because you hear an instrument or a voice on a recording no longer means the vocal or instrumental performance came from a human being.

Such is the case for a recently released project created by Kirkland Lake music producer Perry Levinski, called The Robbie Row Band.

In an interview with the Northern News, Levinski explained he has several catalogues of songs which he wrote from a wide variety of genres but chose one for this project.

“The music is rhythm and blues. Some of the songs go back a few years and were never released. The rhythm and blues (catalogue) had 18 songs. So, I said decided to release the whole lot, the whole catalogue.”

He noted that all the songs had to be re-mixed, so they were consistent in volume. He said his next task was to find an appropriate vocalist for the style of music he was producing, and that is when artificial intelligence made its entrance into the project.

“There are a lot of good singers in Kirkland Lake but none of them wanted to come in to do a big project for free because I do not have the money. So, I couldn’t get anybody to sing or re-sing and have one voice for all 18.”

At that point he said it left him “no choice” but to turn to A.I. “I didn’t know a lot about it at the time, but I learned a lot quickly. I used A.I. and gave it the information it would need to create a singer.”

Pevinski told the A.I. program about the type of singer he was looking for in terms of vocal range, style, nuances in the voice, everything the program needed to create what Levinski wanted to hear.

Once that was decided, Levinski inputted the lyrics to the songs, and the program did its magic.

“Boom, it came back and wow, this is amazing. The voice was good, really good. So, I went with that for all the (lead) vocals.” It should be noted that Levinski sang harmony on over half the songs, and local well-known musician Chris Ackles sang harmony with Levinski on one of the tracks. It should also be pointed out that Levinski played the instruments on the tracks using digital drums and a Roland Integra 7 synthesizer.

While the use of artificial intelligence is growing in popularity, the controversy of its use is also growing.

And for his part, Levinski has been criticized for using this technology. “I had one individual who heard one of the songs. He is very old-school and he said that is not real. I said to him, what do you mean?” It’s not real. He said you have A.I. singing your songs, so it’s not real. I said yes, but the other 90 percent is me. He said but the vocals are not real.”

Levinski then gave the analogy of today’s movie and television industry where A.I. and other technologies create scenes that put people in space, different parts of the world, in different situations, when in fact what we are seeing on the screen, for the most part, is not real, yet we not only accept it. We see it as just a normal part of making a movie or television program.

Levinski’s new music is available for streaming on many of the popular services as well as on YouTube.

As for his other catalogues of music, he does intend to release some of them in the same format at some point in the future but added the number of tracks on each of the follow up recordings will be fewer in number.