Sony launches FlowMachine, an AI-based music production service

Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL) launched a new AI-assisted music production service, FlowMachines on 24th March 2020. FlowMachines is integrated with Flow Machines Profession (FM Pro).

As mentioned before, it is an AI-assisted music production service, and the FM Pro will integrate human creativity and an AI-based recommendation system that will present to its user melodies, chords, and bass best suited to the creator’s music taste.

Sony FM Pro for this amazing service of recommending melodies and chords is dependant on something called Style Palette. Style Palette was developed by Sony CSL itself. FM Pro uses the platform to express the style and rhythm of the song. The entire process is multi-layered, and the creator will have to go through a few steps to get the best-recommended melodies.

First, the user has to launch the FlowMachines Pro plug-in within a digital audio workstation (DAW) and select a style palette based on the chord progression of the song they want to create.

After this process is duly completed, the creator can press ‘compose’ and the Style Palette will present multiple candidates (4 bars x 4 patterns or 8 bars x 2 patterns) of melodies. The melodies will have the chords and bass that was selected using the chord progression.

If the outcome of the AI-assistance based melody suits the taste of the creator, they can drag and drop them into a track in the DAW. If it does not suit them, they can simply compose again, and get a different set of melodies. The music performance of the chosen chords will be used as the MIDI data.

FlowMachines’ homepage comes with a demo of what the user should expect and subsequently get from the production service. A Lo-Fi Beats YouTube channel already features a track created using this AI-based music production service.