If you play guitar, you’ve probably heard of or used the Ultimate Guitar app for Android and iOS to find chords and lyrics for thousands of popular songs. If you produce podcasts or record your own songs, you’ve probably also heard of Audacity, which we named the best open-source audio editor in our roundup of the best audio editors of 2024. Muse Group, the creator of both apps, has been an early adopter of AI technology and is now using it to turn people into better guitarists.
As an enthusiastic amateur guitarist, I have often used the Ultimate Guitar website and app for its catalog of popular song tablature. While not musical notation per se, tablature is a step further than simple lists of lyrics and chords. Tabs show you where to place your fingers on the strings visually, without needing to know how to read music. So, if you want to know how to play Wall of WondersLook it up on Ultimate Guitar and you'll find lyrics and chords, or tab versions that people have submitted.
Typically, it’s up to you to figure out the song next, but Ultimate Guitar subscribers have access to an AI-powered practice mode that can detect whether you’re playing the right notes at the right time and give you feedback. It can also adjust the speed at which the music notation scrolls on the screen as you play, using AI to determine where you are in the song. We asked Martin Keary, VP of Product at Muse Group, about how the company was using AI to help people learn to play instruments, and whether its Listening Mode marked the end of traditional guitar teachers.
“At Muse Group, we’ve taken the approach that you can never replace a guitar teacher with AI,” Martin told us, “but what you can do is get AI to help you teach. If you think about it, what a lot of guitar teachers give you as homework is scales, playing chords, all those things that AI can help you improve by telling you if you’re doing it right. But a lot of playing guitar is physical, it’s about correcting hand position, correcting posture as you play. You’ll always need a teacher for that.”
Ultimate Guitar’s AI tools require a subscription, which costs $39.99/£39.99/AU$59.99 per year. I wondered if I could teach a non-musical person to play guitar.
“Well, I'm not so sure, but I'll say yes,” Martin says. “I think with the help of practice mode you get such direct feedback on what you're playing that over time you'll have to get better.”
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Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
AI has also been used in other Muse Group products, such as the popular audio editor Audacity. Audacity is highly regarded because it has always been a great free option for recording audio on your Mac or PC. There is a plugin called OpenVINO that uses AI to take any recording and separate the different instruments into different tracks, which you can turn on or off. So, if you want to jam out to something on drums, you can remove the drum track from a song and then play it. The plugin runs 100% on your local PC using your processor, rather than asking cloud servers for help.
One thing Martin is keen to highlight is the strong ethical stance Muse Group is taking with regard to AI. “One of the things we’ve done is build our own AI technology and make sure it’s only trained on music that doesn’t have copyrights associated with it.”
As the recent RIAA lawsuit involving popular AI music creation software Suno has shown, we are in uncharted waters when it comes to the legality of AI and its use of copyrighted material for training purposes. ChatGPT faces similar issues.
Another thing AI is very good at is imitating famous people in the form of chatbots. What does Martin think, for example, of the idea of receiving guitar tips from an AI-generated Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain?
“It’s something we’ve discussed a bit,” he says. “It’s certainly possible, but it would have to be done with the full consent of the individual artists or their heirs. I imagine it would be amazing if someone like Jimi Hendrix could demonstrate how he would approach performing a particular piece of music you’re trying to learn. I should mention at this point that we’re not actively developing this idea at the moment.”
If all legal agreements were in order, I personally would love to take a guitar lesson from AI Jimi Hendrix. I can imagine him saying, “Well, you could play like that man, but I think it’s much more beautiful this way. Let me show you how…”
