But let’s back up and first talk about what this means. I got to sit down with the developers in LA, and also have been playing with the latest builds of Magenta Studio. Side note of interest to developers: this is also a great showcase for doing powerful stuff with machine learning using just JavaScript, applying even GPU acceleration without having to handle a bunch of complex, platform-specific libraries.
Developers can dig far deeper into the tools and modify them for your own purposes – and even if you have just a little comfort with the command line, you can also train your own models. Because they’re built with Electron (a popular cross-platform JavaScript tool), though, there’s also a standalone version. If you’re working with Ableton Live, you can use Magenta Studio as a set of devices.
The team at Google AI first showed Magenta Studio at Ableton’s Loop conference in LA in November, but after some vigorous development, it’s a lot more ready for primetime now, both on Mac and Windows. By giving you easy access to machine learning models for musical patterns, you can generate and modify rhythms and melodies. Magenta provides a pretty graspable way to get started with an field of research that can get a bit murky. Instead of just accepting all this machine learning hype, why not put it to the test? Magenta Studio lets you experiment with open source machine learning tools, standalone or inside Ableton Live.