If you’re worried about the impact artificial intelligence technology is having on the music industry, you may be comforted to know that one of the most famous musicians alive has found a more wholesome use for it. Arguably.
Sir Paul McCartney, one of two surviving members The Beatles, has revealed AI tools have been used to recover a vocal track from the late John Lennon recorded before his untimely death in 1980 (obviously).
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The track will be used to finish “the last Beatles record,” the legendary musician says. This wasn’t a case of McCartney asking an AI app to synthesise Lennon’s voice to create something that doesn’t exist, as is the current quite repugnant trend.
Rather, McCartney told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the technology was able to clean up a demo to make it more usable within the new track.
He said: “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI, so that then we could mix the record as you would normally do. So, it gives you some sort of leeway.”
It’s not clear which song will get the AI treatment and how it’ll come together as a track that stands up as a Beatles song. He didn’t say when it’ll be made available either.
McCartney was first turned on to the potential power of AI by Peter Jackson, the Lord of The Rings director, who also produced the eight hour Get Back documentary that’s currently available on Disney+.
Jackson isolated Lennon’s vocals and it allowed the songwriting pair to perform together one more time during McCartney’s stadium tour last year. I was at the Orlando show and it was a spine-tingling experience.
“He was able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette which had John’s voice and a piano,” McCartney added. “He could separate them with AI. They could, they’d tell the machine, ‘That’s a voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.’ And he did that.”
