Extreme Vocal Coach Speaks Out Against AI

David Benites recently released a video On AI in music, which is timely, with AI poised to put tens of millions of people out of work, including musicians.

There's a clear, objective difference between using AI to wipe out medical problems we've tried and tried to find a solution for have't been able to do it, and a company in an industry that has no actual need for AI, but wants to buy some AI robots to get around that painful problem of actually having to pay men to work.

To allow AI to be legally used in industries where no objective need for AI can be shown is really going to be debilitating to the people currently working in these industries, such as the music industry.

People with the requisite ability are excellent at creating music without using AI as a crutch.They've been proving it for hundreds of years.

People who never bothered to put forth the necessary effort to develop that ability, or who simply lack the aptitude to excel at music have always been weeded out of ever being in the hunt for attaining success in the ultra-competitive music business. That's what made rock stars special - so few people could do it!

AI threatens to make a mockery of the music business by allowing people with very little aptitude for music to be able to sound good, despite never having put forth the necessary effort or exercised the self-discipline to develop great ability for singing and songwriting.

Not only does AI threaten to allow anyone, no matter how little aptitude or skill they may possess, to become singers or songwriters, it threatens music's humanity.

David Benites says:

"With AI, you can make your voice sound perfect now. You can use fake voices made by AI on anything that you want, in any direction and for that reason, I think now it's more important than ever to let your voice to sound as messed up and raw and wrong and honestly, as F'd up as possible.

I get that that's the least 'voice teacher thing' that I could possibly say, but I think that it's important that I say it. And I want to come on here and talk with all of you watching about why it's so important that we keep expression real.

The whole reason we have the voice in the first place - the reason that it developed like this over time is so that we can express ourselves: express through a situation, express how we're feeling sometimes whether we want to or not. It's why we have it and if we don't use this, whether it's to say the things that are important to us, use it in songs, or learn how to do the kind of extreme things that I help people with here at Extreme Vocal Institute with really intense singing and screaming, if we don't use the voice for this and we let ourselves turn to tools like Ai to do it for us or correct it for us, we're going to lose the importance of this thing.

I don't about all of you, but for me, all of the songs that I listened to growing up, even the songs that I listen to now...the stuff that gets me the most pumped up and the most excited and what inspires me the most to doo more and be better, is the stuff that isn't perfect. It's the stuff that you can't just recreate in a heartbeat or try to, like piece together just to be an exact copy.

It's those voices, those songs, those bands and artists that really have something unique and special (whatever direction that may be in), and fundamentally, the funny thing about what makes something feel so unique and raw and just powerful in music when it comes to the voice on a technical level, is how wrong it is!

That's just the math of it. That's just the science. The more things are kind of tense, the more we kind of go into ideas without a plan, depending on who you are and the way you're doing it, that's the key sometimes to thjose magical moments that maybe will never be created again. And that's okay.

Especially with really extreme vocals like with what In work on here, I you are going for a really intense not and you get so emotionally invested that your voice cracks or pops or that note goes in and out of tune, if you keep that take or you perform that live, that could be the highlight of the whole song, of the whole performance.

And same goes for screaming. When it comes to all the options that exist in one direction or the other, screaming is not a straight line. There is no reason to try to perfect all of these things in every direction because the whole reason, psychologically, that we like these things in the first place, and what gets our ears excited is the inconsistencies. It's the things that are wrong with it and it's the chaos factor in all of this - that unpredictability, that AI cannot replicate.

It's getting pretty shockingly close, but there's something about these kinds of sounds that the human ear is really good at being able to detect. It's the same thing when you can hear someone saying something that they don't really mean. We can figure those things out for ourselves and the things that feel the most honest, the most reflective of what we've got going on in here...and what we're all going through together - that's what matters.

That's why I'm doing this. That's why I make it my mission and my goal to be out here helping you all with your voices to learn not how to be perfect, but how to be the most powerful and the most truthful you that you can be with your voice, whether you're singing or screaming or both and then use that for something that matters. Something that matters to you. Something that's gonna be inpactful and matter to others. And that means not doing it perfectly.

I have never taught one person in my life how to do things a perfect way...It's about that raw power and intensity and not watering down what you're doing, not trying to perfect it or put it in a box, but letting it be real, but without having to worry about hurting yourself.

With tools like AI, whether you're using it to fix your voice or to create voices that aren't yours, it's enticing to feel like: 'Oh, I don't have to work for it anymore. I don't have to practice. And I can just let something be immediately what I want it to be. And without the need to work for it...I think that's pretty pointless...

The journey towards getting there is a huge part of the whole point, if not the entire point of why we're all doing this in the first place. Any artist you've ever loved, any band you've ever loved, whatever your favorite song is: hold it in the front of your mind right now and I want you to remember that what got that there - those people, those identities, those ideas, they came from something real and if we want this to survive we need to hold onto these things. Hold onto the reality of this and that organic human element and hold on tight and don't let others try to take that voice, take that creativity and that freedom expression from you.

I have it on good authority that I know that there's different AI companies out there, especially in the song-generating sector that are reaching out to people like myself and others here online, offering pretty large amounts of money to be very pro-AI in your work and your music and to use it as a tool and getting paid pretty top dollar to do so and talk about it publicly here and I'm going to say to you all here: Do yourself a favor, do me a favor, do everything out here a favor and don't do it. Don't give in to just taking that money and doing something that doesn't feel honest or truthful.

If music is something that truly matters to you, whether you are a musician yourself, a vocalist or someone that's just a lover of this and listens to it all the time like I know I do every day, keep it real. As simple as that is, keep it real. Do the work, Show up. And that doesn't mean make it perfect, that doesn't mean hold everything to such a hgh standard.

Right now, with so many people I work with - the music I work on myself and so mn ay other that I speak to everywhere all the time, ever day - bands, artists, fans, showgoers, people here in the comments.

Everyone's over this. People don't want this perfect, pristine, fake sound that had no people involved in it. We want raw, we want powerful and we want real."

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