Lucy dreams, a Pop trio from Vienna are pushing boundaries within music by incorporating AI into their songwriting. The three-piece consists of David Reiterer and Phillipp Prückl along with Lucy. Lucy can be described as an A.I.(artificial intelligence) however, as the band’s name-sake the connection between her and the two human members runs deep, giving her the more apt title A.B (artificial band member). Lucy is a system of independent thought, balancing analogue and digital effects, which David and Philip developed specifically for music production. Lucy Dreams challenges the notion of whether machine-aided music can connect with the listener in a meaningful way.

Following on from recent uses with AI in the music sector, Lucy Dreams takes on a collaborative approach blending AI with human songwriting techniques to create a uniquely hybrid system of writing music. Lucy often comes up with melodies, beats and lyrics then David and Philipp use that for the foundations of a song, the result is a catalogue of tracks that while futuristic-sounding in nature, wouldn’t be out of place in a top 40 lineup. Their latest single ‘Silver Lines’ is a testament to that.

Describing how the system works David explains. "Lucy is a system of analogue and digital effects. The former are various effect pedals, the latter are applied in the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) Logic Pro. In our experiments, we send random sounds through this chain of effects, this system, this A.B. and let it work its magic. The information fed includes the classics of electronic and rock music, but also Mozart, Beethoven and everything that Vienna is heralded for. We then just proceed to record ambients, street noise and nature. We send those sounds into the DAW via a cinch cable attached to a record player, or alternatively via a microphone. The original sounds then pass the analogue effects (into an Ibanez CF7, a Boss RV-6, a multi-effect pedal and the Chase Bliss blooper) and go through a fixed template of settings in our DAW (Logic Pro). This system then lets these sounds grow to become oceans of noise, a wall of sound. We often let Lucy process for 10 – 15 minutes, by then you mostly start to hear certain patterns and melodies in these sounds. By slightly altering the parameters of the digital effects we can then stress and intensify those patterns or melodies to make them more prominent. Once prominent enough, we record them and use them as a basis for a new song.“

The concept of AI aiding musicians in songwriting isn’t a new one, with David Bowie in the ‘90s using a digital lyric randomizer for inspiration and recently in 2018, saw the release of the first pop album composed with AI, Francois Pachet’s //SKYGGE ‘Hello World’ The question still remains whether an AI aided artist such as Lucy Dreams can connect with an audience large enough to have both a chart and cultural impact. With AI still relatively in its infancy, Lucy’s system will naturally evolve over time adding parameters, effects, and an extended library of tracks to learn from. Further bridging the gap between man and machine within songwriting.

Check out the music video right here.