Valerio Velardo shares his journey from classical pianist to AI music engineer, researcher and entrepreneur. He discusses the development of Melodrive, the first real-time adaptive music engine for video games, and the growth of The Sound of AI, a thriving ecosystem with over 9,000 members.

Throughout the conversation, Valerio delves into the role of open source in AI music, the limitations of current AI music models, and the potential of neuro-symbolic integration for music creation. They also explore the future of AI-generated music in interactive content, the relationship between AI and human creativity, the role of AI in music education, and the ethical considerations of copyright in generative music.

Valerio Velardo is an AI music engineer, entrepreneur, and researcher with a passion for the intersection of AI and music. He builds AI music products and startups, consults in the AI music space, and helps companies hire and form AI teams. He founded Melodrive, the first AI music engine for generating real-time video game soundtracks, and later sold the company in 2020. Valerio also runs The Sound of AI, a YouTube channel and community with over 9,000 members, offering education and consulting services on AI music. Currently, he's writing The AI Music Revolution for UC Press.

Learn about how AI mimics human creativity by selecting and combining impression molecules and answers to the question “is there anything unique about human creativity that AI can't capture?”

Dr. Esther Fee Reinhardt is an expert in AI and sound. She studied computer science and musicology at the Julius-Maximilians-University in Würzburg.

She completed her doctorate at the International Audio Laboratories Erlangen. Her research focuses on timbre analysis in audio signals using feature-based approaches and optimized artificial neural networks.

As an improvisation coach and composer, she is intensively involved with human creativity and relates this to the current mechanisms underlying hypothetically creative AI systems.

In this episode you can expect to learn about how AI can be used in live improvisation and the frontiers of musical AI tools such as Dicy2.

Jérôme Nika is a researcher and electronic musician specializing in generative technologies that foster creative interactions between humans and machines. With an educational background from Télécom ParisTech and ENSTA ParisTech, he’s studied acoustics, signal processing, and computer science applied to music at Sorbonne University. Awarded for his innovative contributions during his PhD at IRCAM, he blends technology and art. As a permanent researcher at IRCAM since 2020, Nika collaborates on numerous artistic projects, continuously pushing the boundaries of digital music creation.