From your Google searches to your weekly meal prep, AI is here whether you like it or not. It can already write your work emails, help you with your homework, teach you a new language, and even design parts for spaceships. It's not content with taking over your daily life either, and it's coming for your guitar tone.
If the thought of an AI-powered modeling amp gives you the heeby jeebies, it won't make you feel any better that AI is unlikely to stop at mere tone generation. We're already well into the guitar technological revolution where amps fit in pedal-sized enclosures and small amp modelers contain the sounds of every classic guitar amp that's ever been made, and things are only going to get weirder. AI could potentially do anything from teaching us better technique, to changing effects via the power of our minds.
I tested an AI-powered guitar amp for my Positive Grid Spark 2 review, and it works scarily well, creating seriously good tones with a few simple prompts. It's going to keep getting better too, until twiddling with your amp knobs becomes a thing of the past. Testing this new feature got me thinking, what else could AI do for my guitar amp?
Ultimately AI is what we make it, it doesn't think for itself. So if we're going to get the best ever guitar amps from our eventual robot overlords, we need to demand change. With this in mind, I got together with some of the Guitar World team to put our tin-foil sci-fi thinking caps on, and ponder what the future holds for our precious guitar amps. Here's what we came up with...
1. AI guitar teacher
This seemed like one of the most obvious ideas to me. You’re playing through your guitar amp, learning a new song. Whilst you’re doing that AI is listening to you play, commenting on where you’re going wrong, and giving pointers on your technique. Perhaps you’re not quite hitting a bend on a certain solo section, or all the notes of a chord aren’t ringing out fully due to improper fingering.
Your AI teacher will instantly be able to recommend a course of action based on your playing, comparing it to the original performance and working out the differences between the two. It’ll be a two-way street too, you can perform for your ‘teacher’ and ask for notes, where it will judge your rhythm chops, vibrato, and any other techniques you use. Who needs online guitar lessons anyway?
2. AI co-songwriter
Got a chord progression that doesn’t quite resolve the way you want it to? Perhaps you need some more melody ideas for a particular portion of your latest guitar solo. Whichever it is, your AI co-songwriter is on hand to offer suggestions on which path you could take with your song ideas, backed up by colossal amounts of music theory knowledge.
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The possibilities are endless with this one. While I don’t think AI will replace songwriting entirely, it can certainly work as a partner for human interaction. Chat GPT can already do this, but it’s in text form only for the moment. Instead, imagine you could talk to your guitar amp directly, and have it play back the various options for you to try. If you’ve ever experienced writer's block then this would be an absolute lifesaver.
3. AI backing tracks
Perfect for practice amps, AI-powered guitar backing tracks are a natural step in the evolution. You simply prompt it for what you want, from a simple 12-bar blues in E, right through to a full-on modern metal backing track with orchestration so you can release your inner shred god on the biggest stages, and by that I mean your living room.
It doesn't have to stop at traditional rock music either, you could prompt it for jazz, country, or classical. Have a string quartet backing a single acoustic guitar, or a suite of synthesizers so you can build your NIN-inspired tracks. The possibilities with this one are endless, and as Positive Grid Spark already has an AI jam feature, not as far away as we might think.
4. AI transcription
If you've ever had to tab out guitar or bass lines for your bandmates then this one will hit home. Tabbing is a time consuming process, albeit a necessary part of playing in a band at times. With your amp's new AI-transcribe feature that's all part of the past! Just play what you want it to record and it automatically notates it in the background.
With the power of AI it could learn your playing style, noting where you use certain techniques like legato and vibrato and notating it appropriately. No more will you need a mastery of the number pad on your keyboard to transcribe songs for your bandmates, just play what you want them to learn, send the PDF and away you go.
5. AI guitar tech
Imagine an AI component in a tube amp that could see when your tubes need replacing, or determine if something else is on its way out or going to fail before you even notice any adverse effects. AI tech could determine if one of the pots that control your knobs is failing, and recommend you clean or replace it before it becomes a major problem.
It doesn’t stop at your amp either. Got an issue with the way your guitar is playing? An AI guitar tech could analyze your intonation, recommend string action heights, and offer suggestions for your pickup heights too. Just take a picture of the issue and AI-tech will examine it and recommend a course of action. You could also give it other tasks like building a pedalboard or getting your pedals in the right order.
6. AI jam sessions
Used in conjunction with VR headsets, an AI jam session could take place with you and your bandmates in completely different spaces. You could maintain that all-important eye contact to get your off-the-cuff stuff coalescing as you would if you were practicing together, with your AI-powered guitar amp compensating for any latency issues between the players. You’d never have to pay for a dingy rehearsal room again.
You could also jam with legendary musicians in the comfort of your living room. Imagine having a session with John Bonham on drums, Paul McCartney on bass, Jimi Hendrix on guitar, and Freddie Mercury on vocals. They’d all be in the room with you, able to take cues from your playing, and they’d never complain about your less-than-stellar timing either!
7. AI tone-shaping
AI in your guitar amp is always listening, and it knows what you are playing. Imagine then, you’re playing a song that goes from a chunky rhythm part to a searing lead tone. Instead of you having to do any switching manually, AI can listen to your playing and instantly add a clean boost and overdrive pedal to get your solo really standing out in the mix.
Then, when you go back to your rhythm part it automatically compensates, dialing in a more mix-friendly tone that sits nicely with the other instruments. Computational audio already exists in both Positive Grid's Spark Live and Spark 2, automatically adapting speaker sound to its surroundings, so there’s theoretically no reason it couldn’t listen to your playing and adapt your guitar tone either.
8. AI effects creation
AI could help you create the effects of your dreams. Say you want a delay pedal with repeats that alternate between flanger and chorus-effected tails. Or maybe you’d like an octave pedal that only appears when you play an open note on your very lowest string. With the potential power of AI, you could get any effect you like, without having to negotiate the complications of DSP and build your own pedal to get it.
Just ask or write down what you want and AI power can make it a reality. Amp tones are just one part of modern modeling amps so it makes sense that effect creation will get addressed at some point in the future. This could lead to a revolution of guitar sounds that take the instrument far beyond what we imagined, the only limitation being the power of your imagination.
9. AI effects mind control
Okay so this one is a bit out there, but hear me out. How about using an Elon Musk-style neuralink brain chip, linked to your AI-powered guitar amp to change your effects? You’d never have to stomp on a pedal ever again! Brain-computer interfaces - yes that’s a thing - are already here, and combining them with your guitar amp to mind control your tones is the natural next step in human technological evolution.
Imagine, you just think about what effect you want on, which amp tone you want, and it happens instantly. You could change multiple pedals at once with no latency, and no mistiming, it all just happens via the power of your mind. Most modeling amps feature a huge selection of amps and effects, so you just think about what you want and the combo of AI and BCI instantly makes it so. Say goodbye to patch cables, pedalboard tapdancing, or carting two amplifiers around to your gigs.
- The Positive Grid Spark 2 - the first AI-equipped guitar amp - is available to pre-order now
