Everything is AI nowadays, is what the Kaiser Chiefs would have sung if they’d gotten together twenty years later than they did. Whether you like it or not, AI is here to stay, and it’s only going to assimilate itself even further into every aspect of your life, including your guitar playing.
Much in the same way social media and YouTube are now a part of the guitar landscape, AI will change the topography of the music industry as a whole. It’s one of those adapt-or-die situations and I say adapt. You don’t have to wait for the AI revolution to help improve your guitar playing, because there are plenty of tools available right now. Here are 6 suggestions to get you started…
ChatGPT
(Image credit: ChatGPT)
It’s an obvious one, but ChatGPT can be whatever you want it to be. Need someone to suggest chords for a progression you have? How about some help troubleshooting why your guitar isn’t playing the way you want it to? The great thing about ChatGPT is that you can ask it follow-up questions, which is often a much more efficient way of solving problems than straight Google searches.
ChatGPT also gets to know you over time (if you enable the function) so if you keep asking it guitar-related questions it will provide more and more relevant responses. For even more power, ChatGPT has a paid tier that gives you access to more advanced models. The thing to remember is that it’s only as powerful as your prompts, so part of getting the most out of ChatGPT is asking it the right questions.
Spark AI currently features on the recently released Positive Grid Spark 2, but will be coming to all Spark amps in the future. This means if you already own one of these desktop guitar amps, or you’re planning on buying one, AI tone generation is within your grasp. Rather like the image generator Midjourney, Spark AI creates guitar tones when you prompt it. Not only does it allow you to create bespoke sounds, but it’s great for getting the tones of famous guitar players too.
We tried it on our Spark 2 review, and got some great success using phrases like ‘low gain, fat rhythm tone’ as well as things like ‘sludgy doom rhythm tone’. You can get as creative as you like with it and the more you input, the more it will learn, and the better it will get. Soon knob twiddling might just be a thing of the past.
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There's a lot of stem separators around at the moment. I really like StemRoller though, as it’s an open-source, freeware AI tool. that allows you to split the parts of songs down and isolate them. Say you wanted to jam along to the latest tune from your favorite band, you could search it via StemRoller and get the isolated track, remove the guitars, import it into your DAW, and play along with the rest of the instruments.
Depending on your computer it can take a little while to get your stems, anywhere between 5 to 15 minutes, but I’ve found the quality to be astoundingly good considering it's free. Some busy mixes can result in artifacts, but the majority of songs have worked really well for me. It delivers an instrumental, separate drum, bass, and vocal parts, as well as an 'other' category depending on the song in question, which is great for building your own backing tracks or helping you analyze a guitar part without the vocals getting in the way.
AI music generation is understandably, a bit of a sticky subject. Infamously endorsed by Timbaaland, Suno allows you to create bespoke music with a simple text prompt. It requires you to sign up for a free account but it’s scarily powerful, generating full songs in a matter of seconds. You'd think they'd be average or poor quality, but my prompt of 'crushingly heavy death metal song' delivered an actually good, usable result.
Prompts can be done in any style, whether it's rock, blues, country, metal, or anything else. You can also upload your own audio and have the AI finish it off, add lyrics, or generate more ideas based on yours. It’s a powerful addition to anyone’s songwriting toolbox, particularly great for those days when you’re struggling to make anything work and need a fresh perspective.
iZotope Ozone has actually been using AI and machine learning since before it was cool, way back in 2016. The latest version features a seriously powerful AI mastering tool that essentially acts as your own personal mastering engineer. Unlike many online mastering tools you might have come across, it also allows you to get under the hood and tweak every single setting, giving you a lot of control over what you can do with it.
Why would this be useful for guitar players? Well with more and more players opting to record at home, Ozone can help take your tracks to the next level. Giving you that loudness that will compete with others on Spotify and add depth to your mixes. With Ozone in your corner alongside some of the other tools on this list, it's entirely possible to create a great-sounding track by yourself. Think of it as your own personal mastering engineer.
Drummers are a pain. They’re loud, take too much time to set up, and never help you with your guitar cab – just joking, some of my favorite people are drummers! That said, recording acoustic drums is difficult from home, and if you don’t play yourself, creating natural-feeling grooves is even more difficult. DAACI Natural Drums is an AI-powered drummer that can cover all styles, is easily tweakable, never gets tired, and never goes out of time.
Great just for jamming along to or to help you craft tunes when recording at home, it’s endlessly tweakable, allowing you to program grooves and fills with incredible variety and a really natural feel. A recent collaboration with Spitfire Audio means there are loads of great sounds in DAACI now, although I prefer to use it with a drum VST like Superior Drummer 3 or Steven Slate Drums.
So there you have it, six great tools you can use right now to improve or augment your guitar playing. There’s a lot of naysaying about AI, but I’m a firm believer that you need to adopt new technology when it comes, and the earlier you do so, the more of an advantage you'll have over those who won't. So don't be afraid to mess around with these tools to help you get where you want to be.
Whether it's to improve your playing, songwriting, or just to help you have more fun, over the next few years we’ll be seeing an exponential increase in the amount of AI-powered programs available. More and more of these will be aimed specifically at guitarists, too, which could make it an incredibly exciting time to be involved in making music.
Matt is a Junior Deals Writer here at Guitar World. He regularly tests and reviews music gear with a focus on guitars, amps, pedals, modelers, and pretty much anything else guitar-related. Matt worked in music retail for 5 years at Dawsons Music and Northwest Guitars and has written for various music sites including MusicRadar, Guitar Player, Guitar.com, Ultimate Guitar, and Thomann’s t.blog. A regularly gigging guitarist with over 20 years of experience playing live and writing and recording in bands, he's performed everything from jazz to djent, gigging all over the country in more dingy venues than you can shake a drop-tuned guitar at.
