Amazon Announces ‘DeepComposer,’ the World’s First Machine-Learning USB Musical Keyboard for Developers of All Skill Levels

Published on December 2, 2019

As consumers are going on their shopping frenzy for Cyber Monday, tech enthusiasts are spending their time in Las Vegas at the AWS re:Invent conference, where Amazon unveils the latest gadgets and gizmos it has in the works. Excitingly enough, for day one on Monday, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Julien Simon announced the world’s first machine-learning-enabled musical keyboard for developers—AWS DeepComposer.

Source: AWS re: Invent

Powered by machine learning, AWS DeepComposer allows developers of all skill levels to learn “Generative A.I.” while creating original music outputs. In the world of artificial intelligence (A.I.), the most rapidly growing areas include computer vision, natural language processing, and of course, Generative AI.

What is Generative A.I.?

Generative A.I. is one of the biggest recent advancements in A.I. technology because of its ability to create something new by utilizing “generative adversarial networks.”

The ability for A.I. to generate fresh patterns in data with astonishing speed, efficiency, and sophistication has become the new expectation for A.I. to algorithmically generate any object that can be rendered digitally—also known as the “generative” application.

Generative A.I. will help drive the next generation of apps that includes content development and visual arts—especially for musicians and the entertainment space.

The Keyboard
Source: Amazon Web Services

The USB keyboard according to AWS’ website, is a 32-key, 2-octave keyboard and MIDI-compatible, which connects to the developer’s computer and the DeepComposer service, which is accessed through the AWS Management Console.

For developers, DeepComposer provides tutorials, sample code, and training data that can be used to start building generative models in a fun, musical manner.

Source: Amazon Web Services

In addition to the physical keyboard, the AWS DeepComposer console includes a virtual keyboard so you can compose on the go! Developers are able to input a melody by connecting the AWS DeepComposer keyboard to their computer or play the virtual keyboard in the “console” mode.

Source: Amazon Web Services

Once in the console mode, the developer can then generate an original musical composition using the pre-trained genre models in the AWS DeepComposer console, choosing from rock, pop, jazz, classical, or even building your own custom genre.

Source: Amazon Web Services

Developers, regardless of their background in ML or music, can get started with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). This Generative AI technique pits two different neural networks against each other to produce new and original digital works based on sample inputs. With AWS DeepComposer, you can train and optimize GAN models to create original music.”

To keep up on everything else AWS is working on, you can watch LIVE at the AWS re: Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada that goes from Monday December 2 to Friday December 6.

Andrew "Drew" Rossow is a former contract editor at Grit Daily.

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