For our latest Lab Session, we teamed up with Grammy Award-winning Indian music icon Shankar Mahadevan to explore the exciting fusion of AI and India’s musical traditions. The music of India, a powerhouse of artistic influence widely known for its vibrant Bollywood and booming regional film industries, draws from traditions like Carnatic, Hindustani, folk, dance and devotional genres. This richness provided the perfect canvas for exploration using our Music AI Sandbox.
Music AI Sandbox is a suite of experimental tools developed by Google DeepMind in collaboration with YouTube and guided by insights from music industry professionals such as Shankar. These tools help musicians transform existing music, create new instrumental or vocal parts and explore new directions for their work.
We spent more than 30 hours in Shankar’s Mumbai studio, immersing ourselves in his creative process. Together with Shankar’s producer, lyricist and sound engineer, we investigated how Music AI Sandbox could help him create film soundtracks.