What Happens When Every Producer Can Build Their Own Tools?

I opened ChatGPT this morning and it suggested I build an interactive mix bus compression demo.

Which was strange.

Because that's basically what I've spent the last year doing.

Underneath the suggestion was this:

“Creative professionals use ChatGPT Work to develop educational content, build interactive music tools, refine technical writing, and even create polished visual assets.”

I read it twice.

Educational content. Interactive music tools. Visual assets.

That's part of my working week.

Whether ChatGPT had somehow picked up on what I've been doing, or whether lots of people have simply arrived at the same place at the same time, I don't know.

Either way, I think it points towards something much bigger.

People who work creatively in the digital world can increasingly build the tools they want to work with.

And for music producers, I think that's going to change the kind of software we use.

We've Been Able To Do This For Years

Of course, musicians building their own software isn't new.

Max/MSP has been around for decades.

So have environments like Reaktor, Pure Data and SuperCollider.

People have built extraordinary instruments, sequencers, effects and entire performance systems with them.

But there was always a threshold.

You had to learn the environment.

You had to understand its logic. Objects, signals, patching, routing, variables, whatever the particular system required.

You didn't necessarily have to become a traditional programmer, but you had to become a programmer of sorts.

And you had to be prepared to put the time into learning it.

What's changing isn't that musicians can suddenly build software.

It's how little software you need to understand before you can start building it.

I can begin with an idea:

I want to build something that demonstrates subtractive synthesis – a harmonically rich waveform that lets you hear what happens as you filter parts of it away.

And start there.

That's a very different entry point.

The Tool Can Start With The Idea

This is the part that interests me.

I've built tools to help me write better.

I've built sequencers around chords, basslines and melody.

I've experimented with ways of demonstrating compression, rhythm and synthesis.

But the important bit isn't really the software.

The tools contain my way of thinking.

Imagine I'm working and realise I want something very specific.

Not another compressor.

I want something that can give me fresh fills whenever I want one.

Maybe I want a rhythm tool that approaches groove the way I've learned to approach it after years of making records.

Or something that doesn't process audio at all, but generates basslines based on the way I like to work, giving me ideas to choose from as starting points for a track.

Some of these ideas might become products.

Others might only ever be useful to me.

But they don't need a market before they're worth building.

And that's where I think we're going to get more personal software.

Commercial music software has to justify the cost of development, testing, support, compatibility and maintenance.

So there has to be enough demand to make building it worthwhile.

EQs, compressors, reverbs, delays, synths and limiters are the fundamental tools we use to make records.

But when software becomes quicker and easier to experiment with, an idea doesn't need to appeal to everybody to be worth building.

Someone can build a device around one peculiar production technique they've developed.

Someone else can make a sequencer based entirely around the way they hear rhythm.

A mix engineer can turn one of their working methods into an interactive tool.

Some of them might make absolutely no sense to 99% of musicians and become indispensable to the remaining 1%.

And some weird little tool made by one person to solve one problem could find its way into somebody else's setup.

They might use it completely differently.

That's where it gets interesting.

From Using Software To Expressing Yourself Through It

We're hearing a lot about AI being used to make music for us.

That's not what excites me about this.

I don't particularly want software to decide what I should make.

I want software that helps me get closer to what I'm already hearing.

If I'm building a compression tool, I'm not trying to remove the need to understand compression.

I'm trying to put my understanding of compression into the tool.

This is how I hear attack.

This is what I mean by movement.

This is what I'm listening for when I increase the ratio.

Now you can interact with that idea instead of just reading about it.

That's almost another form of publishing.

A producer can express an idea through a record.

They can explain it through an article.

And now they can build the idea into software.

From A ZX81 To This

This is probably why the whole thing blows my mind as much as it does.

One of my earliest experiences with computers was programming a ZX81.

Back then, getting a computer to do anything felt like an achievement.

Then computers became part of making music: MIDI, sequencers, samplers, DAWs, plugins, software instruments.

I've watched each stage open another door.

But this one feels different.

I can have an idea for a piece of music software in the morning and be using a version of it that afternoon.

It might be rough. It might break. It might never become something anybody else would want.

But I can explore the idea by building it.

I don't need to convince a developer that it's worth trying.

I don't need to know whether there's a market for it.

I don't even necessarily need to know exactly what it is when I start.

That's something I've dreamed about being able to do for years.

The Producer Becomes The Developer

I don't think plugin companies are going anywhere.

If anything, the flood of experimental software might make really good software engineering even more valuable.

But there's now another layer underneath that industry.

Individual software.

Producer software.

Artist software.

Small tools made by people with very particular ideas about how music should work.

They might be rough. They might be temporary. They might make no sense to 99% of musicians.

Not necessarily better because they're made with AI.

Better because they carry the flavour of the person who made them.

We've already seen that with something like Jaycen Joshua's God Particle.

His quirks, preferences and ways of working are part of the tool.

Now imagine that happening on a much bigger scale.

Those ideas can find their way into other people's music.

So perhaps the interesting question isn't:

What will AI do to music production?

It's:

What happens to music when every producer can build the tools they wish existed?