Mixing engineer Spike Stent is one of modern music's most accomplished sonic architects, having worked with an array of artists that includes Harry Styles, Frank Ocean, Madonna and Coldplay.
Most of us can only dream of taking advantage of Stent's Grammy-winning ear and decades of expertise, but thanks to the power of artificial intelligence, you may now be able to make use of his talents indirectly, through the use of an AI-based mixing plugin.
Spike AI is a mixing tool trained on what its founders say is one of the "largest and most robust" mix datasets, made up exclusively of an extensive library of tracks that Stent has worked on. Its founders, Henry Ramsey and Spike's son Joshua Stent, say that they have translated decades of his experience into this AI model, which is capable of applying Stent’s mixing skills to your own project.
Like many AI-powered mixing tools, Spike AI will intelligently analyse your mix and apply processing to improve it. What’s makes it different, though, is the inclusion of a chatbot that you can instruct on how exactly to adjust the mix using conversational prompts - effectively a virtual mix engineer sitting within the plugin.
We've seen plenty of AI-based assistive plugins before, but none that take this approach; this the first plugin we’ve seen that can be instructed via text, à la ChatGPT. Spike AI believes that this empowers musicians lacking technical mixing skills to shape the sound of their music, by using Spike AI to translate the description of what they’d like to hear into adjustments to a track’s mix and master.
Spike AI will be accessible through a credit system, where minutes spent using the plugin are measured in tokens. Details on pricing have yet to be disclosed, but its founders tell us that an excellent mix will be achievable at an “extremely reasonable” price.
It’s a wild idea, and it remains to be seen whether it works in practice - we’ll be testing out Spike AI as soon as we get our hands on the beta version.
“I’m a great champion of moving forward, including when it comes to tech,” Spike says of the plugin. “We wanted to offer something unique that everyone can access. That’s what’s so brilliant about Spike AI. It lets people create something new that will help artists and producers who don’t have the option of hiring someone like me.”
