How To Create Your Own Christmas Music With AI -- and Why You Should Just Stick With Human Artists

How To Create Your Own Christmas Music With AI -- and Why You Should Just Stick With Human Artists Yes, you can use AI to make your own holiday soundtrack, but Mariah or Sinatra are your best bets if you don't want a weird, generic song with no feeling behind it. Amanda SmithContributor Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist and writer. She reports on culture, society, human interest and technology. Her stories hold a mirror to society, reflecting both its malaise and its beauty. Amanda's work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Business Insider, Vice, News Corp, Singapore Airlines, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine. Amanda is an Australian living in the cultural center of gravity that is New York City. When it comes to holiday music, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You is a mood setter. It's fun and upbeat, and it gets you through all those holiday chores, like cooking and gift wrapping. I'm certainly a sucker for her holiday hit, but it's the same song every year. CNET I live above a restaurant that plays Sinatra's White Christmas on repeat. Now that's a timeless song. Romantic and cozy. A very different vibe. Given how well the gift wrap I made with AI turned out, I used Adobe Firefly again to attempt to create my own timeless Christmas song. According to Adobe, Firefly Audio Model creates fully licensed, studio-quality instrumental tracks. It's only trained on content that Adobe has rights to. Firefly launched in March 2023 and is available under Adobe's membership tiers, starting at $10 per month. However, you can use Firefly for free with limited access. Getting set up If you don't have an Adobe account, go through the setup process, then visit its soundtrack-generating tool. You can either upload a video and let Firefly suggest the perfect vibe, style or purpose, or you can start from scratch by selecting from the preset tags. Adobe Firefly/Screenshot by CNET Using the interface, you can also populate the energy, tempo and duration of your song. Before you start playing around with the music generator, you should pause to reflect on the type of song you're creating -- where you'll play it, who it's for and what feeling you want to communicate. Create your AI song With most of our celebrations happening after Christmas Day, I wanted to test out Firefly to create a cute track to play with my wife while we open presents. To start, I uploaded a video of a recent snow day we had, just to see what type of song it would create from that. It populated the brief, as well as the energy, tempo and length. I selected "Peaceful" for the vibe, "Cinematic" for the style, and added "Personal" for the song purpose. I wanted it longer than 11 seconds (what it was preset to), so I adjusted it to one minute, then hit Generate. It gave me four track options. Adobe Firefly/Screenshot by CNET I liked...

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