Indian Music Meets AI: Shankar Mahadevan Composes Track Using Google’s Lyria Platform

By working with Google to produce a song using the Lyria AI music generator, well-known Indian musician and composer Shankar Mahadevan has ventured into the realm of artificial intelligence. Mahadevan demonstrated the cutting-edge technology virtually at Google's annual I/O developer conference, which took place in Mountain View, California, on May 20.

During the event, Google showcased a number of its AI innovations, including tools for creating music and movies. The launch of Lyria 2, a music creation tool created as a component of a larger project called the music AI sandbox, was one of the main highlights.

Introducing the project, Google Research Scientist Jason Baldridge explained, "It is a tool for professionals to explore the possibilities of our generative music model Lyria in their work. Let's watch a clip starring legendary Grammy-winning singer and composer Shankar Mahadevan putting the music AI sandbox and Lyria to use."

In the featured video, Shankar Mahadevan appears in his studio and says, "I am a music composer, singer, producer and a happy man... Working with Sandbox is great. We inputted our requirements and it gave us a bed. We used that bed and we came up with this song." The video provides a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a track titled Rubaro, showing Mahadevan and his team collaborating, selecting beats, and fine-tuning pitch as they built the song with help from the AI platform.

Mahadevan said of the experience, "It is such an inspiring tool for a musician." You discover another chamber when you open a door. After that, you open a second room with a second door. AI does that.

Shankar Mahadevan, who is well-known for his energetic and varied musical abilities in Bollywood, devotional, and Indian classical music, has contributed to well-known songs like Desi Girl, Dil Chahta Hai, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Maa, Kajra Re, and Uff Teri Adaa. His most recent venture into AI-generated music marks a significant advancement in the smooth blending of art and technology, providing musicians everywhere with new avenues for creative expression.