Manel Fornells (26) wins first Private Kitchen AI Composition Competition
After an insightful panel discussion with the three nominees (Rene Ahoud, Nikolaï Clavier and Manel Fornells), Manel was handed the first prize for his AI-assisted composition for the short film AIEX Message. With this, he is the winner of the Private Kitchen AI Composition Competition, an award that was conceived to stimulate practical research into whether AI can be a valuable tool in aiding film composers.
The jury was unanimous in their selection of the 3 nominees, who all contributed instructive insights for fellow composers with their scores and the documentation of their process.
photography: Birgit Bijl
photography: Birgit Bijl
The jury had the following to say about the winning score:
“Manel Fornells delivers a convincing score that supports the images well. Manel's investigative attitude is highly appreciated and his use of AI, such as ChatGPT, Stable Audio, Veed.io, some SFX and the mastering using AI, shows an innovative understanding of the film, its narrative, and the process of collaborating with AI. A common issue with current AI-tools is that the score develops into an eclectic collage of musically unrelated material - in contrast, Manel manages to present a coherent and convincing score.”
Download Manel’s report (PDF) on his approach for this competition.
About the winner
Fornells is a 26-year-old film composer and business analyst currently based in Haarlem, Nederland. Born in Paris and raised in Andorra, he eventually found his way to the vibrant city of Barcelona, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours (First Class). Driven by his passion for film music, he relocated to the Netherlands to further hone his craft. In 2021, Manel graduated from the ‘Composing for Film’ Master's program at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (CvA), after which he engaged in significant collaborations, scoring a variety of documentaries, fiction films, and animated shorts culminating in a Special Mention in the 2021 ‘Keep an Eye Filmscore Award.’
The jury (Janne Spijkervet, Than van Nispen and Ivo Witteveen) was also full of praise for the other nominees, Rene Ahoud and Nikolaï Clavier. All three finalists were thanked for delivering convincing soundtracks and insightful reports on their contribution with AI-tools, which the jury sees as valuable and instructive for fellow composers.
About the competition
The main goal of the AI Composition Contest was to stimulate media composers to look into AI as potential tools to assist with creating film scores. There are a lot of thoughts and publications about the potential and threats of AI in general, and for the music industry specifically - but not that much documented, practical examples of whether the current crop of AI tools is actually any good, when used by a composer. This is why entrants for the competition were asked to provide a report on how they used AI, in addition to their score. The jury judged the scores firstly on their musical merits (originality, expressiveness, craftsmanship) and secondly on whether AI was used in an effective or productive way.
All nominees used ChatGPT in some form, often to aid the prompting of audio-specific AI’s such as Udio, Suno and Stable Audio. We encourage you to read to reports of the three nominees on their use of AI as well as listen to the soundtracks. The reports contain numerous inventive approaches, examples of fruitful collaboration - but also obvious AI failures, such and entertaining exchange where ChatGPT pretended to be able to actually listen & provide feedback to Rene Ahoud’s sketches, eventually having to concede that it wasn’t actually able to access the soundfiles and comment on it. Below are the scores and documentation supplied by the three finalists.
The Winning music
CREATED FOR PRIVATE KITCHEN’S AI VIDEO “AIEX MESSAGE”
The nominees
nominee: Rene Ahoud
René Ahoud is a composer of storytelling music for various media and artists. His diverse background (Sonology, engineering, live sound and music for theatre, and more) culminated in the birth of the Johnny Raw Studio in 2006. Currently, he focusses on music for film and media.
AI tools used:
• ChatGPT 3.5 (AI chat model)
• Udio (AI text to music generator)
Download Rene’s report (PDF) on his approach for this competition.
nominee: Nikolaï Clavier
Composer and viola player Nikolaï Clavier (1989) graduated with a Master in Film Scoring from the Conservatory of Amsterdam in 2020 and a Master of Music at Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in 2018. In the past 10 years he built up a repertoire of over 200 compositions and arrangements, including short films, commercials, features films and video games.
AI tools used:
• ChatGPT
• Udio
• AIVA
• Suno
• Randomsheetmusic.com
• Gullfoss + Izotope
Download Nicolaï’s report (PDF) on his approach for this competition.
Thanks!
We would like to thank all participants and submitters for their creations and communication around this competition.
Private Kitchen would further like to thank the jury members Ivo Witteveen, Than van Nispen & Janne Spijkervet, our event host & partner Buma Music in Motion and all creators & editors around this competition for their support in making this competition a success.
Organization
Private Kitchen, the English-language online platform for Dutch media composers produced by MiMM, organizes this competition in collaboration with Buma Music-in-Motion.
More about this contest / AI in Music
