Who are you and what do you do?
The jury of the first Italian AI Music Awards welcomes Valerio Bamberga: AI engineer, co-founder and CTO of NowWhat, author of three albums as Van 42 and artistic director of Nova Armonia AI Music Festival San Marino. We asked him how he found his way to AI music, what he thinks of the Italian scene and what he'll be listening for when the tracks reach the jury.
My name is Valerio Bamberga, I live in Rimini and I'm an AI engineer by profession. I've been a software engineer for more than twenty years, and today I work on applied artificial intelligence: AI agents, language model integration, automation. I'm co-founder and CTO of NowWhat srl, a startup that builds AI solutions for businesses and AI training programmes.
Alongside technology, there has always been music: I've released three albums as Van 42, born from a dialogue between my own recordings and AI. And I'm the artistic director of Nova Armonia AI Music Festival San Marino.
How did you first come across AI music?
I tried to learn drums, guitar, trombone and sax, with results my neighbours didn't appreciate much. So I always channelled my urge to make music through technology: as a kid I composed on the Commodore 64 and then on the Amiga, with whatever sounds those speakers allowed. Then came MIDI experiments on the PC, and canons and songs for several voices, all recorded on my own, one voice on top of another.
When Suno arrived, I think I was among its very first registered users. For me it was liberating: I could finally give shape to the songs I had in my head, without my limited skills on instruments standing in the way. That's where the three Van 42 albums came from, with a method of my own: I record voices and sounds, process them with Suno and then finish the tracks in Logic Pro. In the end it's the same road I started on with the Commodore 64. The difference is that today the machine has become a real working partner.
You created Nova Armonia. What does being a juror at IAIMA mean to you?
It's an honour, and also a welcome change of perspective. With Nova Armonia I'm on the other side: I build the competition, write the rules, organise the jury. Being an IAIMA juror lets me listen with fresh ears, without the weight of organising, and compare notes with people in Italy who were working on AI music before I was. To me it's also a sign that dedicated festivals are successfully starting to build a network: the more serious spaces there are, the more this scene grows.
How do you feel about this technology applied to music?
Enthusiasm, first of all. And not just for music: working with artificial intelligence every day, I see a revolution that affects every field, and one we have to learn to live with. It's not about deciding whether we like it or not: it's already here. It's about understanding how to use it well.
The debate often swings between uncritical enthusiasm and total rejection, and I don't think either extreme helps. AI is an extremely powerful tool, but the author is still the person who has the idea, who chooses, who discards and who gives shape to the result.
The concerns are real and need to be addressed openly: artists' rights, musicians' work, the risk of an avalanche of tracks that all sound the same, deceptive imitations of real voices. That's why I believe strongly in transparency: telling how a track was made, what the machine did and what the person did.
I'll ask myself whether behind the track there's a person with something to say, or just a lucky prompt.
Valerio Bamberga
How do you see the AI music scene in Italy? Is there a scene?
es, there is, and it's bigger than people think. The best thing is that it isn't made only of musicians: there are professionals, enthusiasts, people who had never written a song and finally can. It's still a fragmented scene, made of online communities, radio shows and festivals that are being born right now, IAIMA among them, but it's alive. What's missing are spaces where these songs are listened to in front of an audience and discussed seriously, not just shared on a platform.
AI music and traditional music: what happens next?
The truth is that nobody knows: we can only make guesses. History helps a little. With the sampler, the drum machine and autotune, people talked every time about the end of music, and every time music found a new language.
My guess is that, on one hand, music made with AI will become the norm. On the other, precisely because of that, direct human experiences will become even more meaningful: a concert, a jam session, playing and singing together. The easier music becomes to produce, the more value the moment of living it together will have.
As an IAIMA juror, what will you look for in the tracks?
First of all the idea, and how it's delivered. I'll look for choices you can hear, something I couldn't have imagined on my own, and I'll ask myself whether behind the track there's a person with something to say, or just a lucky prompt.
hen care. I don't mean a "perfect" sound with nothing strange in it: in fact, I also like "broken" tracks, born from pushing the models out of their comfort zone. I mean care for the final product, post-production done with attention. Or, the other way round, a deliberate roughness, if it makes sense for that track. What makes the difference is hearing a choice, not a result taken exactly as it came out.
What advice would you give to people who make music with AI?
Don't settle for a nice song that came out of a prompt: by now, everyone can get that. My advice is to experiment. Use the tools in ways they weren't designed for, mix them, start from your own material, find the most creative routes to results that aren't predictable. That's where music made with AI stops sounding like everything else and becomes truly yours.
