AI generated "Music"

that's a very true thing @BFT Gibson - I do have some old recordings of me pounding away at songs even a couple of cassette ping-pong experiments where I even taped a maraca to my foot for percussion. I didn't have studio access or any professional musicians around me to get me produced recordings... then life happens, you know?

Careers, businesses, kids. for me, just impossible to make the time for music. Between ages 33-45, I was working 12 hour days on my newspaper, 6 days a week. hardly had time to grab an half hour for a jam track or two. I hardly wrote any songs too. maybe five over a decade. uninspired, exhausted. Those were probably my prime music making years too. Just eaten up by life. Yeah, an excuse. But it's mine. And, there was plenty of joy to be had in being a husband and father too.

Anyway, my old recordings are SO hard to listen to. painful. Not something I would likely play for anyone else either.

And I don't think the SONGS are so awful, it's just the execution, or lack thereof. So this AI thing puts real nice gloss on it, without an insane amount of muss or fuss, (yeah, it's surreal, fake, inauthentic, however some wish to label it), but it make
me so happy to have a gloss version, I can listen to them again.

ADDENDUM EDIT
I should also add here too, probably just like many others here, it took me a while to build up my gear for my little DAW room.
A mixer, a second computer (that crapped out), so I had to re-purpose another, an I/O thingy, two computer monitors, an amp, speakers, software, a couple of microphone choices, proper headphones, guitar modeler, amps, guitars, basses, keyboard,
... just a bunch of GEAR. Then, find the space for it, set it all up, maintain it.

Once it was done, I finally had it! my own little recording space! Wow! I could do nearly anything I ever dreamed of doing.
Then the software/engineering/production learning curve. The info is out there, no doubt. But its confusing, conflicting.
You feel inspired, you go down and burn off all that inspiration with a half hour of software frustration, two hours of trying to get a decent drum track, lay some bass down, then when it comes time for guitar, vocals. You're just not feeling it anymore, and
soon five hours pass, and it's STILL kinda terrible. Then, people try to sell you software that will solve all your crappy mix problems. But then it still sounds off. Never quite right. Like maracas on your foot, only cleaner, with compression delay and reverb too.

After awhile it begins to dawn on a fellow. Man, I really love music. Been making it my entire life. But.... (and this feels like a twelve step program revelation here), I realized maybe I'm just lacking in musical talent. It's obvious to me by the grid I have terrible rhythm, musically.
Can't sing much either, no matter how expensive the microphone is.

No amount of software, gear or even practice/woodshedding are likely to solve my musical issues in this lifetime.
But I can write.

Make NO mistake. I STILL love to rip away mindlessly on guitar, get the looper going, escape to dreamy pentatonic worlds. And, I also love songwriting/arranging when I'm feeling it, just me, paper, a pen and acoustic guitar.

But damn, why do I have so many electric guitars? Half of them were " I need this for all the toanz" the other half were projects. Not so much about the music the guitar can emit when in my hands, but to satisfying my burning drive to make stuff.
 
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TVvoodoo said:
that's a very true thing @BFT Gibson - I do have some old recordings of me pounding away at songs even a couple of cassette ping-pong experiments where I even taped a maraca to my foot for percussion. I didn't have studio access or any professional musicians around me
to get me produced recordings... then life happens, you know? Careers, businesses, kids. for me, just impossible to make the time for music.
Between ages 33-45, I was working 12 hour days on my newspaper, 6 days a week. hardly had time to grab an half hour for a jam track or two.
I hardly wrote any songs too. maybe five over a decade. uninspired, exhausted. Those were probably my prime music making years too.
Just eaten up by life. Yeah, an excuse. But it's mine. And, there was plenty of joy to be had in being a husband and father too.

Anyway, my old recordings are SO hard to listen to. painful. Not something I would likely play for anyone else either.
And I don't think the SONGS are so awful, it's just the execution, or lack thereof. So this AI thing puts real nice gloss on it,
without an insane amount of muss or fuss, (yeah, it's surreal, fake, inauthentic, however some wish to label it), but it make
me so happy to have a gloss version, I can listen to them again.
Click to expand...
Cool, what is helping me understand it all. Make music, look how tools like AI can revive old recordings.

What these recent threads point out is, to make more music. For those who don't play in band the new technology gets you involved.

It is in our hands to make more music. It really is a great time to be a musician. Everyone can be involved at a level they are comfortable with. The 'tools" are available ! Enjoy
 
Sargeant Preston said:
I'm back. I have a hundred or more original songs that I recorded years ago. I would NEVER submit a single one of my songs to Suno for transformation into something other than I had originally recorded. I can't quite wrap my head around the sudden obsession that you and other people have with using Suno or other AI programs to re-write lyrics and supply artificial instrumentation.
Click to expand...
Is it not wise to know your enemy?

Others don't feel threatened by or intimidated by or insecure about learning new tools, how they work and how to operate and manipulate them, because that's the entire point. This isn't obsession, so much as a bunch of music enthusiasts who aren't afraid to learn. They're not trying to sell you anything. They're not even trying to hide that they're using AI. In fact, that's the entire point of the Orpheus project. Education. Learning. Maybe even enjoy it a little bit along the way. And all while doing it in a friendly group setting with a bunch of people who have similar interests. Just for fun. Perhaps some younger person just beginning their musical journey will find great inspiration in it. Perhaps they'll just use it to create backing tracks for the sole purpose of practice, and someday they'll blow you away with their technical prowess and musical knowledge on a stage in front of you.

It is simply a new tool that people are experimenting with, nothing more, nothing less.

Allow me to draw a parallel:

I love smoking meats. We've been doing it a long time in my family. There's something beautiful about rising early in the morning to get the fire lit, and putting in the work for hours and hours on end, babysitting the fire, watching the temperature, observing the color of the smoke out the stack, the vents, the airflow, etc...to pull out a beautiful perfectly smoked big ol brisket or ribs or pork butt or whatever. It's almost ritualistic in a way. It's a discipline. It's a skill. It's an art. It's something developed only through experience, and lots of it.

And then, the Traeger style pellet grill/smoker came along.

Wtf?! What a bunch of cheaters!!! These people don't know how to smoke a brisket, and yet, they're eating some brisket that looks and tastes just like the one I make that took me YEARS to master. THAT'S NOT FAIR!!! All they had to do was dump a bag of pellets in and push a few buttons. They're not REALLY smoking their OWN meats. They're CHEATING!!

See....I used to actually think that way. Like they were cheating. Like it was somehow "faked".

Then I realized that I was the one being an A-hole (a Heinous Anus, if you will) and gatekeeping. How selfish I could be. "These people don't deserve to eat a good brisket because they didn't actually learn how to make one for real", I would say to myself. "I had to go through all this trouble and effort to learn, so should they!!"

But why did I care about what some other carnivores seemed to be obsessed with? Well, because I felt threatened by it. Insecure. Intimidated. It is exceedingly easy to mess up an expensive huge chunk of meat with a single mistake. I might screw up and completely ruin it, whereas the Traeger won't do that even if I forget that there's something cooking for several hours.

But at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. If the Traeger user is enjoying using it, and they're enjoying the food they make on it.....who the hell am I to piss in their corn flakes? I don't need to trouble myself with not being able to wrap my head around the fact that they didn't actually have to put in all the effort, the experience, knowledge, and work, that I had to, in order to eat a quality peice of BBQ.

In fact, I think it's pretty awesome that almost anyone, even a n00b, is now able to easily experience and enjoy a high quality cut, smoked perfectly. Better yet, they're not going to end up throwing out a bunch of ruined stuff from stupid mistakes during the learning process, like I had to do.

So now my perspective has changed. If I had a Traeger myself, I could do so, so much more. I don't have to babysit the fire. I know it's good. I don't have to watch the temperature. I know it will stay where I set it. That frees me up to go ahead and get the slaw put together, or get the corn shucked or put the finishing touches on the apple pie.
Suddenly I am able to produce an entire gourmet meal, rather than just a chunk of meat or two.

It is just a tool.

A hammer is a tool.

A hammer can certainly be abused.

...So we shouldn't want to use hammers?


I get the revulsion towards AI, absolutely. I understand. I have feelings about it myself.

But I will never forget when I caught myself on my high horse looking down my nose at other people who just wanted to eat some decent brisket, and were using a pellet grill to do it because they didn't have the benefit of a family who has done it for generations, or the benefit of having the time or funds necessary to learn everything.

The real treasure isn't the product; it's the things we learned along the way.

Traeger food is delicious.
 
Again AI it's polarizing, I get it.

I wrote a post on The Gear Page on AI yesterday. The thread was specifically about less talented
non-professional musicians having fun with AI - You can imagine where that went! :mad::mad::mad::mad:

Oh the hate that came in. "If only you practiced more" or "if only you had better gear" or, it's got no... "soul"
"it takes no work at all." blah blah. If I input my guitar fingerpicking, and it samples that, puts it in correct time,
even adds nuance for softer passages how is that any different than using midi triggered drums,
which are now ubiquitous in the industry? I can add subtle mando, violin, specifically curated for my track.

Nobody seemed to complain about Band-in-Box software which basically allowed musicians to do the same thing,
and it's been around for over two decades.

Thank you @mcblink your point is clear, as is your open-mindedness and humility. And I guess that's the crux of it.
AI is frickin' humbling. REALLY so. Even for me, who doesn't have a whole lot to be proud of, musically.
So the pain is worse, the more skills you may have, I guess.

Some pro-and highly skilled musicians seem have suddenly placed themselves on pretty high pedestals.
I totally envy those who have commanded the gear, the instrument, the fingerboard, engineering.
But I fall short of worshiping them quite as much as they seem to want to worship themselves. If you're fully able
to make music people adore, and perform it for an audience that will pay to see you, you should be golden.
Those skills will likely become rarer, and hopefully for you even more valuable in the future.

As it is, bands have to practically beg to get into a bar to play for gas money and "exposure."

I'm NOT forcing AI down anyone's throat. If you are here reading this, and don't dig it, just steer off.
Ignore the threads where it may arise. But it's happening, no matter whether you dig it or not.
This is a wave that's about to envelope the entire music universe.

I'm gonna try to surf it a little, so I don't get crushed by it.
 
TVvoodoo said:
This is a wave that's about to envelope the entire music universe.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what I am afraid of. Art of all kinds needs to be generated by humans for humans. Already 80% of music is pablum. I'm afraid with AI that will ratchet up into the high 90s. If it is too easy to create art people will get lazy. Art is not easy.
 
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AI will never be as random and skittish as my P brain ! I am so glad AI came up ! It is bringing something out of me that would not of happened. I am going at it, not as a competition but as to what does my effort look like up next to it. Will we hear & feel the dif. We should have a few comparisons in a few months with everybody working on songs . I didn't like what AI did to my song,(before these threads even came up) and it what challenged me to make my own. Not into videos though, but 1 of these songs in the new album . going to get frustrated and do a video on my own. Not my thing at all,

So, AI why did you put batman in here lol my character doesn't hide behind a mask and has a weird lil tote along friend in tights.

 
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@Kerry Brown

That's actually precisely the reason that AI isn't, and will never be, art.

A thing becomes an art precisely because it is not easy. It is because it has taken discipline, dedication, practice, effort, work, to develop and create something that is an expression of one's self.

It is something that certain people innately have and will continue to do because they're naturally driven to do so, regardless of whatever technology exists at the time. As they always have done.

I might argue that the AI system itself could be considered a work of art. But what the AI itself does, isn't art at all.
 
True, like blinky says, I don't think the music that AI creates is a true pure artform.

But certainly hybridized with human input such as lyrical content, perhaps more like a cyborg version of art.
Transitional, towards maybe some sort of future technocratic society?

Society changes, and drags us humans kicking and screaming through it every time.

The Renaissance, the Reformation, The Columbian Exchange, the Industrial revolution.
We just happen to be in whatever is going on now, perhaps lucky, or maybe NOT AT ALL
lucky to have front row seats to it.

I'm sure if you ask the tech geeks behind the AI systems, they probably do feel it's a sort of art, or algorythmic alchemy
 
TVvoodoo said:
that's a very true thing @BFT Gibson - I do have some old recordings of me pounding away at songs even a couple of cassette ping-pong experiments where I even taped a maraca to my foot for percussion. I didn't have studio access or any professional musicians around me to get me produced recordings... then life happens, you know?

Careers, businesses, kids. for me, just impossible to make the time for music. Between ages 33-45, I was working 12 hour days on my newspaper, 6 days a week. hardly had time to grab an half hour for a jam track or two. I hardly wrote any songs too. maybe five over a decade. uninspired, exhausted. Those were probably my prime music making years too. Just eaten up by life. Yeah, an excuse. But it's mine. And, there was plenty of joy to be had in being a husband and father too.

Anyway, my old recordings are SO hard to listen to. painful. Not something I would likely play for anyone else either.
And I don't think the SONGS are so awful, it's just the execution, or lack thereof. So this AI thing puts real nice gloss on it,
without an insane amount of muss or fuss, (yeah, it's surreal, fake, inauthentic, however some wish to label it), but it make
me so happy to have a gloss version, I can listen to them again.

ADDENDUM EDIT
I should also add here too, probably just like many others here, it took me a while to build up my gear for my little DAW room.
A mixer, a second computer (that crapped out), so I had to re-purpose another, an I/O thingy, two computer monitors, an amp,
speakers, software, a couple of microphone choices, proper headphones, guitar modeler, amps, guitars, basses, keyboard,
... just a bunch of GEAR. Then, find the space for it, set it all up, maintain it.

Once it was done, I finally had it! my own little recording space! Wow! I could do nearly anything I ever dreamed of doing.
Then the software/engineering/production learning curve. The info is out there, no doubt. But its confusing, conflicting.
You feel inspired, you go down and burn off all that inspiration with a half hour of software frustration, two hours of trying to
get a decent drum track, lay some bass down, then when it comes time for guitar, vocals. You're just not feeling it anymore, and
soon five hours have passed, and it's STILL kinda terrible. Then, people try to sell you software that will solve all your crappy mix
problems. But then it still sounds off. Never quite right. Like maracas on your foot, only cleaner, with compression delay and reverb too.

After awhile it begins to dawn on a fellow. Man, I really love music. Been making it my entire life. But.... (and this feels like a twelve step
program revelation here), I realized maybe I'm just lacking in musical talent. It's obvious to me by the grid I have terrible rhythm, musically.
Can't sing much either, not matter how expensive the microphone is.

No amount of software, gear or even practice/woodshedding are likely to solve my musical issues in this lifetime.
But I can write.

Make NO mistake. I STILL love ripping away mindlessly on guitar, get the looper going, escape to dreamy pentatonic worlds. And, I also love songwriting/arranging when I'm feeling it, just me, paper, a pen and acoustic guitar.

But damn, why do I have so many electric guitars? Half of them were " I need this for all the toanz" the other half were projects.
Not so much about the music the guitar can emit when in my hands, but to satisfying my burning drive to make stuff
Click to expand...
“Then the software/engineering/production learning curve. The info is out there, no doubt. But its confusing, conflicting.
You feel inspired, you go down and burn off all that inspiration with a half hour of software frustration, two hours of trying to
get a decent drum track, lay some bass down, then when it comes time for guitar, vocals. You're just not feeling it anymore, and
soon five hours have passed, and it's STILL kinda terrible. Then, people try to sell you software that will solve all your crappy mix”
This is so true^

The best part of this is “happy”
It made me feel that way also, joy.
It’s hard for me to truly enjoy unfinished work I do. >

“fake, inauthentic, however some wish to label it), but it make
me so happy to have a gloss version, I can listen to them again.”
 
I was listening this interview with Frederico Faĝgin, an old physicist engineer inventor dude, that has a fascinating theory of consciousness he supports with quantum physics.

en.wikipedia.org

Federico Faggin - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Anyway, that stuff isn't quite totally relevant to the topic of the thread, but in this interview, at 51:00 in, to 52:30, he is asked a question that I think his response is somewhat relevant.


"Creativity is non-algorithmic. ... Besides, even if the AI gives you a good idea, the AI doesn't know that it's a good idea, you recognized the good idea of AI. It still needs your counciousness, your understanding, your comprehension..."
 
TVvoodoo said:
Again AI it's polarizing, I get it.

I wrote a post on The Gear Page on AI yesterday.
Click to expand...
I read the entire thread at The Gear Page.
TVvoodoo said:
If you are here reading this, and don't dig it, just steer off. Ignore the threads where it may arise. But it's happening, no matter whether you dig it or not.
Click to expand...
Translation: STFU and bugger off!

Message received! (y)
 
@Sargeant Preston I guess I don't want to be one to stifle discussion... that was wrong if me to write ... this thread was initially started last year when i first started exploring but wasn't quite so sure at the time.

You know.... I actually put "music" in quotation marks in the thread title.

Oerhaps over time I was hoping we could have one thread here that wasn't a duke it out forever sort of thing. One where maybe users here could discuss it's use in generally a positive atmosphere and perhaps share non-Orpheus related work, old songs reimagined and such. Having detractors dropping in to keep taking pot shots again and again gets old after awhile

If you want that kind of thread, perhaps you should start one called "why AI is terrible evil" or something to that effect. Might get real busy! If welcome, I'll make my argument once, then step off, but definitely continue to be interested in what everyone else is feeling.
 
TVvoodoo said:
@Sargeant Preston I don't want to be one to stifle discussion.
Click to expand...
You haven't exactly been very receptive of differences of opinions.
TVvoodoo said:
If you want that kind of thread, perhaps you should start one called "why AI is terrible evil" or something to that effect.
Click to expand...
I would never create such a thread, but if I did, I can guarantee you that I would be extremely tolerant of differences of opinions concerning Suno and AI.

And I would never resort to hitting
1765587895968.jpg
 
TVvoodoo said:
Nobody seemed to complain about Band-in-Box software which basically allowed musicians to do the same thing, and it's been around for over two decades.
Click to expand...
Back in the mid 90's, I got deep into MIDI. Programmed and tweaked lots of tracks and songs using Cubase. Got into adding stage lighting changes and effects changes etc. for live use. Also traded emails with the developer of Band-in-Box. That software had a little bit of a bad rap among MIDI purists, but it did save some time and was fun to play with. Quite a few options in it even then, and it's super deep now.
It turned a major corner when it added "real tracks". These are audio recordings of real instruments played by professional studio musicians that are integrated into the software. They are not synthesized samples or MIDI files, but actual full recordings designed to follow the user's chord progressions. The big difference today is how Suno can somehow add vocals, and generate plausible underlying songs. With Band-in-Box, the musician still has to enter chords.
 
TVvoodoo said:
The Renaissance, the Reformation, The Columbian Exchange, the Industrial revolution. We just happen to be in whatever is going on now, perhaps lucky, or maybe NOT AT ALL lucky to have front row seats to it. I'm sure if you ask the tech geeks behind the AI systems, they probably do feel it's a sort of art, or algorythmic alchemy.
Click to expand...
Speaking of classic art, it seems statues can be chiseled based on parameters, developed from a "style". If not already, very soon you could describe a statue you'd like to see in a style such as Bernini, and AI would create the 3D data. This would be fed into a CNC device to carve out real marble.
 

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