This is ear-boggling. Have a listen to some of the music samples. Lyrics, instrumentation, vocals - all generated by AI.
It is and it is scary and should be useless. I just read a quote from someone saying:
want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.
What I'd really like is to be able to feed it chords - let's say I want two bars of CMaj7, then a bar of B half diminished then E7 .. and so on. Just tell it what I want in English like that. Ask it to make it sound like a jazz piano quartet but leave space for a guitar.
Then when it comes back with something you could say "good, but make the verse a bit more punchy and the whole thing a bit faster. Make it swing a bit more in the chorus".
It must be possible. Would be a fantastic compositional tool. Maybe it's already available. Actually Band in a Box can do that - sort of - but you can't give it instructions in natural English.
I love Rick Beato's videos. As someone who struggled with Cubase on my Atari, I am fascinated by successful manipulation and creation of music by machines. The weak individual in me loves the concept of AI being able to produce fresh music from my library of addiction. Imagine a new version of Circumstances which isn't a cover but instead new material with all those subtle variations and regularities, with a thick layer of young Geddy on top. However, the spiritual part of my makeup (which I refuse to let go of) is quite frightened by this. It does shout rather than whisper end-times to me. The prophesied period where nothing can be guaranteed as real, where truth is distorted beyond imagination, and where communication becomes almost impossible in a sea of babble. If it was controllable and measurable beyond reproach then it would be fine but unfortunately I believe it's a dangerous slippery slope to some disaster.
Picnic, your glass is always half empty.
Quote from: Slim on June 13, 2024, 07:21:48 PMPicnic, your glass is always half empty.
I totally agree.
This was on my YouTube feed this evening,
https://youtu.be/9dbHLy2z5J0?si=I7utB5jKjtGZKt12
As a lifelong fan of Queen I was stunned to discover this extended version of Lily Of The Valley, one of Freddie's greatest works. I find it quite difficult not to become emotional whenever I hear it. The original is very short so I was intrigued as to why additional verses would end up on the cutting room floor. The new parts took the song in a slightly different direction with the transition from the album version into the new territory slightly clumsy, as were some of the lyrics. I thought perhaps that is why they were discarded, Freddie being the utter perfectionist.
Then it dawned. It's AI. Very, very clever AI, but not from the mind of a genius but rather a piece of software. I find this extremely upsetting. Like trying to capture a human soul in a jar. We are on a dangerous road. No good can come of this.
Quote from: Slim on June 13, 2024, 01:35:37 PMWhat I'd really like is to be able to feed it chords - let's say I want two bars of CMaj7, then a bar of B half diminished then E7 .. and so on. Just tell it what I want in English like that. Ask it to make it sound like a jazz piano quartet but leave space for a guitar.
Then when it comes back with something you could say "good, but make the verse a bit more punchy and the whole thing a bit faster. Make it swing a bit more in the chorus".
It must be possible. Would be a fantastic compositional tool. Maybe it's already available. Actually Band in a Box can do that - sort of - but you can't give it instructions in natural English.
That's enormously exciting in principle, I just wonder if it's still an efficient use of time, as to explain the musical sound in your head to something that (presumably) doesn't have any intuition or empathy could be a laborious process. I'd love to try it though and see.
A few weeks ago I (long story short) used an AI app mentioned in the Image Creation thread to create a movie poster for a film idea I have; I had a firm concept and theme of the image I wanted and added more and more detail to my description, my expectation being of course that it would be progressively fine-tuned toward the end result I wanted. But I found that it had a habit of taking a step back rather than forwards and I ended up abandoning the whole process.
Beato went one step further, but what prompted me to watch this one is that I stumbled upon a flood of AI generated complete albums in genres I usually enjoy. But you hear something is
off. The Bison, as a band does not exist, and clearly Rival Sons' singer was copped here. But there is so much more of this generally generic crap out there, it's staggering.
The Bison:
Beato's take on creating AI music, and doing it himself:
That first Bison tune - you can hear something off in the performance - the guitar doesn't quite sound natural, in the same way that a drum machine doesn't quite sound human.
But as a hard rock tune - I'm totally buying it. I've heard a lot worse, actually I like it. The arrangement as well, can't fault it.
Right, so there's this channel that funk-ifies a lot of rock and metal. The latest is Whotesnake's Love Ain't No Stranger which I think is a lot of fun, You quickly grow tired of it, but that's an aside.
The earlier ones simply replaced entire lyrics, this doesn't which is why it is fun.
I've been using Suno (https://suno.com/) to create jingles for my DJ set in Second Life. I don't have an account so it's limited and I can't download, but I've been cheating with a soundcard recorder.
After a few goes I refined my prompt to this:
West Coast, yacht rock, 1970s California sound, male vocalist, laid back, AOR, horns, mellow
And man it's coming up with some beautiful stuff. Outstanding. I'm tempted to sign up just for music enjoyment purposes. Sorry musicians, it's over.
Quote from: Slim on January 26, 2026, 01:08:48 AMI've been using Suno (https://suno.com/) to create jingles for my DJ set in Second Life. I don't have an account so it's limited and I can't download, but I've been cheating with a soundcard recorder.
After a few goes I refined my prompt to this:
West Coast, yacht rock, 1970s California sound, male vocalist, laid back, AOR, horns, mellow
And man it's coming up with some beautiful stuff. Outstanding. I'm tempted to sign up just for music enjoyment purposes. Sorry musicians, it's over.
Nah, I don't agree. I firmly believe real music is something that only occurs when the hormonal stirrings of human puberty kick that segment of the brain into life, with peak creativity being in the period 5-10 years after onset. Plus or minus factors always being in play as all humans are different. Computers will never have that rush (sorry).
I think you're unwise to say "never". I don't believe that, today, a neural network could write a What a Fool Believes or a What You Won't Do For Love but I've already seen it come up with considerably better songs than most of the rubbish I hear these days written by humans. Better than anything on Vapor Trails or Snakes and Arrows, for that matter.
I'm not a musician and listen (more or less) exclusively to 'legacy' music so I don't really mind where this goes. However, I will feel regret for the thousands of musicians that will possibly become redundant as a result. Progress, eh?
I think some will persist. But professions becoming redundant is the stuff of history. Lift operators, TV repairmen, etc, Thinking about it, it may be a long time before AI takes a lot of the jobs it's threatened. How long have we had online newspapers now? Thirty years? But the physical newspapers still make it to the newsagents shops, so the print workers haven't all disappeared.
There's one important thing about music, which is that some musicians become the focus of a cult. The guy who plays the keyboards on Sainsburys adverts or sitcom theme tunes can be replaced by AI and no-one would notice or care, but Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift? People want to buy into the person, the artist.
Which makes me think actually that the present generation doesn't really have purely instrumental heroes - no Ritchie Blackmore or Keith Emerson, no John Bonham, no John Entwistle.
Quote from: Slim on January 26, 2026, 02:34:31 PMI think you're unwise to say "never". I don't believe that, today, a neural network could write a What a Fool Believes or a What You Won't Do For Love but I've already seen it come up with considerably better songs than most of the rubbish I hear these days written by humans. Better than anything on Vapor Trails or Snakes and Arrows, for that matter.
I think there was consensus on here before when a few of us debated when people write their best material. I think VT and S&N were closer to male menopause than their pubescent days.
I don't think, or maybe hope is a better way of expressing it, that artificial means will ever have that magical spark of actual humanity. Call it from the soul, an expression I guess you won't agree with.
Well I don't believe in a "soul" in the religious sense, but as a metaphor for an emotional and personal core, yes. Some music does come from that but a lot doesn't.
Quote from: Slim on January 26, 2026, 06:40:13 PMI think some will persist. But professions becoming redundant is the stuff of history. Lift operators, TV repairmen, etc, Thinking about it, it may be a long time before AI takes a lot of the jobs it's threatened. How long have we had online newspapers now? Thirty years? But the physical newspapers still make it to the newsagents shops, so the print workers haven't all disappeared.
There's one important thing about music, which is that some musicians become the focus of a cult. The guy who plays the keyboards on Sainsburys adverts or sitcom theme tunes can be replaced by AI and no-one would notice or care, but Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift? People want to buy into the person, the artist.
Which makes me think actually that the present generation doesn't really have purely instrumental heroes - no Ritchie Blackmore or Keith Emerson, no John Bonham, no John Entwistle.
I don't think when teenagers fall in love, smoke weed or take LSD they have any desire to fix a TV or wish that bus conductors would make a comeback, but I think they will always want to write words and music and express that undefinable thing within us. I don't think the guitar will ever die. Even now we can plug it into a computer and create sounds the 70s could only dream of via software but I think we'll always be the hardware.
It will end up being both:
One big commercial money making machine churning out AI tunes and making the non talented rich, which is what happens always.
And one group that keeps making music as means of expression. This will be the music that preserves the urgency that makes it exciting to listen to.
In situations like these I always think of the late 60s, early 70s. The Who played live as if they could fall apart at any moment, but it didn't. It felt like it and that felt urgent, real and imperfect.
Then came the 70s, and the Eagles (and Zeppelin luckily). And the Eagles are driven, calculated and designed to please. I hate the Eagles, but there is an audience for it.
This is similar, there is an audience for AI generated music. But it's not me.
Quote from: Thenop on January 26, 2026, 08:45:54 PMIt will end up being both:
One big commercial money making machine churning out AI tunes and making the non talented rich, which is what happens always.
And one group that keeps making music as means of expression. This will be the music that preserves the urgency that makes it exciting to listen to.
In situations like these I always think of the late 60s, early 70s. The Who played live as if they could fall apart at any moment, but it didn't. It felt like it and that felt urgent, real and imperfect.
Then came the 70s, and the Eagles (and Zeppelin luckily). And the Eagles are driven, calculated and designed to please. I hate the Eagles, but there is an audience for it.
This is similar, there is an audience for AI generated music. But it's not me.
The question is: would you be able to discern whether it was AI generated or otherwise? If so, how?
I think this is OK:
https://suno.com/song/6b4aa8ad-6fc3-4e22-9484-b6235117daee
Quote from: pxr5 on April 22, 2026, 02:32:37 PMI think this is OK:
https://suno.com/song/6b4aa8ad-6fc3-4e22-9484-b6235117daee
Extremely polished and very musical. I quite like it and if it had played in the background without any pointers to AI I would have accepted it as a conventional production.
However, I'm glad I can still pick up on certain non human-like instances. It's a bit like the top of the range Yamaha or Korg arranger keyboard workstations. The sound emulations are incredible, almost indiscernible from a real acoustic instrument, and then there's a weird background to a trumpet trill or something like that.
Maybe I'm kidding myself and I'm just finding something that's not there because I've been alerted to the AI input, but I hope they never quite get there. Rick Beato's kids seem to be able to spot AI immediately when someone of Rick's musical stature can't.
Only suspected this might be AI about three minutes in - gorgeous early '60s soundtrack style.