Today I heard Henry Mancini's "Blue Mantilla" closely followed by The Strangler's "Five Minutes".
Now I want to hear them combined!
Are there any models/services out there that could do a merge?
Manually it would take me forever just to line up the tempo & key, and that would still leave me with the mood-mixing issue.
Leave them in the yard!
After a lifetime being a little obsessed by stone carvings, European cathedrals etc, about 10 years ago I got to visit Carrara, where *that* marble comes from. Saw contemporary craftspeople at work. Got home, angle grinder on a river rock. Mallet & chisels. Truly awful result.
So I dumped it in the yard.
Now with the benefit of time, I'm quite tempted to leave it near some sacred site so folks will think it's a *good* Etruscan artifact.
For example, Henry Mancini's "Blue Mantilla" with The Stranglers "Five Minutes".
Earlier I saw a "what instrument?" request about a Mancini tune (was guiro). Just now I was reminded of an old punk track. Put them together.
The next that hijacked my head was Beethoven plus Acid House. But that way probably lies New Order.
I'm leaving my personal opinions aside here. I certainly don't mean to troll. For background, I have been experimenting with music for more than 45 years. My day job ended up being in computers, I had a very early interest in AI.
So ...
You are a musician. By definition, your output is sound (typically expressed in some secondary medium). It's made through some mix of cognitive processes, sensory-motor skills, very likely involving technology of some kind.
Your mental processes are a mix of nature & nurture.
I think we can leave aside nature for the sake of argument, talk of the nurture. You have listened to your lifetime's worth of sounds. Whether it be music in the traditional sense or incidental, it's all gone in.
When you, as a creative musician, wish to make a new piece of music, you draw on all that history. As an *experimental* musician, you try things out more than simply regurgitating a different version of what you did yesterday. Or do you?
Yes, we make conscious choices about the things we do, but those are also the product of our past experience.
Contrast with recent AI. Put crudely, the output is generally a product of what it has been trained on. A glorified database that happens to be rather good at spewing out things that resemble what it's heard.
But how are we, at a fundamental level, any different?
Or, better question, how is a person that exploits the glorified database any less creative than a person that say, can improvise jazz on Brahms?
Do you think humans have a qualia that differs from these machines? Are you prepared to accept the supernatural, like a soul?
More to the point, is a person that uses an Artificial Intelligence to create music lacking anything that you have internally?
Maybe it's just intellectual/artistic snobbery?
Go on, roast this argument and/or put up a stronger one (with which you might disagree).
Did I mention I have a new album out? I'm for sure an artistic snob.
I own a little field to the left. Not-me owns the buildings to the right. The bank there only appears to be supported by tree/shrub roots. It would be very bad for me financially if any of them fall over, or branches shred the roofs. I suspect the folks that own the building would welcome such a disaster, they live a distance away, never shown any interest in looking after the buildings.
I took down a couple of thin things a few years ago, also bought some climbing gear (discovered I kinda enjoy the rock thing, got a roof to fix too). Also bought the world's most rubbish electric chainsaw (bow saw has been quicker).
There were some really strong winds recently, put the fear of gods into me.
I'm confident I could get up there safely, single rope plus lots of slings around because a bit scaredy.
But I'm a bit overwhelmed. No idea where you would start.
What strategy?
Alongside the rise of AI-generated music there's also some serious pushback, very visible around Reddit.
I'm curious about people's opinions around here.
I've only had a brief play with systems like Suno, where the AI models create mostly from their memories of what they were trained in. It may be better with a pro account, but I found it both amazing and disappointing. Amazing because you get quasi-finished tracks out of thin air, disappointing because there's always a familiarity, heard it before.
Ok, that's an extreme case of machine-assist.
I've recently been working a lot recently with generative plugins. None (as yet) actually incorporates AI at run time, but they are algorithmic. I have a bass line generator that operates according to certain rules (genre, key, scale etc), another that does counterpoint against it, another that adds chords, another that sequences drums.
I also now have an AI vocalist. A friend sent me a speaking toy AI bot which is hooked up to a language model in China. So I've strapped it to a microphone. I can tell it a prompt and it delivers its response into the mic. Great fun.
So, thoughts?
A tool is just a tool, you should use anything you like, still legit (my personal opinion)? Or do you draw the line somewhere, some systems are somehow *wrong*?
Here's a video I recorded yesterday making a lot of use of the generative plugins, together with the AI vocals : https://youtu.be/CCkw3s7abps?is=mZqG7rjYsmWFYeqx
The generative plugins are around here : https://github.com/danja/downspout
I just released an album that uses some of the plugins here and there : https://github.com/danja/attone
I released a new album a couple of weeks ago so decided it was time to check analytics. No-one really has looked at the album, but 7.5k people have watched this from 2018. I'd completely forgotten about it.
A postscript, the poor choice of neck wood came back to bite me *again*, just a few months ago the headstock broke off *again*. A secondary problem also appeared, the neck had bowed forward a bit. More than you'd tolerate in a regular guitar, but on this - tune down a bit, still playable. And can always use a slide.
Right now my little workshop is a total mess so it's likely to be a while before fixing this up. I may just do the minimum possible and hang it on the wall as a decorative item & reminder of the lessons learned.
Btw, the album is experimental electronic, can be found over here : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcI4DK1XcRAHjA180H0dYr7Dvaju027RV&si=Ue8WOtMIsNm3HPFV
Today's little play, making much use of generative plugins, source over here : https://github.com/danja
That was years ago. New album : https://github.com/danja/attone
I just released an album, but since that all my attention has been elsewhere. This one is a bit of fun. Out of sync, but I can't be arsed re-doing it.
https://youtu.be/6pcYjxe\_Hag?is=uYBK1kO7QH2Lvvi7
Here's the album :
In online chat just now with an Italian friend, who is excellent with English on paper (not so much in speech), she came out with : "In the last weeks you have drinken more than before"
Which is such a perfect way of saying what she meant.
I'm originally northern English, so could come up with a dozen different euphemistic dialect and/or offensive ways of expressing that, but none would work quite so well.
Is it a word anywhere? (feels like it fits with Germanic, Old English syntax somehow). If not, why not?
All very experimental, mostly vibe-coded, rather unintuitive UIs, but there is already plenty to have fun with. Time to play, see what works and what doesn't.
https://github.com/danja/downspout
Feedback appreciated. Better still, please improve them youself! (Anyone kitted out and willing to build for Windows/Mac, let me know, I'll add you as a collaborator).
I used a lot of the same algorithms in earlier lv2 plugins on an album I just released : https://github.com/danja/attone
* bassgen: a transport-aware MIDI generator
* p-mix: a transport-aware probabilistic fader
* e-mix: a transport-aware Euclidean fader
* rift: a damage effect, invented by Codex
* drumgen: MIDI drum pattern generator
* cadence: MIDI harmonizer and comping generator
* counterpointer: a transport-aware MIDI counter-melody generator
* gremlin: a chaotic glitch instrument with live performance gestures
* gremlin-driver: a MIDI modulation and action sequencer for gremlin
* ground: long-form MIDI bass generator
I've been experimenting with music for a *long time*. Very much inspired by old school Krautrock.
My most recent play has involved getting AI to write generative software, which plays things (mostly DAW plugins).
This afternoon I was trying out the latest toys, it had *that sound* about it. So I picked up the guitar.
The VSTs are only done for my Linux setup so far, but it's all open source, if anyone cares to try on other systems.