AI Thread

Just used that to make a stoner rock song about a cat.

It's incredible

https://www.udio.com/songs/cNwpPi5vNMxYGyTN2ogc79

Ironhide wrote:Just used that to make a stoner rock song about a cat.

It's incredible

https://www.udio.com/songs/cNwpPi5vNMxYGyTN2ogc79

I actually really like it

That's pretty good. There is a song someone did about a friend who shat his pants at work.

Did a bit of work on it and the results are pretty good.

https://www.udio.com/songs/iVeWF2Th5z2Wun9rNzMG9v

I'm quite surprised by that tbh. It could just be because I enjoy stoner rock.

Doom metal song about a haunted toaster

https://www.udio.com/songs/qawM6DkpFJRoJvKFr9F5qA

What I find most interesting is that it resembles super lo-fi, unproduced, pretty much half baked noise doom nonsense. With time signatures all over the place to the extent they sound almost random but there's some sense of cohesion to it pretty much only because the musicians are interacting with each other to some extent. For the AI, it might be a way to mask most of its imperfections (and to be honest, IRL, that's often the case, because it's not meant to be anywhere close to finished or perfect).

I say so because it's not unlike one of my own tracks "My Name Is No-one".

Which I think at some point I start gutturally screaming/shouting about something "under the floor // beneath the ceiling".

And something else about "I came into your house with a bag full of beans // They crawl up your ventricles, if you know what I mean".

"I came into your house with a bag full of beans // They grow and split into these trees // The trees they speak to me // Of their hollow bodies // They tell me of the nightmares they've seen // The nightmares they've seen // Inside of your spleen / I came into your house with a bag full of beans."

"I came into your house with a bag full of beans // They ruptured your veins // If you know what I mean // My arms they split, and grew into trees // But still no matter // Nobody knows me // My name is no-one."

I've never transcribed these lyrics. What

I'm on the endless sustain / doom guitar btw. There's one other guitarist who when I'm not singing is endlessly hitting bum notes with loads of delay effects .

The drummer is not a drummer. That's actually a fairly bad bassist.

BUT it's still interesting in places.

https://soundcloud.com/tbsblast/i-came- ... x-sessions



I like my cover art, I took that at an aquarium.

You might legitimately enjoy that track Ironhide. Just beware it's 14 minutes long

Let me know if you survive.

I'll listen to it tomorrow when my earbuds have recharged, don't think anyone else in the house will appreciate it.

Ironhide wrote:I'll listen to it tomorrow when my earbuds have recharged, don't think anyone else in the house will appreciate it.

Likely not it's a true test of endurance.

honestly it's an art rock project, it's mostly nonsense, but an excellent catharsis from any kind of rules. I still play in rough "rubato" time and with a pretty rough harmony, melodies and other basic gooseberry fool obviously, otherwise it wouldn't be music, I've done all the orderly/genre stuff before so it's outside of that.

I was just repeating sections trying to write the lyrics (which are all improvised and mostly gibberish), and I've genuinely just strawberry floated the left speaker on my laptop . The right one already had issues so I'd disabled it by setting the balance to about 20% volume on the right speaker only. Now they are both distorted and utterly strawberry floated.

I really is a sonic weapon ffs

I genuinely hear stuff on 6 music at about 2am that resembles some of the more focused tracks so I'll get back into it at some point. I don't have the band anymore because two of them were massive dickheads and the other one disappeared to run an LED business but I wrote most of the material while recording/producing all of it, and I've recently got two excellent guitar amps that can achieve the kinds of massive tones I enjoyed messing around with in studios.

It's completely different in a band dynamic versus tracking stuff at home (even live), but I'll come up with refined versions of some of these ideas one day as I basically own the copyright (not that it's worth anything). I've never really deliberately listened to "doom metal" or other fringe genres like that, so it's interesting to come at it from the perspective of an "AI" trying to do that and I'm like, hang on, this is familiar... (to stuff I've done trying to be genreless or going into it with no expectation to produce anything specific whatsoever, besides literally just noise for fun).

Green Gecko wrote:Which I think at some point I start gutturally screaming/shouting about something "under the floor // beneath the ceiling".

Actually that's this one: https://soundcloud.com/tbsblast/interio ... x-sessions



This one a lot more synth drone etc. If you can endure another 12 minutes. It's a bit more chilled out/ambient actually, especially at the start.

"Under the mattress // Under the wall // Three blind mice // Writing on a star // Three blind mice // Riding on a star // Beneath the ceiling // Under the mattress // Beneath the walls"

Honestly I have no idea.

Noise can definitely be art, music doesn't have to have deep meaning nor does it have to be saleable to have value to person making it (with or without A.I).

Ironhide wrote:Noise can definitely be art, music doesn't have to have deep meaning nor does it have to be saleable to have value to person making it (with or without A.I).

I appreciate that.

I formally make loads of refined kinds of art forms, if I can say so myself. The antiphony of that is often way way more interesting, and fun.

I was in a 5 piece band that started playing quite big venues locally when I was 12 to 16 years old, as a songwriter/singer/guitarist and bassist. At that age they were honestly pretty competent, of course that's how we sent out tapes and got gigs.

After 12 years playing classical guitar and stuff after that, I just wanted to play whatever the strawberry float I wanted or what came to mind. It was a very deliberate thing. Most people will struggle to understand that, but it's some of most interesting stuff I've ever committed to tape and, given the same specific circumstances (including genuine, literal madness), possibly ever will. It's not like the pressure to do commercially viable stuff as you get older lessens, but like I say, I'll revisit it in various forms.

You've got to take away basically any kind of rules/influences/direction/intentions/wants/ideals/goals to be creative at all sometimes. That's why I find it rewarding and quietly funny when I see bands with massive followings and radio airplay doing similar things now, all that really changed with their persistence and/or platforms.

It's unfortunate that band was hopeless in various ways, but nothing can ever take away the effort I put in (and I really put it in) to capture it because I felt it was important to.

Anyway, one day I'll release some kind of anthology of literally hundreds of noise rock tracks like that, some of which is surprisingly competent jazz/fusion stuff.

Put that alongside some of my deliberate/focused/intentional playing and it's showing a massive versatility. When I was around 16, I'd get visibly upset and even angry if I wasn't able to improvise and go with the flow - I completely smashed that to pieces and now I'm able to play well even in professional jazz clubs.

I might experiment with some of the AI stuff just to see what a computer comes up with. When we are measuring that against human-made music, it's a new way to think about what "good" music is or not - if we can be even tongue-in-cheek impressed or inspired by what an AI does, what does that mean for the value of all the unpolished nonsense I did for something like 12 years (just in this one project, it's definitely the most prolific one though).

Edit: I just listened to the end of that "Interior Architecture" recording and it's literally about 2 minutes of me playing a strange melody increasingly slowly, like turning down the tempo on something gradually until it's almost indiscernible as a melody at all That's a strawberry floating great bit of expression, and silliness. That's the kind of thing I think AI will struggle to do, because how can it decide, I'm going to do this strange, nonsensical thing with time just to strawberry float with it. Like, how can it rebel against constant or regular time, to challenge itself technically, and to comment on time division / tempo / regularity itself?

Conceptual stuff like that I can imagine would be really difficult because it requires a conscious thought about the medium itself, while doing it.

My name is no-one

Well that was certainly a bit... odd, but not entirely awful. The main thing that I'd have any (healthy) criticism of would be the overall sound mix (I imagine there's loads of post processing involved when recording something intended for sale).

I quite like the overall tension and atmosphere with the rambling towards the end though, kind of resembles Pearl Jam's heyfoxymophandlemama with the unsettling mood.

Think my ears need a short break now though.

Seem to have inadvertently generated an 80's goth pop song here

https://www.udio.com/songs/uRtbcrenrH8rgweW1pRH2r

Gets a bit incoherent towards the end mind.

Ironhide wrote:My name is no-one

Well that was certainly a bit... odd, but not entirely awful. The main thing that I'd have any (healthy) criticism of would be the overall sound mix (I imagine there's loads of post processing involved when recording something intended for sale).

I quite like the overall tension and atmosphere with the rambling towards the end though, kind of resembles Pearl Jam's heyfoxymophandlemama with the unsettling mood.

Think my ears need a short break now though.

Haha thanks for listening! And congrats, you survived. I love your review, back in the day I would publish it "... odd". I'll check that out.

Honestly I don't recall really doing any mixing or mastering (there's pretty much nothing there to mix with ). If I did, it was applied to about 2 hours of material with nothing done specifically for any of the cuts. The set up was just two (very good to be fair) overhead drum mics and two rear room mics going direct into a recording interface - essentially quadrophonic. So it's a live recording and that's the sound of the room. So it's going to be awful objectively, but subjectively, it is honest and raw.

I might not be remembering correctly but it certainly wasn't multi-tracked or mic'd up properly (whenever I did do that it was either too much equipment or too much time, the band would just complain about sound checking everything), just a room recording giving the total possible dynamics of about 4 "louder or less loud" and a bit of EQ and multi-brand compression slapped onto the end. What we played was, of course, unrehearsed, on the spot, improvised nonsense. This meant the "front" two mics (in two corners) were picking up two guitar amps, a bass amp, a PA, and an entire drum kit at a distance (hence why I had two drum overheads as well, which would also be picking up loads of overspill from the amps, with no particular definition between any of the drums or cymbals). That's super messy and it shows.

The synth (if there is one) is via the room's PA which is chaotic as strawberry float, as well as the vocal (not recorded directly) - generally there will be phase issues and early reflections constantly. The room had a bit of treatment but it's pretty much reverb hell in there. A pretty small room too.

So it's basically only as good as you could expect from a live recording of a band in a tiny pub or something (maybe worse, because at least that is live mixed on a PA with individual sources and then you're just recording the stereo mix of that, or a mirror of it when facing the left/right PA speakers).

It was also LOUD and bassy of course - always problematic. So much bass going on muddies up a recording; then you've got to really tightly record instruments with a small pick-up pattern, record in separate rooms, multi-track, or use 100% amp modelling, pre-amps, re-amping, basically silent with headphones - apart from the drums that obviously can't be silent. You then add back in reverb or a room mic later on so you can "dial in" how much ambient room noise / reverb you want.

The earlier stuff actually was multi-tracked (8 tracks I think) on a computer and live mixer, but using some of the shittest equipment around, later on it's just plugging stuff in in a rehearsal room and getting on with it - or you're paying for 3 hours of fiddling with things. They (the actually micro-tracked recordings) can sound objectively pretty good (i.e. "clean") all things considered, but the material was, well, bad a lot of the time.

I've never uploaded anything I would consider finished on my personal stuff either (that account alone is just for live recordings we mostly shared with each other and some friends).

The mix is still not very good, but some much more refined guitar playing (more in keeping with what I play "normally", besides the classical stuff), a much much better drummer, and leaning into jazz rock, would be this (far more pleasant, and over 8 years before - 12 years ago now!). It's also "only" about 5 minutes long:

https://soundcloud.com/tbsblast/the-word-of-anji



But then there's the same motif / "piece" leaning into trashy, nasty, noise rock/metal territory again: https://soundcloud.com/tbsblast/anji-de ... rning-from



(That painting is me having tripped over a wrapped up guitar cable and my drummer stepping on me. We were nice to each other...)

This is a relatively pretty bit of improvised guitar duet with a drummer who isn't totally out of their depth, but based on a Latin American guitar piece called Milonga by Cardoso but going a bit jazzy and alt/rock fusion with some odd techniques I've developed (a gooseberry fool load of hammer-ons and slurs but with entire chords). So it's much more consistent, there are a few short runs in this that I still find quite compelling and I struggle to play even now: https://soundcloud.com/tbsblast/milonga-en-suite

And finally, if you did see any value in My Name Is No-One (most people understandably won't), this is a more cohesive overall vibe and "developmental" piece of music, still more of a soundscape and/or vibe/atmos thingy though. It's definitely psychedelic, a different session, this time only me on the guitar and the same guys but on bass and drums (and again, not a drummer): https://soundcloud.com/tbsblast/a-steady-swelling

All of those are stereo recordings from dictaphone style devices - they've just placed somewhere in the room, turned on, and that's it. A bit of EQ and loudness/normalisation is all that can be applied.

Picking up on your comment, the tension and atmosphere is something I've been working with for a very long time and is basically the signature of that sound (or "band", I do think focusing on that kind of darkness came about from my involvement thought), I'm really pleased to hear that! It's some pretty dark music in places and it did admittedly help me when we were doing that regularly with my depression etc as I could speak to that from the belly, sing mostly nonsense and at least know where I was coming from. The kind of deranged poetry and stories is a common theme coming from other band members too to describe pretty much despair, conflict, isolation and inner tension, some other themes, I'm confident nothing we ever sung about was positive - we were all oddballs to be fair.

I appreciate just someone having something to say about some of my most avant garde stuff - it's been years. Thanks!

I have way better home recording equipment and (of course) time to refine things for "official" release, and my personal sound is far more deliberate (although I definitely improvise and then later on refine parts). Of course, I couldn't help but share it on here one day.

I Came Into Your House was kind of stressful to listen to, which I think is what you were going for. I think it's cool that it pulled off that kind of disturbing vibe, particularly in the second half. Interesting track, probably won't listen again. (You can put that on your reviews page. )

But... I actually really liked A Steady Swelling! Not a musician so it's hard to put into words, but I enjoyed how the mood shifted over time, and how your melody gradually 'overtook' the rhythm. It was cool!

Thanks! Yeah, that's one of the better tracks I managed to record with those too. And maybe even had potential.

The lo-fi nature of the recording or something to do with the room acoustics managed to create this weird swell in the bass notes, which actually isn't something coming from the bass guitar at all (it can't do that), or an effect, it's something to do with either the recorder or the acoustics, possibly a kind of phase cancellation effect (producing an effect similar to, well, a phaser, but it happened organically, with zero processing, which is itself interesting). Hence the name, "A Steady Swelling".

It does start with that rhythm (which is almost transparent, non-present, or something) and then over time I figure something out on the guitar that was never played before and never played again either.

I Came Into Your House / My Name Is No-One is about as close as I've ever gotten to actual guttural metal shouting , my entire voice changed to a very, very low (far below my usual register) bass, similar to Tom Waits - when that happens, I just run with it. The fact that improvising a piece of music with a dark tone can physically change your voice and make that darker is quite fun. It's a bit scary, and really speaks to the kind of place I might go to or feel if I'm particularly ill, or in need of catharsis (which is largely what that is, I can pretty much completely unmask and do/play/sing/shout whatever the hell I want).

And yeah towards the second half, I'm basically saying "nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody nobody quite like me" as fast as I possibly can. And then "nobody anybody nobody anybody nobody anybody nobody anybody etc".

Then it devolves into just stating the chords, "B flat // E minor // B flat // E minor" as if I've given up on saying anything and am just hopelessly, nihilistically saying the chords, like a comment on how trivial this all is.

I probably won't do a reviews page, because the band is kind of dead (after two of them where incredibly abusive and queerphobic towards me), but two of my favourite "reviews" from the past were, "This reminds me of Punch and Judy" (from a stoner friend, what ), "I thought you had to be on drugs to make that kind of music" (promoter), and "It's some of the most horrible music I've listened to in years... But it's brilliant" (one of the technicians at college).

It is exactly what I'm/we're going for because, in brief, it's not a product. And yet, learning more about the kinds of music in that style that are at least moderately to really successful... I guess it is.

So that's, "kind of stressful ... disturbing vibe ... interesting, probably won't listen again."

The fact it won't be listened to again, is fitting! It was played once, recorded once, and was only ever really intended to exist once. That's the irony of recording. A multiplicity of things that can only really be heard or felt while there, possibly while participating... a collective kind of madness. Well, I guess I've been proven wrong, because some of those emotions translate!

Thank you, I have listened back to some of these things maybe 10, 20, 30 or more times as a personal kind of meditation, to uncover layers and rediscover things I like I or don't like... But I rarely expect anyone to take the time to dive into something so unpolished (I'm basically saying, hey, this isn't very good... You can't then expect an audience, I prefer an unwitting audience, one that steps back afterwards in recoil, saying effectively, "what the strawberry float just happened?")

In fairness, with actual rehearsed songs, the few live shows we played were received well because they were completely different and it was exciting.

I'm going to solo some experimental small venues with electronic blended stuff in the next couple of months, I'll try to get some recordings as I have never "put together" any meaningfully live or considered music entirely of my own. Or if I did, I forgot. I was in another band at school that was (for 12 to 16 year olds) pretty good blues/rock/grunge 5 piece... With three guitarists .

(Bearing in mind at least 66 to 80% or even more of what's in these recordings is other people I have no control over and are often playing random stuff.)

Edit: I just listened a bit to A Steady Swelling again and if you listen at exactly the 3 minute mark the recorder I'd literally taped to the wall falls off onto the floor and someone has to hastily stick it back up again

It's hard for me to listen to that. Because that's actually my partner who sat in for the session with these two not especially refined musicians playing mostly random gooseberry fool, and it's her sticking the recorder back up (I can't imagine I managed to do that at the same time as playing some riffs). What I would give to go back 12 years, but I know that's not healthy (I can't pick an emoji for this).

I put this together. I got a bit self-indulgent at the end with the guitar. I have no musical ability so this is fun to play with

https://www.udio.com/songs/rTDmtoLnL5ZniwhU2WYxjt

Outrunner wrote:I put this together. I got a bit self-indulgent at the end with the guitar. I have no musical ability so this is fun to play with

https://www.udio.com/songs/rTDmtoLnL5ZniwhU2WYxjt

That's actually not bad, Did you write the lyrics as they seem a lot more coherent than what it's been generating for me.

Ironhide wrote:

Outrunner wrote:I put this together. I got a bit self-indulgent at the end with the guitar. I have no musical ability so this is fun to play with

https://www.udio.com/songs/rTDmtoLnL5ZniwhU2WYxjt

That's actually not bad, Did you write the lyrics as they seem a lot more coherent than what it's been generating for me.

Thanks!. No, I just used the prompts but I did go through several iterations, some of the lyrics in other versions were less coherent.

I was recently in Japan for my field trip module and for my project I went on the Yamanote loop line collecting the station stamps. Here's a completely accurate account of how it went.

https://www.udio.com/songs/nGYJbxMAMah7ZmqNyCPgS8