AI generated music… is this where we’re heading?

[Geoff]

2 hours ago, Darkstone said:

Yeah, I've written 5 tracks so far that I'm very happy with.

When I get to about 10 or 12, I'm gonna seriously muck around with artwork and try to present them as an album.

I agree with Glen, that finding the time is the hardest thing.

Cheers to both of you for posting your tracks, I wish more members would embrace this.

 

 

Haha, I have the artwork for my album 'The '99 to '01 Sessions' on my laptop as we speak. Still tossing up whether to bother or not. I keep re-listening to the songs and second guessing, lol. 

But yeah, the pasting your final lyrics into Suno and creating songs is super quick and easy. It's finding the time to write lyrics and even the aftermath, sorting the winner from the rest can be quite time consuming. But yeah, when and where do you find time to write lyrics is the main obstacle. Especially when we are just doing it for fun... hard to justify spending too much time on this stuff.

I have 11 from this year that I'm pretty content with. Still hopeful, though, that others will push them out of their slots for my final 2024 "album."

2 hours ago, Darkstone said:

Don't forget, it's only early days with this stuff.

I have no doubt that very soon you'll be able to isolate a particular voice from existing tracks and use that as a default for future songs.

Yeah, I'd love that feature. To select a particular voice from one of your stand-out tracks and just say "use this one every time."

2 hours ago, Darkstone said:

I've found that you can include many bracketed prompts on the lyrics page to have more control over the finished product, from the type of voice to certain musical segments. 

It makes the lyrics page look ugly, but you can remove them with the "edit displayed lyrics" option.

Keep it simple with the "Style" options, but use heaps of brackets amongst the lyrics to sculpt it the way you want it.

 

Yeah, the [brackets] I find best for prompts such as verse, chorus, bridge, solo, instrumental, breakdown (which it never does, lol) etc. 

The (brackets) are best for backing vocals, I found. 

I used to do a lot more prompts in [brackets] but especially on [pre-chorus] I was constantly finding it would repeat the pre-chorus twice in the first verse before the chorus and it was pissing me off so much, especially on otherwise good cuts. I found that when I started removing the [pre-chorus] there have been far, far less un-requested repeated sections within verses. 

2 hours ago, Darkstone said:

You know that you can use the "re-use prompt" option to bring up the lyrics for a particular song, tweak them and then generate another song?

Of course, it won't be the same song, which is annoying, but I reckon that will be a possibility down the not too distant track.

Yeah mate, I use re-use prompt feature all the time. But like you say, sadly, it never re-creates the song as it was, but a completely new version.

I agree that there is surely a day not too far away where you can tweak final versions of the song without creating a different one altogether. If and when that day comes I will rejoice heavily.

I have my 14 favourite songs I'm thinking of putting in my 'The '99 to '01 Sessions' album but I am not even remotely kidding that there's probably at least 5 things about every single song that I would change if I could. Whether it be a particular ultra-cringe lyric, a mispronounced word (read, should be red, mis-spelt or not), a non-plural word that should be a plural (time instead of times), accidentally typing ti instead of it... all these tiny little things which stick out like a sore thumb and are so minor and seemingly easy to fix, in light of the technology at hand, yet for now you just have to grin and bare it, or completely re-do the whole song, which, 9.5 out of 10 times then loses the magic of the "original."

But will I hold off and await this progression, or just release my scraps as a moment in time? Still deciding. 

[Geoff]

In terms of the time thing, I often find myself just dropping something quick to have the thrill of something new to listen to the following day in my car at work.

I just thought of the first two lines of this chorus in the shower last night, and penned the song (kind of, on my way to unexpected sleep) in about 20mins afterwards. And that's how I find I mostly do it these days. 9/10 times they're pretty throwaway songs and I definitely find the most "worthwhile" songs actually resonate in some way with you... but every now and then one of the "throw-away" ones come out pretty cool. Though this was pretty irritable, to be fair. 

I penned this one and then typed in 5 different prompt variations, always hinting at something more uptempo, and of the 10 versions of this song I only have two up-tempo ones. Most of them were completely unprompted ballads. In the "early days" I found the reverse, that you really had to make sure you typed "ballad" to get a slower version of the song. Now I don't know the prompts to use to make sure I get an uptempo song because typing "uptempo" doesn't even work, lol. 

Anyway, this was the tune I fell asleep on last night and finished this morning as I was doing school lunches. Pretty content with the final cut. Was catchier and far more hard rock riff driven in my head, but it's a fair crack;

https://suno.com/song/aa5e5c87-032e-471c-997a-287da1df5a42

 

[Geoff]

Haha, okay, it's done. Don't know what I'll do with this link, but I thought why not post it here, at least.

I've compiled a few of these AI generated tracks (all with my own cringey lyrics) as an album to see how it looks. Hesitant to share the link anywhere but here and maybe my brothers, but it's kind of like my photography, I guess. I have a website if it ever becomes "a thing," not that I ever guide anyone there. And I think this will be like that too. It's uploaded and it's there, and if you want to check out what I've been playing around with on Suno AI, here's an album of some of the "better" outcomes from my 25-year-old lyrics. 

I have it in my head that each year I'll compile the best new songs for an "album" too, so it'll be fun to compare that to this one. 

Lyrically, I was in a place I will (thankfully, lol) never be again so as bad as these lyrics are, they capture a moment in time and it is what it is. Anyway, if you want a good laugh, check out the link;

EDIT - and yes, of course I considered - heavily - adding a "w" to the end the the project name. 

Edited 17 hours ago by Geoff

[Darkstone]

5 hours ago, Geoff said:

Haha, okay, it's done. Don't know what I'll do with this link, but I thought why not post it here, at least.

I've compiled a few of these AI generated tracks (all with my own cringey lyrics) as an album to see how it looks. Hesitant to share the link anywhere but here and maybe my brothers, but it's kind of like my photography, I guess. I have a website if it ever becomes "a thing," not that I ever guide anyone there. And I think this will be like that too. It's uploaded and it's there, and if you want to check out what I've been playing around with on Suno AI, here's an album of some of the "better" outcomes from my 25-year-old lyrics. 

I have it in my head that each year I'll compile the best new songs for an "album" too, so it'll be fun to compare that to this one. 

Lyrically, I was in a place I will (thankfully, lol) never be again so as bad as these lyrics are, they capture a moment in time and it is what it is. Anyway, if you want a good laugh, check out the link;

EDIT - and yes, of course I considered - heavily - adding a "w" to the end the the project name. 

That's great mate.

That's exactly what I want to do with my tracks.

Is the artwork AI generated? 

What's the meaning behind the name?

[Geoff]

2 hours ago, Darkstone said:

That's great mate.

That's exactly what I want to do with my tracks.

Is the artwork AI generated? 

What's the meaning behind the name?

Thanks mate.

Yeah, you will actually be able to put yours on Bandcamp and have them available for download if you wish, as you're on the paid plan. My preference was to put it on Bandcamp too, but being that everything I've done is on the free account. I'm limited to Soundcloud and any similar streaming services - Youtube too, if I wanted. But you'll have a lot more freedom to do what you wish with yours. 

Yeah mate, artwork definitely AI generated, just to keep on theme, lol. I use bing.com for AI generated artworks. It's great for images, but incredibly useless with text, so I just save my favourite image and then bring it into photoshop and add text. And increase file size too, as files saved from Bing are very small. 

Haha, the name. It's something I came up with in an instant when I downloaded my first tracks and started rating them (to sort keepers from duds) and I needed a way to identify them asap and that's what I came up with. 100% thought it was temporary and I'd move on it asap, but here we are and I've just decided to stick with it. 

The main think I wanted to acknowledge is how small my contribution is to this. One could argue, 1/5 of all this is actually me. Which is the g. AI is making it very clear to anyone and everyone that this is an AI project, as I am not a fan of the projects that are making the rounds these days where you look at it and wonder if it's AI or not, and often there seems to be an effort to conceal the fact that it's AI generated music. Didn't want any illusions about that. And the 'no' is just adding a part of Suno into the name, which is the actual reason for all this. Plus, to me, it has some kind of stupid, childish lol factor too, so I thought why not? Like I say, I considered adding a 'w' on the end for proper lol factor, but that'd not be very politically correct. More to the point I thought it was a but unnecessary. 

But in a nutshell, the name is a meshing together of Geoff+AI+Suno. 

[Darkstone]

5 hours ago, Geoff said:

Yeah mate, artwork definitely AI generated, just to keep on theme, lol. I use bing.com for AI generated artworks. It's great for images, but incredibly useless with text, so I just save my favourite image and then bring it into photoshop and add text. And increase file size too, as files saved from Bing are very small. 

I'll have to check out Bing. 

I definitely think you're album is worthy of its own thread... "gAIno - The '99 to '01 Sessions (2024)".

I have absolutely no idea what it would cost these days to get some sort of ultra limited run of CDs created, but if you ever do, then I'll be expecting a signed copy.

As for your contribution to the songs, don't underestimate it. I reckon it's more 25%, rather than 20%.

I would say that the music we love basically consists of 4 elements. The lyrics, the music, the melody and the production. You're definitely responsible for a quarter of each track and lyrics can be arguably the most important element. 

I don't have enough songs yet for an album, but I have enough for a 5 track "Darkstone" EP. I think I'm gonna start concentrating on artwork. If I can manage to create something presentable, I'll post it here.

Thanks for the tips. 

Speaking of tips, I'd be interested to know what some of your "go to" prompts are and which ones you've had the most success.

Edited 3 hours ago by Darkstone

[Darkstone]

On 9/23/2024 at 6:09 PM, Darkstone said:

The Heavens Sent Me You - Darkstone (2024) 😉.

100% my lyrics and structure.

I did a few versions of this track which were great, here's two.

I know Geoff and Glen have embraced this and have created many tunes featuring their own lyrics.

I wish they'd post them.

C'mon guys.

 

https://suno.com/song/667a8d12-a03a-422b-9dd9-19a2aee3efe4

 

 

https://suno.com/song/7f093862-0ee4-4b21-83ee-99438df2982c

 

This is another version of that track, a ballad this time.

Very, very soft and soppy, but it's one of the rare successful duets I've created.

 

 

 

https://suno.com/song/31c2f1f7-d275-4404-9371-f3dcd93e44f5

[Geoff]

2 hours ago, Darkstone said:

I'll have to check out Bing. 

I definitely think you're album is worthy of its own thread... "gAIno - The '99 to '01 Sessions (2024)".

I have absolutely no idea what it would cost these days to get some sort of ultra limited run of CDs created, but if you ever do, then I'll be expecting a signed copy.

As for your contribution to the songs, don't underestimate it. I reckon it's more 25%, rather than 20%.

I would say that the music we love basically consists of 4 elements. The lyrics, the music, the melody and the production. You're definitely responsible for a quarter of each track and lyrics can be arguably the most important element. 

I don't have enough songs yet for an album, but I have enough for a 5 track "Darkstone" EP. I think I'm gonna start concentrating on artwork. If I can manage to create something presentable, I'll post it here.

Thanks for the tips. 

Speaking of tips, I'd be interested to know what some of your "go to" prompts are and which ones you've had the most success.

Yeah, I like Bing for what it is... like I say, as long as you don't need to include text. 

Haha, I did think of creating a thread. Maybe. We'll see. I'm still very sheepish to share it anywhere with the lyrics from what seems like a lifetime ago. I persisted as it's a snapshot of a moment in time, but still very cringey, though. Will be interesting to see my mindset when I drop albums with new songs.

Thanks for the pre-order of the CD. I'll keep that in mind when drafting up expenses.

I do actually agree that a vital part of a song is the lyrics, and there is no doubt that when you construct lyrics you're directing them towards a melody in your head, that I find Suno picks up on to some degree, especially if you space the words/sentences/lines out in a certain manner. I've particularly noticed with my newly written songs I can sculpt where I want the melody to go with more effectiveness. I have one song (out of a lot, lol) which is more or less exactly as I imagined it bar some barely audible lyrics in the outro... but the rest is more of less right from my head.  

Anyway, I was making a point. I do agree that lyrics are a massive part of a song. To me, they're incredibly important. I guess the point I was making with regards to my older songs, is that because I have such a low opinion of my lyrics, they're contributing less to the song as they're the worst part, imo, and the good parts are all done by the AI, is my point, lol. But to my point above, I should admit that the lyrics - good or bad - are the reason for the rest of it. So who knows? 

I'll look forward to your EP, artwork and all. 

I wouldn't worry too much about my prompts as every time I hear one of your works I'm always like, "how is he getting these killer riffs with such simple prompts?" lol. So I think it's working for you. But to answer your question, I actually got deep into it early on and set aside my favourite 20 songs (from my earlier batches) and I marked off in a spreadsheet what the most common prompts were across those 20 songs. Before I tell you my findings, keep in mind I then used these prompts to hopefully get all killer songs afterwards, and it doesn't work that way. Even if you use the same prompts 2-3 times in a row you'll notice some curveball results, and I get the impression it doesn't work well with continuous identical prompts. 

Anyway, some of my go-to prompts are "melodic hard rock," "big chorus," (or catchy, or huge), heavy or intense guitar riffs, "emotive vocals" though vocals are hit and miss and don't seem to have anything to do with prompts. I now generally typoe "male vocals" as the un-prompted female vocal results were giving me the shits. Though I have noticed when I type in other favourite prompts of mine like "sleaze metal" or "glam metal" you can get some pretty shrieky kind of vocals, and harsh rasps. "80s" and "hooks" also had decent results, but so did "big production" but I'm yet to trust this prompt makes any difference either, to the sound quality. Undecided. I also personally like 'alt-rock' (or 'alternative rock') and post-hardcore as to me they just make good rock songs, often ballads, which align with what I like, but may not be for everyone. Happy hunting!