Using AI as a songwriting tool

mystixboi1

mystixboi1

Kick Henry Jackassowski
What are everyone’s thoughts about using AI as a songwriting tool? I’m not talking about using AI to write the entire song, I’m talking about using it to get ideas and then crafting parts of your song from that?

For example, I’ve had a verse, chorus and pre-chorus ready to go for about 10 years. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out a good chorus for it. I tried working with other songwriters And no one could give me exactly what I was hoping to hear for the chorus.

For shits and giggles, I tried using AI to create a chorus and within three minutes of prompting, I had the most amazing chorus I’ve ever had for this song. It completely fits my style of writing and has an absolute awesome hook.

Part of me feels guilty because I obviously didn’t write it but then again, I only used the output of the AI to give me an idea of where to go with a chorus.

Would you use AI like this? Or would you scrap it and keep on trying to figure out a chorus on your own or with other people?
 
When I did the "Build a Band" the last few years, we would break into our semi-randomly sorted groups and meet for the first time... we would draw a random AI prompt from a bucket to use as a jumping off point for writing a song.

Considering that our song would have to be written and rehearsed in the next 4 hours, the prompt was sometimes useful just as something for everyone to collectively think about instead of random things from each of our lives.

Now that said, one time we used the prompt as a line in the song, one time it was just an inspiration that sent us to a different idea in that direction, and a third time we threw it out entirely. Ultimately it's still your creative choices.
 
Enh. It’s one thing to use tools like Oblique Strategies or tarot or cut up to get the juices flowing—which is something AI can do. And generating random prompts seems fair enough.

But I’d feel pretty squicky letting AI do the work. I mean, when I steal/appropriate/interpolate/bite stuff I like to do it knowingly and I like to steal from actual humans. Frankly, I don’t care what robots have to say about pop music.
 
I think in that scenario, you are using tools to instantiate YOUR idea, but you are still a big part of the creative process.

As an analogy, is a rhyming dictionary any different? Yes, to a degree, but it’s still a tool to help you sort out your idea.

if you were to hand over the entire creative process to AI, I think that’s the line.
One could still argue that the ideation is the creative part, and there is some truth to that, but then the argument can shift to the execution - and then…. Is AI just the new session player?

All of this is just to say, it depends on how you use it.
 
Everything is a remix

Basically impossible to be 100% original. Are you ok with 10% originality? Probably where anything mainstream is at these days. Depending on your metrics of course.

All this ai media stuff is impressive and neat at first, but also kinda gross and empty. Then again I feel that way about a ton of modern media that's not ai generated. *shrug*

Anyway the jig is pretty much up, in the very near future no consumer will be able to tell what is ai generated and what isn't, or to what degree ai was used if it's not 100%.
 
If there's some artistic point in doing it that way, then I guess, yes.

I think the current AI hype raises some interesting question, and I think @sonik has an interesting point. Like essentially, what does it mean to be human, and in in what way, if any, is that different from a machine? A true positivist would claim that we're just products of our genes and environment, and at the end of the day we probably don't have much of a choice or any actual agency in any matter. We're biomechanical passengers of the universe, and the only thing that really sets us apart from the leaves on the trees is that we experience the ride.

I suppose most of us object to this, or are even offended, and we like to think there's more to it. I guess one of the main differences between humans and language models is that we relate to words rather than simply sequencing them based on statistics and algorithms. I believe even the most advanced AI is still not capable of this and probably will not be in the near future because it does not experience the things we do. It doesn't have a body, it doesn't feel any thrill, joy or pain, and even if it should reach some state of awareness, it will not know the true meaning of ice cream because it has never tasted any, and that's why I'd imagine @Flamencology would conclude that it doesn't fuck because it doesn't fuck.

I know most people.. er.. eat ice cream and I can relate to that so therefore I'd much, much rather listen to lyrics written by a human than some AI-generated stuff.
 
I asked a bot to write a tune,
It gave me lyrics that I could croon.

It rhymed "heart" with "smart", and sounds alright.
It had no soul, but it sure is tight.

I'm not sorry — it’s just code.
It nailed that chorus, and man, I’m sold.
 
Chicken Man said:
If you don't enjoy songwriting, don't do it. No sense in burning down the rainforest to generate a piece of art you don't care enough about to finish.
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This is a very good point. You don’t need to write songs. And honestly, the need to invest yrself in making pointless little make-em-ups nobody asked for is probably more bug than feature and probably a major reason why creative types are, generally speaking, not the happiest, easiest-to-be-around people.

I get slightly manic when I feel the urge to make/create something coming on. It’s a totalizing weather system that just takes over. I’ve very recently been caught up working on a little group of songs that came on all at once because I’ve been kind of distracted from my own pursuits because of work. Thinking about these songs and tweaking them and scheming up what to do with them has occupied the better part of the last 10 days. It would be probably more enjoyable to not have this compulsive thing. And I certainly wouldn’t trust outsourcing it to a robot.

And while AI can generate prompts and ideas, frankly my experience with ChatGPT at least is that it’s too prosaic/vanilla/inside the box to get anything good. It’s most helpful when offloading workaday tasks or having it summarize or organize. But I can’t imagine it has any feelings about the wilted marigolds in the vase at the YMCA or driving somewhere pointless late at night or or incipient fascism or the taste of Apple cider donuts or the way Florence Pugh plays a depressed super spy in a movie that it watched on an airplane or how Taylor Swift clearly doesn’t know shit about Hamlet — and it certainly can’t roll up all those feelings in a lateral/non-linear way to write a song that doesn’t really have anything to do with those feelings—at least explicitly.
 
Monson said:
…and that's why I'd imagine @Flamencology would conclude that it doesn't fuck because it doesn't fuck.
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When your spectrum brain creates tight boxes of thought, its not so bad to have a technology that can lift you above those walls to consider a landscape you may not have seen otherwise, and then use that glimpse of a foreign vista to expand your box.
 
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