Using AI as a songwriting tool

mnewb1 said:
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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I get that, but AI just seems like a cheap and tawdry version of it. I mean, drugs and alcohol are fun ways to hijack and reprogram consciousness. Meditation and boredom and just being in the world. There are systems for changing how you perceive and think from religion to therapy to occult practices. You can read theory. You can experience other art. You can do all sorts of transformative things that also have the benefit of being real experiences that you get to have IRL.

One of the big problems I have with the on demand streaming world of everything is that everything is available as long as you ask for it or are cool with a robot/algorithm feeding it to you. Which is different than accidental discovery and happenstance or whatnot. Random encounters. In a surveillance economy with targeted ads and personal curation as the norm it’s less and less likely you’re going to encounter something new to you that is transformative—especially if you have to generate the prompts yourself.
 
mnewb1 said:
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.
Click to expand...
This is a better way to say what I meant.
 
Suno is actually a lot better if you write the lyrics yourself.

If you don't it just invariably writes something boring about neon lights or other cliches LLMs seem to like a lot.
 
Peen Simmons said:
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.
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I'm looking forward to hear what you're coming up with!
 
Monson said:
I'm looking forward to hear what you're coming up with!
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It’s a distraction from the 10-12 song LP I’ve stalled out on because I’m a perfectionist weirdo who is never at home. So the answer is of course to write more songs and fuss with those. I’m still working on those tracks, but am now on a side quest.
 
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dodgechargerfan said:
Those are just tags identifying the result. No?
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I'm not sure now.

When I have generated songs I just use a list of terms for genres/instruments/period/production style.

But maybe Peen put in something more specific (in order to get it to generate lyrics) and it converted to that list of prompts afterwards.
 
Bones McHorror said:
I'm not sure now.

When I have generated songs I just use a list of terms for genres/instruments/period/production style.

But maybe Peen put in something more specific (in order to get it to generate lyrics) and it converted to that list of prompts afterwards.
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Yeah, I just entered that sentence with some basic descriptors and chose the best result in terms of sounding like what I imagined.

I think the shorter tags are just what the program broke my prompt into.
 
2 days after my dad died, I wrote a song about our 5 year old dog teaching the new puppy how to dog. There are undertones of loss, a specific reference to my dad dying, and contemplations on society as a whole with how things have been going politically.

Could I have given those prompts to AI and it spit out something “better,” maybe so, but I didn’t exactly set out to write this. I was just unable to sleep and watching the dogs and just kind of started going with it. That is the process.

When I play it out, if I’m in a listening room type environment where people care about where songs come from, they tend to dig it. Is it going to make me a super star? no. Do I care? no.

In an increasingly digital world, genuine human connection is becoming a rare thing. Songs are a great way to connect with people on a human to human level.

I’ve never really liked thinking of myself as an artist, but one of my buddies has a great definition that I can get behind. It’s some one who produces an artifact, which is more or less a snap shot of a time and place. Our job as songwriters is to produce something via the filters of our own experience. Maybe it sucks. Maybe it doesn’t.
 
Peen Simmons said:
It’s a distraction from the 10-12 song LP I’ve stalled out on because I’m a perfectionist weirdo who is never at home. So the answer is of course to write more songs and fuss with those. I’m still working on those tracks, but am now on a side quest.
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Nevertheless. I dig your stuff.

And I didn't mean to derail the thread, but then again, I guess the human factor/effort/struggle/whatever is just a lot more interesting to me.
 
mnewb1 said:
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.
Click to expand...
Like I said, psychedelics


On a serious note, this thread is the same conversation the folk crowd had when Dylan showed up with a Strat. If you are a young cat you better pay attention to AI or get left behind.
 
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dodgechargerfan said:
Those are just tags identifying the result. No?
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those are what Peen chose


I wrote a "jingle" for my sons weekly college radio show about heavy metal. Turns out I got the show name wrong. oh well.

I tried integrating southern rock with metal.

suno.com

HMP

Listen and make your own on Suno.
suno.com suno.com

I find the ai motivates me to put words to paper so to speak. its a fun tool but remember its not fully you making the song but guiding one along.
 
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Honkridge said:
Like I said, psychedelics


On a serious note, this thread is the same conversation the folk crowd had when Dylan showed up with a Strat. If you are a young cat you better pay attention to AI or get left behind.
Click to expand...
Honkridge said:
Like I said, psychedelics


On a serious note, this thread is the same conversation the folk crowd had when Dylan showed up with a Strat. If you are a young cat you better pay attention to AI or get left behind.
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This is also the same conversation the keyboard crowd had when the keytar came out. Embracing new trends can make you Bowie, but it can also make you Rappin' Rodney.
 
Honkridge said:
Like I said, psychedelics


On a serious note, this thread is the same conversation the folk crowd had when Dylan showed up with a Strat. If you are a young cat you better pay attention to AI or get left behind.
Click to expand...

I can see your logic but I don’t think it is. This is bigger than that.
 
Bones McHorror said:
Suno is actually a lot better if you write the lyrics yourself.

If you don't it just invariably writes something boring about neon lights or other cliches LLMs seem to like a lot.
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This is true. I still consider this my masterpiece lyrics-wise:
suno.com

The Tank

Listen and make your own on Suno.
suno.com suno.com
 
Chicken Man said:
This is also the same conversation the keyboard crowd had when the keytar came out. Embracing new trends can make you Bowie, but it can also make you Rappin' Rodney.
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Absolutely. So as an artist we have to make an artistic decision. AI is a tool. When we surrender our judgment then we are fucked.
 
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