SUNO is killer!

[bermudagold]

@wonshu: thanks for that experiment and taking the time to blog about it with audio excerpts Hans...Your issues seem to be in line with other experiences I've read about...btw that productionAI string instrument sounds better than the ace studio one from the examples I've heard so far...I'm going to be interested to compare the AI tools using SVS vs those using RVC in terms of sound...since RVC still uses the samples as part of the resulting sound

@zerocrossing: I agree with most of your observations...whether there is a delineation between influenced by vs imitation of is valid question...I also think your not alone in wanting to play a sampler or vst instruments with your instrument of choice that is most intimate, natural, and expressive for you the individual...that's why the "holy grail" has always been to be able to do this with voice...as it is the most natural instrument for the most people...that's why tech has chased the many implementations of "audio to midi" over decades...there was even a contraption 20 yrs ago that was a electromechanical collar that you tightly fastened to your throat that supposedly achieved the highest accuracy...but was too expensive to take off and was abandoned...if AI can achieve this everyone will want it because everyone always has...
and you've touched on the related point Bones and I were making earlier...that at some point the workflow improvement is in perception only not really net net...because the iterative prompting and critical listening and timeline cue adjustment tools (in the case of Ace Studio) is just as time consuming and ear fatiguing as current workflows, if not more...at the end of the day ur just robbing peter to pay paul...especially when things like cubase & dorico expression maps, FL Studio articulate tool, articulation map max4live device, and open source AMF by koukou exist...

@pxindy: what you may not have thought through in your SWAM example,...is that "learning curve" is precisely YOUR individual musicality...chasing how something "is supposed to sound" robs YOU of your uniqueness...giving up the intimate connection to the instrument and the control of instantiation of sound because of time constraints is antithetical to expression and surrender to the genericness of convention...that is precisely what Hans is talking about and will cause music to be even more derivative and formulaic than it is now...there will end up being no new experimentation, no new styles, no new sounds, no new motifs...that is one of the biggest complaints for these tools now, especially suno...it doesn't "render" faithfully the audio you fed it or what you asked for...it constantly embellishes and goes against your inputs, if it thinks it is improving what you input based on aggregate statistical preferences of others...critical design flaw to favor instant gratification through familiarity by opposing creative expression through artistic license and agency...which to me again exposes how dangerous the anti self determination bent of these tools is across all walks of life...because agency and self determination are core to our humanity

for me it comes down to the intimacy levels achieved with respect to execution of conscious intent, and the breadth and depth of available timbres...timbre realism if a known instrument, or the visceral and evocative nature of timbres achievable for instruments that don't naturally exist...The tradeoffs of synthesis vs sampling have been known since its invention....synthesis has higher expressivity than samples, but less timbre breadth and depth (realism) than samples....if expressivity is more important to you ur likely to prefer synthesis...if timbre is more important to you, ur likely to prefer samples...which is why people like wivi, wallander, samplemodeling, SWAM, have made hybrid instruments for years trying to get the best of both worlds.

Visceral and evocative timbre is most important to me...so as of right now, I would rather get the higher intimacy interfaces (breath controllers, expression pedals, continuums, rolis, mpe devices etc), learn to map the CCs, and develop the performance chops with keyswitches to record the most expressive performance i can with samples...if it doesn't sound how its "supposed to sound" I'm ok with that...because 1) its not the real instrument being played through its natural interface and 2) I refuse to spend more time dicking around in piano rolls and automation lanes than time spent playing...conformity to the expectations of others for the validation by others is NOT my goal...that is however AI's goal which is part of the quandary...

If AI gets to the point where it can deliver rich timbre without impeding on my individual musicality with workflows that increase intimacy with instruments, save time, and reduce ear fatigue...I'll be on board

[BONES]

I haven't heard interesting fresh material yet - only this regurgitation of "historic mainstream" be it classical or song-based. Albeit it the sonic quality of it has increased substantially!!

I'd say the same of most orchestral music composed by humans in the last 80-100 years, with the possible exception of some film scores.

Many predicted orchestras would disappear from production work, but the opposite happened. Orchestral recordings are still being made all the time, because even sample libraries have to be recorded by real orchestras in the first place. New tools shift parts of the market, but they don’t automatically replace the source.

Nothing will replace the visceral experience of a live symphony orchestra in full flight. It's one of those things that you never get tired of (although I hardly ever find the time to do it any more and it ain't cheap). Of course, a lot of orchestras are financially supported, either by the State or through private funding, so it's not like they need to make money to survive.

Yup... AI can only produce what it's been trained on.

That's no more true of AI than it is of you and me. It doesn't slavishly adhere to what its learned, it's very capable of moving well outside it's parameters to do unexpected stuff. That's what makes it such a useful creative tool.

Yup... AI can only produce what it's been trained on.

That's no more true of AI than it is of you and me. It doesn't slavishly adhere to what its learned, it's very capable of moving well outside it's parameters to do unexpected stuff. That's what makes it such a useful creative tool.

[Grizzellda]

I will be interested to hear BONES views on AI in about ten years, or so...

If he still has free will !!! Rock'n Roll BONES!!!

[BONES]

I made a little simple experiment and wrote about it... what can I say... judge the results for yourself...

I noticed that the first two had noticeably more artifacting towards the end but some versions didn't seem to suffer as badly form this, which is interesting. To be fair, I only got through the first five before I got bored (but they are still playing as I type this).

The thing that strikes me is that you seem to want the AI to do all the work for you. You already seem to have the precise idea of what you want, so why even bother with this particular AI? It seems something like ACE Studio would be a more appropriate tool.

Whilst we get Tunee to generate entire songs for us, all we're really looking for are ideas that reflect our ambitions, that we can take and turn into the songs we want. Listening to the stuff you've linked to, surely the AI has given you at least half-a-dozen useful ideas that you could run with, even if it's not what you were originally looking for? For us, that's half the fun of using AI - you don't really know what it's going to give you, it is every bit as random as playing around on a synth keyboard until something happens that you can turn into a song (which is my usual creative process).

These AIs aren't designed to be precise, they are designed to be creative so it shouldn't surprise you that if you have a very precise idea of what you want, it is not going to give it to you.

BTW, some of the artifacts I can hear are really obvious and would probably be heard in a mix with other instruments. That, I think, would be more worrying to me. I've listened to them all now. I love the sound of a cello, I use it in our music whenever I can which, sadly, is not very often.)

Right, but at that point, why not just use a SWAM cello and have full control of the expressive aspects of the results? This is what I have been complaining about. AI can give you impressive results, in general, but not specifically.

As I said, that's because it is designed to be creative, not a slave to your very precise whim. I honestly don't think their creators had that kind of thing in mind when they made them. It is quite obvious that it will deliberately NOT give you exactly what you asked it for, in the same way that a Jazz band won't give you a song in precisely the way you might remember it. It's taking what you've asked it to do and riffing on it as a theme because that's how it was made to work.

[BONES]

I will be interested to hear BONES views on AI in about ten years, or so...

Interestingly, unless things change again, we probably won't use AI after this album. Every new version seems to make it harder and harder to get it to do anything interesting. We don't know whether that's just the way it is evolving, if it is being neutered to keep the creators safe from lawsuits of if the vein we were tapping has simply run dry. Whatever the reason, it is around two months now since we got anything useful from it. The things it spits out now are far more commercial/mainstream sounding, no matter how much you tell it to do something else.

Here's a little something to remind you of what we all are -

[wonshu]

The thing that strikes me is that you seem to want the AI to do all the work for you. You already seem to have the precise idea of what you want, so why even bother with this particular AI? It seems something like ACE Studio would be a more appropriate tool.

Because I like testing how things work and behave in order to learn and also to see if I can integrate it as a tool into my process.

I would love to test ACE studio but it is kind of expensive if I forget to request a refund right away - which I've been known to do, so I'm protecting myself a bit from "the trap"... but it also means I have to actually start testing it right away. Sometimes I think I may have the time to get into something like that, but then work comes up, I loose sight get distracted and "bam" I lost the test period... anyway *cue the smallest violin to play a sad melody*

[Tiles]

I will be interested to hear BONES views on AI in about ten years, or so...

Interestingly, unless things change again, we probably won't use AI after this album. Every new version seems to make it harder and harder to get it to do anything interesting. We don't know whether that's just the way it is evolving, if it is being neutered to keep the creators safe from lawsuits of if the vein we were tapping has simply run dry. Whatever the reason, it is around two months now since we got anything useful from it. The things it spits out now are far more commercial/mainstream sounding, no matter how much you tell it to do something else.

Here's a little something to remind you of what we all are -

AI degeneration is a known thing. You could use the old tech from back in the time as long as it is useful.

[BONES]

It doesn't feel like "degeneration", it feels more like they are refining their target market and we no longer fall within that target. It's kind of how things work outside the mainstream, it comes as no surprise.

Because I like testing how things work and behave in order to learn and also to see if I can integrate it as a tool into my process.

You don't buy a sports car and take it off road just to see how it goes. My point was that there were more appropriate tests you might have thought to conduct, to see what it actually has to offer, rather than seeing if it could do one thing that it is probably not designed to do. A more cynical person might think you deliberately set it up to fail.

[zerocrossing]

I made a little simple experiment and wrote about it... what can I say... judge the results for yourself...

I should have probably just fed it the midi notes of what I was thinking... if that's possible with producerAI - I didn't check...

Right, but at that point, why not just use a SWAM cello and have full control of the expressive aspects of the results? This is what I have been complaining about. AI can give you impressive results, in general, but not specifically. Of course it can't, or maybe I should say, it could if you wrote out a prompt description for each note, and at that point... well, there's no point.

One reason not to use a SWAM Cello is because it takes some skill and knowledge of how a cello is supposed to sound.

In Ace Studio, you can feed midi to the AI instrument. I know the Violin has articulations and I think their Cello does too. From what I've heard, the automatic articulations done by the AI are better than what some, or even many of us can do manually.

One of the reasons I don't have the SWAM instruments is because I don't use acoustic instrument emulations that much and there is a learning curve to using them. I don't use AI instruments either, but they are improving fast enough that I am starting to consider it.

Yeah, the reason I own SWAM cello is I've always liked the sound of a cello, especially in tunes like Strawberry Fields. When controlled with my Roli Rise, it's great and fun for me. I feature it in this track:



Could I have just used a sample library instrument? Yeah. Might be as good, but I had fun doing it the way I did it. Could I have used ACE Studio? Yeah, might have been better and easier, but again, I liked doing it, and since no one listens or cares about my music, I have to focus on how I enjoy making it.

[bermudagold]

I made a little simple experiment and wrote about it... what can I say... judge the results for yourself...

I should have probably just fed it the midi notes of what I was thinking... if that's possible with producerAI - I didn't check...

Right, but at that point, why not just use a SWAM cello and have full control of the expressive aspects of the results? This is what I have been complaining about. AI can give you impressive results, in general, but not specifically. Of course it can't, or maybe I should say, it could if you wrote out a prompt description for each note, and at that point... well, there's no point.

One reason not to use a SWAM Cello is because it takes some skill and knowledge of how a cello is supposed to sound.

In Ace Studio, you can feed midi to the AI instrument. I know the Violin has articulations and I think their Cello does too. From what I've heard, the automatic articulations done by the AI are better than what some, or even many of us can do manually.

One of the reasons I don't have the SWAM instruments is because I don't use acoustic instrument emulations that much and there is a learning curve to using them. I don't use AI instruments either, but they are improving fast enough that I am starting to consider it.

Yeah, the reason I own SWAM cello is I've always liked the sound of a cello, especially in tunes like Strawberry Fields. When controlled with my Roli Rise, it's great and fun for me. I feature it in this track:



Could I have just used a sample library instrument? Yeah. Might be as good, but I had fun doing it the way I did it. Could I have used ACE Studio? Yeah, might have been better and easier, but again, I liked doing it, and since no one listens or cares about my music, I have to focus on how I enjoy making it.

I agree...that should probably be the priority variable in choices made...and ur example also highlights how the differences can be inconsequential at the composition level...in the context of that song and mix any limitations of SWAM realism or limitations of expressivity of a pure sample library would likely not matter...nice song btw...listened all the way through

[BONES]

... since no one listens or cares about my music, I have to focus on how I enjoy making it.

That's a very interesting perspective, one I could never share. Interesting to hear some of your music, too. I know I've heard some other stuff in the past but this was quite different from what I remember, more personal? It's not terrible.

[bermudagold]

the progress is wild to see...for introverts and people that struggle to find collaborators...despite the beauty of the communal synergies that are lost,...the ability to sketch their ideas and demo songs at this level of polish probably feels quite liberating...here is kvr's own grabtracks developer with a nice AI assisted diddie

[Grizzellda]

I made a little simple experiment and wrote about it... what can I say... judge the results for yourself...

I should have probably just fed it the midi notes of what I was thinking... if that's possible with producerAI - I didn't check...

Right, but at that point, why not just use a SWAM cello and have full control of the expressive aspects of the results? This is what I have been complaining about. AI can give you impressive results, in general, but not specifically. Of course it can't, or maybe I should say, it could if you wrote out a prompt description for each note, and at that point... well, there's no point.

One reason not to use a SWAM Cello is because it takes some skill and knowledge of how a cello is supposed to sound.

In Ace Studio, you can feed midi to the AI instrument. I know the Violin has articulations and I think their Cello does too. From what I've heard, the automatic articulations done by the AI are better than what some, or even many of us can do manually.

One of the reasons I don't have the SWAM instruments is because I don't use acoustic instrument emulations that much and there is a learning curve to using them. I don't use AI instruments either, but they are improving fast enough that I am starting to consider it.

Yeah, the reason I own SWAM cello is I've always liked the sound of a cello, especially in tunes like Strawberry Fields. When controlled with my Roli Rise, it's great and fun for me. I feature it in this track:



Could I have just used a sample library instrument? Yeah. Might be as good, but I had fun doing it the way I did it. Could I have used ACE Studio? Yeah, might have been better and easier, but again, I liked doing it, and since no one listens or cares about my music, I have to focus on how I enjoy making it.

Watched vid and enjoyed. Questioning the vocals though, not enuff Janis Joplin energy for my taste, but that is unlikely, right?

Also, was the video itself an open source, academic type of thing?

[zerocrossing]

I made a little simple experiment and wrote about it... what can I say... judge the results for yourself...

I should have probably just fed it the midi notes of what I was thinking... if that's possible with producerAI - I didn't check...

Right, but at that point, why not just use a SWAM cello and have full control of the expressive aspects of the results? This is what I have been complaining about. AI can give you impressive results, in general, but not specifically. Of course it can't, or maybe I should say, it could if you wrote out a prompt description for each note, and at that point... well, there's no point.

One reason not to use a SWAM Cello is because it takes some skill and knowledge of how a cello is supposed to sound.

In Ace Studio, you can feed midi to the AI instrument. I know the Violin has articulations and I think their Cello does too. From what I've heard, the automatic articulations done by the AI are better than what some, or even many of us can do manually.

One of the reasons I don't have the SWAM instruments is because I don't use acoustic instrument emulations that much and there is a learning curve to using them. I don't use AI instruments either, but they are improving fast enough that I am starting to consider it.

Yeah, the reason I own SWAM cello is I've always liked the sound of a cello, especially in tunes like Strawberry Fields. When controlled with my Roli Rise, it's great and fun for me. I feature it in this track:



Could I have just used a sample library instrument? Yeah. Might be as good, but I had fun doing it the way I did it. Could I have used ACE Studio? Yeah, might have been better and easier, but again, I liked doing it, and since no one listens or cares about my music, I have to focus on how I enjoy making it.

Watched vid and enjoyed. Questioning the vocals though, not enuff Janis Joplin energy for my taste, but that is unlikely, right?

Also, was the video itself an open source, academic type of thing?

Yeah, I just pulled stuff off the NASA website. It’s all open source. We paid for it. I didn’t really spend much time on it. I just needed some visuals.

The voice is synthesized, similar to the cello.

[Grizzellda]

Cool, will check out NASA stuff, wanna see some deep space pictures, will likely use them myself in vids.

Thanx!!