Waveform 14 AI assistant tips?

[unholyeyebrows]

Now that the latest beta enables the AI assistant on Linux, I have dropped $10 into OpenAI and decided to give this a go. Partly to see what the assistant is capable of, and also to see how far my $10 will get me so I can judge whether this is good value for money.

So, I started with one of the suggestions built into Waveform. I asked it to "Create a funky bassline", to which I received the following reply:

midi [ { "pitch": 36, "start": 0.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 40, "start": 0.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 1.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 43, "start": 1.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 2.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 41, "start": 2.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 3.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 38, "start": 3.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 4.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 40, "start": 4.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 5.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 43, "start": 5.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 6.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 41, "start": 6.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 7.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 38, "start": 7.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 8.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 40, "start": 8.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 9.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 43, "start": 9.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 10.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 41, "start": 10.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 11.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 38, "start": 11.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 12.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 40, "start": 12.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 13.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 43, "start": 13.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 14.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 41, "start": 14.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 36, "start": 15.0, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 }, { "pitch": 38, "start": 15.5, "duration": 0.5, "velocity": 110, "channel": 1 } ]

Now what?

I asked it a follow-up question of "How can I use this in Waveform?" to which it gave me a long reply about creating a new MIDI clip and pasting the above into it, but I cannot find a way to make it work.

Has anyone had any success using the assistant to work with MIDI, or indeed any of Waveform's functions. This might be a handy place to assemble some tips. Meanwhile if anyone can specifically help me get my funk on with the above block of ASCII please comment.

Thanks,
Nick

[unholyeyebrows]

Looks like my original query didn't quite finish. I have run it again and it generates a MIDI item you can just drag into the arranger. Pretty neat! Screenshot attached of the correct response, plus the original for comparison.

Will experiment some more. I've put about 6 queries through the assistant and my OpenAI balance has dropped by $0.03.

[starflakeprj]

And...can we listen to it?

[unholyeyebrows]

Sure - attached. Not too exciting but shows it works. Playing via Dan Dean Bass.

[starflakeprj]

Thanks. Maybe not exciting, but not too bad either. Could probably be useful in some cases.

[skipscada]

Thanks for giving a practical example of the AI feature in use. That's not remotely "funky" on its own. It's a random bass line. You could surely get the same sort of quality from the old generative features in Waveform. I guess it could be made to sound funkier when combined with an appropriate rhythm pattern.

[unholyeyebrows]

For the curious I have just tried to create a 12-bar beat using the AI assistant. Very mixed results which I'll post here over a few posts. Firstly the good - I managed to instruct it to create a reasonable chord sequence and bassline which could work as a base for a song given some time to arrange it etc. Here are the screenshots and the mp3 of the resulting music.

[unholyeyebrows]

Next I asked it to create some drums. This didn't really work. It came up with a beat but didn't give me an option to drag it into the project. I then asked it to insert it itself which didn't work. I then followed its instructions to copy and paste the MIDI and this didn't work either.

I've logged a bug report: https://github.com/Tracktion/waveform_p ... /issues/57

[unholyeyebrows]

Finally I thought I'd ask it for help in EQing the chords which started out looking promising but ultimately didn't deliver. The 'run' and 'save to library' buttons which should have inserted the EQ for me didn't do anything in this test.

Bug report: https://github.com/Tracktion/waveform_p ... /issues/58

I'll mention I'm running my tests on WF14.0.31 on Ubuntu 26.04. The fact I'm on Linux may be giving me a rougher ride then perhaps a Mac user but it ought to be the same.

I think there is potential here but there's a lot of work to really integrate the assistant into Waveform. I'll leave the debate elsewhere as to whether this is needed or wanted (personally I'm unlikely to use it much other than out of curiosity), but I just wanted to show some examples for anyone who wants to see how it currently works in WF14.

Oh and I think all of this cost me about 6 cents from my OpenAI $10 investment. I'll keep playing with the assistant until I run out of credits. If I find anything interesting I'll post it here.

[unholyeyebrows]

Managed to get the drums to generate using WF14 on my old Mac Mini. Screenshot and audio export attached.

I had to nudge the AI to respond as it errored-out the first couple of times.

[unholyeyebrows]

I've also tried asking it to EQ my chords on my Mac. It generates a script again but it does not run when clicked. It does give you the script output itselft with instructions to manually run it via "// 1) Open the Script Editor in Waveform (Window > Script Editor)."

If only I can find the Window menu in WF14, let alone the script editor...

[jabe]

All interesting. Not meaning to be picky, but might "Linndum" instead of "Linndrum" have confused it?

[unholyeyebrows]

I did intentionally leave my typos in just to see what happened. My limited experience of AI elsewhere tells me minor spelling mistakes shouldn't matter.