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Over the past year I’ve become a big fan of Japanese music. I started with Yoasobi and then Spotify led me to Vocaloid (I knew of Hatsune Miku but I'm not into

by bogdan 2y ago

Over the past year I’ve become a big fan of Japanese music. I started with Yoasobi and then Spotify led me to Vocaloid (I knew of Hatsune Miku but I'm not into that). Nowadays I mostly listen to Vocaloid because it’s so expressive and different. This is why I'm excited about ai music - it’s a powerful and accessible tool that can help talented people explore new forms of music. That’s what music is all about for me.

jsheard 2y ago
Vocaloids are specialized synthesizers in the traditional sense, the producer has a huge amount of control over the sound. They're not even remotely comparable to typing a prompt into Suno and letting it barf out whatever.
- bogdan 2y ago
  I understand that and how Vocaloid works. The point I am trying to make is that AI will allow people without technical musical knowledge create music. If that means writing a prompt to create a banger then so be it.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    In that case yes, things like Suno make it easy to create music in the same sense that ChatGPT makes it easy to write a novel.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      Eh, a novel has to hold coherence over many hours, while a song only runs for a few minutes. It was possible to do a credible job composing algorithmic music in many genres before the current AI frenzy. Before long, you won't be able to tell the difference between human-composed and machine-composed music in any genre. It will be quite a while before that happens with novels and screenplays. Wouldn't bet against it in the long run, though.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    This right here exemplifies my fundamental issue with GenAI. Paint a picture without painting a picture! Write a novel without writing a novel! Compose a melody without composing a melody! There was an absolutely insane comment on HN a few months ago where the poster said that they felt a sense of accomplishment after "producing" a song on Suno. I mean... how could that possibly be true? They didn't compose the melodic motif, figure out the chord progression, structure the song, or even write the lyrics. The world is getting a bit too kafkaesque for my liking.
    - scotty79 2y ago
      It's a bit like taking a photo and it coming out surprisingly good. You just pointed the thing and pressed a button. Yet you feel accomplishment. Sure you might have chose a lens, depth and tried to point the things somewhat precisely. Then you sat at your computer to cut enough of the edges and fiddled with some curves so it feels nice for you. But ultimately you didn't make any of it. Machine made it all. You just guided it with the knobs provided for you. Yet you feel accomplishment if you make something good because you also made hundreds of it that were crap.
    - drusepth 2y ago
      > There was an absolutely insane comment on HN a few months ago where the poster said that they felt a sense of accomplishment after "producing" a song on Suno. I mean... how could that possibly be true? They "created" something that, until now, would have required skills they didn't have. You don't see how someone could feel a sense of accomplishment for the end result, the thing they poofed into existence and like? We use tools to make things (even art) easier to create. I don't make my paints from scratch (anymore), or string my paintbrushes (anymore), or now sometimes choose my color palettes or general composition -- tools (like genAI) exist to let artists create art easier, and saying "you didn't put in enough thought/work/etc for it to count as art!" feels dismissive of the creative process and the joy people find in expressing themselves, regardless of how they got there.
    - wodderam 2y ago
      Suno to me has only produced the most trivial garbage but music is really hard to produce. I could see how someone with no background in music could feel a sense of accomplishment with this. It is like a gen z version of playing the ironman or smoke on the water riff on guitar. It is just not that hard to play the ironman riff either. As someone who has put thousands of hours into learning music, anything that gets people into music is a positive to me. It seems like generative AI art and music really triggers tech people who have nothing to do with art and music. "Kids these days starting off programming a web app with a language model. In my day we had to take adderall and debug assembly code just to print an underscore to a dot matrix printer. That is the right way to start and anything else is WRONG"
  - fzeroracer 2y ago
    There is no aspect of creation. All of the creative process is offloaded to something else. It's the middle management of art, people pretending they're creators by doing none of the work. Fundamentally what you are doing is no different than sending money to an artist to request them to draw you something. Except instead of a transaction which involves an actual artist doing work somewhere down the line, you are dictating to a model using stolen art to create something for you and then claiming you made it. I have seen amazing works of art and music from people with zero technical knowledge. It may be rough or weird but the jagged edges is what makes it art.
- doright 2y ago
  I think this has become slightly more nuanced as of late. For example Synthesizer V now has an AI edition that produces retakes with deep learning. I wonder how people will feel about this long-term as it blurs the line between generated from scratch and tool-assisted. Clearly the intent is to make it easier for producers to get the results they want. How easy is too easy? I believe in the near future there will be more discussion about specific parts of songs being derived from AI even if the rest is traditionally composed. Because that is the natural result of creating more efficient tools to solve specific needs that artists have, when "generate my song for me" is not an option they would ever consider (given today's rapidly changing norms, at that point it becomes an issue of integrity over efficiency). I think it is also interesting how revered Vocaloids have been in certain fandoms stretching back to the late 00's in spite of their artificiality. Whereas a lot of the autogenerated content today is derided for being artificial, "not the real thing." I guess because the vastly wider gap and set of limitations of Vocaloid compared to human singers causes creative workarounds that wouldn't be considered otherwise. But the creator is the one who needs to plan and execute those workarounds, as it confirms to their artistic preference. Maybe in the future the AI art tools that are seen to be most ethical are the ones that preserve the artistic vision of the user. An aspect that artists are lamenting the loss of. Less outsourcing and more deliberate collaboration.
CHB0403085482 2y ago
You like Creepy Nuts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6FUBWGSOIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6FUBWGSOIc
- bogdan 2y ago
  Love them!

by bogdan 2y ago

jsheard 2y ago

Vocaloids are specialized synthesizers in the traditional sense, the producer has a huge amount of control over the sound. They're not even remotely comparable to typing a prompt into Suno and letting it barf out whatever.

bogdan 2y ago
I understand that and how Vocaloid works. The point I am trying to make is that AI will allow people without technical musical knowledge create music. If that means writing a prompt to create a banger then so be it.
- jsheard 2y ago
  In that case yes, things like Suno make it easy to create music in the same sense that ChatGPT makes it easy to write a novel.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    Eh, a novel has to hold coherence over many hours, while a song only runs for a few minutes. It was possible to do a credible job composing algorithmic music in many genres before the current AI frenzy. Before long, you won't be able to tell the difference between human-composed and machine-composed music in any genre. It will be quite a while before that happens with novels and screenplays. Wouldn't bet against it in the long run, though.
- vunderba 2y ago
  This right here exemplifies my fundamental issue with GenAI. Paint a picture without painting a picture! Write a novel without writing a novel! Compose a melody without composing a melody! There was an absolutely insane comment on HN a few months ago where the poster said that they felt a sense of accomplishment after "producing" a song on Suno. I mean... how could that possibly be true? They didn't compose the melodic motif, figure out the chord progression, structure the song, or even write the lyrics. The world is getting a bit too kafkaesque for my liking.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    It's a bit like taking a photo and it coming out surprisingly good. You just pointed the thing and pressed a button. Yet you feel accomplishment. Sure you might have chose a lens, depth and tried to point the things somewhat precisely. Then you sat at your computer to cut enough of the edges and fiddled with some curves so it feels nice for you. But ultimately you didn't make any of it. Machine made it all. You just guided it with the knobs provided for you. Yet you feel accomplishment if you make something good because you also made hundreds of it that were crap.
  - drusepth 2y ago
    > There was an absolutely insane comment on HN a few months ago where the poster said that they felt a sense of accomplishment after "producing" a song on Suno. I mean... how could that possibly be true? They "created" something that, until now, would have required skills they didn't have. You don't see how someone could feel a sense of accomplishment for the end result, the thing they poofed into existence and like? We use tools to make things (even art) easier to create. I don't make my paints from scratch (anymore), or string my paintbrushes (anymore), or now sometimes choose my color palettes or general composition -- tools (like genAI) exist to let artists create art easier, and saying "you didn't put in enough thought/work/etc for it to count as art!" feels dismissive of the creative process and the joy people find in expressing themselves, regardless of how they got there.
  - wodderam 2y ago
    Suno to me has only produced the most trivial garbage but music is really hard to produce. I could see how someone with no background in music could feel a sense of accomplishment with this. It is like a gen z version of playing the ironman or smoke on the water riff on guitar. It is just not that hard to play the ironman riff either. As someone who has put thousands of hours into learning music, anything that gets people into music is a positive to me. It seems like generative AI art and music really triggers tech people who have nothing to do with art and music. "Kids these days starting off programming a web app with a language model. In my day we had to take adderall and debug assembly code just to print an underscore to a dot matrix printer. That is the right way to start and anything else is WRONG"
- fzeroracer 2y ago
  There is no aspect of creation. All of the creative process is offloaded to something else. It's the middle management of art, people pretending they're creators by doing none of the work. Fundamentally what you are doing is no different than sending money to an artist to request them to draw you something. Except instead of a transaction which involves an actual artist doing work somewhere down the line, you are dictating to a model using stolen art to create something for you and then claiming you made it. I have seen amazing works of art and music from people with zero technical knowledge. It may be rough or weird but the jagged edges is what makes it art.
doright 2y ago
I think this has become slightly more nuanced as of late. For example Synthesizer V now has an AI edition that produces retakes with deep learning. I wonder how people will feel about this long-term as it blurs the line between generated from scratch and tool-assisted. Clearly the intent is to make it easier for producers to get the results they want. How easy is too easy? I believe in the near future there will be more discussion about specific parts of songs being derived from AI even if the rest is traditionally composed. Because that is the natural result of creating more efficient tools to solve specific needs that artists have, when "generate my song for me" is not an option they would ever consider (given today's rapidly changing norms, at that point it becomes an issue of integrity over efficiency). I think it is also interesting how revered Vocaloids have been in certain fandoms stretching back to the late 00's in spite of their artificiality. Whereas a lot of the autogenerated content today is derided for being artificial, "not the real thing." I guess because the vastly wider gap and set of limitations of Vocaloid compared to human singers causes creative workarounds that wouldn't be considered otherwise. But the creator is the one who needs to plan and execute those workarounds, as it confirms to their artistic preference. Maybe in the future the AI art tools that are seen to be most ethical are the ones that preserve the artistic vision of the user. An aspect that artists are lamenting the loss of. Less outsourcing and more deliberate collaboration.

CHB0403085482 2y ago

You like Creepy Nuts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6FUBWGSOIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6FUBWGSOIc

bogdan 2y ago
Love them!