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If you enjoy it, I'd leave it at that - that's all that matters. It's a pretty absurd claim to say that learning Suno is no different than learning a musical i

If you enjoy it, I'd leave it at that - that's all that matters. It's a pretty absurd claim to say that learning Suno is no different than learning a musical instrument. My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. Generative tools (visual, auditory, etc.) can serve as powerful tools of augmentation for existing creators. For example, you've put together a song (melody/harmony) and you'd like to have AI fill out a simple percussive section to enrich everything. However with a translation as vast as "text" -> to -> "music" in terms of medium - you can't really insert much of yourself into a brand new piece outside of the lyrics though I'd wager 99% of Suno users are too lazy to even do that themselves. I suppose you can act as a curator reviewing hundreds of generated pieces but that's a very different thing. I always get a little confused when I hear non-musicians say that something like Suno is empowering when all they did was type in, "A Contrapuntal hurdy-gurdy fugue with a backing drum track performed by a man who swallowed too many turquoise beads doing the truffle shuffle while a choir gives each other inappropriate friendly tickles".

visarga 1y ago
> My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. You imply "it is Prompt -> Song" but in reality it is "Prompt -> Song -> Reflection -> New Prompt -> New Song.." It is a dialogue. And in a dialogue you can get some places where neither of you could go alone. As software developers we know that multiple people contribute to a project, inside a git repo, and if you take one's work out it does nothing useful by itself. Only when they come together they make sense. What one dev writes builds on what other devs write. It's recursive dependency. The interaction between human and AI can take a similar path. It's not a push-button vending machine for content. It is like a story writing itself, discovering where it will end up along the way. The credit goes to the process, not any one in isolation.
- j4coh 1y ago
  It’s really not. It’s like having interdimensional Spotify where you can describe any song and they will pull it up from whatever dimension made it and play it for you. It may empower you as a consumer but it does not make you a creator.
  - radley 1y ago
    I dunno, based on Spotify's recommendation engine, AI is absolutely sufficient to make anyone a creator ;P Almost all naturally-generated music is derivative to one degree or another. And new tools like AI provide new ways to produce music, just like all new instruments have done in the past. Take drum and bass. Omni Trio made a few tracks in the early 90s. It was interesting at the time, but it wasn't suddenly a genre. It only became so because other artists copied them, then copied other copies, and more and more kept doing it because they all enjoyed doing so. Suno ain't gonna invent drum and bass, just like drum machines didn't invent house music. But drum machines did expand the kinds of music we could make, which lead to house music, drum and bass, and many other new genres. Clever artists will use AI to make something fun and new, which will eventually grow into popular genres of music, because that's how it's always been done.
    - j4coh 1y ago
      You can do exactly what you describe with interdimensional Spotify. People can describe all kinds of fun and interesting things that can be statistically generated for them, but they still didn’t make anything themselves unlike in your other examples of using new tools. Japanese oldies became a trend for a while - the people who found and repopularised the music dont get to say they created it and how it’s so awesome to have mastered the musical instrument of describing or searching for things. Well, of course they can, but forgive me if I don’t buy it. Maybe when there is actual AGI then the AI will get the creative credit, but that’s not what we have and I still wouldn’t transfer the creative credit to the person who asked the AGI to write a song.
      - radley 1y ago
therealpygon 1y ago
I disagree with the characterization as “absurd” to equate AI to an instrument. As you just said, it is a powerful tool. I would equate basic Suno prompting to a beginner on an instrument, as instruments are tools like anything else. Just because you get music out, it doesn’t mean it is actually “good” any more than if I smash random keys on a piano. Controlling that flow of generation, re-prompting, adjusting, splicing, etc. to create a unique song that expresses your intention is significantly more work and requires significantly more creativity. The more you understand this “instrument”, the more accurate and efficient you become. What you’re comparatively suggesting is that if a producer were to grab samples off Splice, slice them and dice them to rearrange them and make a unique song, that they didn’t “actually” make music. That seems like it would be a more absurd position than suggesting AI could be viewed as an instrument. Tools like Suno make people feel like “their own music” is good and they have accomplished something because they elevate the floor of being bad at a tool (like all technological improvements do). They feel like they have been able to express their creativity and are proud, like a kid showing off a doodle. They share it with their friends, who will listen to it exactly one time in most cases and likely tell them it is “really good” and they “really like it” before never listening again. That type of AI use is akin to a coloring book, but certainly doesn’t make for “good” music. When a kid shows off their badly colored efforts proudly, should we yell at them they aren’t doing “real art”, that their effort was meaningless, and that they should stop acting proud of such crap until they go to art school and do it “properly”?

visarga 1y ago

> My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. You imply "it is Prompt -> Song" but in reality it is "Prompt -> Song -> Reflection -> New Prompt -> New Song.." It is a dialogue. And in a dialogue you can get some places where neither of you could go alone. As software developers we know that multiple people contribute to a project, inside a git repo, and if you take one's work out it does nothing useful by itself. Only when they come together they make sense. What one dev writes builds on what other devs write. It's recursive dependency. The interaction between human and AI can take a similar path. It's not a push-button vending machine for content. It is like a story writing itself, discovering where it will end up along the way. The credit goes to the process, not any one in isolation.

j4coh 1y ago
It’s really not. It’s like having interdimensional Spotify where you can describe any song and they will pull it up from whatever dimension made it and play it for you. It may empower you as a consumer but it does not make you a creator.
- radley 1y ago
  I dunno, based on Spotify's recommendation engine, AI is absolutely sufficient to make anyone a creator ;P Almost all naturally-generated music is derivative to one degree or another. And new tools like AI provide new ways to produce music, just like all new instruments have done in the past. Take drum and bass. Omni Trio made a few tracks in the early 90s. It was interesting at the time, but it wasn't suddenly a genre. It only became so because other artists copied them, then copied other copies, and more and more kept doing it because they all enjoyed doing so. Suno ain't gonna invent drum and bass, just like drum machines didn't invent house music. But drum machines did expand the kinds of music we could make, which lead to house music, drum and bass, and many other new genres. Clever artists will use AI to make something fun and new, which will eventually grow into popular genres of music, because that's how it's always been done.
  - j4coh 1y ago
    You can do exactly what you describe with interdimensional Spotify. People can describe all kinds of fun and interesting things that can be statistically generated for them, but they still didn’t make anything themselves unlike in your other examples of using new tools. Japanese oldies became a trend for a while - the people who found and repopularised the music dont get to say they created it and how it’s so awesome to have mastered the musical instrument of describing or searching for things. Well, of course they can, but forgive me if I don’t buy it. Maybe when there is actual AGI then the AI will get the creative credit, but that’s not what we have and I still wouldn’t transfer the creative credit to the person who asked the AGI to write a song.
    - radley 1y ago

therealpygon 1y ago

I disagree with the characterization as “absurd” to equate AI to an instrument. As you just said, it is a powerful tool. I would equate basic Suno prompting to a beginner on an instrument, as instruments are tools like anything else. Just because you get music out, it doesn’t mean it is actually “good” any more than if I smash random keys on a piano. Controlling that flow of generation, re-prompting, adjusting, splicing, etc. to create a unique song that expresses your intention is significantly more work and requires significantly more creativity. The more you understand this “instrument”, the more accurate and efficient you become. What you’re comparatively suggesting is that if a producer were to grab samples off Splice, slice them and dice them to rearrange them and make a unique song, that they didn’t “actually” make music. That seems like it would be a more absurd position than suggesting AI could be viewed as an instrument. Tools like Suno make people feel like “their own music” is good and they have accomplished something because they elevate the floor of being bad at a tool (like all technological improvements do). They feel like they have been able to express their creativity and are proud, like a kid showing off a doodle. They share it with their friends, who will listen to it exactly one time in most cases and likely tell them it is “really good” and they “really like it” before never listening again. That type of AI use is akin to a coloring book, but certainly doesn’t make for “good” music. When a kid shows off their badly colored efforts proudly, should we yell at them they aren’t doing “real art”, that their effort was meaningless, and that they should stop acting proud of such crap until they go to art school and do it “properly”?