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Folks labeling "AI generated" might be jumping the gun considering OP described his process took him the last couple months and then some for this project. Cal

Folks labeling "AI generated" might be jumping the gun considering OP described his process took him the last couple months and then some for this project. Call it what you want, but I think this sits better with "AI assisted" and, perhaps, really well supervised full of the human intent behind of it. Then again, labels are strange, we call algorithmic and synthesizer assisted music "electronic" music these days and we still praise musicians who take the time through endless Moog / Ableton fine-tuning sessions to find the perfect loop patterns for their craft. I could definitely feel the connection between the human author side of this post, thank you for sharing it!

petcat 8mo ago
> we still praise musicians who take the time through endless Moog / Ableton fine-tuning sessions to find the perfect loop patterns for their craft. There are still plenty of purists that will not consider this a "craft". But it's always been that way. The electric guitar itself was a controversial music transition. Bob Dylan was famously criticized heavily for going electric. But that was a long time ago, and people got over it. And they will again this time.
- wbl 8mo ago
  Dylan going electric was not about instrument choices. It was about abandoning the radical folk music tradition that Seeger, Guthrie, etc. had revived.
  - petcat 8mo ago
    It absolutely was about the instrument choice. Because folk music had strong norms about acoustic authenticity. Going electric at the time was seen as "commercialized" and "mass produced". We see the parallels with what some perceive as "slop" today.
    - Throaway1975123 8mo ago
      Dylan went electric for money purposes. That was the big betrayal.
  - ryukoposting 8mo ago
    Bingo. The problem with this take is that the people pissing and moaning in the early '70s were right. Early Dylan sounds good. The texture of an acoustic guitar draws focus to songcraft and away from objectively bad execution. Dylan's vocals were always bad but they went from charmingly bad to just-plain-bad with the transition to electric. The bigger sound was not flattering for him. With 60 years of hindsight, folk still remains a largely acoustic genre because the sound is flattering to the rest of the genre too. That isn't to say that all folk should be acoustic, it's just that you have to come correct otherwise. I find later Dylan annoying despite loving his early records, and I was born 30 years after everyone stopped caring.
    - Throaway1975123 8mo ago
      Actually most serious music fans consider Dylan's best work to be in the 70's period. New Morning, Saved, Planet Waves, Basement Tapes Source: Worked in record store for 15 years.
      - ryukoposting 7mo ago
        The only consensus among serious music fans is that there is no consensus among serious music fans. Source: me, serious music fan. A lot of things about Dylan got empirically better throughout the '70s, I'll give you that. Deeper concepts, more challenging structure, yada yada yada. The problem is that I don't decide what I listen to based on anything empirical. If I'm standing around thinking "man, I want to listen to Bob Dylan today," I'm thinking of Freewheelin'. You could say "well that's just you," but we both know it isn't. A third group probably thinks of Highway 61 or something. Same thing goes for a lot of artists. Master of Puppets is the best Metallica album empirically, but if I'm thinking "gee I want to listen to Metallica today," I'm playing Ride the Lightning, or And Justice for All. In any case, I think all of this subjectivity might suggest that Dylan going electric was a bad comparison for AI generated art, lol.
        Throaway1975123 7mo ago
        I can't tell someone not to listen to their favourite Dylan, but in reality we serious music fans often do decide based on empirical factors, we just don't think about it. The "Deeper concepts, more challenging structure, yada yada yada" are all things that go into making the music more interesting and satisfying for your brain, and that's why we keep going to them. Some people appreciate simplicity more, or folk more than rock, but many people with Dylan, just like the social commentary more than the music itself.
wrl 8mo ago
How about "AI ghostwritten"? That's a much closer parallel, and some commercially successful musicians similarly are "ghost produced".
- hmokiguess 8mo ago
  Ghost produced isn't a good parallel here, the "ghost" in ghost produced comes from the NDA when acquiring a track from a different producer, which, most often is a human.
  - wrl 8mo ago
    My impression was that the "ghost" comes less from the formal NDA and more from the fact that somebody else produces/writes the work and is uncredited for doing so. Then, the "author"/"producer" passes it off as their own work.
    - hmokiguess 8mo ago
      Yeah that's both true and the fact that it is a work for hire where the agreement implies the original author cannot claim credit, hence, turn into a ghost. I think the difference here is that the AI isn't a "work for hire" setup, it's more like a tool. It would be closer to buying algo sample packs, using Apple's Logic Pro AI drummer for part of the work, or other drum machines for example, and working your way around to glue them together into a composition. The parallel would need to be between "tool" <—> "composition", rather than "author" <—> "composition" imo.

petcat 8mo ago

> we still praise musicians who take the time through endless Moog / Ableton fine-tuning sessions to find the perfect loop patterns for their craft. There are still plenty of purists that will not consider this a "craft". But it's always been that way. The electric guitar itself was a controversial music transition. Bob Dylan was famously criticized heavily for going electric. But that was a long time ago, and people got over it. And they will again this time.

wbl 8mo ago
Dylan going electric was not about instrument choices. It was about abandoning the radical folk music tradition that Seeger, Guthrie, etc. had revived.
- petcat 8mo ago
  It absolutely was about the instrument choice. Because folk music had strong norms about acoustic authenticity. Going electric at the time was seen as "commercialized" and "mass produced". We see the parallels with what some perceive as "slop" today.
  - Throaway1975123 8mo ago
    Dylan went electric for money purposes. That was the big betrayal.
- ryukoposting 8mo ago
  Bingo. The problem with this take is that the people pissing and moaning in the early '70s were right. Early Dylan sounds good. The texture of an acoustic guitar draws focus to songcraft and away from objectively bad execution. Dylan's vocals were always bad but they went from charmingly bad to just-plain-bad with the transition to electric. The bigger sound was not flattering for him. With 60 years of hindsight, folk still remains a largely acoustic genre because the sound is flattering to the rest of the genre too. That isn't to say that all folk should be acoustic, it's just that you have to come correct otherwise. I find later Dylan annoying despite loving his early records, and I was born 30 years after everyone stopped caring.
  - Throaway1975123 8mo ago
    Actually most serious music fans consider Dylan's best work to be in the 70's period. New Morning, Saved, Planet Waves, Basement Tapes Source: Worked in record store for 15 years.
    - ryukoposting 7mo ago
      The only consensus among serious music fans is that there is no consensus among serious music fans. Source: me, serious music fan. A lot of things about Dylan got empirically better throughout the '70s, I'll give you that. Deeper concepts, more challenging structure, yada yada yada. The problem is that I don't decide what I listen to based on anything empirical. If I'm standing around thinking "man, I want to listen to Bob Dylan today," I'm thinking of Freewheelin'. You could say "well that's just you," but we both know it isn't. A third group probably thinks of Highway 61 or something. Same thing goes for a lot of artists. Master of Puppets is the best Metallica album empirically, but if I'm thinking "gee I want to listen to Metallica today," I'm playing Ride the Lightning, or And Justice for All. In any case, I think all of this subjectivity might suggest that Dylan going electric was a bad comparison for AI generated art, lol.
      - Throaway1975123 7mo ago
        I can't tell someone not to listen to their favourite Dylan, but in reality we serious music fans often do decide based on empirical factors, we just don't think about it. The "Deeper concepts, more challenging structure, yada yada yada" are all things that go into making the music more interesting and satisfying for your brain, and that's why we keep going to them. Some people appreciate simplicity more, or folk more than rock, but many people with Dylan, just like the social commentary more than the music itself.

wrl 8mo ago

How about "AI ghostwritten"? That's a much closer parallel, and some commercially successful musicians similarly are "ghost produced".

hmokiguess 8mo ago
Ghost produced isn't a good parallel here, the "ghost" in ghost produced comes from the NDA when acquiring a track from a different producer, which, most often is a human.
- wrl 8mo ago
  My impression was that the "ghost" comes less from the formal NDA and more from the fact that somebody else produces/writes the work and is uncredited for doing so. Then, the "author"/"producer" passes it off as their own work.
  - hmokiguess 8mo ago
    Yeah that's both true and the fact that it is a work for hire where the agreement implies the original author cannot claim credit, hence, turn into a ghost. I think the difference here is that the AI isn't a "work for hire" setup, it's more like a tool. It would be closer to buying algo sample packs, using Apple's Logic Pro AI drummer for part of the work, or other drum machines for example, and working your way around to glue them together into a composition. The parallel would need to be between "tool" <—> "composition", rather than "author" <—> "composition" imo.