The new "AI" Section

[Boydie]

Hi all

I have had a few suggestions to create a section dedicated to AI...so here it is 

Love it or hate it - it looks like AI is here to stay, so please use this area for all discussions about AI, share any info on your favourite tools, any breakthroughs, news etc. etc.

I didn't want to ignore AI - but I think having a separate section for AI creations would be useful (for those that want to admit they are using it  )

[ChrisPrice]

Brilliant! So glad to see this. Agreed, AI is most likely here to stay. Another forum I visit has AI on the main songwriters' page, and it's caused no end of trouble. They've lost quite a few members over it. Hey - some of them are now here!!

For the record I don't like AI generated music, but some folks are very much on board with it, so having it's own section makes perfect sense.

[Nick Ryder]

AI can be great for some things. For example, when it was used to isolate John Lennons voice from his demo recording of Now and Then (the most recent Beatles single), it made such a difference to the quality of the mix. And I hear they're revisiting Free as a Bird and Real Love which are both being re-released the back end of this year.

However, if you write, or generate lyrics using AI, and then use those lyrics to get AI to write, arrange and produce a song when you are not a musician, then that does not qualify as songwriting.

I have seen some people who generate AI music get very upset when someone calls them out on this, but in my opinion this kind of thing is insulting to real songwriters who hone their craft over many, many years!!

[Elvis Nash]

I think this subject has been done to death , Its here to stay , you can use it as a tool , or full-blown AI songs , Its just a song , I'm not worried on replacing studio songs I do . You gotta try to beat robots . Not easy , they're radio Ready on V4 .

[Vicki]

For me...I use AI as a songwriting tool in various ways. For instance, I'll ask ChatGPT to...

1. ...give me some ideas of directions I can go with a prompt like, say, "ocean". From that, I get a pretty good list of ideas.

2. ...analyze one of my songs, which gives me an idea what it might mean to some people.

3. ...critique one of my songs, which usually gives me some good ideas for improving it.

4. I'll give Suno a lyric and ask it to create musical settings. I can go two ways with this. I can treat Suno as my collaborator--I write the lyrics and Suno writes the music (I collaborate with people in the same way). Or I can generate several musical settings and get ideas from them for writing my own music. I am likely to use some of Suno's musical phrases. And I can have it generate the same lyric in different genres to get an idea how various genres can affect the impact of the lyric.

A side note: my grandchildren love giving Suno word prompts and listening to what it comes up with. One of the girls asked Suno to write a birthday song for her dad. She generated several, chose the one she liked best, and sent it to him. He loved it; he was so touched!

Using Suno as a collaborator, as in #4 above, is perfect for lyric writers who have trouble finding melody writers.

Vicki

[icystorm]

I think this subject has been done to death , Its here to stay , you can use it as a tool , or full-blown AI songs , Its just a song , I'm not worried on replacing studio songs I do . You gotta try to beat robots . Not easy , they're radio Ready on V4 .

@Elvis Nash -- I think you're missing the point, my friend. When someone posts to a songwriter's forum and essentially says, "Here's a song a computer wrote, what do you think of it?", I immediately wonder, "What's wrong with this picture?" I'm not alone.

Songwriting forums are for humans to share the songs we conceive of and write ourselves. We evaluate each other's human-written songs based on that, whether music only (instrumentals), lyrics only, or words and music together as complete songs.

You're a very talented songwriter, Elvis. I've enjoyed your human-written songs a lot over the years. You always composed the music and lyrics, and you often used a team of skilled studio musicians, engineers, and producers to lay down tracks and polish your songs to create a great final product. I hope you never stand down and allow AI to write your songs for you. You're much better than that.

As for AI-written songs, there is a sub-forum intended to prevent the mixing of human-written songs with AI-written songs. I think that's a great idea to protect the imagination and creativity of human songwriters from being lost in the rising sea of instantly-composed AI songs written by computers.

Sadly, I'm afraid the next topic will be "The great lost art of songwriting."  

Cheers,
Joseph

[Elvis Nash]

I think this subject has been done to death , Its here to stay , you can use it as a tool , or full-blown AI songs , Its just a song , I'm not worried on replacing studio songs I do . You gotta try to beat robots . Not easy , they're radio Ready on V4 .

@Elvis Nash -- I think you're missing the point, my friend. When someone posts to a songwriter's forum and essentially says, "Here's a song a computer wrote, what do you think of it?", I immediately wonder, "What's wrong with this picture?" I'm not alone.

Songwriting forums are for humans to share the songs we conceive of and write ourselves. We evaluate each other's human-written songs based on that, whether music only (instrumentals), lyrics only, or words and music together as complete songs.

You're a very talented songwriter, Elvis. I've enjoyed your human-written songs a lot over the years. You always composed the music and lyrics, and you often used a team of skilled studio musicians, engineers, and producers to lay down tracks and polish your songs to create a great final product. I hope you never stand down and allow AI to write your songs for you. You're much better than that.

As for AI-written songs, there is a sub-forum intended to prevent the mixing of human-written songs with AI-written songs. I think that's a great idea to protect the imagination and creativity of human songwriters from being lost in the rising sea of instantly-composed AI songs written by computers.

Sadly, I'm afraid the next topic will be "The great lost art of songwriting."  

Cheers,
Joseph

Naw I'll keep writing them and use session players and sing them . Well AI is a bit disturbing to beat them , I've just accepted the fact now .

[icystorm]

Naw I'll keep writing them and use session players and sing them.

That's great! Elvis Nash's original songs are what I've enjoyed hearing over the years and want to continue hearing. Whether it's just you and a guitar, or a polished song you wrote and then recorded with session players and a pro producer, both sound great in their own way, because you wrote them!  

Well AI is a bit disturbing to beat them, I've just accepted the fact now.

As someone who enjoys songwriting as a fun and fulfilling hobby, I never think about it in terms of competing with AI-generated songs. Since you aspire to create music professionally, I can understand your perspective—that the finished product is what truly matters. AI excels at rapidly creating full albums of finished songs in just minutes.

For me, songwriting is always about the creative process based on my own imagination, thoughts, and emotions that I experience myself and see in others. Experiences like walking along a beach in the moonlight, hand-in-hand with the beautiful woman I love—smelling the aroma of her perfume, seeing her perfect summer hair tousled by the wind, tasting the coconut lip balm on her soft lips, and looking into her lovely eyes as she tells me she loves me—all make for great songwriting inspiration! On the flip side, heartbreak and painful breakups inspire deeply emotional songs, too.

I don't need to turn my romantic beach experiences into prompts for SUNO and ask it to write a song for me about them. I prefer to compose the music and lyrics myself, drawing inspiration from my own experiences and emotions, the world around me, people, movies, books, and more. There's no shortage of inspiration, nor any limit to where it comes from. There's absolutely no need for a computer to interpret all of that and generate a song based on prompts.

Another source of inspiration is listening to songs that deeply resonate with us. When you're in that mental, spiritual, and emotional space, write a song! Not to copy the chords and melodies from their songs, but to channel the mental imagery and the emotional/spiritual essence the song(s) evoke. Just imagine what another song from the same album might have sounded like if the original artist had written and recorded it. Of course, AI-SUNO's stance is, 'Here's what that song would have sounded like!' But my response? No thanks—I'd rather imagine it myself!

Cheers,
Joseph

[Elvis Nash]

 I never think about it in terms of competing with AI-generated songs. I do cuz I have to compete against them , its more than a hobby I guess

[Nick Ryder]

Having read through some of the examples about, I think its opened another can of worms that I'd not considered before.

So, playing devils advocate here.....

Someone who is a musician, has a DAW and small studio setup could use AI to generate lyrics and then upload them to a site like Suno and get it to produce a fully arranged song for them.

Then they could re-record that song in their own studio and play all the instruments and sing the vocals and then pass it off as their own composition and nobody would ever know.

And what about if they had part written a song but was stuck for a chorus? They could just take a chorus from an AI generated song, drop it into their own DAW session and again, claim to have written it.

I'd put money on some people having done that already which does not sit right with me at all.

I do wonder if there will be tighter regulation around AI music generation because at the end of the day, it is taking melodies from established songs, so there has to be copywright issues which need addressing.

So yeah, my opinion on this aspect of AI is that I strongly disagree with its use.

[Elvis Nash]

People who use AI are not singers or musicians , So AI gives them an outlet . I doubt any AI song done by a person on AI sites are making money or on radio . I highly doubt majors are worried about AI songs beating them .  Sorry to say a good AI song beats most singer -songwriters songs , Way it is . Everybody is worried about robots , I'm not