I will never forget the immortal Ross Perot once saying with a straight face "I'll play footnotes on a shoe horn for ya, all day".
I can't carry a tune, I have no idea what a G-chord is. I do however have a life long love of music up until about 1994.
I used to work in radio and nightclubs (strip clubs). I guess it's like fashion.
My dad stopped wearing new clothes around the time he was my age now. He just wore the same old style from decades before. He listened to "Oldies" when they were what I would consider oldies. (Fifties/Motown).
Now, the "Oldies" station plays god-damned Depeche Mode, and shit I grew up with. I've often railed against the destruction of this site due to AI slop pouring in. I have a fellow author who placed THREE em-dashes in the same sentence. I am starting to think people are just writing in the shit way that AI writes because they read so much slop.
As much as I hate AI, I also love making AI images to include in my stories. They add a fun element. I love placing myself somewhere in the background as an easter egg (or even as a background character). I am usually some perverted asshole (like in real life), but a little different slant on me.
I've been digging AI music for a while. It's better than most songs out today. I couldn't tell a Dua Lippa from a Pussy Lippa. I have no fucking clue about modern music. I can tell you Anita Ward sang Ring My Bell, and the Five Stairsteps sang O-O-H Child. I can tell you every hit from the 1980s Top 40 and rock charts within a few notes. I just can't get into new music.
AI Music on Youtube blew my mind. I heard a rendition of "The Black Parade" (originally by My Chemical Romance). It was sung with a raspy Sam Cooke voice that's as rough as it is smooth, and impossible to imitate. You have to earn that voice with a lifetime of practice and the luck of being born with it. The voice cracked in the middle of a belted out lyric about his father passing away and charging him with carrying on after he was gone. Fuck!
I thought there was no way anyone such as me could ever approach that genius.I am still convinced he didn't come upon that song with a simple prompt. There are a ton of tools to sweeten and edit songs. I finally decided to take the plunge and make a few songs.
My favorite music is covers of the unusual. I heard a Glam Metal version of "Busta a move" by Young MC that blew my mind. I heard a rock version of "I'd like to teach the world to sing". That's a song that you only have to hear ONCE and you'll never forget it. I love the unusual covers of songs in a completely different genre because they don't try to do just a poor imitation of the original artst.
You can't fucking "Out Prince" Prince. If you want to copy someone like him or Freddy Mercury, the best you can do is "Yeah, you are almost as good."
If you are going to perform anything by Steve Perry, and you try to sing like him? Fuck off. You already lost. There are some people who can sound almost like him but you aren't him.
I've heard some incredible country versions of Faithfully and Don't Stop Believing that the singer made their own. That is what I wanted to do. I wanted to take what I hear in my head, and use a tool that was previously never available to someone like me to make it real and share it with others.
I love Country. My caveat is not the shit that's on the radio now. There are exceptions, Jamey Johnson, Luke Combs people like that are the real deal. I love 1970s Jukebox country that takes me back to begging for a quarter at the Moose Lodge so I could hear something while my dad got drunk. I love old Crystal Gayle and I've heard some bad ass interpretations of "I've never been to me" by Charlene.
I love uplifting Gospel. I am not going to get into belief, not worth it. I just love how uplifting a sweet southern voice is in church on Sunday morning. The exultant joy of a hands clapping and a baritone black man singing with all of his might, backed up by a mighty choir that's just having fun up on that stage showing off that gift in their voices. I've heard a White Zombie "Dragula" sung gospel that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I never sat down and listened to the lyrics of that one. I was pissed he changed his style and thought he was tryna go mainstream with it.
I love Pinoy Rock. It's usually fast, sometimes angry, dramatic, raw guitars. The interesting thing about it is that they pick some old songs to cover that I would never have imagined are jams. I think if Lionel Richie heard the cover of "Endless Love" or Peabo Bryson heard the rock cover if "if you are in my arms again", they'd smile. They'd be flattered. These songs are fast and great to drive too.
I finally took the plunge and made some songs. True by Spandau Ballet, Raspberry Beret by Prince. I was still learning, and I am happy with how they turned out. I couldn't pick one version and leave the others behind. I made about 8-10 versions and then mixed a few down. I remixed, remastered, edited, and learned a few things about getting the melody right.
Then I did a melancholy, sad, forlorn version of "Little Red Corvette" and "1999" by Prince. it's not that I am a Prince Fanatic. I could just hear them in my head as sad songs. If you listen to the words of Raspberry Beret, Prince is basically saying that the girl was a dumb bitch but she was hot as fuck. If you listen to 1999, it's about we are all gonna die some day and you may as well just dance. Little Red Corvette is about a slutty bitch that carries around used condoms.
In my videos, I decided to have a little fun with it and put videos. At first, just something to look at when you are listening. The music is the show. It still is. I am not trying to synch to the words but I had a lot of fun making the videos.
I decided to see what would happen if I did a Pinoy style ballad with the Little Red Corvette song. Let me tell you, my dick got immediately hard when I heard it. It was so special that I just couldn't believe I had made something that beautiful. I haven't felt that way since I first picked my daughter up at the hospital.
it was cathartic. I am hooked. I will still write, obviously! I have a tone of stories to edit and put proper endings on and I have a ton of new ideas that I want to explore.
But, I thought I'd share a video. You can be a troll and leave shit comments etc but please do not. Life is too shitty these days for snotty crap like that. If you are interested in what I considered a fun creative exercise - check it out.
Does it steal from musical artists? I am not interested in the debate, but the answer is "Duh, sure it does"
When hasn't the record company stole from musicians? The concert promoter? The lawyer that figured out there was a way to get around copyright laws by calling it something else when they sample a song. When hasn't the agent?
I tried to explain to someone who hadn't lived through the Napster age. There used to be a record store on every street corner and in all malls. It was huge, had Kenny Rogers and Stevie nicks painted on the side of some of them (Peaches). Then one day Napster came out and fuck if everyone didn't start sharing music. Within two years there wasn't a record store for miles. USED CD stores hung on for a little while, now you can count the used record stores on one hand within 50 miles of most places.
It transformed the industry. The AI we have now isnt good enough to give us movies on demand. In twenty years, you'll probably say "Give me Baby Got Back sung by Taylor Swift" and the AI will create it for you while you are watching a custom TV show it just wrote for you. It will still suck, and be shitty but we produced the Lord of the Rings TV show, and Star Trek Academy, so humans aren't all that much better than AI.
AI is here - people are gonna use it, and while the world isn't on fire, I am going to fucking jam. If you wanna listen, I am proud of this one.
https://youtu.be/5SI_080BHSI
and here is the same song, sung country - as country as I could make it. I actually didn't want all the extra instruments. I am still learning how to prompt in the instrumentation.
https://youtu.be/umtTz5dr-jk
Fun little videos. They are just clips and still images, not intended to be coherent story, or synched to the voices.