In the 80s alot of people thought that a computer could never beat a world champion at chess, but by 1997 one did, and for the last decade, decade and a half, computers can beat the best humans a thousand times in a row.
I was expecting a lecture like this from Momus. Last week, as I was playing around with Suno, pastiching this and parodying that, I thought to myself, “Isn’t this pretty much what someone like Momus does already, just not with software and algorithms, but with genius and a brain?” Within days came the “Yikes” commercial, quite the most exciting thing Momus has done for at least a month or so-and the funniest. Before I listened to “Yikes” (I have the download and I’m waiting for the “real” cd), I used Replay to replace all of the vocals with David Bowie’s (there are a variety of Bowie voices available on Weights). David did his usual yeoman’s service, and it gave me a whole new angle not only on the album as well as Momus’s debt to Bowie. However, when I listened to the unaltered songs later, I wasn’t so anxious: for some reason, I had kept fearing posthumous David would flub a note or lyric, even though that was almost technically impossible (or unthinkable). Already I’ve used Suno and Udio to produce pretty fascinating musical settings for some favorite poems, lyrics by Shakespeare, and a resetting of Sitwell’s “Facade” (not that I don’t love Walton’s music, but a sort of “remix” was due). (As well as the odd songs for friends about having to take the dog for a walk or do the dishes.) Oddly enough, when I copy-and-pasted the lyrics to “Strawberry Fields Forever” into one of the programs, and prompted with phrases like “psychedelic sixties with mellotron, etc.” I got something much closer to a cross between the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd than The Beatles, not very experimental, although still fairly good. True idiosyncrasy is at yet beyond these programs, presumably. (I haven’t published any of these experiments yet, because who knows if Shakespeare’s estate will demand a take-down... maybe I will eventually.) Please, please beat everyone at the game and make your own AI album today, Momus! You could have it done in time for tea… (In addition, I’d like to hear Momus sing the entirety of “154,” still after all these years perhaps the album with which I’d choose to jump into the abyss.)
Wow! Walton's Facade, Wire's 154, Bowie singing Momus... we are deep in the same hymnbook, though you are clearly deeper already. Replay / Weights, eh? I must try to Bowiefy Yikes! Who would have thought, even in the recent past, that an album could be experienced this way? O brave new world, etc.
Its thilling and threatening as you say, but its so fascinating and highly creative. I am using it, thanks to you, and its really beautiful. To create more as long as we can, even as amateurs I think we can still create some original music and sonics. I have a want to imagine what Gainsbourg might have done with an extra decade or so. I made Moi, M'aime Bwana and then what his attack on vapourwave might be (murmurs du minuit), Im going to try a gangster rap album with the narrative of Gainsberre in a bisto after a stroke with his gangster buddies in 1997 spitting rhymes about his new obsession, Irene. Also would like to make some Nico records if she hadn't died in 88, but instead 08. What would she have done in that time. Its kinda like how in the past new genres emerged as a kind of fandom and branching off the work you like as both initilly pasiche but then its becomes original with tinkering and reflection. Thanks for sharing Nick ❤
Oh, nice. The age of musical necrophilia is upon us. Just sampling the past wasn't enough. Now we are digging up corpses and force them to sing our demented comedic lyrics. Yes, plunder Bowie's legacy and mutate it into whatever floats our boat. In retrospect the Bowie song Blackstar foreshadows this unscrupulous, 'anything goes' age.
You may get away with it because you are intending to be genuinely creative with it, Momus. That is key to all art, surely? A mere pastiche in itself (which so much pop music is and your art is much more than) has little, if any, creative value. It can only appeal to dullards! I remain open-minded about your experiment as you are capable of being creative and innovative with something that is essentially limited by its programme parameters. As you say, 'amateurs' become groundbreaking through mucking about with stuff in ways they aren't supposed to! The best artists are very naughty (unlike machines)!
This is the technology in the here and now in April 2024 and it is improving at a terrifying speed. In two years' time, it might be bordering perfection. Then, how would you feel if some bunch of weasels released a new Momus album that had nothing to do with you? Or if a confected, cynical and fraudulent "Secret Bowie and Moms studio bootleg" surfaced, etc? I think this is the end of copyright and artistic autonomy, because anyone anywhere will soon be able to get exactly whatever they want depending on their exact request. Even if it never existed before and will never exist again beyond a single whimsical unit of consumption. And then think about actors, and creatives of any genre. Music, fashion, architecture, industrial design, urban planing, cafe menus. It is a cultural singularity and therefore a cultural apocalypse.
This is what (ahem) Rick Beato is predicting: there will be XTC records and XTC AI records alongside each other, and in fact the AI ones will do rather better, because you’ll be able, as you say, to specify everything you want. They may serve as an advert for the real artist’s records, or maybe replace them. Either way, the labels won’t care. Artists are just the first specifiers of a set of signifiers, audiences the second.
I suspect for reasons of copyright-related reasons, the audio quality of Udio's output is somewhat limited: low-res mp3. Which (to me, at least) limits its usability in making "real" recordings...
Even as we speak, some of these services (Suno, for instance) are monetising and restricting, in a sort of accelerated version of “the enshittification of everything” (invent, disrupt, dominate, monetise, restrict).
In the 80s alot of people thought that a computer could never beat a world champion at chess, but by 1997 one did, and for the last decade, decade and a half, computers can beat the best humans a thousand times in a row.
I was expecting a lecture like this from Momus. Last week, as I was playing around with Suno, pastiching this and parodying that, I thought to myself, “Isn’t this pretty much what someone like Momus does already, just not with software and algorithms, but with genius and a brain?” Within days came the “Yikes” commercial, quite the most exciting thing Momus has done for at least a month or so-and the funniest.
Before I listened to “Yikes” (I have the download and I’m waiting for the “real” cd), I used Replay to replace all of the vocals with David Bowie’s (there are a variety of Bowie voices available on Weights). David did his usual yeoman’s service, and it gave me a whole new angle not only on the album as well as Momus’s debt to Bowie. However, when I listened to the unaltered songs later, I wasn’t so anxious: for some reason, I had kept fearing posthumous David would flub a note or lyric, even though that was almost technically impossible (or unthinkable).
Already I’ve used Suno and Udio to produce pretty fascinating musical settings for some favorite poems, lyrics by Shakespeare, and a resetting of Sitwell’s “Facade” (not that I don’t love Walton’s music, but a sort of “remix” was due). (As well as the odd songs for friends about having to take the dog for a walk or do the dishes.) Oddly enough, when I copy-and-pasted the lyrics to “Strawberry Fields Forever” into one of the programs, and prompted with phrases like “psychedelic sixties with mellotron, etc.” I got something much closer to a cross between the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd than The Beatles, not very experimental, although still fairly good. True idiosyncrasy is at yet beyond these programs, presumably. (I haven’t published any of these experiments yet, because who knows if Shakespeare’s estate will demand a take-down... maybe I will eventually.)
Please, please beat everyone at the game and make your own AI album today, Momus! You could have it done in time for tea…
(In addition, I’d like to hear Momus sing the entirety of “154,” still after all these years perhaps the album with which I’d choose to jump into the abyss.)
Wow! Walton's Facade, Wire's 154, Bowie singing Momus... we are deep in the same hymnbook, though you are clearly deeper already. Replay / Weights, eh? I must try to Bowiefy Yikes! Who would have thought, even in the recent past, that an album could be experienced this way? O brave new world, etc.
Bowie singing Life After Sixty: weights.gg/shared/clvb7sgye0avxzml725ret6g3?inviteCode=ae1cf
Momus... Just so incredibly cute with those filters. Don't worry, AI could never replace you in my heart!
I think the best use of suno is making personalized songs about ones daily life . Like songs about fixing the fence gate latch
Its thilling and threatening as you say, but its so fascinating and highly creative. I am using it, thanks to you, and its really beautiful. To create more as long as we can, even as amateurs I think we can still create some original music and sonics. I have a want to imagine what Gainsbourg might have done with an extra decade or so. I made Moi, M'aime Bwana and then what his attack on vapourwave might be (murmurs du minuit), Im going to try a gangster rap album with the narrative of Gainsberre in a bisto after a stroke with his gangster buddies in 1997 spitting rhymes about his new obsession, Irene. Also would like to make some Nico records if she hadn't died in 88, but instead 08. What would she have done in that time. Its kinda like how in the past new genres emerged as a kind of fandom and branching off the work you like as both initilly pasiche but then its becomes original with tinkering and reflection. Thanks for sharing Nick ❤
This cybernetic pairing of ML/Ui and Momus sounds very promising.
Oh wow. Nick singing Colin Newman was weirdly enjoyable.
I would dig all of 154 in MomusTone if such a thing existed.
Oh, nice. The age of musical necrophilia is upon us. Just sampling the past wasn't enough. Now we are digging up corpses and force them to sing our demented comedic lyrics. Yes, plunder Bowie's legacy and mutate it into whatever floats our boat. In retrospect the Bowie song Blackstar foreshadows this unscrupulous, 'anything goes' age.
What is our greater fear of, the Human, AI, or ourself?
You may get away with it because you are intending to be genuinely creative with it, Momus. That is key to all art, surely? A mere pastiche in itself (which so much pop music is and your art is much more than) has little, if any, creative value. It can only appeal to dullards! I remain open-minded about your experiment as you are capable of being creative and innovative with something that is essentially limited by its programme parameters. As you say, 'amateurs' become groundbreaking through mucking about with stuff in ways they aren't supposed to! The best artists are very naughty (unlike machines)!
This medieval dance song also sound like The Dragonborn Comes from The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim.
This is the technology in the here and now in April 2024 and it is improving at a terrifying speed. In two years' time, it might be bordering perfection.
Then, how would you feel if some bunch of weasels released a new Momus album that had nothing to do with you? Or if a confected, cynical and fraudulent "Secret Bowie and Moms studio bootleg" surfaced, etc?
I think this is the end of copyright and artistic autonomy, because anyone anywhere will soon be able to get exactly whatever they want depending on their exact request. Even if it never existed before and will never exist again beyond a single whimsical unit of consumption.
And then think about actors, and creatives of any genre. Music, fashion, architecture, industrial design, urban planing, cafe menus. It is a cultural singularity and therefore a cultural apocalypse.
This is what (ahem) Rick Beato is predicting: there will be XTC records and XTC AI records alongside each other, and in fact the AI ones will do rather better, because you’ll be able, as you say, to specify everything you want. They may serve as an advert for the real artist’s records, or maybe replace them. Either way, the labels won’t care. Artists are just the first specifiers of a set of signifiers, audiences the second.
Momus as a mad scientist...can't wait
I'm weirdly proud of having my post about attempting to get ChatGPT to make a punk rock joke onscreen here.
The irony is that I tried to reproduce that, but it stubbornly refused to disobey my instruction to avoid the question format.
I suspect for reasons of copyright-related reasons, the audio quality of Udio's output is somewhat limited: low-res mp3. Which (to me, at least) limits its usability in making "real" recordings...
Even as we speak, some of these services (Suno, for instance) are monetising and restricting, in a sort of accelerated version of “the enshittification of everything” (invent, disrupt, dominate, monetise, restrict).
idk, its kind of sad
and precisely because it feels like a bad joke where everything that you had to care about, will be taken from you anyhow