Following On ...

 "Following on ... the second innings ..."

The Great A.I. Debate (and its part in my musical history)

The John Player League "Around the Wicket'

And so ... how to get your music heard if you have used A.I. to 'produce' your content. I feel this distinction - between 'produce' and 'create' is important - as I have used Suno, as it were, as a recording studio with session musicians, rather than as a writing partner or record producer. All the initial ideas were mine - words, music, feel, genre, intonation, colour and shape.

Yet, to my dismay, the usual platforms for ensuring that my songs get even the smallest chance to be heard rejected my content, as it was (either created or produced) using A.I.

I do find this galling, especially as Suno's terms and conditions stipulated that with a paid subscription (which I had) allowed me to retain the rights to my compositions. Yes readers, I paid for a service! I didn't by-pass it or use some weird satellite to bounce something for free.

Secondly, I find it extraordinary that the above collection of songs - cricket parody tunes 'performed' by a vintage, vaudeville, jazz influenced pub band centering on characters in cricket's past such as Alan Knott, Tony Greig, David Steele at al could ever have come from the head of an A.I. bot. I find it hard to believe, unless the bot had exactly the same upbringing as me, would have any clue as to why I would be celebrating the type of batting glove used by a former England captain, or my own observations of a peculiar stance of a diminutive wicket-keeper.

The songs I wrote were so personal to my memories and recollections, of watching or listening to cricket on the television or radio - back in the days where a solitary commentator sufficed, the camera was positioned at one end of the ground only and small boys in flared trousers and bucket hats were allowed to sit on the boundary rope to fetch the ball for a weary fielder if it ever came their way.

They also detailed my experiences as a village, club and junior county cricketer - whether that be undulating pitches, dashing characters, dibbly-dobbly bowlers, tired old fielders patrolling the boundary or schoolboy nicknames for those pieces of necessary equipment your mother hadn't warned you about!

Bringing the game up-to-date, a couple of songs reflected my own personal thoughts on modern whack-a-bouts and particular England opening bats. 

I do find it extraordinary that anyone could lay to claim that these songs were born from the mind of A.I.

Yet there it was ... rejection from the sources I used to up-load the tracks to streaming platforms. Breaching conditions, small-print, artificial this and that, and I have VIOLATED their terms and conditions.

Stunning!

Apparently you can appeal these decisions. Okay. Good luck with that. Three months down the line and a few reminders and yet, as always, nothing!

Suno didn't come up with the idea of a Vaudevillian jazz/pub band. Suno didn't think of 'clever' ideas for songs about the sort of gloves a certain cricketer used or the type of player someone from my youthful games of club cricket was. Suno didn't come up with the idea of comedy cricket songs (I think that was the 'Duckworth Lewis Method!) 

However, unlike the DLM, I don't have the finances nor wherewithal to produce an album using musicians in a recording studio - however, big or small, however technically or incompetent. So I used Suno instead. A tool for helping musicians with their projects. Yes, it could create from scratch but in my case it didn't. I had to write the songs first, come up with arrangements, decide (as any record producer would) what instruments I wanted on the song, to best compliment its feel and emotions. I had to create an imaginary band, give them a name, decide what they looked like, choose their instruments, conclude what sort of era they were from, in any. Or do I leave that to the listening public's imagination?

Yes.

Imagination.

Using it.

Imagine that ...