The Great A.I. Debate (and its part in my musical history)
The Great A.I. Debate (feat: 'Suno')
"it's not real" "you're stealing someone else's work" "you can't trust anyone these days"
Introduction:
The growth and recognition of A.I. recently has been extremely fast (certainly quicker than people expected) and is now forming a constant debate in everyday life. I'm not an expert in things 'computer' but it seems the possibilities are endless, even beyond our wildest imaginations and the fact that when the internet and World Wide Web was developed we thought "well, that's it then!"
Education, politics, the workplace, sport, photography, the arts have (and will continue to be) affected by this rapidity of growth. I, however, am going to concentrate on my passion - music.
When A.I. first raised its head, there were comments abound that "all you have to do is press a button and hey presto, you have a song which sounds just like Ed Sheeran!" (Ironically, or possibly not depending on your taste, the 'Ed Sheeran' songs were typically hideous!)
Then there was a 'band' (who may or not have been based around 'The Eagles') who managed to stream countless times on Sp*t*fy despite not existing, as well as having guitarists with 6 fingers playing seemingly impossible chord shapes. I'm sure there are other examples but life is short and I for one can't be doing with it.
My own ventures into A.I. began with some frankly dreadful platforms where you could supposedly manually enter in midi notes of your melody and a generated 'voice' would sing it for you - usually in the style of a dolphin or a whale who has over done it on the plankton. Needless to say, I gave up on that idea. I could sing my songs badly - I didn't need A.I. to do it for me.
How I Arrived At 'Suno':
My first foray into the world of 'Suno' (I'm sure other A.I. music generation websites are available) came about by accident. I had just begun performing at a local Open Mic evening - just me and my out-of-tune acoustic guitar - and a kind comment came my way about considering use of Cello and/or violin on my songs, as these instruments would be the perfect compliment.
My initial thoughts turned to 'Fiverr' - the on-line platform of available to hire freelancers and specialists in many fields - Marketing, Writing, Graphic Design, Video Production and of course, Musicians. I had previously engaged singers and musicians to help me with my projects, with (it's safe to say) varying degrees of success. Using 'Fiverr' involves scrolling through endless freelancers who all claim to be the best person to help with your project but whose abilities are often questionable and whose past efforts don't always match your expectations. The downside of this operation is having to make a financial commitment up-front, as well as being unsure as to whether the freelancer is accepting your project because they genuinely like it or just need some money.
The second, (could it be said 'old-fashioned') option was to advertise on-line for musicians. Now, I'm being perfectly honest here, the area of the country I live is notorious for 'good-time Blues covers' and 'Party Bands', or hard rock. Any acoustic/folk/pop/rock musicians seemed to be plying their own trade on their own quite happily, and no-one answered my frequent ads for players to join me.
Having been burnt by previous excursions into 'Fiverr' I began thinking that surely there was a better way of getting the cello and violin parts I needed. I scoured the internet for a solution and after quite a few false starts, purely by more luck than judgement, stumbled across 'Suno'. What it seemed to offer was a way to generate music at the click of a button, with a host of style prompts designed to customise your song or idea. From literally a thought to the other end of the spectrum, where a fully formed and already recorded track to be uploaded, Suno could turn your piece into something resembling work ready for availability on streaming platforms within seconds.
Too good to be true? Undoubtedly ...
The Argument:
I've heard it said that using 'Suno' (or any other platform) is not considered 'creative' because, (and I paraphrase): "all you do is press a button and because you have no idea what the result is going to sound like, it's not creative. You can then press the button again and Suno will deliver a different result every time, each time the 'author' not knowing what it will come out as."
On the one hand, this is true. 'Suno' can even compose lyrics for you, with gentle prompts. There are arguments that being 'clever with prompts' or 'knowing the best prompts' is actually part of the creative process. I can understand that point of view but, in my opinion, there should be at least some form of melodic and lyrical content idea before setting off.
On the other side, (and this would be my particular viewpoint), 'Suno' has the ability to take a fully formed, fully recorded, arranged, thought out, mastered, complete idea and re-produce the track in a more rounded and professionally sounding product. I'm not suggesting that 'Suno' can replicate the sound of a state-of-the-art studio or mastering suite, led by top professionals but the results, to my ears, can be to my liking.
The range of possibilities are potentially endless ... from a word to a full suite. I would argue it is how you use 'Suno' which should be debated rather than simply "oh, you used 'Suno'"
Why? (A personal reason):
To go back a little way, I've been in bands and performing on my own for more years than I care to consider. But despite the undoubted ups (being signed, TV, radio, photoshoots, meeting Duran Duran, Chas n Dave and one of Adam and the Ants) and the downs (being dropped, being laughed at by a sound engineer when doing a sound check, playing a gig while singing into a microphone taped to a Christmas Tree) I have persisted with music, primarily with writing and recording my own songs. I began with a tape-to-tape cassette recorder, progressed through a 4-track tape machine, then an 8-track digital recorder to dabbling with MIDI on Cakewalk, to Cubase and finally (and still) with Logic Pro.
Never the best guitarist, I played in an array of bands over the years; jumping-up-and-down indie, strange folk, sweet, honey pop, indie-trash, indie-pop, singer-songwriter ... Sometimes I sang, sometimes I didn't. Nevertheless, all through the years I had assembled quite a collection of tapes, DAT tapes and CDs of either my own bedroom recordings, 'live in a garage' rehearsal tapes or studio sessions. It was fair to say that, as time passed, some of these I couldn't bear to listen to (for a variety of reasons but primarily the poor audio quality and some of the playing and singing.) Time meaning money meant we rarely had the time to do justice to any of the songs. That and the naturally occurring band egos meant sessions were often less than satisfactory and the results showed.
Even as I developed my own 'skills' within Logic I felt I could never quite match true studio quality, both technically with equipment and the ears of a producer. However, 'Suno' changed both my approach and my attitude, as well as my lost faith in my songwriting. All of a sudden, literally within the press of a button, I regained the missing years of my musical history.
How?:
By uploading to 'Suno' old demos I was able to tweak the style prompts to let the programme produce superior sounding results of my songs yet retain the essence of the track. I gained audio perfection of guitar tone, bass intonation, piano flourished, strings resonance, vocal sonority and drum accents that I couldn't have dreamed of, even during the days of professional studios and record contracts. If I wanted a Cello, I could have a Cello. If I decided the track needed Cor Anglais, I could have a Cor Anglais. Guitar parts were in tune, singing was in key, harmonies well-arranged.
Yet, and to me this is the important part and central to my argument as to why this use of A.I. is positive, these parts were all my part of my arrangements. Certainly there were embellishments and flourishes but I will address this shortly. The crux is, these tunes retained my original thoughts and ideas - those I had already committed to tape - sometimes decades earlier on a cheap cassette machine in my bedroom. Now they sounded like an orchestra our friend Ed may have hired.
To answer the criticism that "you don't know what you will get" I would counter that by saying, "yes I did know." The style prompts and all the adjustment features 'Suno' gives creators allows you to adjust and control the degree of accuracy to your uploaded track as you wish. I wanted my finished product to have the identity, integrity and honesty of my original demo, albeit one which sounded like a studio made product.
Back To The Future:
I could also be more creative than previous technology had allowed me. A few years ago I had developed the idea of 'Valentina Way' an imaginary band from 1969-1971. This came from the Covid-19 lockdown days, idly messing about on social media, where the comedian Arthur Smith (self-appointed Night Mayor of Balham) would invite his followers to accompany him on imaginary excursions around Europe - bearing in mind the restrictions on travel and movement during the pandemic. My own contribution to these threads was to include 'Valentina Way' performing in imaginary venues, supporting other, more luminary yet still imaginary, oversea tribute band. (Trust me ... you had to be there!)
I'd been listening to the new 'Cornershop' album at the time, and had been led to their cover of 'Sugar Sugar' by The Archies. I realised that one of my own songs, 'Impossible' bore a similar feel to that track, even more so, if it could be produced in a Bubblegum-Pop style. So I set about just that - re-arranged everything with Farfisa organs, tambourines, jangly electric guitars, employed someone from Fiverr to do the vocals and hey presto, there was the track. I then set about manufacturing the 'band'. I found old 1970's clothes catalogues and recruited my five members - cutting and pasting on PhotoScapeX to create their look and style. I even employed a Fiverr artists to design some 'Scooby Doo' style characters of the clothes catalogue images.
With one song complete, I followed up by taking a selection of what I considered to be the most appropriate sounding late 60's to early 70's of my songs to re-work into Valentina Way arrangements.
All this was achievable in my own house (during lockdown) using computer-based software to augment human vocals and my own human guitar playing and arrangements to songs I had sat down and written using my brain, hands and a cheap acoustic guitar.
Did I know what I wanted it to sound like? Yes! Did I use humans to reproduce the parts? Not entirely. Were they my lyrics and top-line melody? Absolutely.
Fast Forward:
When I first realised I could use 'Suno' to give me the professional sheen my own recordings had been lacking, instead of trying to make a thoroughly modern recording I began to wonder if I could use the A.I. programme in a more imaginative way. What if I followed the example of my 'Valentina Way' experiment? I sat down to consider my own musical influences over the years, concluding that I had rarely been guided by current musical trends. Instead, I had tended to delve back into the past (sometimes my own past) to find what I wanted to achieve musically and sonically.
The songs I'd been performing at the open mic nights were very much influenced by Stephen Duffy and The Lilac Time, particularly the late 1980's period when Stephen had been introduced to the world of Nick Drake. Cellos were the thing (see my previous struggles) and this was the perfect opportunity to recreate the songs in the style I preferred. Again, in my defence of 'Suno', this was my imagination, my creativity, my choices in deciding what style, texture, tempo, key, performance I wanted for my song, as well as using that imagination to then create a band from the late 1980's to 'front' the project, in a similar vein to 'Valentina Way'.
The Milli Vanilli Argument?:
Aha. A band who appear as one thing but don't actually perform on their records? Possibly. Maybe. Definitely. I refer my honourable Lord to 'The Archies' but not 'The Monkees' (at least not all of 'The Monkees'.) Or 'Edison Lighthouse.' Or 'Sweet' or 'The Bay City Rollers' until they were actually allowed to play on their own records. Or ... any number of acts who were fronted by those not actually performing on the track ... (the singer in the 'Renee and Renata' video saving their love, the 'singer' fronting 'Coast To Coast' doing the Hucklebuck or the 'Boney M' male dancer attempting to lip synch to 'Daddy Cool'.)
No attempt was made to disguise the fact that The Ragged Vagabonds as they became to be known, were anything but imaginary. The accompanying blurb, written entirely tongue-in-cheek and with a sarcastic bent made sure of that. They didn't exist. Yet the songs did. They were mine. I wrote them. Every word, every note, the melody, the tempo, the key, the harmony parts, the fills, the swells, the hooks. I decided what was a verse, a pre-chorus, a chorus, a bridge, a middle eight, an instrumental section, an intro and an outro. 'Suno' took all of that on board and created the finished article. Not with "one click" though. If it wasn't right I made adjustments. I thought about what was correct and what was wrong. I was acting as 'producer'. Another click. Sounds good? Not sure? Another pass? Perfect? Still decisions I had to make, and once made, be comfortable with.
The Producers: (a natural digression)
To go back to the statement "when you click you don't know what it will sound like" I would like to present the following argument.
In the early days of recording, say Frank Sinatra, the listener might well expect that at the very least, the sound they are hearing is indeed, Frank Sinatra in front of an actual orchestra, actual humans playing actual instruments. Fair enough. You can't argue with that.
Listeners may well be right in concluding that some of Elvis Presley's early recordings were indeed Elvis and his band, around a solitary microphone, with one complete performance of a song, committed to tape. Again, fair enough.
Each time, the performer and engineers would have known what sounds they were getting.
However, (and I can't know this for sure) but, for example, when The Shadows recorded 'Wonderful Land' in the early 1960's would they themselves have known quite what the exotic strings would sound like? Or would that have been the producer's task? My point is, does the listener say to themselves "that's definitely a Shadows' record" or do they think "that can't be The Shadows, theres an orchestra on that!"
Similarly, even on early Beatles' recordings, the Fab Four used two-track recording, therefore the sound heard is the Liverpool lads but with extra Merseybeat added! No-one questions the record by suggesting it can't possibly be an authentic recording because it wouldn't be possible for Paul to sing his part twice at the same time and, hang on, who is doing the hand-claps?
Later on, did Paul really know what George Martin had scored for the quartet on 'Yesterday' or did he let the producer get on with it. Paul being Paul may well have had a hand in suggestions but (with a hint from engineer Geoff Emerick's excellent book 'Here, There and Everywhere') John being John was happy to let George Martin do whatever he wanted. Similarly, when the Beatles worked on the famous orchestral build up on 'A Day In The Life' they had no clue as to what it might sound like, as an orchestra of confused musicians were instructed to start at the lowest note on their instrument and work their way up to the highest within a certain section of allocated bars.
Substitute George Martin (or an orchestra) for 'Suno' and I contest that you have similar experience and a set of skills at your disposal - each at the peak of their abilities at the time of asking. George Martin and musicians, equipped with musical training, experience and historical references, being asked via style prompts (human to human rather than human to keyboard) and a set of results (some expected others not so) being produced. If the results weren't right at the first time of asking then they did it again!
As the 1960's progressed so did technology. 2-track became 4-track, then 8 then 16 then eventually we are where we are today with endless possibilities. Tape was played backwards, sped up, slowed down, compressed, flanged, distorted. Sound effects, samples, session musicians, orchestras, friends, guests, mistakes, overdubs galore, synthesisers, drum machines, looper pedals, auto-tune, pitch-correction ... there are countless things which make up records and performances today which never claim to be being fully produced by the actual musicians or singers standing on the stage or being presented on a record sleeve (or Tik Tok reel).
So what makes A.I. different? A faceless 'producer' creating music for a fabricated 'singer' or 'group' to front? Stock, Aitken and Waterman anyone? Or Frank Farian? Yes, 'Suno' can create a 'song' from scratch and possibly it sound half-decent. I couldn't comment. However, used well by actual imaginative creatives and I can't see the problem. I digress ...
To Cut A Long Story Short:
One thing led to another ... 'The Ragged Vagabonds' had enough material (from my past) to make a second album, followed up by two albums and an E.P. from 'lead singer Fred Orain'. I then delved back into my bag of songs to have fun with some New Romantic synth pop (from a band I'd written about in my failed novel 'Paul King Stole My Haircut' - the life and times of a miserable musician in the early 2000's and his run in with a has-been band called 'Adrian Eves and the Anoraks.') They became 'Anorak Synthetique' and 'released' one album, an E.P. of re-mixes and a single E.P. as I had endless fun playing with the early 80's genre of instruments. Again, still my lyrics and melodies from my old songs, this time using my knowledge of 80's synth pop instruments and styles.
The natural thing to do was to re-work 'Valentina Way' into 'Suno' and this was a real treat. The songs were already there in their 60's form, so to be able to play with piccolo trumpets and analogue sounds was a joy. There was enough in my back catalogue or bubblegum tunes for two albums.
The 'Bus Stop Romeos' were a forerunner of Anorak Synthetique from early 1981 - a new wave, power pop quartet who wrote tongue-in-cheek songs about living on housing estates in the 70's riding Chopper bikes and chasing girls with Tukka Boots. These songs were also written for the 'Paul King ...' book and could now be made into a reality.
Julia Misbeahves and Julia Ocean were created from very old demo and studio recordings made when I was very young, naive, and with little equipment or money. Inspired by Marc Bolan, David Bowie and mid 70's progressive-folk band 'Renaissance' I took my more pastoral songs and created something completely different to my more indie-pop work. I was able to add harpsichord where bad, Casio playing had been on my demos as well as tuned violin and fiddle where only badly played (and terribly recorded) parts had been. Suddenly all the drum parts kept time, no beats were missed, vocals were in tune and the whole thing came alive. 'Julia Misbehaves' had enough material for two albums plus a solo effort for 'lead singer Julia'!
At this point I should also add that 'Suno' gave me the chance to re-write some of the terrible lyric ideas and rhymes I'd conjured up in my youthful naivety and ignorance. (I realise now that I used the motif 'dreams' rather too much!)
What's That Noise?:
Where's this leading ...? Well, to the fact that I had, in my possession, songs on CD that I simply didn't think I would ever listen to (or could ever face listening to) ever again. The reasons for this are not for this essay but still, I was left with a huge hole in my musical history which would seemingly be forever empty. 'Suno' allowed me to tentatively approach these songs to see if I could somehow regain the enthusiasm for them which I once had. One of the driving reasons behind this was the fact that some of the compositions had been the ones I'd had the most 'success' with, particularly in terms of recognition for my songwriting, albeit one which I was required to write to order for the market we were in at that time. It was the peak of my 'career' as a recognised writer, if not musician, if you could base such things on who we were signed to and the company we kept. I would argue that 'The Ragged Vagabonds' represent my peak of creativity as lyricist and being true to myself while 'Valentina Way' represents my being at my most playful while wishing I was in a 1960's band - my era of choice if I ever had one!
What became Detox Cute and the New Beauty Junkies was, for me' the ultimate satisfaction in what 'Suno' could achieve, if purely based on where the results left me emotionally, as finally putting to bed (and to rest) the ghosts (and hauntings) of what those songs had become. I was finally able to come to terms with what could have been achieved given the opportunity at the time instead of the hideous travails we went through.
I don't care now what people say about using A.I. This was therapeutic, restorative, healing to a degree I didn't expect. What was in my head all those years ago has now been produced aurally - even if I'm the only one who ever hears it. For me, that is enough.
Yet nothing changed dramatically on those recordings. The tunes were the same. The tempo was the same. The lyrics even, more or less, remained intact. What changed was the way 'Suno' addressed the performance and the audio quality. If I ask the same question "will I know what it will sound like?" the answer would be, "yes, absolutely!" In fact, more so ... because what it sounds like is what I heard in my head all those years ago and not the sound on those terrible records we were left with my circumstances we couldn't control, professionally, personally, emotionally and technically.
If I'm left with the song I'm happy with then A.I. has done it's job - the job that endless producers and managers and studio engineers failed to do back in the day.
Thank you for reading ... to hear the music mentioned in this essay please follow any of these links. They will take you to various Soundcloud sites ... Sp*t*fy and B*ndc*mp won't let them be uploaded but that's another article for another day!!!
Julia Misbeahves and Julia Ocean
Detox Cute and the New Beauty Junkies
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