PG Music Home Forums General Discussion User Showcase I Believe In You ... A deep dive into AI

So... what we have here is an experiment. This is a deep dive into the world of AI. Artificial Intelligence, to see what possibilities exist, musically, in the digital world.

So here's what we got.

The AI we're all familiar with in the form of Band in a Box, combined with the AI lyric writing app Joanne is developing, and the AI from a small Japanese company developing the Synth V and the voices database.

BB was the easy part and the part I was most familiar with so there's not much new there.

Second part was actually how this whole thing started. The Lyric app. I was playing around with the app a few weeks ago. I gave it an idea to see what it could do. I instructed it to write the lyrics to a song about believing in someone and to make it encouraging and uplifting. It sent back words in about 10 seconds that were halfway workable. I did however, take much longer than those 10 seconds to edit mostly the second half of the lines in the the verses and chorus.

Then the third part....I wanted a female vocal but since I don't know any ladies who are available to sing..... Why not try a synth female vocalist. I had recently found out about the vocalists in Synth V which sounded pretty good. Certainly a huge improvement over the vocaloids of the last few years. I downloaded the basic SV and one of the demo databases and set to work learning something new. Word by word, edit, drag, play, ooops, stop, undo, retry... and so on. After I got it halfway together over several days of frustration and grief, I sent it across the internet to another, more experienced person, who kindly took my meager efforts and added the full database voice with AI and sent it back as a finished MP3 track.

My observations on the synth V vox....not bad, it is a major step up from the vocaloids I have heard in the past. It still has a ways to go IMHO before it captures the emotion a human can provide in the vocal. However, I did not really delve into all of the controls, sliders, and options that were in the side panels in the synth so it is possible that I don't know how to get that aspect into the vocal track. It was a major task for me just to get to this point on my first deep dive into the world of vocal synths. The track was not as clean as I would have liked but again, I don't know what I don't know yet. THat could have been MP3 compression or something else that was beyond my control on this. All in all, for a first try, I am pleasantly surprised with the fine result.

Note: I used the main vox track to create 2 harmony tracks in BB using the auto-harmony feature. It's the first time I have ever used that. The harmonies are extremely homogenized as a result. I keep them low in the mix.

Another note.... this is the 3rd rendering. The first was a hip hop style that I could never get under control to my satisfaction. It kinda sounded ok but then again it kinda didn't. The second render was a simple piano/vocal mix. But the piano on that was rather busy and distracting so it resides in a folder that won't likely see the light of day in it's current condition. The 3rd rendering is what is here. Again... there's a bit to be desired by me.... but it has to be called "almost done" at some point. So.....

The details:

Style: Puplift kind of pop with distorted guitars

Bass 1268
synth pad 1278
Drums Real drums praise and worship
Guitar 1272
Guitar 1853
Guitar 4056
Vocalist Eleanor Forte AI on Synth V


Have a listen and let me know your thoughts.




I Believe in You

LYRICS:

I believe in you


When the world is spinning fast and you don't know what or who to ask
I'll be there to remind you, I'll be there to help you through

I Believe in You
Everything you do everything you say no matter what comes your way
Just take it day by day only you can make your dreams come true
I believe in you

When the path ahead is unclear and you don't know who to trust or fear
I'll be there to help you find your courage and your peace of mind

I Believe in You
Everything you do everything you say no matter what comes your way
Just take it day by day only you can make your dreams come true
I believe in you

And when the night is long and you feel like you can't go on
Just close your eyes and you will find the strength to carry on

I Believe in You
Everything you do everything you say no matter what comes your way
Just take it day by day only you can make your dreams come true
I believe in you (3x)

copyright 2023 Herb Hartley

I have spent the past days doing something very similar. I used a midi BIAB style but moved all the midi to Reaper for assignment of VIs. I wrote the chord progression and I did use BIAB to create a melody. First time I had used the Meldodist.

I used AI lyrics and like you, I was happy with the first pass, but like you, did a lot of clean up. But here is what is spooky, just looking at your lyrics they look a lot like mine! Even some of the phases are identical.

I will be posting soon, so tell me what you think. The hardest part for me was getting the lyrics to match the melody line. This took a lot of tweaking, but since I sang it I was able to adjust where needed.

Otherwise, your arrangement sounds good. I honestly could not tell this was BIAB or a synth vocalist. I assume you have written songs in the past. So tell me does the application of all this AI make these songs any more or less satisfying to you?

My legal team will be in touch with you for copyright infringement....

Where did the rest of my comments go? Give me a few minutes to rewrite it

Were you writing a similar idea? None of my ideas use repeated lines. I have a few more I'm going to work into songs.

I had to play the melody in with midi. A convoluted process but I understand that the pro version of SV is a plugin.

The satisfaction level is comparable because it's still an effort to get the final result.

I tried several different ways to get the vocal melody in to the synth. In the end...I put my instrumental track in my DAW. I then sang.... An amazingly horrific job I will admit.... To simply get the groove. I then used my astounding keyboard playing skills to play the melody in to a midi track. From there I went to the synth with inputs of the midi melody and the instrument reference. I believe the pro version works as a plug-in.

Anyway, that's my process for this.

Joanne is working on adding more details to the app including rewrites and syllable count per line. Currently, IMHO, the first draft is what I consider to be extremely basic with a lot of cliche rhymes.

Thanks for commenting

Finally I'm not alone with my pop stuff anymore
I think this is a pretty good start and you definitely did a great job of implementing what we talked about.

ChatGTP lyrics in general (Joanne's app uses that) are not my thing, too many rhymes and clichés, but sung it sounds better than it reads above.

I like your song


At least in terms of lyrics that's different for me, there is nothing more satisfying than doing them myself.
That said, I think it's interesting that you've used AI (or machine learning systems) as much as possible to figure out what's possible with it.

And you learned that, contrary to the claims of some, you still have to know a lot about music to write music.

Very cool, Herb. BD has done an excellent job with those gals, too. I hear what mean about homogenized harmony. Maybe try tuning them a bit off perfect pitch, like humans do. Man, you're right about the upgrade from vocaloids. Elenore has a very good voice. It's because of what you say ("Word by word, edit, drag, play, ooops, stop, undo, retry...") that makes me fear the temptation. Great job here though.

Stefan (Crossroads) had that lyric app write a song about Trump that was hilarious.

Hi Guitarhcker,

You amaze me. Your experience is really interesting and the result very pleasant. Nice melody, continue in your experimentation.

Kindly regard
Derochette
alias JaniJackFlash

Herb,

This is really outstanding. I love the song and arrangement, but the synth V vocal is a real standout!

The vocal sounds better than most of the pop female vocalists today - there is even some phrasing going on here. Just superb stuff.

Bob

Hi Herb
Great experiment ;-)
The song has everything what a good song must have
Could sound a little more powerful in some passages but I really like it
Ok. A real female singer could (maybe) bring something too
In any case great work
Many greetings
Andi ;-)

Contrary to what some folks think.... I do listen to advice given to me....sometimes. I do appreciate what you told me.

It has a great singer delivering the lines so yeah... it does sing better than reading it.


And you're correct.... you still have to know something about music to be able to use the tools effectively.

Thanks

Thanks Babu it is a lot of work and to get the best results takes time. I guess kinda like most everything else we do.

Thanks

Thanks. Sometimes I amaze myself too.

For a first time foray into the world of AI and vocal synths.... I've since learned that there are parameters for that and other things that can be adjusted and automated.
So theoretically, it's possible to get better results with more time invested.

Thanks for listening

I've discovered that there's a power parameter that can be adjusted to belt out or pull back so I will be experimenting with that.

I appreciate your observations and comments

Thanks

Excellent Job on this experiment. The song itself is good, as a hit pop song. I too have been experimenting with Synth-V Basic and all I got so far was "Mary Had a Little Lamb" ... lol ... so I am impressed with the amount of work this took from you. This example of your's shows some real potential. It would be awesome if BIAB made a deal with SynthV to include a version of it integrate into future releases on BIAB.
What were the AI tools you used to get the lyrics? is that an app, or a website?

Yeah, it was a bit of work to get this going.... I took a few lines... worked on them and saved it and shut it off. It was brain draining. It took a number of days to get it and I was really tempted to copy and paste where I could but I didn't know enough to do that without worrying about it getting out of time.

Regarding the lyrics app. Our very own Joanne Cooper has the app and is developing it on an ongoing basis, adding new features. It's called Lyric Lab and you can get it here: http://lyriclab.net/ you can also grab it on your phone which is where I tend to use it most often. It lets you email the lyrics to your email address so you can save it and print it.

Very nice experiment, with these AI tools & BIAB you can create a song indistinguishable from a modern (lyrically clichéd) pop song on the hit lists. I assume that at least the melody and the chords were the work of your creativity, they were very enjoyable, mellow and catchy. But I'm scared of the day when everything is computer generated and I still enjoy it and feel that it's a genuine human creation. I have tried Chat GPT for lyric generation, but it couldn't reach my level, so there is still hope But I'm beginning to feel that humans are "A" - artificial as well, there is no fundamental difference

Eleanor sounds very good, good work with the lyrical flow which is very important to make AI singer sound convincing.

Thanks for the backstory, good to know about your idea and process.

Janne

Thanks for listening and the questions.

Yes, I am responsible for the chords and melody. I also edited the lyrics that AI gave me. It was too cliched straight from the brain of AI. Like you said, it was closer to the level of a beginner songwriter but it did provide something that could be developed a bit with some thought.

Thanks again

Hi Herb

Cool stuff. I had to laugh at 'Word by word, edit, drag, play, ooops, stop, undo, retry... and so on." Yep...lol, Synth V can do some pretty cool stuff but automation is certainly not its strong suit.

The style you used fits the Synth V software well. The other thing that worked well was to limit the vocal range. The very limited vocal range of the databases was a surprise to me.

I have listened to everything I can find being produced in English with Synth V. That, and my own experments have revealed many of the limits of the software.

I can not say for sure if the limits I experienced were inherent in the software or the fact I certainly do not know what can be done based on my own understanding of how to use the Synth V software.

It is undeniably obvious that a competent musician used these tools to produce the results.

Anyone who might think all this AI stuff is simple or easy is mistaken. This is no "put a quarter in a jukebox" and have a song play out process...lol

At any rate, fun stuff to listen to. See you in a few days!

Billy

Herb, I would say that your experiment was a complete success.
Great song and uses of AI and the vocal synth.
Two thumbs up

Well done Herb! I think I need to experiment with synth voices too. Great pioneering work!