AI Generated Music

This shit is getting out there, and it is so good you can easily be fooled. I was, and that sparked this short journey.

As I have tuned my Youtube algorithm to surface more interesting metal, something has begun to appear with eerie regularity.

How it presents itself is usually with an eye capturing image, like the video below:

It checks the boxes: Guitar, hot chick, and the pose is reflective of some emotive body language.

Even without the “Metal SAD” graphical overlay, I expect this to be a mainstream metal, melodic.

And if you click on it, you will hear twenty plus minutes of tracks that are in a dark minor scale, with the usual flourishes and structure. Main riff, chorus, riff, chorus, outro.

And if you just turn it on and let it run, you will find your head nodding along.

But the still image cover of the video isn’t a real video, it is the still, where they change the track name that flashes in the lower left corner, and there is some animated “snow” falling.

This is what we call a “tell”. This video does tell you that it was created with an AI service, called Suno. While I haven’t tested this (it goes against every fibre of my being to use AI to create music or words¹), it is increasingly appearing across Youtube (and I presume all user generated content streaming sites).

Sometimes, they put the fact that it is AI generated in the description, so you can easily see it. But others are more sneaky. Here’s a “band” called “Array of Illusions”. It has a page, a profile, cool artwork, and all the usual accoutrements of a real page (hell, it is a real page, just not a real band):

If you were just scrolling and you like the graphics, this is going to be some dark gothic metal.

You then click on one of the songs, and you get this:

Again, the checklist: Hot chick, 7 string guitar with angular features, dark background. Yep, this is hard edged gothic metal.

And it is. Played flawlessly, no errors and the vocals have you nodding your head.

But this is also AI. You have to go into the “About” details to see this:

Yep, these are all AI generated. This “band” page has near 5K subscribers, and over 800K views in about 7 months. All from stringing together some prompt engineering in various consumer accessible AI tools, and some packaging, into a “polished” package.

Just don’t look for concert dates.

An old joke was that the “grunge” revolution was for “musicians” who couldn’t play their instruments, and there was some truth (the level of proficiency of many of that genre is not high, you have to admit) to that, but this level of polish, precision, and the like is mind blowing.

But, in my mind, not in a good way. Music needs to come from within, even in the realm of classical musicians (Mozart, Bach, Beethoven) their compositions began with a motif that intended to capture a feeling or some sense of connection to the world that the composer wanted to capture. Think Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Now, type a few words into a text box, press enter, and you are off to the races, with the ability to re-direct that prompt to get it exactly like you want.

Starting with the Beatles, pop music had predictable song patterns, and AI is just capitalizing on that “structure” to deliver pitch and note perfect music.

Honestly, I do not like this, even though I find the technology cool as hell.

Did you click and listen to those tracks? Let me know what you think.

1. In the interest of science, I did sign up for a free account, and I prompted it to write a blues shuffle on the intricacies of Quantum Mechanics (a field I know a lot about), and it spit out this: https://suno.com/song/0b60b66b-35b2-423b-8c70-cef4655102fd and this: https://suno.com/song/88b22cf6-2870-4b96-a18e-803dd7d8b1fb

Fuck an A, they are good. I want to hate it, but I was tapping my toes to the beat.

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