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Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

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Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#51

Post by dwnw »

__d wrote: post #33
dwnw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art is about the human experience of the artist reflected in the art. LLMs have no human experience. They just try to statistically trick you into thinking they made art through mass plagiarism of art. It's an illusion, and also rather boring/lame/uncool. You can do it, sure. But you'll probably also start to wonder why nobody really wants to listen to it, and you can count me out before I do.

I’m not disputing that human produced creative works have, at their best, qualities that computer generated works don’t, and maybe can’t. I am however interested in the claim of plagiarism and how what generative AI does is different to what humans do. It’s not clear to me how it’s different.

You can make the weak argument all you want, it is still a weak argument. I get it, you think there is no such thing as an original thought therefore mass scale plagiarism (even for profit) is all cool and fine, like a technical loophole or something. Just like the music AI will create, the end result will be that nobody will want to listen to you.

Good for you. Enjoy your AI generated art. By yourself. You've missed the whole point of art.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#52

Post by elseleigh »

I wrote my own; Lyricist, to integrate rhymes, synonyms and antonyms without having to switch applications or browser tabs. It's a small, not very fancy, web page you can run anywhere, even from your own hard drive. You have to sign up to a third party to use the rhymes, synonyms etc, but it's easy and free.

https://www.else.co.nz/code/creating-lyricist

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#53

Post by __d »

dwnw wrote: post #51
__d wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not disputing that human produced creative works have, at their best, qualities that computer generated works don’t, and maybe can’t. I am however interested in the claim of plagiarism and how what generative AI does is different to what humans do. It’s not clear to me how it’s different.

You can make the weak argument all you want, it is still a weak argument. I get it, you think there is no such thing as an original thought therefore mass scale plagiarism (even for profit) is all cool and fine, like a technical loophole or something. Just like the music AI will create, the end result will be that nobody will want to listen to you. Good for you. Enjoy your AI generated art. By yourself. You've missed…

Clearly I’ve hit on a sensitive topic. I’ll leave it here.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#54

Post by dwnw »

__d wrote: post #53
dwnw wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make the weak argument all you want, it is still a weak argument. I get it, you think there is no such thing as an original thought therefore mass scale plagiarism (even for profit) is all cool and fine, like a technical loophole or something. Just like the music AI will create, the end result will be that nobody will want to listen to you. Good for you. Enjoy your AI generated art. By yourself. You've missed…

Clearly I’ve hit on a sensitive topic. I’ll leave it here.

Nope, totally fine with me. I'll just assume you see the error of your ways.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42762755#42789029

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#55

Post by littlekey »

dietrichepp wrote: post #17

Currently working on an album. Software I use for songwriting: mostly Logic, also Dorico. Voice memos. Rhymezone sometimes. Rhymezone seems less and less helpful as I go on. I hardly use text editors for lyrics, paper seems to work a lot better. I end up with a lot of scribbles all over the paper. AI suggestions for songwriting seems a bit like turning on cheat codes in a game. Cheat codes will help me beat a game fa…

I'm not sure if this helps further the analogy or not, but I would use an AI if it could help with the annoying first part of the puzzle where you just have to spread out the pieces and flip them all over.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#56

Post by CharlesW »

nprateem wrote: post #50
Humphrey wrote: post #2

- Most time is spent in the iPhone's Notes & Voice Memo apps. - I try Rhymezone, but it rarely helps me find a word I hadn't already though of. - The Complete Rhyming Dictionary [1] as it also helps find great family rhymes - but is a very manual process. - ChatGPT voice chat for object writing - mostly just because I'm more of a vocal processor - I forbid it from writing anything, and instruct it clearly to just lis…

Chatgpt: "There's no such thing as a wonderwall. Listeners won't understand it or like it."

The word is already very well represented in ChatGPT's training data since it's a cliché ("Anyway, here's Wonderwall"), and its origins go back 50+ years.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#57

Post by jareklupinski »

obeats wrote: post #43

For lyrics, I currently use Google Keep and hugely resent myself for it. What I want is to be able to write lyrics as easily as plaintext, but with manually assignment of meter, rhythm etc, while also being able to "fork" lyrics at a point and be able to work on different threads, keep track of alternative lyrics on a phrase level too. Being able to sync that up with some basic music notation (e.g. keys and percussio…

> What I want is to be able to write lyrics as easily as plaintext, ... while also being able to "fork" lyrics at a point and be able to work on different threads, keep track of alternative lyrics on a phrase level too.

made me think of how sometimes i use ide "code folding" features to see just the first lines of a series of easily collapsable lists of text blocks

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#58

Post by HenryBemis »

__d wrote: post #33
dwnw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art is about the human experience of the artist reflected in the art. LLMs have no human experience. They just try to statistically trick you into thinking they made art through mass plagiarism of art. It's an illusion, and also rather boring/lame/uncool. You can do it, sure. But you'll probably also start to wonder why nobody really wants to listen to it, and you can count me out before I do.

I’m not disputing that human produced creative works have, at their best, qualities that computer generated works don’t, and maybe can’t. I am however interested in the claim of plagiarism and how what generative AI does is different to what humans do. It’s not clear to me how it’s different.

I like music and poetry. While stealing from another composer/author/poet you "steal", using AI is not stealing. But to the point that dwnw is trying to make is that the product will not be from the heart. If/when your audience will learn that you never actually experienced "this or that" e.g. I don't like Taylor Swift's music - at all - but it is rumored that she writes about her own life experience and that makes her output relatable.

Will it fill up 60mins for one album? Yes. Will you sell out the MSG when your audience finds out that it was all ChatGPT (or some other LLM)? No. Never.

Another metaphor/analogy is like the Friends episode "The One With Phoebe's Cookies" where the magic disappears because the 'grandma's cookies' end up being Nestle cookies. And the magic is gone, and your audience will be gone.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#59

Post by setsewerd »

obeats wrote: post #43

For lyrics, I currently use Google Keep and hugely resent myself for it. What I want is to be able to write lyrics as easily as plaintext, but with manually assignment of meter, rhythm etc, while also being able to "fork" lyrics at a point and be able to work on different threads, keep track of alternative lyrics on a phrase level too. Being able to sync that up with some basic music notation (e.g. keys and percussio…

Late response here that might not be useful to you, but I mostly use Google docs for lyrics (on both my phone and laptop) and tend to rely on bullets for alternative lines.

This is fine for 1-2 alternate versions of a given line, but would get clunky beyond that. I imagine if I wanted to fork a song further than just a few alternate lines, I could insert a 2-column table and continue the song in each column.

It's rudimentary, but if you're worried that making your own software for it is just a form of advanced procrastination, something like Docs might be more manageable than Keep.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#60

Post by tylernigrofr »

I always test new LLMs to see how they expand on lyrics that I've started to see how well they expand on them - and what they generate is just lame and cringe. The only thing I've found that seems to have AI trained in a sort of artistic way is Suno's ReMi lyrics model - but it's purely for generative purposes with no real way of interacting with existing lyrics. It would be nice if Suno implemented a lyrics editor that uses their ReMi model. I'd really have a use for an AI assisted songwriting tool - like Cursor, but for artistic songwriting that doesn't totally suck.
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