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Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

suno.com

281–290 of 318 posts

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

• I didn't say there's a line between "tech people" and "art people". Why would there be? • We're having this discussion because people are trying to equate an auto-amalgamation/auto-generation machine with the artistic process, and in doing so, redefining what "art" means. • Yes, you can "be creative" with AI, but don't fool yourself-- you're not creating art. I don't call myself a chef because I heated up a microwa…

> I don't call myself a chef because I heated up a microwave dinner. A better analogy would be "I don't call myself a chef when ordering from Uber Eats".

I'm not the artist just because I commissioned the painting and sent them a picture of my dog.

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#282
post #248

I consider myself an amateur musician and pulled a decent side hustle teaching piano back in university. I also worked the occasional gig as a cocktail pianist. I've actually had a lot of fun using tools like Suno/Udio as a means of sonic exploration to see how some of my older compositions would sound in different mediums. When I composed this piece of classical music practically a decade ago, it was intended for st…

What an interesting use case! And interesting composition. One thing that's interesting about the AI violin cover is that I'm not sure those runs would be physically possible at that speed on a real violin. So that composition can _only_ be played digitally, I believe.

I love that you brought up that particular point!

When I used to do larger more orchestral arrangements, I was constantly getting dinged by the instrumentalists that while they were theoretically musically possible, certain runs or passages were very unnatural on the instrument that I scored them on.

For a long time I really hoped that some of the more professional notation tools such as finale would add in an ability to analyze passages and determine how realistic/natural they were for the instrument that they were set to.

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. You imply "it is Prompt -> Song" but in reality it is "Prompt -> Song -> Reflection -> New Prompt -> New Song.." It is a dialogue. And in a dialogue you can get some places where neither of you could go alone. As software developers…

clicking on a button until you like what you hear is not "making music". I have nothing against these tools, but the hubris of the people using them is insane

I just tried it out because of the discussions on this thread, and I got to say I land squarely on the side of this is neat, but it is not artistry. Every little thing I generated sounded like things I've heard before. I was trying hard to get it to create something unique, using obscure language or ideas. It didn't even get close to something interesting in my opinion, every single output was like if you combined every top 40 song ever made and then only distilled out the parts relevant to certain keywords in a prompt.

These tools will probably be great for making music for commercials. But if you want to make something interesting, unique, or experimental, I don't think these are quite suited for it.

It seems to be a very similar limitation to text-based llms. They are great at synthesizing the most likely response to your input. But never very good at coming up with something unique or unlikely.

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refining a request that generates music, is "making music" however you slice it.

Trying to convince some tech people about how artistic creation works, and why it's more than just the right amount of "optimization" of bits for rapid results, is about as pointless as trying to make a chimpanzee understand the intricacies of Bach. The reductiveness of some of you is amusing, but also grotesque in the context of what art should mean for human experience.

You are really going to dislike my "code is art" opinion.

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You record yourself whistling it and out it in as an input. I've been recording myself on guitar and using suno to turn it into professional quality recordings with full backing band. And I'm not trying to sell it, I just like hearing the ideas in my head turned into fully fleshed music of higher quality than I could produce with 100x more time to invest into it

This is more closer to actually creating rather than generating music. However this cannot be done with a text prompt, which the comment above claimed, is expressive enough. Actually having an "autotune" AI that turns out-of-key poor singing into a beautiful melody while keeping the voice timbre, would be not bad.

Well then I have news for you... That's what Suno is. You can generate from simple text prompt, you can describe timings and chord progressions and song structure. You can get very detailed, even providing recordings

Yes the barrier for entry is low, but there is a very high ceiling as well

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#287
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. You imply "it is Prompt -> Song" but in reality it is "Prompt -> Song -> Reflection -> New Prompt -> New Song.." It is a dialogue. And in a dialogue you can get some places where neither of you could go alone. As software developers…

It’s really not. It’s like having interdimensional Spotify where you can describe any song and they will pull it up from whatever dimension made it and play it for you. It may empower you as a consumer but it does not make you a creator.

Well I made songs with my lyrics that brings tears and memories to my audience. Don’t know what other creator things you are talking about, but this to me is creating.

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#288

Tools like Suno are fundamentally enabling. I'm about 40 years old and never "had the music" - not for lack of trying (music lessons at a young age)... but could never carry a tune or keep rhythm. I suppose its what being dyslexic feels like. If I were educated in a culture where music was fundamentally as important as reading or math, I suppose would have spent enough hours on it to eventually be passable... but I g…

I’m gonna barf

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't want mood playlists, the majority of the time. I'm saying I use AI generations for exactly the opposite — so that I can explore and listen to things that are more intellectually interesting in the ways I find intellectually interesting, because the human music it's easy to find is common denominator music. The way you describe AI ('continuous stream of auditory stimuli') is the way I'd describe Spotify.…

I was also having Spotify in mind when writing about algorithmic curation and GenAI in music ;) Regarding this: > I'm saying I use AI generations for exactly the opposite — so that I can explore and listen to things that are more intellectually interesting in the ways I find intellectually interesting I just have not found any AI music that would satisfy this description. But I am very interested in failure modes of…

I've been avoiding trying to class what counts as 'interesting' because it feels like the wrong point to make, for a medium so entwined with personal preferences that are so often at odds with each other. To single out my tastes feels like it would be saying 'paleontology is the true interesting subject, unlike architecture'. The tracks you listed here aren't really my thing, but I can see why AI audio doesn't help with it. That's fine.

I will also repeat that I'm well aware that the best stuff is definitely all human. It's not my genre either, but traditional composers like Bach certainly made extremely interesting, clever, even deeply-studiable pieces and AI 'in the style of' those composers surely won't capture much of that. There's a lot of stuff AI can't do wholesale; one particularly strong example is if you're Jacob Collier, AI is not going to make the complex harmonizations and song structures there.

AI is pretty bad at these textural or instrument exploration things like from Collier above or Mike Dawes or Yosi Horikawa or Yoko Kanno or Keiichi Okabe. There's a bunch of music I listen to because it's generically a genre or mood I like and it's well produced, which I won't list here, and AI audio can often do stuff like that at baseline but not especially well. There's also nostalgia; I'm also certain a huge part of the reason I like the Celeste soundtrack so much is in part that I liked the game so much.

But then there's a whole category of music I listen to where the texture is supplemental to the part that defines it, like most of Acapella Science or Bug Hunter or Tom Lehrer. Eg. Prisencolinensinainciusol isn't interesting to me because it's musically complex; the part I care about is that it's a listenable execution of an idea, not precisely how it was executed on. I don't keep coming back to I Will Derive by some random schoolkids recorded on a potato 17 years ago annually because it's sung well or they were particularly clever with how they took another song and changed the words; I come back to it because it's fun and reflects for me onto a part of my past that I remember fondly, and these things make me happy.

All these words and I've still only addressed half the comment. Ok, let's consider the idea that it's not enough for AI audio to facilitate the creation of interesting musical pieces, and it instead has to create whole interesting musical styles. I take issue with this in a bunch of places. I don't reject artists who I judge not likely able to create a new Bossa Nova. I judge artists based on whether the output they produce is something I want. I do the same for AI.

I also think the question about whether AI could 'create' a new style is somewhat misplaced. A style is a cultural centroid, not just a piece of audio. AI can definitely create new musical textures or motifs, but it's always being pulled towards the form of what it's being asked to produce. As long as we're talking about systems that work like today's systems, the question still needs to involve the people that are selecting for the outputs they want. Could that connected system create something as distinct and audibly novel as a new genre? Yeah, probably, given time and a chance for things to settle. That's a different question from whether it'll do so to an inspecific prompt thrown at it.

Re: Suno Studio, a Generative AI DAW

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not something I feel like arguing about. We’ll never agree. I’m an artist (the old-fashioned kind). That’s where I come from, so my viewpoint is colored by my own experience and training.

If you're an actual artist, who's taken the time to paint and learn its intricacies, yet you're still just as impressed by an automated CG rendering of a work in Old Master style vs. one really done by a dedicated human hand, then you either hate the thing you learned because something about it frustrated you, or you have no clue about forming qualitative measurements of skill. Also, "old-fashioned"? This to imply th…

It might be enlightening to find out a bit about the process of creating CGI; especially 3D scenes. Many works can definitely take over a year.

I spent some time, making CG art, and found it to be very difficult; but that was also back before some of the new tools were available. Apps like Procreate, with Apple Pencil and iPad Pro, are game-changers. They don't remove the need for a trained artist, though.

But really, some of the very best stuff, comes quickly, from skilled hands. Van Gogh used to spit out paintings at a furious pace (and barely made enough to live on. Their value didn't really show, until long after his death).

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