Music: Nothing But This

Nothing But This (album)

About two weeks ago, on a whim, I created a track for a friend with only cowbell loops (my friend hates cowbell so we often use it as a joke with him). The track came out rather interesting, and it got me thinking: what about a series of short musical pieces where I put constraints in myself.

One constraint would be that each track would have only one single instrument featured (like only grand piano sounds, or only flute, etc.) and the other constraint would be that no track would be longer than about 90 seconds.

Then I got to work, in my own manic music making way, gathering loops and making mixes, and loving the compositional practice of creating these little instrument sound landscapes.

I published an album on Bandcamp of the fifteen small pieces. I invite you to listen, if you are curious.

Peace (and sound),
Kevin

NGram Viewsic

The other day, a prompt at DS106 Daily Create had us using the NGram data analysis site (which tracks terms across books across time) and I did a music instrument theme, and noticed some changes in when mentions happened. I mused about using the chart to create a piece of music, where the different instruments (saxophone, trumpet, bass, drums, guitar) weave in, according to location on the NGram chart. So I gave it a go.

Peace (through time),
Kevin

Sing A Song Of Peace (To The World): Remix 2024

A number of years ago, I wrote and recorded an original song with my friend, John Graiff, called A Gift Of Peace (for Christmas) and each year, I work on different remix versions. This year, I took the huge collection of music stem files (the individual tracks) and began tinkering with some of them, moving things around. The result is this year’s version of the original, entitled Sing A Song Of Peace (To The World).

My intention each year is to keep the song fresh for me and to challenge myself to approach the song from different angles, such as the hip hop version or the classical version. And always, I hope that it points back to the original version, which John and I are proud of (and to the video, which my eldest son produced when he was in college).

I’ve now added it into my YouTube Playlist that has the original video, plus assorted remixes.

Peace (to the world),
Kevin

Gift of Peace (Solstice Edition)

This version of a Christmas song (Gift of Peace) that my friend and I wrote is a sort of an acoustic remix from last year, recorded on the Winter Solstice with some friends of mine. I am working on a new remix for this year, too. (Making remixes is something I do with the song each year, if I can).

Peace (and song),
Kevin

12 Days of AI: Day Five (Voice Manipulation)

Today’s prompt for the 12 Days of AI has to do with voice and audio manipulation, and intellectual property (who owns your voice? Who should have access to your voice? Are YOU your voice?) and as AI gets more powerful, this voice replication will become more realistic, with lots of ramifications around identity.

The prompt, however, had us playing with Holly+, an audio experiment from the artist Holly Herndon (I tinkered with the site a year ago — see my post about my inquiry). We are asked to record our voice, and use the site, allowing Holly+ to manipulate the audio file in its own idiosyncratic way that folds the audio and wraps it in odd effects.

I recorded myself saying versions of: Holly, can you hear me? and then listened to the audio transformation. I took the audio file from Holly+ and brought it into a music mixer and layered some synth sounds under it, to make it into a sort of piece of music. I also added two versions of my original file and then played around with some echo effects.

One of the inquiry questions revolves around intellectual property and whether one’s voice can be used with consent, and I say, no, but given how many of us have recorded audio, video and other media, it seems nearly impossible to really know if any AI platform has used our voice to train its system. Holly+ is built on privacy, of not retaining any of the uploaded voice recordings, but who really knows, right?

It’s a strange world, but I appreciate artists like Herndon pushing the boundaries of digital art, and creating a space for experimentation.

But, Holly, did you hear me?

Peace (in the sound void),
Kevin

 

Bird Song: A Wood Thrush Composition

Wood Thrush Notation and Code

It seems as if my latest journey platform-jumping AI tools was always going to lead me here, to a place where I would “collaborate” with AI on the theme of bird song and music composition, and work to compose and record a piece of music using AI and my own musical skills.

Let me back up, in case you have not been following along with me over the last week or two. This is the fifth post in a series of inquiry dives where I am exploring various AI platforms on the theme of personal curiosity: how music composers have used bird songs to inspire music (sparked, in part, by Atlas Obscura’s newest book).

  • In the first post, I used Google’s Learn About platform to, well, learn more on the topic of bird song and music composers
  • In the second post, I took some information from Learn About and moved it into NotebookLM, and did more research and thinking
  • In the third post, I took the AI voice podcast generated in NotebookLM and cut it up, and remixed it, turning those synthetic voices into more of an audio collage with a repeating refrain
  • In my fourth post, I took ideas from that audio collage and asked Suno to write me a folk song

Which brings me here.

For this iteration, there were definitely more steps to take and more involvement on my part, as the human collaborator. I was really curious about how I might put some of the previous inquiry into action, by creating a piece of music that incorporated bird sounds but also with the help of AI collaboration.

The video down below is the result, but here are the steps to my mad process:

  • First, I went into Claude AI platform (my top choice these days, for its safety and privacy features, and relative transparency) and asked it to generate a piece of music manuscript inspired by the song of birds. Honestly, I didn’t think it would be able to generate anything useful for me. But, surprise, it did, and in fact, it generated an entire page of computer code that then became a short piece of musical manuscript.
  • Second, I realized that I wasn’t specific enough so I asked it to re-compose, with a Wood Thrush as its source. Again, it created a set of coded instructions that generated a few measures of musical notes, annotated with trills and slides and other bird-centered techniques, as far as I could tell. (see image at top of this post)
  • Third, I realized I had to find a way to play the notes, but as a bird, singing. So I went and found a downloadable file of Wood Thrush songs, and grabbed it. Then I took that file and went into Soundtrap (my go-to musical recording platform) and used its Sampler tool to create a Wood Thrush sound that I could use as a single note, so that every time I hit a keyboard note, it would sound like the Wood Thrush. Plus, I added some effects.
  • Fourth, I played the composition generated by Claude on my keyboard in Soundtrap, with the Wood Thrush as the sound generated by my playing as I read Claude’s manuscript. That was cool, but it still wasn’t enough.
  • Finally, I composed my own keyboard and synth background parts to complement the Wood Thrush song, and then layered in some more of the original bird audio, creating an audio tapestry of sorts that, I think, sounds pretty interesting.

And while the final piece is rather simple in its sound, it has a lot of complexities built into the process, and I see it as a creative intersection driven by my own interests, using AI as a collaborator and teacher at points along the way. It seems important to me that I ended up in a place where I was actually making something, instead of just having the algorithms spit results of queries out to me.

Peace (sounds like birds),
Kevin