AI meets my musical past

 

What did you just watch above? Let me explain🙂

Let's go back in 2010, shall we?

I'll spare you the "where did all these years go" and... oups I didn't🙂... sorry, hard to skip that. So, spring of 2010, I am pretty close to say goodbye to my last office job (that's a matter of another post in case you're curious why) and in a classic "OrestisTrips" fashion I decide to take an Easter trip to Latvia's capital, my beloved Riga (been there for my 1st time in 2008). This would give me the chance among others to meet Elina, the artist behind the animation you can see on my song "Land of the Free":

(We lost contact shortly after that so I have no idea what's she's doing today but in case you wanna look her up I assume that's her IG.)

You can read more details about that trip of mine here.

So, another Latvian friend of mine (who I also lost contact later) was kind enough to find me a place to stay at the apartment of another friend of hers who I never met. She would be at Argentina at that time so I could stay at her flat for a week.

I don't blame her, from the moment I land at Riga's airport it's the coldest April of my life by far. She's definitely having a much better time in South America while I struggle to make my Mediterranean DNA survive the ex Soviet cold at an ex Soviet building where flats have double entrance doors and now I totally understand why. The central heating keeps the radiators lukewarm all day, I've just opened my eyes on 3rd of April 2010 and I see this guitar in the bedroom. I feel like playing before I start my day but it's 8:00 AM hence as you can see I gently touch that thing. You can also see the glasses I used to wear before putting my contacts on. I had a laser operation 4 years later which spared me from all this trouble - best money ever spent.

Over the following years I didn't materialised this idea to a full song but I kept that clip into my "guitar ideas" folder. Fast forward 16 years later, last night I decided to try what Suno can do with it and the help of my prompt.

Here's the results - version 1:

Version 2:

It's not that I'm impressed by the result itself, although with a more detailed prompt it might have been better (the AI model didn't follow instructions precisely). It's mostly about doing this imaginary trip back in time and telling myself "you know what? 15 years later you'll be able to turn this into a song in a second, online, for free, without installing any app or needing a powerful machine". How would I have reacted? Probably calling a doctor.

Becomes even more impressive if you consider that digital evolution is not necessarily linear but rather exponential. Just imagine what's coming next... However, the million dollar question is how this will affect our lives, now that AI can "create" "art". Will this dull our excitement as everybody will be able to "create" something just by typing a prompt in a AI window? Will this make the need for forming a band even  lower than it is today? Originality already left the chat?

No technophobic intentions to idealise the past (quite the opposite) but I am afraid it will be a little bit of all the above. And if we do live in a duller world art wise in the future it won't be AI's fault. The decline started already years ago when it became a norm that bands can keep touring regardless if they need a million backing tracks cause they're too incompetent to support their "own" music or they're too old to do so. So we went from "of course everything is live on stage otherwise it's not live" to "oh well, I don't give a fuck, everybody has backing tracks now".

Well, actually no. From dinosaurs like Deep Purple to younger bands like Mother's Cake, there's still some real live stuff left worth your money. Be fair to them and yourself and support those who deserve your money.