Yes, I know, those kind of 'He did not think it was possible, until...' titles, I would advise you to stay away from. No matter where you find them in the 'socials' realm, they're most likely click bait for money making traps. Hey, but the content can be somewhat entertaining. Especially when they contain a video about Alan Watts. Where the suggestion is being made that it is the late philosopher who actually did make the video himself. But, you have to watch (and listen to) it all the way to the end, because there a secret will be exposed! Getting there, truly going through all them 50 plus minutes can be quite a challenge though. But it helps me to fall asleep easily.
Maybe you've seen those click bait titles and even dared to watch one or even more. The voice is clearly A.I. generated. Even in a lazy way, done in one take. Sentences are 'spoken' in a weird way, certain words sound odd, even the automated subtitles are having a hard time generating a text that makes sense. And once you took the bait many more videos in line with that will be presented to you. Poor Alan Watts, he died somewhere in the early 70s of the previous century, and probably would not have guessed his work would have been used as a money maker for others like that.
An't I a Grumpy Oal git to act so cynical about some genious internet entrepreneurs who found a way to earn a lot of cash in a short amount of time? Yes, of course, maybe I'm just jealous because I did not come up with that. It could well be that there's now more interest in the philosophical writings of Alan Watts? His legacy might be moving to the center of attention, as a positive side effect. And how about Gnosticism? That might be something more people have started to look into. There's always more sides to something. Even if it appears bad at the first glance.
Music was my first love
Now I wonder how to bridge this to something I actually want to share with you. And in a way getting back to the kinda click bait title. As I did try some music creation A.I. tools, of which the result I released under a Free Usage Permission license. (While the copyrights remain with the original producer.)
It started off kind of like in the title of this publication. Creating music with A.I., that must be a bad joke, right? At least the result would be clearly robotic automated fakery. It has to be. Creating images from noise, okay, that is clearly possible. People having three legs, not just men, and six or seven fingers on one hand, while the second arm is missing. And when animated, it even got worse, clearly fake. Well, technology moves forward fast. And these days some fake A.I. images and videos are getting harder to debunk. Only real life still seems to be real.
But I thought that music would be almost impossible to be created by a computer. Well synthesizer sounds, okay, that would work. A human like voice singing, with emotions and glitches, no freaking way!
It turned out I was wrong, as I was prompting my way through some Computer Intelligence Application to create some music, I was actually shocked by the result. While I thought it would choke on what I wanted to get produced. Do something with an orchestra, with a female singer doing a live performance. It's about moving on, emotional passion in her voice, as she almost cracks up. Well, something in line with that. And, there is a live audience! Hah, now surely that would have this A.I. thing break down in a million pieces!
And I put my headphones on to listen to what would actually be bleeps, squeaks and mostly just noise. Right...?
No way!!!
What I did hear though blew my mind. And I actually did like the result. Okay, I love it! It's a short song, not the HiFi that it could have been, but it's a permanent part of my 10 mile (16 Kilometers) long-walks-playlist. There's of course a downside to this all, but I already started of this article describing some of that. And hey, there's always the real analogue world to escape to. Where I listen to A.I. created music. Which might be considered a little bit ironic. But most of the times I walk without music in my ears.
Now, as I did before, I stored the 'Erase the past' song on the Arweave blockchain. (Three times actually, because I thought it was not uploading and I can act quite impatiently.) And I called 'her' Nemowa, which turns out to be a wrong spelling, but hey, what's in a name? Added is a photo of mine, that I took yesterday in a forrest in Midwolda (municipality Oldambt).
You are free to listen to the song, download it, share it and so on. Enjoy the Free Usage Permission license! 😁
Have a great one!
Erase the Past - Nemowa
The Arweave blockchain stored song link:
