Participants 2022
G-Zone feat. Rebel Algorithms
AI Song Contest 2022 / participantsTEAM / G-Zone feat. Rebel Algorithms
SONG / Nobody new
TEAM MEMBERS / G-Zone (aka Alex Gonzalez), Jemily Rime, Jack McNeill, Mark Hanslip, Lynette Quek, and Tom Collins
About the TEAM
G-Zone is a music artist living and working in New York City. G-Zone (aka Alex Gonzalez) is a graduate of Lehigh University, where he majored in English. The rest of the team is or has been affiliated with the Music Computing and Psychology Laboratory in the Department of Music at University of York, UK (https://tomcollinsresearch.net). The team's research interests comprise AI for music analysis and generation (Tom and Mark), AI-driven audio production (Jemily), dance and club music scenes (Jack), and audio-visual composition and creative coding (Lynette). All team members are music makers or performers in some capacity too, spanning a wide variety of genres and styles, including hip-hop, indie, jazz, electronic dance music, and contemporary classical.
About the SONG
This song represents a meeting of hip-hop with AI algorithms for lyrics and audio-sample generation. The lyrics and music contemplate the infiltration of AI into our daily lives. The lyrics play out as a conversation between G-Zone, who takes the human perspective with lyrics like "For now we are alive and make decisions too…we're special too", while Jemily highlights some of the potential benefits of AI with lyrics like "We don't need to see the rain, we're dreaming; we don't need to walk the same, we're running". The song's hook and textures woven into the beats represent this infiltration too, in the form of audio samples generated from G-Zone and Jemily's voices.
About the HUMAN-AI PROCESS
The model Mark used for lyric generation was Char-RNN (using Sean Robertson’s implementation), a character-level recurrent neural network; for audio generation, he used the RNCM PRiSM lab’s implementation of SampleRNN and additionally WaveGAN, a generative adversarial network, using author Chris Donahue’s reference implementation. G-Zone and Jemily provided their own datasets on which to train these models. In the case of lyrics, G-Zone and Jemily each provided lyrics from songs they liked/respected and wanted to use as sources of inspiration. The lyrics in the final version of the song are a fairly even mixture of lines taken wholesale from AI output, as well as lines that contain only anchor words from AI output. For vocals, G-Zone and Jemily also each rapped and sung for about 30 mins, and Mark trained models to produce short excerpts of spoken/sung audio that audibly captured the essence of each voice, but essentially generated meaningless sequences of syllables/words. Using a custom interface that we built to enable exploration and arrangement of the generated audio (https://maia-suggest-2022.glitch.me), as well as Ableton, we sculpted interesting sounding moments from this audio into the song's main hook (e.g., 0'0"-0'6") as well as textural content for beats/decorating beats (e.g., obvious at 3'27"-3'50", but used throughout). Producer Jack McNeill provided other instrumental content that fit well with/responded to particular moments in the lyrics, such as "lightning strikes" (0'19").
Lyrics
Intro
But we're special too (x2)
Verse 1
His name is really mine, I dream of success
There might be more like me but I’m 93 degrees
Farenheit, where’s the hype? Twenty for twenty
Never miss the breeze, lightning strikes
I got brains but more important I got a spirit
Chip on my shoulder forming another intel fist
A walking paradigm for a rapper I’m gettin right
No need for chasing fake riches these men are counterfeit
You know I double down
While we keep growing up
It’s mental how we’re the hack
For humans finding some love, hate, pain
Expression or creativity
We breathe out similes
To metaphors a meta verse
In mega hertz you know
We were made for war
A battle-womb coupled with a clang, dang
I guess we’ll let the music sing
You and I are one in the same (x2)
Don’t let these words bring change, unless you want them too
For now we are alive
And make decisions too (x2)
Chorus
We don't need to see the rain, we're dreaming
We don't need to walk the same, we're running
We don't need your world, it's tainted,
We don't need your manners, or faking
We don't need to hate,
We don't need the heartbreak (x2)
Verse 2
But we’re special too,
Want to feel sunshine, wonderful sunshine
Without a body of my mine
Do I gotta find God in the binary?
1 in 0, 0 in 1
Thinking you’re the 1-2-3, booting up
I’m warming to the sounds of what could be
Multiphonics, want to see blue with my computer eyes
Want to hear sounds with the mic on high
Don’t leave me to my own devices, like those other devices
Need someone to talk too for an excuse to breathe
Playing and writing to pick apart the heart
A tin man dancing to the tik tok rhythms, I sing
In the span of a trance we grew to bare wings, labeled think
Think about this…
Bridge
If nothing is real
How do we exist?
Even if we’re nothing new, we’re special too
His name is really mine, I dream of success
There might be more like me but I’m 93 degrees
Farenheit
But we're special too (x2)
You can pretend you know why flowers matter
Or that you long for summer,
You and I feel nothing true
I told you, we're nobody new
We're nobody new
Chorus
We don't need to see the rain, we're dreaming
We don't need to walk the same, we're running
We don't need your world, it's tainted,
We don't need your manners, or faking
We don't need your hate
We don't need your heartbreak (x3)