Participants 2022

First, Bob curated a tune from several generated by Tradformer (http://kth.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1659532) – the system winning The AI Music Generation Challenge 2021 (https://github.com/boblsturm/aimusicgenerationchallenge2021). Then, Bob had Music Transformer (https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/magenta/piano_transformer/piano_transformer.ipynb#scrollTo=CFnUHAk1g_rc) arrange the tune for piano. Bob also used Music Transformer to generate the brief breakdowns, which have a contrasting freer form. 

To find a topic, Bob prompted GPT (https://textsynth.com/playground.html) with, “What is this song about? I’ll tell you what it’s about.” GPT responded: “It’s about me, me, me, …” This text forms the first verse.

Bob and Daniel met to try out various things. Daniel sang a second verse, “It’s not about you you you …”. They decided to have a radio announcer introduce the song, and used neural voice cloning (https://uberduck.ai) for the voice. Bob and Daniel developed a storyline about a human fighting with his AI music system. They also experimented with neural music instrument cloning (https://erl-j.github.io/neural-music-instrument-cloning-web-supplement), converting a Moog bassline into a bouncy tuba, and a penny whistle into some strange sounding instrument. Here’s a figure showing edits made to the conditioning of the model for synthesizing the trombone.

On the final day of recording, Bob and Daniel interacted again with GPT to figure out what happens in the second and longer breakdown. After some iterations, they came to a scenario of two brothers fighting over the topic of their song when Mom interjects. They used voice cloning to synthesize mom, and finished the last verse. Daniel added percussion and performed the final mastering.