Vaughn ist one of theee DM Commenters - and I must say - I am not so far from his "verdict" - would have bin a lot cooler to listen to this as a leaked song - I just thought one thing - is has sort of not exactly the structure of a classic (even DM) song, but the details are so real / authentic - it is ... good.
and second - he speaks about creating it and how it was sort of parameterised / prompted - and what other potential songs would have been created alongside of this?
this is more related to the KI, what it actually means to big data a well known group with a long back catalogue - I'd suggest a lot of other band tries might sound as good as this.
as long as the band has a long enough history.
so what did you think about him when reacting since he sort weighs the KI and it's "controls" and in this case you as the initiator of this song etc.?
how does it feel - is it different after what has happened to you and your channel and - sort of this is an interesting double meta reflection…
Yeah the structure of this song (and the others) is clumsy for sure. For two reasons:
1) I'm someone who doesn't have any musical talent whatsoever and also completely clueless about music theory or how to structure a song (so part of the fault is in the creator)
2) It is very challenging to get proper song structure in Udio. It has a hard time repeating sections that were earlier in the song (for instance a chorus) instead it likes to keep reinventing the song as you add new chunks. (so part of the fault is in Udio itself)
Other potential songs:
So whenever you generate a clip in Udio, it will produce two samples. When I made this first song, the "twin" was actually this clip:
It sounds super promising, but it also had some issues that I didn't like. That's why I went with the other twin, which ended up being that first song.
As far as prompting, to be honest, ever since the first song, I have been constantly reusing the original prompts that Udio replaced "Depeche Mode" with. I should experiment more though. It would be interesting trying to get Martin Gore's voice for instance. Or try different things like 80's or 90's.
So what did I think about his reaction?
1) Surprise: Well first off, I honestly thought everyone had already moved on and forgotten about this song. So I was shocked and surprised to see a reaction video now at this late stage, after a couple of weeks had passed. I guess Vaughn had other videos scheduled before he got to this one. Dunno!
2) Emotions resurfaced: Since this whole event of losing my YouTube account has been super traumatic to me, I have been pushing it all out of my mind. I haven't touched Udio. I haven't touched YouTube. I've just been moping around ignoring the world and playing Valheim to get my mind off it all. Just waiting waiting waiting for a result of the 2nd YouTube appeal.
So when I saw his reaction video, all the emotions resurfaced and overwhelmed me. To actually see the video that had been crushed, bludgeoned, erased... now there - in
his video. It felt surreal to see it there knowing that the original does not even exist anymore. Surreal also in the sense that the video was there in someone else's world, with their comments. And I felt like I was behind a glass window watching from afar. Almost like a mother watching through a glass window when her baby is being handed to a foster parent and she has no control or access to her baby anymore. Sorry for being dramatic, but it was this kind of feeling. Silly, I know!
3) Delight and bittersweet feelings: Of course, assuming my video was dead and forgotten, it was a feeling of delight to see that people still care about it (in either good or bad). I couldn't believe people still want to talk about it! So this made me think: "Why should I be excluded from this experience?" "Why should I be behind the glass window watching from afar?" So this emotion prompted me to open a new channel and reupload the videos. (most people will never find them of course, since there is no mention of DM anywhere, but that's fine)
4) But of course, I understand that the above rambling is not what you meant when you asked "What did I feel about his reaction". You probably wanted to know what I thought of his actual reaction. Well first off, I was quite surprised that he reacted as positively as he did. I recently watched his video where
he listed his 10 top least favorite DM songs and he was BRUTAL in that video. I was expecting him to be much more brutal in his reaction to my video! I could see his inner struggle with the "wanting to hate, but I kind of like it". And I understand this emotion, as I still have conflicting feelings myself.
Some points he made:
a) About the lack of the human touch and when he was comparing it to how easy synthesizers made producing music. Yes, although Udio does most of the work, it's not like the song was just from one press of a button. For the first song, it took 10 hours of generating samples and adding parts and listening and comparing and generating more to get that end result. So there was some human element in the process.
b) He also talks about how worrisome it is that people get lazy with making music. And for sure this is a valid point when we are talking about actual proper musicians. But then there are people like me: Who have zero musical talent. Software like this (regardless of whether it produces famous voices or not) gives people like me the opportunity to create something they could have never created before. And for us, this is a wonderful beautiful opportunity and experience! I'm a visual artist, so for me it's easy to make nice artwork. But what about people who have zero artistic talent, yet have these visual dreams in their brain that they wished they could express in an image. Equally for people like that, AI generated art is a wonderful opportunity.
But overall, the whole reaction video was a delight (even if he would have been brutal). And it kind of woke me up from my depressed and sad state. After opening the new channel last night, I feel so much better. I don't feel silenced, shackled or chained. We'll see how long that lasts though. I am emotionally prepared for it to be taken down again.
