Happy Easter !

 

It's been a strange time here at Cyber-Studios. Over the festive season we decided to be less reliant on Microsoft. Let's face it Windows XP was actually their last operating system where you still had a say in how you use your computer and what you can do with it. So with the threats of no future updates to Windows 10 we have switched over to Linux.

It takes a little getting used to at first and it's the little things that take a while to find alternatives for. Shift and print-screen for example as a quick way to copy the screen which can then just be pasted into paint and cropped.

The biggest change however is that we are currently without access to our chosen DAW of the past decade (or two). That's been quite a big change from a production point of view. While we are in limbo, it has been a good time to see just how likely we are to be replaced by AI and to be honest it hasn't made much difference as this is mainly a hobby (as in we have to do proper work for money so until AI hits us there, it's not going to have a massive impact on our free time).

If anything, the change has been a thought shift. Now we're no longer focusing on building a studio with a load of incompatible synths and space is at a premium, the change has been more towards online tools and platforms. Yes we have discovered Suno, and rather than just fear it, we're exploring what this change means. First and foremost, we now have.. 'Songs!'. Not to be confused with... 'songs'. For 30 years we've uploaded 'songs', our inward worlds expressed as house, trance & dance music but always tracks that felt unfinished and unpolished like we hadn't quite mastered how to make something popular enough that it would provide in a financial sense. The likes of Justin Bieber might be able to book a day in a studio with a top producer and maybe get Taylor Swift in to knock out some vocal hooks but we just don't have access to those resources.

So we've spent some time playing with Suno and you can check out our results above if you haven't already clicked play yet.

So it felt like Suno wants everyone to become 'Song!' writers, or that was the initial take. It does state that you can leave the lyrics box empty to create an instrumental. The change has definitely been a switch in producer roles for us. Now we are song-writers, so who knows we might one day get some royalties from this investigation into the current state of AI. What it has also done is moved us from endless tweaking of instrumentals into writing and tweaking lyrics, then really going deeper into song structures and audio descriptors. There's a whole sub-group of Suno creators exploring how to actually attempt to make AI express emotions in a vocal context. For the first time though it feels like we have a producer, studio team and session singers working with us. This is beyond our financial reach in the real world. So now the focus has shifted towards producing lyrics and sourcing video clips. 

This is why we've released 'Automation' now. There are still obstacles for all the youngsters out there with no money and heads full of ideas. We've worked with them; they know which artists are at the top of the pyramid  and how much their luxury houses cost. They love a few hours on garage band but their world is so different. Services like Suno and Producer.AI offer a democratisation of studio time and that is not going to affect singers and producers as much as people think. The backlash may be harsh against those at the top of the pyramid trying to save a few quid, but those at the bottom of the pyramid have a shot at climbing up a level or two.

The hardest part right now is sourcing video content and that may be a legacy thing. It's always been a cheap option to get somebody with a camera follow a band around and hope someone plays the fool (anyone thinking about the Prodigy's 'Out of Space' video at this moment?). For this track we used Googles Flow (free version is very limited at present). The question though now becomes 'is there a path up for those who follow our lead?'. It won't affect us either way. This is a hobby after all and it's back to work on Tuesday.