The Road to Ruin

Community Hub Artificial Intelligence
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Thanks to all who will listen, and to the admins for allowing me to post my AI tracks here. I know AI is a bridge too far for some folks.

So what’s the deal with this new track? I wanted to write a song similar to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and see if I could have him (or someone close) sing it. LOL

So, I wrote the lyrics with a AACBBC rhyme scheme like “Hallelujah,” except for the refrain. For the vocals and orchestration I first queried ChatGPT to create a prompt that I could feed into Suno since you can’t enter in artist names in the Suno prompt. Here is what ChatGPT gave me and I used in Suno:

Folk ballad, acoustic, spiritual, poetic, intimate, slow tempo, deep male vocal, fingerpicked guitar, piano, strings, minimal production, reflective, sacred atmosphere, emotional crescendo, storytelling, ‑Slow, ‑contemplative folk ballad at approximately 56–60 BPM, ‑Deep, ‑resonant male lead vocal with a calm, ‑intimate delivery and subtle gravelly texture, ‑Sparse arrangement built around gently fingerpicked acoustic guitar and warm piano, ‑with occasional understated bass and soft string accompaniment entering gradually, ‑Minimal percussion or none at all, ‑Emphasis on lyrical storytelling, ‑emotional restraint, ‑and spacious production, ‑Rich natural reverb creates the feeling of a quiet church or large hall, ‑Melancholic yet uplifting mood, ‑blending spiritual imagery with themes of love, ‑loss, ‑redemption, ‑and mystery, ‑Dynamic build from solitary voice and guitar to a fuller, ‑emotionally powerful ensemble, ‑Organic recording style, ‑warm analog character, ‑clear vocal presence, ‑and a timeless singer-songwriter atmosphere

How close to “Hallelujah-ish” did I get?:

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I wouldn’t be able to tell Clint…what I can say is that I like it. Are the lyrics yours? I’m also curious to ask why did you want to write a song similar to Hallelujah?

Btw Hallelujah is one of my favourites to play on the guitar.

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It ended up being an operatic version of Leonard Cohen. Yes the lyrics are mine. I grab inspiration where I can and Hallelujah is very inspirational. Thanks for the listen and nice comment.

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Nice song, Clint :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:
It’s easy on the ear, sounds professional, and preferable to much of what might be playing on my radio whilst I’m trying to dial in the station I’m looking for.
Kudos for being inspired by Mr. Cohen. I plagiarise shamelessly, and that’s a good thing, as long as you don’t try to hide the fact.
Suno did a good job of fulfilling the brief, according to your prompts.
Will I ever listen to it again?
No.
I prefer it when you play your acoustic with your stubby cigar fingers and raspy voice.
But then again, I only listen to music here to see (and be amazed) what my buddies are up to- not for my musical enjoyment.

Not even close :grimacing:
But don’t take that the wrong way-
Leonard Cohen is a poet.
His music is an accessory.
He spent years and years working on this song with hundreds of verses and versions.
To paraphrase a Wiki quote, I would love to imagine you ‘sitting on the floor in your underwear, filling notebooks, banging your head on the floor’ until you had a masterpiece, but life is too short :wink:

ps. I’m working on a local songwriting challenge. I wrote the lyrics yesterday and passed them to my bass-playing son, asking him to put them to music. I’m lazier than you… I didn’t even bother giving him prompts!
Maybe I should do a Son-o v Suno comparison when I have it ready? :rofl:

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I really appreciate the listen and comment @brianlarsen ! I’m not even close to being so thin skinned as to get worked up over fair criticism.

We do disagree on a number of things, as you mentioned in another post, but I do hold your song writing skills in high regard and do respect your opinions.

Looking forward to hearing the Son-o track soon. :slight_smile:

My goal is to continue writing songs/lyrics, and bang out riffs and songs on my guitar(s) and maybe record music that I like to listen to.

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I dont know what suno is. So my question is you wrote the lyrics and then what? What did the AI do for you? I guess thats my confussion. Did it give you a good guitar progression to play? Backing tracks to go with the lyrics and progression? That beats my keyboards 56-89 preset drum tracks so yeah, that’s cool. Maybe i getting it wrong.

So my assesment is your vocals sound great and play guitar well. I know you been playing a while it shows.

I am sorry to say, I dont think it sounds like Cohens “hallelujah” that is a tough act to emulate. It is more like the new country music perhaps. It’s cool though we all got our nitch.

Ontime,

:victory_hand:t2::love_you_gesture:t2::sign_of_the_horns:t2:

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I appreciate the listen and comment. My intent is not to promote, educate or convince people about AI music. Suno is the AI app that I use, there are others out there.

The AI in this case turned my lyrics into an arrangement and musical production based on a number of prompts and iterations.

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That’s interesting. This is like AI-squared with the prompts which guide the song-writing AI, which are often claimed to be part of the human “skill” or “creativity” in AI-generated music, are themselves being handed over to chatGPT. I suppose this can be improved further by asking Claude for the best prompts to chatGPT to generate the best prompts to Suno to produce a song that sounds like Leonard Cohen, hahaha!

This is making my head spin, I think I will stretch out on my couch and listen to Songs From a Room :grinning_face:

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Humans are capable of using multiple tools at once, and a hammer doesn’t always work for every situation.

This particular project/song is analogous to handing a lyric sheet over to a small group of talented musicians, with an engineer and producer in the room. With as much direction as you can provide you tell everyone, “Hey, can you guys make this work?” After a number of takes and prompt adjustments, something that you like may shake out of it.

I know you are poking fun, and that’s perfectly fine. There may come a time when someone might write a song and wonder what it would sound like if someone else outside of their circle of friends were to sing it. :slight_smile:

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As Steve Jobs said 45 years ago, the computer is the bicycle for the mind, emphasizing that humans make tools to multiply our abilities.