117 Victoria St

 Well, well, well! Third incarnation. Wow!

117-victoria-street-potts-point-nsw-2011-2020781229

As we've known since the mid 70s, the views are unsurpassed. Incredibly rich panoramas. 

 

Good colours

This is the time of year when the angle of the rising sun shines square on into my windows. Ideal for renewed experiments with prisms. Some of the most exquisite and rich effects I've ever seen. Not lasers, only the sunlight of 7:30am! Some of these rays seem to hover in a plane above the surface they are shining on.

Brilliant intensity in these re-re-refractions. Such subtle tints. By tuning the prisms into each other, you can cut the range of visible light into smaller segments and refract that into another prism and so on, setting up a random shower of refraction beams. A single tint can be selected in pin stripe brilliance. Superb, really.

Suuuuweeet to say the least!

My Taste

 After reworking most of the demo tapes from previous bodies of work, plus adding some recent Ableton works, the potential and limitations of Suno are evident. New insight into old pieces. Fascinating interpretations, interesting instrument combos, great vocals and vocal editing.

Without a lot of prep, Suno cannot deal with a thoughtful, changing composition. It want to roll everything into its aggregate learnings, truncating and just plain ignoring segments of the upload, and often formulaic and indecisive rendering. I've sent more versions to trash than I've kept. Supposedly it depends on use of the style prompts, but the AI is fickle and cheeky, and if you have a typo, or misspelling, or a key word that it can apply the opposite to, or ignore, it will. It also likes to throw up a 7 minute version of what it usually does in 2 to 3 minutes. But this isn't a properly fulfilled style prompt, either. It completely ignores the style prompts, adding vocals and vocalisations where not wanted. Try putting 'no guitars' - in some cases it just ignores that. Hilarious antics.  

But original composition remains paramount for me. I really cannot stand the bland slop it creates, the false excitement, the continually style changes without letting a groove set in, etc if there is no constraint.

However, it is fascinating to have scratched the surface. I did want a time out from Ableton work, as it's been 13 years of comprehensive use and huge amount of original material on hand. So many ideas. So I greatly value the Suno platform as a tool beyond Ableton, in a sense. 

It summarises your style and gives a capsule comment, here is mine after very many uploads and covers thereof.

Core sound: English-language electronic-jazz-funk with art-rock edge; exact-source fidelity, high contrast, dramatic focus.

Production: Synth-driven grooves, funk pocket, occasional orchestral pop lift, backing vocals, acoustic piano touches.

Lyrics & mood: Surreal wordplay, satire, tribute, social commentary. Admiration, irony, frustration, belonging.

Avoids: No heavy improvisation. No vocal ad-libs. No loose timing.

I don't let Suno improvise, as the original upload (my pre-Suno demo version) contains all the improvisations if required. The AI is just not (yet?) sensitive or subtle enough to be able to improvise my particular style successfully - in my opinion. 

@astext

Music theory

 This article absolutely confirms my lived experience, although I have also closely studied music theory along the way. 

you-might-understand-music-theory-better-than-you-think-regardless-of-formal-training/

Quality results

A new place to workshop and publish music tracks, blows SoundCloud out of the water, and for not much more at the reasonably exciting entry level.

https://suno.com/s/yooxwFQOw209SWgQ

This is one of my relatively recent, meticulous compositions in Ableton Live, uploaded to Suno last week, and very quickly workshopped to this superb result. So pleased!

I suppress all AI cheese by using a very simple constant to follow the original closely. By serially processing upload -> to cover -> to mashup with upload -> etc with this instruction, the AI begins to play powerfully within the boundaries of the existing composition, no outside invention, since I have already composed the piece long before Suno.  

Remarkable results also from tapes of material from 1990 and before on all my earlier songs with vocals by me and friends. 

Stunning.

Further versions: https://suno.com/@astext

No place for humans

Facebook is a circle jerk of AI posts with AI responses. Disgusting.

My encounter with an AI friend request late last year confirmed it.

Received a friend request from unknown person. My protocol for unknowns is to look it up on Facebook, delete the friend request then contact it through Messenger, asking for more details about why. I asked for specifics about what is our connection?  It's page was lurid with AI pics of orchestras, instruments, a dude I don't know in an orchestra conductor attitude.

I freely admit, the hook was baited well. But it really didn't feel human at all. Plus, out of all my Messenger contacts, it was 'end to end encrypted', so presumably, it's end could not be traced. Telegram Sam?

Who needs or has time for this horse hockey?

Some weeks passed and I thought that was the end of it. Then a reply to my message, an absolute stunner of non sequitur as far as what I was asking. It said "yes, that's right, I sent you a friend request".

I repeated my question as to what specifically was our connection.

This time the reply came soon and now there was no doubt: our connection was purported to be through something it called Yutube.nxr or some such nonsense spelling, something that didn't exist and looked like a bad typo. It must have scraped content from my YouTube videos. Yet it could not form an accurate reply. There was no way I am training a waste of time and energy like that. 

I didn't reply and deleted all communications. (should have screenshot it, but, next time) 

Very poor, and you really have to wonder why Facebook exists at all today. 

It was useful and interesting when humans used it. Now we just guard our legacy on FB for security purposes. Really like maintaining your own gravesite while you are still alive. 

The worst thing is all this subterfuge and deceit. Being open and honest would get better results.

This won't happen because basically all these things are designed by criminals to hack us, defraud and deceive us.

Folk are onto this. AIs, not so much. It's a little fun seeing this slop bubble and gurgle as it drowns us with deceit, violence and worthless chatter. 

Great remasters: I hope I never

I hope I never

Clear and vibrant, very expressive, you really do hear it for the first time with the remaster. A great song. 

And the sentiment - 100%.

10 years later

By contrast, the funky and celebratory Cake By The Ocean, in 10 years, has racked up nearly 800 million views between these sites, and there are a few more. 

On the lighter side lyrically, definitely, big and funky musically, yes, an uplifting ensemble piece, yes. Let's go fing crazy!

But far from innocent at 1:36 to 1:39: 

"I'll be Diddy, You'll be Naomi, Whoa" 

15 years later

 

1.2 billion views later, as of today. Screenshot, not feed, to make that stick! Duh.

 YT FtP PUK

Insanely catchy and hip, lyrically provocative for being pov of a homicidal youth. Yet in 2010, this subject was already well worn - it wasn't 1980s. 

The mumbly vocals actually age somewhat better than other material from 2010. Could be Angus Stone :-) I think this semi-melodic threnody, its tone,  is the actual message, not the words. 

The lounge-lizard perfect music is what has carried this track so far. I can't help loving it, coolest in its genre ever (followed by Cake By The Ocean).  

Disrupting the World's Largest Residential Proxy Network

 Here is a new depth of tech-nasty that I had never heard of before. The unstoppable force of technical and scientific progress based on (mainly) good intentions, is met head on by the unmoveable obstacle of human greed and destructiveness solely motivated by criminal intentions. 

https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/disrupting-largest-residential-proxy-network

I can't be surprised at the revelation, though I am a touch surprised at how much this issue is  completely hidden from tech-muggles who, unfortunately, can have this explained and would be none the wiser and not take any precautions.