Help Me Buck the AI Monkey

 

When I created Swords Against Madness, I wasn't expecting a big hit. I figured that my own LSD-soaked imitation on Tale of the Manticore with immortal space barbarians and killer robots might garner an audience of 20... including my friends and family.

I sure as hell didn't expect it to have over 500 regular listeners and thousands of downloads. I am astounded, amazed, blessed, and humbled by the response  to my show.

Now I want to make it into an eve higher-quality, weirder, wilder, trippier project than before.And the first step to that is to ditch one of its weakest points: the AI-generated music.

Finding Music & Acessibility Issues

When I started working on SvM, I spent days combing Incompetech, Pixabay, and The Free Music Archive  for music that matched what I was imagining in my head, and I got very frustrated. The "instrumental pyschedelic heavy blues-metal fusion" I was looking for just didn't seem to exist outside of my head. So after wasting many man hours in fruitless searches, I sat down and tried to compose it.

I have know understanding of music theory. Ask me to learn anything else in the world and I can do it... but start talking anything more complex that reading sheet music for an alto saxophone, and I am lost.

Moreover, when the paraesthesia in my hands gets bad, just touching things hurts. Using a keyboard or playing an instrument is pure torture. Which makes learning to play one very difficult. Making the music myself seemed like an awfully big ask for a doodle I was creating just for the hell of it. As a rule, I minimize self-torture.

So, frustrates as I was, I sat down on Suno and tried about a dozen or so prompts to see if i could figure out a prompt that could give me something close to what I wanted. And it delivered. 

Using Suno 

Having scrutinized them myself, I don't accept many of the sweeping arguments made against the use of generative AI; an LLM can be ethically sourced from the Public Domain and Creative Commons. So long as there is no intent to use AI-generated content commercially there is no contract for an artist to lose out on. The power demands of AI can be substantial, but the environmental impact of one volt may not necessarily be equal to another. People may not like and may wish to choose not to consume AI-generated material, and that ought to be their right, so anyone using it ought to say so.

Thus, I hold that ideally, Generative AI should have its electricity generated by green or nuclear production, and ethically, it should be using an ethically sourced model, it should be used transparently, and it should be used for noncommercial purposes. 

When I started using Suno they were headquartered in a region that has primarily green energy. I had no interest in making Swords Against Madness into a commercial project.

And doing my own research when I started working on SVM, I found no claims regarding them using copyrighted material. In fact, some of their marketing material stated that they were primarily sourced from open culture the public domain. So I could see no way in which those criteria: transparent, green, ethically sourced, and non-commercial was being violated using it.

So I grabbed a subscription long enough to play with it and generate an assortment of tracks to use as bed music for Swords Against Madness. 

Since then, Suno has put out a few new models, and accusations against them have started to come out suggesting that they were deceptive in discussing the sourcing on their models. I stopped using them for any projects and discontinued my subscription. And, aside from the odd doodle that will be shared with no one for anything, I have not used it at all.

I feel satisfied that I have behaved ethically within the scope of my limited information. 

Growth, Expansion, Community... Conflict

I could not have predicted that the Solo RPG Semi-Actual-Play Audio Drama scene would explode. That  I would find myself brought into the centre of a big network of creators all making similar podcasts.

Nor that my use of Suno would be such a sticking point. Everyone in the network has been adult enough to avoid (intentional) personal rudeness, but some of them consider any use of generative AI not just unethical, but personally offensive. Quite a few have refuse to collaborate with me on that basis. A few refuse to be a part of an organization that would have me as a member.

I personally don't give a shit what moral crusaders think of me, nor do I care to expand and alter my work for the broadest appeal. Changing to please others is a very effective way of making yourself miserable.

But I do have increasing personal reasons to move away from the existing tracks. 

Making a Change 

Swords Against Madness has exploded in popularity; it has an audience much bigger than my personal circle, and being one of the more popular creations within the narrow genre, reflects on it. I would like to bring a higher quality and standard to my work accordingly. And machine-generated music is simply inferior and shows less attention to detail than the project deserves at this stage in its development.

Moreover, I feel like the sheer volume of downloads also demand I treat it like a commercial product, at least in terms of the quality of the editing and material. AI-generated artwork or music has no place in a commercial-grade creation.

If I want to step up the show quality, it might eventually require a Kofi or Patreon page to give me a budget to defray increasing running costs. As it is, it piggybacks on my commercial site for free, but is taking up a lot of bandwidth and maintenance time. I won't create any such thing until such time as I can say that I am no longer using AI material.

And, of course, the allegations against Suno are such that I will not be using their tools for any substantive use until courts issue findings about their use of copyrighted material to remain within my ethical framework.

For the sake of honesty, integrity, and consistency, I will phase out AI-generated music slowly from Swords Against Madness with a goal of starting a second season around Episode 50 that is completely free of AI-generated music.

In the interim, I will generate no new music for the show using Suno. Any new songs added hereafter will be human made.

I will spend some of the time allotted for the show every week for searching for music that does suit me.

I am learning to program music when time - and my hands - allow it. 

Bonus content will use different bed music, not include AI generated content.

Eventually I will create alternative versions of older episodes free of AI tracks. 

Looking for Some Help

But the difficulty remains. As far as I can tell, the kind of music I am looking for exists mostly in my head. I have found a few things that match on obscure 1970s records and a few artists that are close.

Can you help me find anything that matches my instrumental pyschedelic heavy blues-metal fusion aesthetic?

• Point me to tracks in the creative commons or public domain.
• Introduce me to music that is close to what I have "created" that can be licensed cheaply.
• Introduce me to artists who might be willing to trade tracks for advertising or barter for editing and sound engineering services.
• Point me to blues-friendly free or affordable virtual instruments that I can use on a LINUX machine. 
•  Throw your creations at me for credit, thanks, and praise in the show.
• Or tell me you just don't care. 

I will appreciate any kind of help I can get to follow my roadmap away from Suno.

Cheers,

Brian