The Band Practice Dialogues: AI Songwriting – Part 1

The rock band Realizing Resonance performs enthusiastically in their otherwise empty rental practice space. The band is four members, Taylor on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Daniel rocking the lead guitar, Rune slamming on the bass guitar, and Chris banging out a beat on the drum kit.

Rune: Good set…hey, I wanted to bounce an idea off you guys.

Chris: Does it involve computers?

Rune: Funny. You’re right…this time. I was thinking that it would be interesting to use ChatGPT to write the lyrics for our next song. Have you seen what that thing can do? It’s amazing!

Chris: Every time. Remember when you wanted to connect your bass to…

Taylor: Whoa, hold up! I’m not singing lyrics written by an AI. I write most of our lyrics, and I don’t even like doing covers.

Rune: I forgot about your covers hangup. It’s not like covers at all. This is generative AI we are talking about; it creates original content based on ideas we come up with and prompt into it. What could it hurt to see what ChatGPT can do, and then decide if the lyrics meet your high standards?

Taylor: Not interested. I have no trouble writing my own songs. I almost always write lyrics to music of some sort, whether to some guitar chords, or by humming a melody. I feel the lyrics out based on the contours of the song and how it flows. Starting a song with fake lyrics just won’t have any of the feeling I put into it.

Rune. Don’t you think you’re being a bit of a luddite? Probably you’re just paranoid about the machines taking away your job away as a lyricist.

Daniel: Fallacy, dude.

Chris: Fallacy? Isn’t that your old band, Daniel. That’s way before AI, maybe before CDs.

Daniel: Er, yes, but no. I mean, that’s my old band name, but I’m talking about a fallacy as in a mistake of reasoning. Rune, you resorted to using ad hominem, aka name calling. Luddite or not, you wrote off Taylor’s point without actually addressing it.

Rune: Okay, Doctor Logic. Taylor, don’t you want to push your boundaries as a songwriter? And be at the forefront of innovation in music? Man, don’t give me that look.

Daniel: For what it’s worth, I think it’d be fun to mess around and see what the AI can do. If for nothing else than to just understand what we’re up against.

Chris: I’m not sure I get it still. Is this AI thing going to write a whole song, with the lyrics, the chords, melody, drums, bass line, and all the parts? Is it going to give us sheet music to read or something? Or can it create its own audio recording if it wants to?

Rune: ChatGPT doesn’t want to do anything. It’s not anything like the sentient AI in movies, we’ve all had too many Hal and Skynet tropes fed to us over the years. For now, I’m just talking about using ChatGPT to write song lyrics. I haven’t thought about asking it to write the music parts as well. That’s a great idea!

Taylor: Please don’t give him any more ideas.

Chris: Ay, Dios mio! Terminator 2 does kick ass though.

Daniel: ChatGPT is a large language model, or LLM for short. This just means that a machine learning model was trained on a massive dataset of human generated text from all over the internet. These models also use something called transformers—don’t say it Chris—which lets the model pay attention to word patterns across sequences and predict the best word placements. This is why AI can now write songs that actually rhyme, and write other very human sounding things like blog posts and term papers. But, at the end of the day, AI algorithms are just very complex probability calculations that have been trained on real human writing to pattern match it. It’s not remotely the same thing as human inspiration in its function, but the output can look remarkably, and creepily, similar.

Taylor: I’d be fine with having AI write our blog, and all our social media posts for that matter. That stuff’s tedious and boring.

Daniel: Speak for yourself, I enjoy writing blog articles.

Chris: Especially if they’re about cats.

Daniel: Damn strait! Best cat Dad! And I am already using ChatGPT to help write blog articles. I can write about cats AND the band now.

Taylor: Yeah, no songs about cats either. Look, I think it would be interesting to mess around with AI for lyrics and whatever else. I’m NOT against innovation, I DO want to push my boundaries as a songwriter. Except, AI is not me. I still don’t think I can bring myself to sing an AI written song. Writing and singing a song is a personal, intimate thing, and our fans want to hear authentic music sung from the heart. It’s what I want to hear! What would I tell it write anyway? “Hey AI poet, write me a song about longing for love that uses telepathy as a metaphor. But don’t make it cliché!”

Chris: “Hey AI Taylor, write me a song about forbidden love using the metaphor of an alpaca and a puma.”

Rune: Okay, yeah, trash in, trash out. You can write good prompts and get good output.

Taylor: That’s the thing though. Just the act of writing the prompt itself kills the inspiration. I mean, think about how the best songs have lyrics that transcend one simple reading of them. How there are different facets to a song. I don’t even like to explain the meanings of my songs, because the best ones take on different meanings to different people. They are open to interpretation. The best songs resonate with a listener on a personal level.

Chris: REALIZING RESONANCE!

Taylor: Exactly.

Rune: Alright, we don’t have to commit to releasing an AI single or anything like that. Let’s just see what the AI can do and call it having fun.

Daniel: I have an idea. Have you heard of the Turing Test?

Rune: Yes.

Taylor: No.

Chris: We’re going to bring the AI robot on the road with us to play shows?

Daniel: Not a touring test, a Turing test. A test to see whether an AI can think like a human, which was envisioned by a guy named Alan Turing. It is an imitation game, where a player asks questions to both a human and an AI. If the player cannot tell which one is the real human, then the AI has passed the test.

Taylor: Oh, I guess I have heard of that.

Daniel: I propose that we conduct a song lyrics Turing Test. Rune, you write prompts into ChatGPT to get song lyrics. Taylor, you write your own song lyrics. At band practice tomorrow, you each place the lyric sheets on my amp without showing them to Chris or me. Then, Chris and I read the lyrics and see if we can tell which one is written by the AI.

Rune: That’s a great idea!

Chris: Could you imagine if we thought Taylor was an AI?

Taylor: Fine, let’s do it. Should I write about the same thing as the AI?

Daniel: Yes. Write a song called The Labyrinth, that is loaded with references to the Greek myth, and is a metaphor for the confusing and convoluted paths that we find ourselves navigating in the modern world of media disinformation.

Taylor: Man, I don’t know anything about Greek myth. Thanks for the homework.

Rune: You could ask ChatGPT.

Daniel: See you tomorrow!

Written by Jared Roy Endicott