Whether we like it or not it seems that AI is here to stay. In this article I describe one way I’m using AI in my music to my advantage.
Creating Album Art For Music
In today’s digital streaming world of Spotify and more musicians are required to have art work for each piece of music they release for distribution. Each image must be unique. It’s also in the musician’s best interest to provide an interesting image that grabs listeners attention so they will listen to the music. This provides a special challenge for independent musicians for 2 reasons. First of all most musicians are not visual artists. And second, they are releasing music that they may or may not ever earn any money for. This is where AI comes in.
DALL-E
DALL-E is the first AI generator I became aware of. In the beginning I heard this was completely free. But when I went to try it, you had to pay for it before you could even try it. I then searched for free alternatives.
Trial And Error
I quickly found that there are endless versions of this type of software online. I began trying them out. After a short while I was ready to give up because the results were so unsatisfactory.
The way these work is that you write in a phrase. Then the software is supposed to give you images that look like the phrase you’ve input.
For my song “Star Wars Freak”, I typed in that as a phrase first just to see what would happen. I can’t remember the images shown but there was nothing I could use. I had to be more specific.
I think the next prompt I tried was “guy with light saber.” Some of the pictures it gave me were of a man standing next to a light saber. š Still needed to be more specific.
Tried “guy holding light saber.” This was better, but I was looking for something funny, and none of the images these programs gave me were humorous. Here is one of the images generated.
Not the style I had in mind. Not funny. And why are there 2 light sabers in the picture?š
I thought it would be funny to have a guy in his underwear holding a light saber. Most of the software I tried wouldn’t even give me this image. Parental controls I guess. I finally found a program on canva.com that would generate an image of a guy in his underwear.
This wasn’t going to work though! š Too adult. I don’t think Spotify would even let me use this if I wanted to. š
Decided to try something else. Tried “geek with light saber.” Then “nerd with light saber.”
Not bad. But kind of sad instead of funny. Decided to let the software know the guy needed to be smiling. š Finally ended up with the image pictured at the top of this article which I felt would work.
I have also been experimenting with AI generated music videos. So far everything I’ve tried has been unusable. Don’t think the technology is quite there yet to do what I’d like it to. Maybe eventually…