#algorithmic music creation

[rich4a1]

How Spotify uses Ghost Writers and AI Content to Increase their Profits

Making a Scene Presents How Spotify uses Ghost Writers and AI Content to Increase their Profits Spotify has significantly reshaped the music streaming landscape, becoming an integral part of millions of listeners’ daily lives. However, behind the curated playlists and mood-setting tracks lies a controversial strategy involving “ghost artists” and artificial intelligence-generated music, aimed at…

[sweaterbob]

follow my tiktok @sweaterbob

[niggadiffusion]

Beats, Bytes & The Future Sound: AI Meets Electronic Music

Electronic music has always been about pushing boundaries, breaking rules, and bending sound into new dimensions. Now, artificial intelligence is stepping into the booth, reshaping how beats are built, melodies emerge, and tracks come to life. This isn’t about robots replacing producers—it’s about a new creative partnership, where human intuition meets machine-driven possibilities.The Evolution…

[birkobird]

The Youtube Algorithm's Forces, BradTasteInMusic, And How I Think About The Machine

So BradTasteInMusic put out a (now unlisted?) video on his second channel venting about the way that The Youtube Algorithm(TM) is pushing people around him to move towards daily, current affairs/news content that farms clicks from either baiting the audience or keywords. He didn't mention them but channels like SomeOrdinaryGamers, Penguinz0/MoistCritikal, PyroLIVE, and their ilk are probably what he is talking about.

(Like seriously, there's not a lot of difference here) The Machine likes this stuff. Since It doesn't care about timelessness, videos like this fit all that it wants. 1) It always gets a decent number of clicks, whether through curiosity, clickbait or (however little) personality the creator has, 2) The output is high, as these videos have little to nothing in the way of analysis or deeper interrogation beyond simple recounting of events, and 3) Advertisers can't get mad about normally-demonitised topics when They're In The News, so the money keeps rolling in. Content like this is basically the same as Reacting To Videos, but with the distinct advantage of definitively falling under Fair Use protections.

The Machine pays rent, The Machine keeps me fed, The Machine is my only life skill, I must do what The Machine wants: That is the force that Brad is feeling. And it is a powerful force! Content creation generally has developed a "Grow Or Die" feeling to it, one that is quite toxic to the concept of keeping a personal identity in your own content. Brad specifically will at some point have to accept that there is a maximum level of success that his channel can reach. He makes music reaction/review content. Even if he has perfect titles, thumbnails, video pacing, and everything else that keeps up watchtime (and thus favour from The Machine), he is further constrained by the diverse music taste of a general Youtube audience. If he makes a video on Swans, only people who are interested in Swans will watch. Sometimes his videos will only be viewed by the core audience that is there for him specifically, and that is much smaller than his subscriber count. As someone making video game videos, I'm kinda in the same boat. While I am working around this somewhat by making videos on a wide variety of games, my audience is limited by people who are interested in the game that I am playing -- I'm too small to have any real core audience that are there to watch me, so I have to develop them by making videos for various games first.

This leads to my content clearly confusing The Machine somewhat.

This analytics graph of my recent Borderlands 2 video (go watch it :D https://youtu.be/9w7SI92cxrQ ) is bizarre. The Machine did nothing with it for a full day, pushed it to tens of thousands of people, then sat on it again, and now has started slowly pushing it to more people a week after it was uploaded. But this will eventually cap out as everyone who is interested in Borderlands 2 will make a decision as to whether they want to watch my video. I have to accept that this will eventually happen to my channel as a whole as well.

TL;DR: There's a maximum size to a Youtube channel based on content type, and you should be careful comparing yourself to people working in entirely different content lanes. I can't pump out daily videos in my style, so I won't force myself to. If you're also making videos, look around not at the people with 1,000,000+ subs making videos in any old topics, look at the large creators in your own space and look at their metrics. Have they topped out? Are you aiming for the same audience as them, or are you more broad or niche? Set your expectations and goals for growth based on that, rather than on a Generic Youtuber that doesn't share much of an audience with you.

[careyakane]

What really do I want out of all this?

I know damn well I’ll die an angry old carcass of regret and mediocre creations if I look for my validation and taste in the clumsy hands of algorithms and apps—one day shining their warm and bright eyes upon my songs, lifting a curtain to a million onlookers that praise and praise until the next morning comes and the silence is complete, beyond a few snickers and jeers (be they imagined or not).

It’s troubling that I have found so many good people through sharing my work online, and it leads me to come back again and again like some hungry dog, both for the praise and for the company. I have always wanted to be seen, to stand in front of ten thousand people and mean something to them—a common quality in young people starved of some form of validation at the beginning. I don’t think this part of me will ever die, and yet the real kicker comes with my refusal to just play their game and add to the overflowing heaps of rubber, soulless excess that gets passed off as art.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a great number of wonderful and honest creations being distributed at the highest levels, but clawing at their boots is the sheetrock, department-store music and noise that fills far too many rooms and empty heads (adding to the emptiness, to make matters worse). And this lower batch of machines keeps a lot of lights on in the record companies, and for that reason, it has become a well-shined and walked path that is encouraged, if not forced, upon many doe-eyed kids such as myself.

Anyway, I was just upset for a moment. All is well. Carry on.

[qwertyprophecy]

Mortholme Post-Mortem

The Dark Queen of Mortholme has been out for two weeks, and I've just been given an excellent excuse to write some more about its creation by a lenghty anonymous ask.

Under the cut, hindsight on the year spent making Mortholme and answers to questions about game dev, grouped under the following topics:

Time spent on development Programming Obstacles Godot Animation Pixel art Environment assets Writing Completion Release

Regarding time spent on development

Nope, I’ve got no idea anymore how long I spent on Mortholme. It took a year but during that time I worked on like two other games and whatever else. And although I started with the art, I worked on all parts simultaneously to avoid getting bored. This is what I can say:

Art took a ridiculous amount of time, but that was by choice (or compulsion, one might say). I get very excitable and particular about it. At most I was making about one or two Hero animations in a day (for a total of 8 + upgraded versions), but anything involving the Queen took multiple times longer. When I made the excecutive decision that her final form was going to have a bazillion tentacles I gave up on scheduling altogether.

Coding went quickly at the start when I was knocking out a feature after another, until it became the ultimate slow-burn hurdle at the end. Testing, bugfixing, and playing Jenga with increasingly unwieldy code kept oozing from one week to the next. For months, probably? My memory’s shot but I have a mark on my calendar on the 18th of August that says “Mortholme done”. Must’ve been some optimistic deadline before the ooze.

Writing happened in extremely productive week-long bursts followed by nothing but nitpicky editing while I focused on other stuff. Winner in the “changed most often” category, for sure.

Sound was straightforward, after finishing a new set of animations I spent a day or two to record and edit SFX for them. Music I originally scheduled two weeks for, but hubris and desire for more variants bumped it to like a month.

Regarding programming

The Hero AI is certainly the part that I spent most of my coding time on. The basic way the guaranteed dodging works is that all the Queen’s attacks send a signal to the Hero, who calculates a “danger zone” based on the type of attack and the Queen’s location. Then, if the Hero is able to dodge that particular attack (a probability based on how much it's been used & story progression), they run a function to dodge it.

Each attack has its own algorithm that produces the best safe target position to go to based on the Hero’s current position (and other necessary actions like jumping). Those algorithms needed a whole lot of testing to code counters for all the scenarios that might trip the Hero up.

The easiest or at least most fun parts for me to code are the extra bells and whistles that aren’t critical but add flair. Like in the Hero’s case, the little touches that make them seem more human: a reaction speed delay that increases over time, random motions and overcompensation that decrease as they gain focus, late-game Hero taking prioritising aggressive positiniong, a “wait for last second” function that lets the Hero calculate how long it’ll take them to move to safety and use the information to squeeze an extra attack in…

The hardest attack was the magic circle, as it introduced a problem in my code so far. The second flare can overlap with other attacks, meaning the Hero had to keep track of two danger zones at once. For a brief time I wanted to create a whole new system that would constantly update a map of all current danger zones—that would allow for any number of overlapping attacks, which would be really cool! Unfortunately it didn’t gel with my existing code, and I couldn’t figure out its multitudes of problems since, well…

Regarding obstacles

Thing is, I’m hot garbage as a programmer. My game dev’s all self-taught nonsense. So after a week of failing to get this cool system to work, I scrapped it and instead made a spaghetti code monstrosity that made magic circle run on a separate danger zone, and decided I’d make no more overlapping attacks. That’s easy; I just had to buffer the timing of the animation locks so that the Hero would always have time to move away. (I still wanted to keep the magic circle, since it’s fun for the player to try and trick the Hero with it.)

There’s my least pretty yet practical solo dev advice: if you get stuck because you can’t do something, you can certainly try to learn how to do it, but occasionally the only way to finish a project within a decade to work around those parts and let them be a bit crap.

I’m happy to use design trickery, writing and art to cover for my coding skills. Like, despite the anonymous asker’s description, the Hero’s dodging is actually far from perfect. I knew there was no way it was ever going to be, which is why I wrote special dialogue to account for a player finding an exploit that breaks the intended gameplay. (And indeed, when the game was launched, someone immediately found it!)

Regarding Godot

It’s lovely! I switched from Unity years ago and it’s so much simpler and more considerate of 2D games. The way its node system emphasises modularity has improved my coding a lot.

New users should be aware that a lot of tutorials and advice you find online may be for Godot 3. If something doesn’t work, search for what the Godot 4 equivalent is.

Regarding animation

I’m a professional animator, so my list of tips and techniques is a tad long… I’ll just give a few resource recommendations: read up on the classic 12 principles of animation (or the The Illusion of Life, if you’d like the whole book) and test each out for yourself. Not every animation needs all of these principles, but basically every time you’ll be looking at an animation and wondering how to make it better, the answer will be in paying attention to one or more of them.

Game animation is its own beast, and different genres have their own needs. I’d recommend studying animations that do what you’d like to do, frame by frame. If you’re unsure of how exactly to analyse animation for its techniques, youtube channel New Frame Plus shows an excellent example.

Oh, and film yourself some references! The Queen demanded so much pretend mace swinging that it broke my hoover.

Regarding pixel art

The pixel art style was picked for two reasons: 1. to evoke a retro game feel to emphasise the meta nature of the narrative, and 2. because it’s faster and more forgiving to animate in than any of my other options.

At the very start I was into the idea of doing a painterly style—Hollow Knight was my first soulslike—but quickly realised that I’d either have to spend hundreds of hours animating the characters, or design them in a simplistic way that I deemed too cutesy for this particular game. (Hollow Knight style, one day I’d love to emulate you…)

I don’t use a dedicated program, just Photoshop for everything like a chump. Pixel art doesn’t need anything fancy, although I’m sure specialist programs will keep it nice and simple.

Pixel art’s funny; its limitations make it dependent on symbolism, shortcuts and viewer interpretation. You could search for some tutorials on basic principles (like avoiding “jaggies” or the importance of contrast), but ultimately you’ll simply want to get a start in it to find your own confidence in it. I began dabbling years ago by asking for character requests on Tumblr and doodling them in pixels in whatever way I could think of.

Regarding environment assets

The Queen’s throne room consists of two main sprites—one background and one separate bit of the door for the Hero disappear behind—and then about fifty more for the lighting setup. There’s six different candle animations, there’s lines on the floor that need to go on top of character reflections, all the candle circles and lit objects are separated so that the candles can be extinguished asynchronously; and then there’s purple phase 2 versions of all of the above.

This is all rather dumb. There’s simpler ways in Godot to do 2D lighting with shaders and a built-in system (I use those too), but I wanted control over the exact colours so I just drew everything in Photoshop the way I wanted it. Still, it highlights how mostly you only need a single background asset and separated foreground objects; except if you need animated objects or stuff that needs to change while the game’s running, you’ll get a whole bunch more.

I wholeheartedly applaud having a go at making your own game art, even if you don’t have any art background! The potential for cohesion in all aspects of design—art, game, narrative, sound—is at the heart of why video games are such an exciting medium!

Regarding writing

Finding the voices of the Queen and the Hero was the quick part of the process. They figured that out they are almost as soon as writing started. I’d been mulling this game over in my mind for so long, I had already a specific idea in mind of what the two of them stood for, conceptually and thematically. When they started bantering, I felt like all I really had to do was to guide it along the storyline, and then polish.

What ended up taking so long was that there was too much for them to say for how short the game needed to be to not feel overstretched. Since I’d decided to go with two dialogue options on my linear story, it at least gave me twice the amount of dialogue that I got to write, but it wasn’t enough!

The first large-scale rewrite was me going over the first draft and squeezing in more interesting things for the Queen and the Hero to discuss, more branching paths and booleans. There was this whole thing where the player’s their dialogue choices over multiple conversations would lead them to about four alternate interpretations of why the Queen is the way she is. This was around the time I happened to finally play Disco Elysium, so of course I also decided to also add a ton of microreactivity (ie. small changes in dialogue that acknowledge earlier player choices) to cram in even more alternate dialogue. I spent ages tinkering with the exact nuances till I was real proud of it.

Right until the playtesters of this convoluted contraption found the story to be unclear and confusing. For some reason. So for my final rewrite, I picked out my favourite bits and cut everything else. With the extra branching gone, there was more room to improve the pacing so the core of the story could breathe. The microreactivity got to stay, at least!

A sample of old dialogue from the overcomplicated version:

Regarding completion

The question was “what kept me going to actually finish the game, since that is a point many games never even get to meet?” and it’s a great one because I forgot that’s a thing. Difficulties finishing projects, that is—I used to think it was hard, but not for many years. Maybe I’ve completed so many small-scale games already that it hardly seems that unreasonable of an expectation? (Game jams. You should do game jams.)

I honestly never had any doubt I was going to finish Mortholme. When I started in late autumn last year, I was honestly expecting the concept to be too clunky to properly function; but I wished to indulge in silliness and make it exist anyways. That vision would’ve been easy to finish, a month or two of low stakes messing around, no biggie. (Like a game jam!)

Those months ran out quickly as I had too much fun making the art to stop. It must’ve been around the time I made this recording that it occurred to me that even if the game was going to be clunky, it could still genuinely work on the back of good enough storytelling technique—not just writing, but also the animation and the Hero’s evolving behaviour during the gameplay segments which I’d been worried about. The reaction to my early blogging was also heartening. Other people could also imagine how this narrative could be interesting!

A few weeks after that I started planning out the narrative beats I wanted the dialogue to reach, and came to the conclusion that I really, really wanted it to work. Other people had to see this shit, I thought. There’s got to be freaks out there who’d love to experience this tragedy, and I’m eager to deliver.

That’s why I was fine with the project’s timeline stretching out. If attention to detail and artistry was going to make this weird little story actually come to life, then great, because that’s exactly the part of development I love doing most. Projects taking longer than expected can be frustrating, but accepting that as a common part of game dev is what allows confidence in eventual their completion regardless.

Regarding release

Dear anonymous’s questions didn’t involve post-release concerns, but it seems fitting to wrap up the post-mortem by talking about the two things about Mortholme's launch that were firsts for me, and thus I was unprepared for.

1. This was the first action game I've coded. Well, sort of—I consider Mortholme to be a story first and foremost, with gameplay so purposefully obnoxious it benefits from not being thought of as a “normal” game. Still, the action elements are there. For someone who usually sticks to making puzzle games since they’re easier to code, this was my most mechanically fragile game yet. So despite all my attempts at playtesting and failsafes, it had a whole bunch of bugs on release.

Game-breaking bugs, really obvious bugs, weird and confusing bugs. It took me over a week to fix all that was reported (and I’m only hoping they indeed are fully fixed). That feels slow; I should’ve expected it was going to break so I could’ve been faster to respond. Ah well, next time I know what I’ll be booking my post-release week for.

2. This was my first game that I let players give me money for. Sure, it’s pay-what-you-want, but for someone as allergic to business decisions as I am, it was a big step. I guess I was worried of being shown that nobody would consider my art worth financial compensation. Well, uh, that fear has gone out of the window now. I’m blown away by how kind and generous the players of Mortholme have been with their donations.

I can’t imagine it's likely to earn a living wage from pouring hundreds of hours into pay-what-you-want passion projects, but the support has me heartened to seek out a future where I could make these weird stories and a living both.

Those were the unexpected parts. The part I must admit I was expecting—but still infinitely grateful for—was that Mortholme did in fact reach them freaks who’d find it interesting. The responses, comments, analyses, fan works (there’s fic and art!! the dream!!), inspiration, and questions (like the ones prompting me to write this post-mortem) people have shared with me thanks to Mortholme… They’ve all truly been what I was hoping for back when I first gave myself emotions thinking about a mean megalomaniac and stubborn dipshit.

Thank you for reading, thank you for playing, and thank you for being around.

[ayaahh00]

Here are the creations made by women that men never mention and completely forget: Rosalind Franklin's critical work on the structure of DNA, which was pivotal yet overshadowed by her male counterparts; Ada Lovelace's development of the first computer algorithm, a foundational achievement in computing history; and Hedy Lamarr's invention of frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology, which underpins modern wireless communication. In literature, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," a seminal work in the science fiction genre, is often wrongly attributed to her husband. Similarly, the Brontë sisters, writing under male pseudonyms, produced some of the most enduring works in English literature. Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, both accomplished composers, had their musical contributions minimized or attributed to their male relatives. These examples show the systematic erasure of women's contributions and creations, taking away the very rich history of female innovation and creativity, which deserve recognition. This is why we should not allow men to undermine women's work, especially given the fact that patriarchy literally stripped away women's rights. Regardless, women continued being innovative.

[artfulascension]

A reminder: If your scale of lived experiences and expectations are based on the internet and what others post and how they consume - you will never be truly embodied in your life.

The first step to really dreaming and creating is plugging off from sources that bring noise to your creation system.

-are you watching things that give you real inspiration to create / or are you always feeling like you are missing out on life. And you are not enough?

- are you reading something that gives you an insight or aligns you with your deep work / or you are mindlessly doomscrolling whatever the algorithm pushes out for everyone?

- is the material you take in real enough, rooted enough, transparent enough for you to base it in your life or is it another type of anesthesia to escape from your own potential?

Listen to me loves, this virtual world is not real.

Your real life needs you.

Your body, mind and spirit needs you to create with your hands, with your mind, with your voice, with all that you can muster in the moment.

The Internet will make you feel like you are not pretty enough to be loved, that you are not talented enough to live a good life, that hyper consumerism and the latest fast fashion is the way you find happiness and that for you to live truly, everything needs to be perfect and a big vision of light and love needs to descend for you to be absolved of everything.

No. No. No.

Do not feed this to your powerful creator brain and body and spirit. Look in the real world. There are women of every beautiful kind being dated and dined and loved. There are friendships made in real world. There is art and music and satisfying aims and real intimate luxuries. There is grounding and nature and rhythm of stillness and deeper worlds. Find those, experience that. Do not wallow hoping something will save you. You don't need saving. You need to shut off things that don't feed you.

I assure you my love, you are good enough and worthy enough to be what you are destined to be. Immerse yourself in your life.

She's waiting for you.

Much love.

[ladyaldhelm]

This post is a very long rant about Generative AI. If you are not in the headspace to read such content right now, please continue scrolling.

....

....

It has come to my attention that a person who I deeply admire is Pro-AI. Not just Pro-AI, but has become a shill for a multi-billion dollar corporation to promote their destructive generative AI tools, and is doing it voluntarily and willingly. This person is a creative professional and should know better, and this decision by them shows a lack of integrity and empathy for their fellow creatives. They have sold out to not just their own destruction, but to everyone around them, without any concern. It thoroughly disgusts and disappoints me.

Listen, I am not against technological advancements. While I am never the first to adopt a new technology, I have marveled at the leaps and bounds that have been made within my own lifetime, and welcome progress. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning models certainly have their place in this world. Right now, scientific researchers are using advanced AI modeling to discover new protein configurations using a program called Alpha-Fold, and the millions of new proteins that were discovered have gone on to the development of life saving cancer treatments, vaccine development, and looking for new ways to battle drug-resistant bacterial infections. Machine learning models are being developed to track and predict climate change with terrifying accuracy, discover new species, researching new ways of dealing with plastic waste and CO2/methane, and developing highly accurate tools for early detection of cancers. These are all amazing advancements that have only been made possible by AI and will save countless millions of lives. THIS is what AI should be used for.

Generative AI, however, is a different beast entirely. It is problematic in many ways, and is destructive by its very nature. All the current models were trained on BILLIONS of copyrighted materials (images, music, text), without the creator's consent or knowledge. That in and of itself is highly unethical. In addition, these computers that run these GenAI programs use an insane amount of resources to run, and are a major contributor to climate change right now, even worse than the NFT and blockchain stuff a few years ago.

GenAI literally takes someone's hard work, puts it into an algorithm that chews it up and spits out some kind of abomination, all with no effort on the part of the user. And then these "creations" are being sold by the boatload, crowding out legitimate artists and professional creatives. Artists like myself and thousands of others who rely on income from art. Musicians, film makers, novelists, and writers are losing as well. It is an uphill battle. The market is flooded right now with so many AI generated art and books that actual artists and writers are being buried. To make matters worse, these generated works often have inaccuracies and spread misinformation and and lead to injury or even death. There are so many AI generated books, for example, about pet care and foraging for plants that are littered with inaccurate and downright dangerous information. Telling people that certain toxic plants are safe to eat, or giving information on pet care that will lead to the animal suffering and dying. People are already being affected by this. It is bad enough when actual authors spread misinformation, but when someone can generate an entire book in a few seconds, this gets multiplied by several orders of magnitude. It makes finding legitimate information difficult or even downright impossible.

GenAI seeks to turn the arts into a commodity, a get-rich-quick money making scheme, which is not the point of art. Automating art should never be the goal of humanity. Automating dangerous and tedious tasks is important for progress, but automating art is taking away our humanity. Art is all about the human experience and human expression, something a machine cannot ever replicate and it SHOULDN'T. Art should come from the heart and soul, not some crap that is mass produced to make a quick buck. Also developing your skills as an artist, whether that is through drawing, painting, sculpture, composing music, songwriting, poetry, creative writing, animation, photography, or making films, are not just about human expression but develop your brain and make you a more well rounded person, with a rich and deep experience and emotional connection to others. Shitting out crappy art and writing just to make a quick dollar defeats the entire purpose of all of that.

In addition, over-reliance on automated and AI tools is already leading to cognitive decline and the deterioration of critical thinking skills. When it is so easy to click a button and generate a research paper why bother putting the work in? Students are already doing this. Taking the easy way out to get a grade, but they are only hurting themselves. When machines do your thinking for you, what is there left to do? People will lose the ability to develop even basic skills.

/rant

By the way if any tech bros come at me you will be blocked without warning. This is not up for debate or discussion.

[physalian]

Whatever project you're too afraid to start, just go for it

I know a lot of my posts lately have been video/content creation-related but I just want to say:

The learning curve that I have had to climb in the past week alone has been both frustrating as hell and ridiculously rewarding.

Already, I had to refresh my memory on basic video editing and sound comping, but for the first seven episodes of my little series I’d accepted the average quality of my voice recording as cest la vie, I’m not sinking money into this without proof of concept, you’re supposed to be a little rough around the edges when you’re first starting out. But one thing I couldn’t get over was the clipping from some technobabble shenanigans with frequencies that isn’t important here.

What I thought was a quick fix—replace and double the RAM in my laptop—was absolutely not the source of the problem and suddenly I was in the deep end trying to fix broken audio in post while also troubleshooting an issue no one else seemed to have between my microphone and my recording software and I was about tempted to just use my desktop mic, the built-in, because at least I could somewhat fix that in post.

After far too many hours deep in discussions with strangers on the internet who were very helpful, I half-fixed the problem. My mic stopped clipping, but it was distorting pretty heavily between two different processers and my recording software hated it for a whole different reason.

Reluctant Plan B was to record gameplay live, but record audio separately/after and then sync them in post. If you’ve ever made a gaming video like these, you’re staring at probably 15+ clips of useable content over the course of recording sessions, which means 30+ clips with all the separately recorded audio, and since I can’t hit start/stop congruently with both programs, they would always be a little bit off, which meant more tedious editing.

Why? Because I was recording in Program A, fixing audio in Program B, and editing the video together in Program C, and Program C is for like, tiktoks, not professional youtube videos. I was only using it because I was already paying for it in an Adobe package with InDesign.

Enter DaVinci Resolve.

It’s like, Photoshop compared to MS Paint, a free one-stop-shop for video and audio editing (and visual effects, this thing is used to make blockbusters) and here’s me still confused by all these audio terms like ratio, attack, threshold, etc.

So I’m still wading through tutorials, all while my mic only works through Program B, Audacity, with an episode deadline looming over me. From the time I committed to initially fixing my audio by replacing the RAM, to episode release date, I had 6 days. Today is day 4.

And I’m still without a proper recording setup because Program A hates my microphone. But I am not missing this deadline, not just for the youtube algorithm, but because I know I can make it.

So episode 8, at the time of writing this, I have only 9 minutes and 25 seconds all edited and ready to go, out of 22-24 that I usually publish. So what have I done?

Fuckin’ taught myself DaVinci Resolve and committed to recording my vocal track in post just this once, doing it over and over again until it sounds as genuinely live as it can, and doing regular voiceover and music montages wherever else I can to fill the time with meaningful content.

All to buy myself time for my replacement mic to deliver so I can get back to proper live recordings, because at this point, the time it takes to fix terrible audio in post isn’t worth it, when I can spend a little bit of money for a mic that isn’t 8 years old and is built for gaming, not podcasting (but I am keeping the problem child as a backup, because it’s not broken).

I’m waiting for a timelapse to render while I write this, staring at a workflow with one video source and 3 different audio layers—game sound, vocals, and music—and I can almost turn my brain off when trimming things because that part I already know how to do.

This thing is a mess, to be clear, but it sure as hell won’t look like a mess when I hit publish on time two days from now.

But like…. 3 weeks ago I knew next to none of this, beyond basic video editing I learned back in college. And here I am with my double-wide monitor up and professional video making software quietly churning along in the background.

So just—if you want to do it? Go fuckin’ do it. Whatever it is that you’ve been holding off on pursuing. When I started I already owned things like a gaming laptop (that I bought to run photoshop so I could paint), an 8-year-old podcasting mic from a dropped podcast attempt, my game of choice, and I was already paying for the bare bones version of Premiere: Premiere Rush.

But heck, even if I had none of the fancy equipment, the only limiting factor would have been my computer’s processing power to run all these programs at once, and I would have figured it out.

I’m a perfectionist bound and determined to fix my audio, but I didn’t hear any complaints when it was jank, and I’m learning all this because the whole process, not just the gameplay, is just so fun and fascinating.

[diezmil10000]

when i was a teenager i used to spend too much time on social media. since i've always been into anime and otaku things, a lot of the japanese and south korean artists i looked up to were kind of distant; they didn't talk about their lives nor followed people back often. to my eyes, this was peak cool. these people drew so good that they didn't need to adapt to algorithms or foreign languages to succeed! i used to think that if i had so much power i wouldn't be able to resist the urge to use it to change the world.

at the same time, i also hated it. i hated when artists were so secretive about their process, so ungrateful towards the people who always supported them. i especially hated pick me artists who were constantly complaining about how hard it was to draw profiles and the other eye and who would mostly draw trends and memes and didn't understand the depth of the pieces of media they liked.

now i understand that my vision back then was blurred by a mix of admiration, bitterness and of course the language barrier. artists on social media are just random people. very few get to the point where someone else manages their account, or they start working for a studio, and even then it's still someone behind the screen.

i still have my takes about how certain types of online artists behave, but lately i've been trying to avoid those bad feelings and be more grateful for the fact that people are still creating, despite everything that's going on in the world. i'd rather be forced to follow a thousand amateur and/or attention-seeking artists than a shitty genAI account.

it's been about 8 years since i started posting my fanart online and i've met so many artists from completely different backgrounds. i've seen my friends grow and make art i would have never imagined they could make. i'm mutuals with people i've admired for almost a decade and i'm regularly told that my art inspires others. some manga authors and videogame developers have seen my art of their characters. it's been like this for years and i'm still not used to it. it's so nicel!! but it's still unbelievable.

i realized some time ago that i am now that type of unreachable artist to a lot of people. i feel guilty about it, but i don't know what to be sorry for. i guess that it was never about trying to be mysterious or forcing myself to hold back my opinions, it's just that the world is too big for one person to be on the spotlight. now that i have a job and i'm busy, i'm very comfortable in a spotlight i can turn off whenever i want.

(side note i still draw a lot but it's mostly my ocs and i'm embarrassed to post them)

if there's something i know for certain is that people will always want to see cool art. my family always asks for my drawings even if they're always girls making out and not the kind of paintings they wish i made. my friends who aren't artists still struggle to put into words why they like what i do, even if they don't know the characters; but the fact that they keep trying to communicate it makes me happy, because it shows that they really want me to continue doing this.

i don't need to hope that humanity keeps making art because i already know it will happen. but i wish people who are already on this path don't feel discouraged about the future, even with the rise of generative AI and fascism and the decline of social media platforms. the world is much more beautiful with everyone's creations in it and there's always room for more, we will always yearn for more.

i have no plans to stop making art unless i go blind, in which case i would probably learn to make music. i want to get better, i will get better, but i'm just a random person who happens to be alive at a time when random people post their art online. no matter where you are in your artistic journey, if you decide to keep moving forward, i'll meet you here in the spotlight.

[prodigal-sunlight]

What do u have against ai? :(

How much time do you have?

1. Generative AI is trained on the works of artists and writers without consent or compensation. It’s literally stealing from actual people. And no, it isn’t “learning like a real person” because it isn’t a real person. It’s a program that is incapable of creating anything new of its one. All generative AI is built on theft by corporations from small independent creators.

2. It uses considerably more power than most other current technology. Like, arguably it is worse for the environment than NFTs. The amount of water it wastes is absurd, the uptick in energy usage is absurd.

3. Corporations are salivating at the chance to cut creative people out of products. They don’t want to pay people for their work because they don’t respect art and artists. As long as we live under a capitalist system, people need to be able to own what they create and be able to provide for themself with their own skills.

4. The misinformation and disinformation generative AI can cause and has ALREADY caused is insane. People have had their faces and voices stolen without consent or compensation. People can generate believable deepfakes of politicians and social figures that will degrade the truth and potentially even damage our already messed up political climate. How would you feel if someone posted a realistic video of you praising a product you never bought? Or vouching for a politician you hate? Or saying you think all gay people should die?

5. This one is just personal, but I don’t care what a machine “makes.” Creativity is special to me because it lets you see the world through someone else’s eyes. Art of all kinds—writing, art, music, roleplay—is a kind of communication. I want to communicate with people, not an inanimate object mimicking what a person would be like. The joy of art comes from creation. Reducing it to only consumption is a disservice to all humankind.

Certain scientific fields have genuine uses for other kinds of AI, and I respect that. But Generative AI is built on theft and disrespect; at best its used for shallow art that someone didn’t care enough about to make themself, at worst its used for scams, disinformation, and stripping away even more of people’s rights.

I legitimately believe there is no current ethical uses for Generative AI. Will there be one day? Its possible, but I honestly find that unlikely. For now, though, if you are pro Generative AI, please unfollow me.

I may not be the most talented artist/writer out there, but I have enough self-respect that I don’t want people who see me as replaceable by machines engaging with my creative works. I put a lot of time, passion, and love into my work. Someone who sees that as equal in worth to something an algorithm spat out in five seconds is not welcome here.

[niggadiffusion]

Beats, Bytes & The Future Sound: AI Meets Electronic Music

Electronic music has always been about pushing boundaries, breaking rules, and bending sound into new dimensions. Now, artificial intelligence is stepping into the booth, reshaping how beats are built, melodies emerge, and tracks come to life. This isn’t about robots replacing producers—it’s about a new creative partnership, where human intuition meets machine-driven possibilities.The Evolution…

[probablyasocialecologist]

No streaming platform can accurately predict taste; humans are too dynamic to be predicted consistently. Instead, Spotify builds models of users and makes predictions by recommending music that matches the models. Stuck in these feedback loops, musical styles start to converge as songs are recommended according to a pre-determined vocabulary of Echo Nest descriptors. Eventually, listeners may start to resemble the models streaming platforms have created. Over time, some may grow intolerant of anything other than an echo.  Before there were Echo Nest parameters, the 20th century music industry relied on other kinds of data to try to make hits. So-called “merchants of cool” hit the streets to hunt for the next big trend, conducting studies on teenage desire that generated tons of data, which was then consulted to market the next hit sensation. This kind of data collection is now built into the apparatus for listening itself. Once a user has listened to enough music through Spotify to establish a taste profile (which can be reduced to data like songs themselves, in terms of the same variables), the recommendation systems simply get to work. The more you use Spotify, the more Spotify can affirm or try to predict your interests. (Are you ready for some more acousticness?)  Breaking down both the products and consumers of culture into data has not only revealed an apparent underlying formula for virality; it has also contributed to new kinds of formulaic content and a canalizing of taste in the age of streaming. Reduced to component parts, culture can now be recombined and optimized to drive user engagement. This allows platforms to squeeze more value out of backlogs of content and shuffle pre-existing data points into series of new correlations, driving the creation of new content on terms that the platforms are best equipped to handle and profit from. (Listeners will get the most out of music optimized for Spotify on Spotify.) But although such reconfigured cultural artifacts might appear new, they are made from a depleted pantry of the same old ingredients. This threatens to starve culture of the resources to generate new ideas, new possibilities.

[wizards4for20]

I am going to try and put this in as few words as possible, because my roommate and I spent an hour talking about this today; but there is truly nothing more incredible to me than human creativity.

Like, you’re telling me someone made this? You’re telling me this art came from someone’s own hand? You’re telling me this story came from someone’s mind? You’re telling me that someone as flawed and mortal and lost as me made this?

There is a beauty in math and in science, I am not here to argue that. But mathematics existed long before us. Science will exist long after us. And while the knowledge we have is a wonder, it is not ours. We did not make one and one equal two, we only learned and accepted that it did.

But our art is not universal. Our music was born through us. Our writing will die with us. And there is so much more beauty in knowing that we have made something. People have language and culture and poetry not because it was fact, but by our own whim and design.

This is something AI can never fulfill. An algorithm cannot create, it can only compile. A computer generated image has no link to us, to human emotion. To human flaw and struggle and passion.

Art is beautiful, and creation is the most powerful thing a person can do. Your stories, your art, hell, your fanfic and original characters, they exist not because of universal laws of math and physics, but because of your mind and skill; and if that isn’t the most amazing thing in the world, then what is?

[mama-qwerty]

I greatly dislike the term 'content creator'. It is a dehumanizing term, as though those of us who write or draw or animate or create music or whatever creative pursuit we happen to focus on are nothing more than faceless machines, whose only purpose is to constantly create nothing more than a THING to be consumed en masse, and, once consumed, forgotten until the next THING we create is released.

Yes, in posting THING to the internet, we do want people to read/view/listen to our creations. We want them to be liked, to be enjoyed, to be shared and reblogged (PLEASE REBLOG) and passed around to friends to like and enjoy and share and reblog.

But these are not THINGS created to an algorithm. These are works of love, of passion, of self-indulgent happiness that we want to show others. We LOVE when people interact with us, when they ask us about our ocs, gush over something we created, accuse us of inflicting horrible sadness or pain over our latest update. That's what we LIVE FOR.

We are NOT 'content creators'. We are writers. Artists. Musicians. Animators. Creative individuals who like to share our imagination and talent with the world. Please remember we're human and enjoy our creations with that mindset.