A large number of clips (~50), back to back, comprising what could be the soundtrack for a brooding neo-noir TV drama where the title of the show is always the last name of the detective -- think "Bosch". Clip lengths range from 10 seconds to 120. 

Generated via Meta's MusicGen models using the same prompt each time, varying the inference parameters (top-k, top-p, temperature, guidance scale), model version, and model size. A couple things I observed:

1. There's not a lot of wiggle room to do controllably musically-relevant things with those parameters: you can start getting weird noise, or you can observe no effect.  One notable effect is to use a negative guidance scale to "move in the opposite direction" of the prompt (ca. 3:05).

2. There are times when the audio reminds me of an analog synth (my friend @shadow_wanderer who does amazing analog synth work just visited last week). See e.g. 20:58 onward.  This intuitively makes sense to me: an autoregressive model is kind of like having a "feedback" loop...?

Due to limited VRAM I was unable to make longer clips or use the new Multi-Band Diffusion decoder. If you'd like to help out a GPU-poor professor, hook me up with compute! 

Image is via Stable Diffusion XL

Detective Show Clips (A MusicGen Study)

indie classical folk track with acoustic guitar, cello by Saul Richmond-Raekerd and fretless bass by Michael Manring

Soft Stars--Bluejay take19

The Soft Stars is a band from the Oakland/San Francisco bay area, California. Guitarist is currently working on a classical music album

Golda's awesome singing has been described as a mix between Siouxsie Sioux and Poly Styrene from the X-Ray Spex  with her own bold style. Golda and has been in lots of bands including DeathGlam and Golda and the Guns. 

Bassist and pianist Naomi plays classical piano and has played in experimental and punk bands such as Andy Human and the Reptoids, Echo of Bullets, Botskurd, The Next, and Sound Police. 

Drummer Kirk has played in bands such as powerviolence/hardcore band Malicious Dismemberment.  

Guitarist Stephen has played in a bunch of solo projects and bands that never escaped the practice studio such as Swiit Ashiikii (with members of Boyjazz, the Mae-Shi, and Pegataur).

The Soft Stars love music such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Unwound, Drive Like Jehu, Sonic Youth, the Stranglers, Killing Joke, Captain Beefheart, Spike in Vain, Wire, Joy Division, Live Skull, Swervedriver, Neil Young, My Bloody Valentine, MX-80 Sound, the Minutemen, James Brown, Josef K, Bauhaus, Hugh Mundell, etc. 

Live Soft Stars video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw2Ur1_m1uU&list=PLLxu0bKGI7AYbGd70abTC0LZhX0rD6Mhu

Golda Sargento - vocals
Kirk Brys - drums
Naomi Stine - bass, piano
Stephen Stine - guitar, bass

New tracks tagged #fretless_bass