The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Blood and Fire
Due: Wednesday, 01/31/24 9:59am PST
optional challenge: Don't use AI
yourbandname_baf.mp3 sent to fightmaster@songfight.org
Subject: Blood and Fire
Body: (your band name)

I mean, just tell me you miss Rone Rivendale. I got you, my guy.

optional optional challenge: use ALL the AI

Optional optional optional challenge: Use AI all you want, don't tell anybody* and see if they notice.

*until you do your reviews. You ARE doing reviews, right?

throptional challenge: have AI write your reviews

Man, these recent 2 fights have been my first back since an AI capable of writing lyrics was available. For two fights I resisted the temptation to plug the title into Bing and let 'er rip, but this time, after the admonishment of the optional challenge, I've tried it already. I'm gonna go stash the lyrics it wrote in the lyrics marte, and continue trying to write without it.

Trying not to be a curmudgeon, but I feel like I'll probably not have any desire to review AI lyrics. Using AI seems more like SongCockfight than the cage match that is SF.

Thankfully the challenge is to not use it, and TBH that should always be part of the implied challenge. We’re already speedrunning songwriting here, no sense also speedrunning songwriting talent.

Put another way: we’re RTA, not TAS.

Duncan wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 25, 2024 9:48 am

Trying not to be a curmudgeon, but I feel like I'll probably not have any desire to review AI lyrics. Using AI seems more like SongCockfight than the cage match that is SF.

In case there was any confusion, I write all my own lyrics. The AI portion is a vocal filter. And the most recent fight, an AI made singing pattern and music creation. At no point have I had AI create my lyrics. There'd be no point in submitting at that point.

fluffy wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 25, 2024 9:59 am

Thankfully the challenge is to not use it, and TBH that should always be part of the implied challenge.

Well, yeah, but when everybody keeps talking about AI then I'm gonna at least go see what it does, curiosity and cats all that.
My curiousity was satisfied that I can write better lyrics than the machine did, or at least lyrics that *I* like better, even if I'm currently still stumped.

Oh absolutely. I had AI-written "Radio Galaxy" lyrics which were surprisingly good but not good enough for me to want to record, and I used AI as a sort of bouncing-ideas-off-of thing when I was writing "Material Change" but none of the lyrics GPT came up with for that stuck (but it gave me ideas for better stuff).

I like AI as a collaborative tool or an idea generator, not so much as a thing to actually do the work.

Nick Cave famously described AI-written lyrics as "a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human" in a post from January 2023. I just discovered that he doubled down on this later when someone asked him what was wrong about "faster and easier": https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chatgpt ... nd-easier/
(Of course, you don't need ChatGPT to get this sort of pointless lyrics. Many things that got played up and down on the radio in the past couple of decades are just as pointless, all without ChatGPT...)

I've written a disturbing little lyric and knocked off a quick G&G sort of tune, so I hope to be in for this fight.

In with a dysfunctional ditty.