Draconian Measures

More ChatGPT lyric experiments.

I had started a piece several years ago inspired by the phrase Draconian Measures ("Idea 1"). It suggested something dark ("dark measures", hence Draconian Measures, a play on words).

 

This is typically how I start new pieces of music: I use a seed idea that suggests a vague metaphor and I build it from that.

ChatGPT is essentially "AI in the loop", but it isn't always that useful. It doesn't have the capability for seeing or generating metaphors, and returns cliches as you'd expect. It associates the word "draconian" with "taking away our freedom", hate, and fear, the usual suspects of everyday life in the 2020s, because that's what's scraped from the internet. But it generated usable phrases nonetheless.

I created another piece ("Idea 2") using the generated lyric and it came out sounding 70s funky R&B that doesn't sound dark at all. 

Idea 1 was then combined with Idea 2 with lyrics mapped to a melody, to be sung antiphonally. 

The creative process uses some of the ChatGPT results, perhaps 5%.

What is more interesting is to create a co-collaborative "weave", but in the end, I feel it's 95% me. Like alternate tunings, it generates ideas you wouldn't have had otherwise--or perhaps it causes you to act on an idea, where you might not have without ChatGPT.