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Producing AI Cover Songs

It is scary-easy to create AI covers of songs that sound surprisingly good now. I was blown away when I stumbled across songs sung by cartoon voices, celebrity voices, and alternative artists that sounded so good, and wanted to create some of my own. I learned that the process is essentially that you use AI to separate the vocals from a song, use another AI to alter the vocal track, and then marry the two back together again for the final product. I was going down this path when I found Voicify AI, which does all of this easily online, even taking audio from YouTube if you like and leveraging any of thousands of trained voices.

It doesn’t work perfectly every time, but it works very well a lot of the time, and that’s pretty impressive. There are even options to remove background vocals when present to get better results when that is a factor.

I then used MidJorney to create an image to associate with each and then used this free online tool to create a video file using the audio file and image. I did use Audacity to trim empty space at the start or end of a track, but that won’t be necessary if the source audio doesn’t need trimming. I created eight inside a couple of hours and published five of them (the others didn’t sound good). Check them out:

If you want to try this yourself, click here. It does cost $8.99 per month for 35 credits (one per song) which is a pretty good deal given the time you’ll save trying so manually. It is surprisingly easy and fast. I doubt I’ll maintain my subscription; you can cancel at any time, and I’m not sure I will be compelled to create more than the 35 attempts will get me. I think it is a good deal to play with and enjoy deciding what songs will be sung by whom until the novelty wears off. Will it?

Joywave Concert

After repeated attempts to see Joywave with pandemic delays and cancellations, I finally got to see them on April 5, 2023. Easily my favorite band that I’d not seen.

I walked in late and managed to easily get right up close on the side of the stage. As the openers cleared, it turned out the stage was perfectly arranged to my position and my view was virtually unobstructed.

For the first couple of songs there were professional photographers walking in front of me so I wasn’t trying to get a good shot. After the first couple songs, the photographers cleared out and I got a better position where I could hold the phone in a way where it wouldn’t bother anyone. I recorded in Cinematic mode at 1080p.

I’m so happy with how it came out— best show I captured since Spoon.

Grandson – Live at the UnderGround CLT (Sept 2019)

What a great show. I had the pleasure of seeing Grandson play once a year earlier at the same location when they opened for Nothing But Thieves. I attended that show exclusively to see Grandson, but it is always a bit disappointing to have such a focus on an opening band. Not only does an opening band not get to play long, but the stage setup is is sub-par and the sound is frequently poor as compared to the headliner. I recall at this show in particular, the sound was way too low and so the powerful moments in the songs really lost their impact as a result.

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Atmosphere 2018

I caught Atmosphere touring for there great new album Mi Vida Local in Charlotte last week and was happy to get a great spot up front where I could shoot the show while barely looking down at my phone. I enjoy recording shows, but being up front I didn’t want to hold my phone up at all. The result is very little zooming but it wasn’t really necessary given my position.

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Miike Snow at the Fillmore Charlotte

I record a lot of concerts and have for many years. I started with a point and shoot camera that took video and it was relatively good for video but lighting was a problem and audio was often quite bad. I’m so impressed with how each new iPhone handles the very load bass of a live concert better and better. The last show I recorded was one of the best I’ve managed and that was Spoon at the Orange Peel in Asheville, NC a couple weeks ago.

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Virgin Mobile FreeFest 2012

Virgin Mobile FreeFest is on its way this October 6th. I’ve gone the last couple of years and it is always an awesome time. This year, I’m most excited to see Jack White, Ben Folds Five and Skrillex. A few other bands on the list are interesting too, but most I’d not heard of. As a Spotify user, I’ve created a collaborative playlist containing the top few songs by each band in an effort to make sure I don’t regret making my way over to one of the smaller stages to catch a future favorite. Check out the playlist here!

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Flood

I think it was U2’s Achtung Baby! release in 1991 when I took notice of producer Flood. I started looking through my CD collection and saw his name listed enough of my favorite releases that I started digging to put a catalog of his work together.

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