2024

Trovedex remade

A couple weeks ago I remade my web app Trovedex from scratch. It’s private for now, only for my own use; if you go there, it’ll ask you for a password. You’ll have to settle with this impressive screenshot:

It’s now a simple document manager. You can create documents (HTML pages) and put them in folders. That’s basically it. I wanted something like a wiki, but I wanted to use HTML instead of markdown, and I wanted to see folders and files on the side for easy navigation between pages.

I created the app with the help of AI, which was a fun experience (Claude to be exact). While AI doesn’t do all the work for you, it definitely makes things a lot easier. For instance, I had trouble figuring out React before (a javascript library for building interfaces), so the AI was able to show me how it’s done. Adding some features was also breeze. I could tell the AI: “Let’s add the ability to delete documents.” And it would respond: “Sure, paste this code to your frontend and this code to your backend.” Done! Of course, that’s an easy feature to add. Some features caused a bit more trouble. Trovedex is using the Jodit Editor to edit the HTML on the documents / pages, which Claude had some trouble with now and then, forcing me to do my own debugging.

Claude also had a habit of choosing annoying tools and frameworks. It recommended I use PostgreSQL for the backend database, and Prisma to connect to it. No! I had to tell it to use MongoDB and Axios instead, which seem a lot simpler to me.

Overall though, using the AI made me much more productive.

There are still plenty of features I’d like to add to Trovedex eventually, including the ability to make pages or folders public. That way I can use it to replace “Hanniwiki”, which was a MediaWiki site containing the catalog of all my music and stuff. But the software (which was more sophisticated than I really needed) went out of date, so “Hanniwiki” has been missing for a while now.

I’ll probably open-source the project to GitHub at some point.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Mixing my own music with AI

Suno AI has an “upload audio” feature, allowing users to upload up to 60 seconds of their own content to be extended by the AI. So earlier this month I had some fun feeding it 45-60 clips of my own music and having the AI write lyrics and turn the clips into choir songs. It’s interesting to hear how the AI uses the melodies, chord progressions, and orchestrations provided in its own creations. The lyrics are a bit amateurish, but serviceable; I was too lazy to write my own. I’m calling the project Hannifin x AI. Here’s the first installment, based on my classic piece “Hour by Hour”; the first 60 seconds are from the original piece, while the rest is AI-generated.

I did the same with 18 other of my pieces. Some things I noticed:

  • The AI works best with simple 8-bar melodies, or 4-bar phrases. It doesn’t seem to “parse” weirder phrase structures very well.
  • It’s not very good at extended the input instrumentally, in my opinion; it quickly starts to sound too repetitive. Having it produce lyrics and turning the music into a song seems to work better. (Melodic repetition seems easier to bear with alternating lyrics.)
  • If you want the AI to generate the voice of a choir, feeding it music from the louder, more energetic and melodic parts of a piece seem to work better, especially if it features a prominent string section. Otherwise you’re more likely to get a soloist, and the music it generates is less likely to sound like a natural continuation of the music you provide.
  • For whatever reason, some tracks just seem to work better than others; maybe it depends on how “familiar” the AI is with the melodic and harmonic patterns? For some tracks, it gave me some pleasant results right away. Other times I had to roll the dice over and over to get something acceptable.

There were some pieces I tried for which I could not get any output that I was happy with, including The King’s Assassin, The Moon Dreamed By, and On the Edge of a Dream. And there was one track, Silver Moon Waltz, for which I got a couple songs I was pleased with. Anyway, I’m done trying for now.

As for the video above, I made it with Blender 4.2, which took a little time figuring out, mostly with various tutorials on YouTube. I’m not completely satisfied with the results. What’s supposed to be “dust” looks perhaps too much like snow and moves a bit too fast, and the text looks a bit weird. Turns out trying to create a sort of “drop shadow” effect on text in Blender is pretty much impossible; I had to sort of fake it with compositing cheats, and I’m not sure I did the best job. (I could’ve just put the text on the background picture and used an image editor to create the drop shadow, but I wanted the animated frequency bars to have it too.) Also, the text might be a bit too bright, but I blame that on the VR display I get with Immersed in the Meta Quest 3.

I’ll upload the other 19 songs I created soon!

 

By S P Hannifin, ago

My first AI music album: “The Shadow Age”

I’ve been enjoying writing songs with AI songwriting tool Suno for the past few months, and recently put together a full-length album of some of my favorite tracks so far. While AI wrote the music and provides the performance, I wrote the lyrics, which are very deep and profound. (Though two of the tracks are from old famous poems.) The symphonic metal album is free to download here (ZIP file, MP3 V0, 111.2MB) or on Bandcamp.

Don’t like AI music? Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to create even more AI albums, bwahaha!

By S P Hannifin, ago

First impressions with the Meta Quest 3 VR headset

As I’ve blogged about before, I’ve had trouble with my programming productivity lately, a major cause being my terrible sitting posture while using my desktop due to the monitors not being situated quite how I’d like, and my chair not optimally supporting my spine. I get a sharp stabbing pain in the back of my neck and between my shoulders after about an hour or so.

I thought about getting a Steam Deck to allow me to play games away from my computer, but, after seeing a few YouTube videos and Twitter posts from people finding comfort while programming in VR, thought that the Meta Quest 3, which was released near the end of last year, might be just what I needed!

So I just got one and am happily writing this post from the comfort of my bed with a wireless keyboard and some giant VR monitors hovering just in front of me.

Overall, I’m loving it, just the sort of thing I was hoping for. Here are some pros and cons I’ve found with the Meta Quest 3 during my first couple days of use.

Pros

The resolution and frame rate are great, much better than the original Oculus Rift I got 8 years ago (2016). That was fun for a bit of gaming, but the resolution was too inferior for any sort of virtual desktop work, and the VR sickness was pretty intense.

With the resolution doubled since then, and improvements made to the lenses (the field of view does not seem quite as wide now), virtual desktops are now usable. It also seems to help with VR sickness. I have explored a few virtual worlds and have experienced no VR sickness whatsoever!

Another pro is that it does not need to be connected to anything. It’s a standalone unit. It also doesn’t need an external camera for positional tracking (as the original Oculus Rift and the PSVR do), and the tracking is pretty much perfect. I can even connect it to my computer for a virtual desktop all through Wi-Fi. This is a great convenience.

The “passthrough” is excellent. The unit has cameras on the front, allowing me to basically see through the unit (albeit at a lower resolution), so I can see my hands, my keyboard, my cat, etc., with no problem. I can even walk around the house with no problem!

I have been especially impressed with VR videos on YouTube, of which I’d love to see a lot more. Not the flat 360-degree videos which just put you in a big flat sphere, but the 180-degree 3D ones, that make it look like people and places are just in front of you. In fact, I’d really love to see an entire movie or play in VR. I would definitely love to even get a VR camera and shoot some stuff at some point.

Cons

The major problem with the Quest 3 is that it is very uncomfortable for me. It comes with simple straps that sandwich your face, the main unit pressing against your eyes and cheeks. It’s made worse for me by my need for glasses. I can wear them in the VR, but, although it improves my view of the VR world, it’s just something else pressing into my face. It’s extremely annoying.

Hopefully this problem can be helped with some accessories, which I’ve purchased but which won’t be delivered for a few weeks. First, I’ve ordered some custom lenses so I’ll be able to see clearly in the VR without having to keep my glasses on. I’ve also ordered a halo strap which should, like the PSVR (which is by far the most comfortable VR headset I’ve yet tried), take the pressure off my face by transferring the weight of the unit to my head instead.

Another con is that, like the Oculus Rift, it gets a bit warm, which is annoying when it’s pressed against your face. Hopefully a halo strap will also help with that.

The unit has a short battery life, around 2 hours, which I’m sure will only get worse over time. I’ve only had my unit for a couple of days, and I’ve already drained the battery three times. I guess I could just keep it plugged in? But that’s a bit of a nuisance. The halo strap I ordered comes with a battery pack, so that should definitely help.

Another con is that the resolution could be even sharper; although it’s now good enough to use virtual monitors, text is still somewhat fuzzy, and there is still some aliasing and shimmering going on. Hopefully in another decade we’ll have even higher resolution VR sets? I still don’t think I’d watch a movie in here; even though I can experience a giant virtual theater, I enjoy the higher resolution of the real world for movies and TV. (Also, the Netflix app for this thing is terrible, it streams at too low a resolution with too much compression.1)

One last con is that the unit is kind of… smelly. It doesn’t have that new plastic computer smell, which is the stuff dreams are made of. Instead it just smells kinda weird, almost like body-odor. It’s admittedly slight, but it’s annoying. Hopefully it’ll go away eventually, but until then I guess I can always light scented candles or some dragon’s blood incense.

(Now I have to write the rest of this post outside of VR, because I drained the battery again.)

The Metaverse

I’m still not at all sold on the whole “Metaverse” concept. Perhaps I’m too much of an introvert, but I don’t see the appeal of exploring a virtual environment with a bunch of strangers’ avatars wandering around in front of me with random chatter from random voices all over. If they were people I knew outside of VR, it could be a fun and interesting experience, but I just don’t want to explore VR worlds with strangers. Sorry strangers. Sorry Mark.

Desktop Use

Right now, I’m using the “Immersed” app, which allows you to cast you computer monitors to VR, and allows you to add additional virtual monitors. With programming, it’s very useful to have at least two: one for the coding, another for seeing the running results. It should be useful to have even more screens to pull up documentation and other resources without having to shrink and hide windows.

Right now I’m just using the free version of the app. I’ll probably try the paid version when my accessories eventually arrive to see if it’s worth the upgrade, but the free version is probably all I need.

Since the visual info is streaming through Wi-Fi, there’s no need for cords, but it does drop frames every now and then, so it’s probably not great for watching videos from the desktop or playing PC games. For that, you’d probably need to physically connect your computer to the VR, which I have not yet tried.

Overall, the Meta Quest 3 gets a big thumbs up for me, despite its cons, which I hope the accessories will help with.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Solar Eclipse!

My parents and I travelled up to Erie, Pennsylvania this weekend to see today’s total solar eclipse. (We missed the 2017 one.) It was awesome! It was a very cloudy day, but fortunately the clouds thinned out enough that when the eclipse reached totality, we could see the “diamond ring” in its full glory. Very interesting to see the faint shades of color around the edges of the moon. The rapidity with which the whole sky becomes dark and light again before and after totality was also awesome to see. I generally hate traveling, but this was worth the trip.

(It was also nice that our hotel gave us a free upgrade from a normal dinky little hotel room to a double bedroom; more spacious, and I got my own room!)

I didn’t spend much time trying to get a good picture as I preferred to just focus on the experience. But here’s the partial before totality, taken through the filter of the eclipse glasses:

And then here’s a terrible picture of the total eclipse as shot through my phone with default settings, blurry and crappy:

There’s really not much else to do around here in Erie, PA. We went to see the shore of the great lake yesterday, and tonight I want to try seeing the new Godzilla x Kong movie at a nearby theater in 3D with D-BOX haptic movement seats, which I’ve never tried; we don’t have any back home.

By S P Hannifin, ago

Prayer to St. Michael with Suno AI

I turned the Prayer to Saint Michael into some epic choir music with Suno AI:

It would have been a lot easier for me to learn my prayers as a kid if it had been so easy to turn them into music.

I actually wanted the whole prayer to be sung by the entire choir, but Suno AI seemed to insist on featuring a solo vocalist for the second part (“May God rebuke him…”), as you can hear above. I also had to try quite a few times to get it to pronounce “wickedness” clearly and correctly; it kept wanting to sing “winess” or “wicks”. But I like how it ended up.

Here are some other versions it come up with, though I didn’t quite like any of them as much as the above.

V3 with the little “….amen!” at the end sounds almost comical.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about posting some lyric videos of my Suno creations to YouTube. I made the St. Michael video above with Shotcut, but that seems impractical for a video with changing lyrics. Perhaps if I can make a template in Blender, I can use that. But I haven’t played around with Blender in a long time, and I don’t want to spend too much time on it… something to play around with later this month.

For now, it’s almost time for the 2024 eclipse! Though the weather might not be so good… we’ll see…

By S P Hannifin, ago

Fun with Suno: AI Song Generator

Wow, this is my first blog post of the year. That’s pretty sad.

This week I’ve been playing around with Suno, an AI song generator. As far as music-generating AI goes, it’s definitely the best I’ve seen so far, as it actually generates melodies, which is what most musical AIs stink at.

Of course, it’s got its weaknesses, but this is new tech, so that’s to be expected. And I haven’t seen competition that really does anything similar yet, though I’m sure that will come.

Anyway, here are some of the songs I’ve generated with the app. You can have it generate its own generic lyrics, but I find it more interesting to provide my own.

The first three are symphonic metal, one of my favorite genres. Maximus is an epic choir singing in another language. A Song Unsung and The Road Inside are some relaxing indie folk. The Owl and the Dragon is a folk-ish lullaby. A boys’ choir sings The Crystal Knife. About the Cats is in the style of a generic 90s pop song. Finally, Boop! is an Irish folk song with nonsense lyrics. Links to the lyrics for each song can be found at the bottom of this post.

Weaknesses

Perhaps the biggest weakness is lack of control. Other than providing the lyrics and style, you don’t really have much control over the details, which you’d likely want if you were a serious composer or songwriter.

Styles are also limited; I asked it for the style of a Russian folk song (“The Owl and the Dragon”), and it just gave the singer a Russian accent.

The format is limited. For best results, it seems good to stick to four-line verses and chorus, from which generates standard generic 8-bar melodies.

It’s text-to-song isn’t perfect. Sometimes it repeats a syllable, ignores a syllable, or puts emphasis on a weird syllable. Sometimes it will sing a line from a verse as though it’s part of the chorus; its “parsing” makes mistakes.

Sound quality is another weakness. You can probably tell from the examples that it outputs some pretty low-quality sounds, especially with the bombastic symphonic metal, which can sometimes make the lyrics hard to understand. But musical sound data has even more information than images, and image AI generators themselves still output a lot of noise. With images, however, it’s easy to discount the noise as texture or something. With musical sound, noise gets in the way; with professional recordings (especially if you’re an audiophile), we’re used to hearing nice clean sounds; even the hissing high frequencies of cymbals matter to a degree.

In some output (not the ones I’ve showcased here), I could swear I could hear overtone artifacts of other words or singers faintly in the background; I’m guessing the AI is doing diffusion with frequencies / Fourier transforms, and generating little fragments of training data it should be ignoring. Or it could just be weird auditory illusions.

Is it useful?

Given all these weaknesses, is Suno a useful tool? Honestly, it’s probably not super useful for professional musicians yet, perhaps other than a quick and easy way to get some ideas. Otherwise, it’s perhaps still more of a toy at its current stage.

Granted, such a musical toy can still be a lot of fun, and I’m excited to see the app develop further. I’m not sure who’s behind it or even what country it’s from, but I do hope they don’t get bought out too easily.

TuneSage

What about my own music AI, the development of which I’ve been procrastinating on? Has Suno beat me to the punch?

My approach is a lot different as I’m not really dealing with the sound of music. My focus with TuneSage is more about the actual notes and musical structures of a piece.

Lyrics

Here are links to each song on Suno, where you can see my profoundly beautiful lyrics:

Close Your Eyes
A True Heart
The Shadow Age
Maximus
A Song Unsung
The Road Inside
The Owl and the Dragon
The Crystal Knife
About the Cats
Boop!

By S P Hannifin, ago