Udio Twinkle
This simple piece is a little gem. It was generated with Udio, one of the newer music AI generators, first available in April, 2024, and it is special. Not heard here, since I used MIDI, but the output is very realistic for orchestral and vocal works. The company was started by four researches from Google's DeepMind. Just sign up and you can use their free trial which is quite generous.
https://www.udio.com/
Udio is a generative artificial intelligence model that produces music based on simple text prompts, example: piano, jazz, wild. It can generate vocals and instrumentation. At first, I kind of ignored it only because it didn't output in MIDI.
I'm editing this after a few weeks of using it. Since I convert my files to MIDI, I'm working mainly with piano music, and to get piano alone, no other instruments or voice, reliably in generation of a new song, I use the words: piano unaccompanied.
Sometimes, Udio has really good quality sounding output, from a fidelity standpoint, including full orchestra and vocals. That makes it extraordinary. The AI violin sound, for example, sounds real, except in a few little places. Musically, it can also generate a lot of really boring garbage, some which kind of sounds good only on the surface.
Alternatively, some of the more complex works it produces can have some great parts, and some bad parts. Even free users can use the "crop" feature in the advanced section, so you can specify what part of the clip to extend, and also cut out bad parts.
Free users get 100 credits, and outputting a 2 minute piece takes about 2 credits. When you've gone through your 100 credits, you still get 10 credits a day. I recommend using Udio in the early morning or late night hours, as otherwise, you may be time-constricted and they'll just tell you your generation time is up. In 24 hours, you can use it again. It also generates much faster in non-peak hours in the US.
For this particular piece, because I wanted to edit the music, I used a free online audio-to-MIDI converter which, because of the simplicity of this, worked pretty well, although there were mistakes. I will link to it below. It is useful for me since I like to edit pieces, and maybe use them as MIDI clips to generate continuations in other generators.
I tried that with this piece, to see if a generator could sequence variations. They didn't come out well at all. I'll post some of the vocal clips and other things from Udio, to show the variety of how it can sound. Except if it is your first day playing with it, wait for a good clip, even if you have to generate 20 bad ones to get there.
Sometimes you specify a style or instrument and it gives you something else. It can be unpredictable. But with enough patience, maybe you can get something remarkable. I liked this piece for its simplicity.
Udio generates two pieces at once. I suggest starting out by generating just the two 30 second clips, and then if you like it, you can "extend" it, by extending it before, like making it write an introduction, or having it continue, or even write an ending. By clicking on the three dots at the end of the piece, you can download it, post it to their board for others to hear, or delete it.
And you can listen to music by other users while you're waiting for your pieces to generate, as they can take up to 3 or 4 minutes if you are doing 2 minute generations. And you can download them also. Paid users can download in Wave, and paid users can also upload music and have the AI continue it.
I've only used Udio about four times but I'm going to use it more.
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Video from Pixabay
Link to ByteDance Solo Piano Audio to MIDI Transcription, by A. Sigalov
Transcribe any Solo Piano WAV or MP3 audio to MIDI
(If your audio piano file is too long, cut it in two sections and then do the conversion.)
https://huggingface.co/spaces/asigalo...