AI music

Since we kicked off Grailrunner around 2016 or so, I’ve intentionally left out references to me personally or the contractors I work with. My thought was to keep this super professional and focus on inspiring ideas and cool tools or giveaways that prod other people’s imaginations. Grailrunner Publishing is just a network of like-minded folks that help me put new things into the world, with the potential for other like-minded folks to (hopefully) catch a spark here and unleash their own.

I’ve noticed, however, that a lot of Youtubers are finding these days that their audiences seem to want to know more about them personally, beyond whatever terrain building tips or historical curiosities they talk about. Then occasionally, we get asked the magic question:

Who is Grailrunner?

So for giggles, I’ve rewritten the ABOUT page to tell the origin story and shed a little light on that, specifically recounting the strange experience I had in a rock gorge in Oman in 1997 that poured jet fuel into what became Grailrunner and our signature property, Salt Mystic.

No fairy tales. No gimmicks. That happened. Go read it to see what I mean. Over a decade later when I read that C.S. Lewis had a similar experience that turned into the Narnia series, it struck a chord with me big time. But anyway, in order to celebrate this slight shift in the Grailrunner approach to you guys, I thought it would be awesome to have something cool and free for you to enjoy.

So I wrote a Grailrunner theme song.

I was going for Springsteen/Bob Dylan-style poetry with a modern rock vibe, and I wanted to include a variation on our slogan: “Dreams are engines. Be fuel.” Not an easy task, I’ll grant you. It wasn’t a pretty process. I’m also bad about mixed metaphors, so if you detect any traces in the lyrics of shifting imagery, just be cool about it.

Here’s a link to hear it.

Here are the lyrics, by the way.

And no, that isn’t me singing. I used Suno, an AI app, to take the lyrics and generate a bunch of variations – all in a rock & roll direction but with some tweaks on other styles to get something nice that didn’t sound like everyone else. I think it turned out fantastic.

Anyway, let me know what you think about all this. And if you liked the song, I’d especially appreciate hearing that as my wife thinks it’s too loud and fast. We kind of all need to tell her how wrong she is about that.

Till next time,

You might think today’s topic is a bit heavy, but it really isn’t. It’s transformative, is what it is! Honestly, I did a thing with AI tools recently that blew me away. It was an experiment that has blasted daylight into a world of opportunity that can send your imagination soaring if you let it.

Welcome back to a series we call “Conversations from the Abyss”, where we use AI tools to stage new dialogues or honor creators of the past. The songs here are being made available for free – nobody’s selling you anything with this.

Back in 2017, I wrote this memorial post for a dear friend of mine who I lost to depression. He fought it hard, but he lost. And we lost something magical with that guy, I promise you. That isn’t my point today, though. Not really. His name was Tim, though we called him Droopy because his voice sounded like that cartoon dog when he spoke.

Anyway, Tim wrote lyrics. Great ones, if I’m honest. I tried too, but he showed me up because mine were always too out-there, too audacious and unrelatable, too philosophical. I was always trying to “say something” or break some kind of ground, and in the end, he’d show up with a song about wanting to take an old convertible to Florida and everybody would love it. We would jam on guitar at his house, and he’d riff crazy lyrics about girls and beaches and highways…and it was amazing.

So I’m a few posts deep into this series of AI experiments, and it got me thinking about whether I could dig around in some crates and find something Tim wrote back in the day to bring to life with the help of some AI tools. And sure enough, buried in a pile of college papers and useless memorabilia in the basement, I found this:

For the youthful among you – that’s a tape. You recorded stuff onto it with ancient witchcraft. In this case, my friend had gifted me in 1994 a thing as I was going off to the Navy that now has become one of the most precious pieces of my life’s treasures. He recorded 14 original songs on an album he titled Crush, and dedicated it to me and to someone named Amie who I never met. (I was the Pope – don’t ask).

I learned not to close my eyes as I listened to it, because it felt way too much like being back in his room playing guitar and getting lost in music with one of my dearest friends. I can’t really do that right now. Maybe never.

But what I DID do was amazing. I picked two of them and brought them to life with Suno, an AI application that generates songs from your lyrics and other direction. Tim would have been horrified to see his words in a country song, but that’s my little joke and he can deal with it. For my part, I think they’re incredible. I remember him singing ’59 Ford Fairlane Convertible in my dorm room, and I believe I know who April was (the girl from the second song).

How about you do me a favor then? If this topic has at all intrigued you, or if anything I’ve ever written on Grailrunner has brought you even a moment of diversion, would you do me a great favor and listen?

My friend, Tim would appreciate it.

Smash the buttons. Let me know what you think.