Musings of a Snickerdoodle

 My brother and I are still playing around with that AI music generating software, Udio. It can generate excellent tunes and really puts emotion into the voices. It truly is amazing what God has allowed humans to do. I figured I'd put out a few more songs we were able to 'direct' (and in Tim's case, write).  First, one of my absolute favorites, my brother Tim did this one, and unlike myself, he writes the lyrics completely himself. This one actually made me cry... O Heavenly Father, Make Us Like Thee! You can view the lyrics and download the MP3 or Wave file here:  https://www.udio.com/songs/rcJrrJTqABKtrnga2JSeF7 And next is one that I 'directed'. I am HORRIBLE with poetry, rhyming n' making lines have rhythm.  So I utilize Chat GPT for the lyrics, though I don't just generate them and take them as is, I make it generate a lot of prompts and several versions of the lyrics. Then I go back through and revise each verse, switching out words, chunks of the ...

  Shepherds For Sale, as one would expect, is not an uplifting read, but it's very insightful.  Each chapter gives details about how so many church leaders are turning away from the Bible as their sole authority of faith and practice and instead turning to the 'moral' 'causes of the world.   I really liked how Basham did this, giving facts in  journalistic way and yet giving Biblically based commentary/critiques throughout.  I wasn't sure how to write this review (or 'tome' as it turned out to be!) as this book is a little more unique from any book I've read before, as it has a lot of 'data' as it were, a lot of documenting of the downfall of church leaders. So I'll write it a bit different and go chapter by chapter: CLIMATE CHANGE: Pastors have accepted the idea of climate change as one of the things they are obligated to warn their people about. Some of them are doing it under the guise of it's being "Creation Care" or somethi...

For the past day or two my family and I have been playing with this new AI audio generator software called Udio (www.Udio.com).  At first I heard a sample of an instrumental piece someone had generated and it sounded very nice, so I decided to sign up and just see what it could do. It also lets you put in your own lyrics to generate music with. What I didn't really see coming was how well it could do voices...they sound real, and I don't mean AI real, I mean REAL.  They sound like actually people singing with their own individual voices (you can even hear them taking breaths). I have found it has been getting harder to find nice music, not just generally okay music, but music that you REALLY like. Most especially, Christian music.  Well Udio allows you to create it.  And you don't even have to be musically inclined, you just prompt it.   You type in prompts like "classical", "cinematic", "female voice" etc.. and add any lyrics you want and then...