Musings of a Snickerdoodle

 So, I obviously didn't get around to posting the AI Christmas songs anywhere near in time for Christmas. But I'll just throw some out there now:  Here are several of the Christmas songs my brother Tim and I had fun 'directing'. - I would have posted more of Tim's but Udio's new update won't let me download the video or audio of other people's 'creations' anymore, so the ones that are here are from back when I was able to download them. The first up is this one by Tim, "Look Who is Born", I really like the lyrics he wrote to it (unlike myself, he doesn't utilize AI at all for the lyrics, he writes them himself).  https://www.udio.com/songs/9UvYQHkFnbeLBfh4YWca2z?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing This next is one I 'directed', it is based on Mary's praise of God in Luke 1, and as usual, utilized Chat GPT due to my lack of rhyming skills and general word creativity. I usually generate...

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...

The Carols of Christmas by Andrew Gant goes through various popular carols of Christmas and tells some of their intricate, and often confusing, history.  You may not come out of the book wiser than when you started it about who wrote such and such a carol but Gant himself warns of this in the intro:  "…if you occasionally get to the end of a chapter in this book slightly unsure about who wrote words or tunes or bits of either, me too…." Apparently we don't know exactly who wrote some of the songs, and many of them were revised from their original written form.   One of the histories I found particularly interesting was that of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, originally Hark How all the Welkin Rings' by Charles Wesley.  Apparently George Whitefield was one of the people who revised the song, one of the verses he changed was "universal nature say 'Christ the Lord is born today!' " to "With th'Angelic hosts proclaim, Christ is born in Bethl...

This is an excellent song! You can listen to it here: http://www.bjupress.com/product/279752 His robes for mine: O wonderful exchange! Clothed in my sin, Christ suffered ‘neath God’s rage. Draped in His righteousness, I’m justified. In Christ I live, for in my place He died. Chorus: I cling to Christ, and marvel at the cost: Jesus forsaken, God estranged from God. Bought by such love, my life is not my own. My praise-my all-shall be for Christ alone. His robes for mine: what cause have I for dread? God’s daunting Law Christ mastered in my stead. Faultless I stand with righteous works not mine, Saved by my Lord’s vicarious death and life. His robes for mine: God’s justice is appeased. Jesus is crushed, and thus the Father’s pleased. Christ drank God’s wrath on sin, then cried “‘Tis done!”Sin’s wage is paid; propitiation won. His robes for mine: such anguish none can know. Christ, God’s beloved, condemned as though His foe. He, as though I, ac...