SONG:
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on The Guardian, 12 Oct 2023, “Researchers use AI to read word on ancient scroll burned by Vesuvius,” as used in the post AI is reading scrolls burned in Vesuvius.
ABSTRACT:
This is that song that was almost, almost ready for the end of November, but the words weren’t there. Well, some stuff happened. I got earwormed with a song that’s more than 10 years old, Vienna Teng’s “Hymn to Acxiom,” which she self-consciously modeled on Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” – both using a vocal harmonizer effect to create a sort of robot choir, which both of those folks used as the only instrument in their songs (with some overdubs for harmony and counterpoint parts). Looking into how this stuff really *really* works, I learned that Reaper, a DAW I’ve been using as my main recorder since… well, I think before Vienna Teng recorded her song… actually comes bundled with its own vocal harmonizer effect, ReaVoice. I’d never really investigated it until now.
So, for this song…. Well, first, back in early November or even late October, I made that echoey percussion track and the drums, and then laid down some chords and a solo. By the time that was done, I knew I wanted this song to be about recovering the words from a scroll burned in Vesuvius, because that is one evocative situation. It’s AI doing the recovery, though, and “Hymn of Acxiom” is an AI song, with a robot chorus that is in effect singing in the character of the Almighty Algorithm, using the same religious language, really. So there was a reason to try using this technology (that I’d had all along) to open a way into this subject. The words would be the AI, explaining to long-dead writer(s) that the words you all thought were destroyed and gone, the messages that were burned after reading, are not really gone at all.
There’s an implication in the chorus that not even the Library of Alexandria is necessarily entirely vanished. I mean, it’s clearly not recoverable with this iteration of this technology, but if we’re able to read a scroll rendered to charcoal in one of history’s most famously destructive volcanic eruptions, then I’m not sure where the limits really are any more.
The ReaVoice effect, predictably, is not exactly like the “Vienna Girls Choir” Imogen Heap effect. It’s a little chipmunky in the higher registers, and not quite as vocoderish/robotic. I think it probably wants some formant-shifting on the higher parts to sound less like helium, and maybe a ring modulator to create an android sheen. But I quite like the harmonies, and the melody that the effect inspired is really satisfying. The bass, which filled in everything after it was done, made me very, very happy – it’s the instrument I feel is the most “mine,” although I don’t feel really technically virtuous on it, and this bass line just came together exactly where it needed to be.
The structure of the thing is a little weird to me – it feels right, I feel like everything is said that should be and that the build-up toward the release of the solo (which I also wound up using the vocal harmonizer on, just to give the guitar a sense of “this is a voice, too, speaking to you in a different language”)… all that stuff is right. It’s just odd to me that there are three verses before the solo, which is in effect a fourth verse, followed by a final chorus. That’s not a usual song structure – the solo or bridge is usually 2/3rds of the way through, not 3/4s – but cutting a verse didn’t really feel right. I was also annoyed when I realized, days after recording the vocals, that I’d written a lyric that ends two different lines with “smoke.” But I couldn’t see a way to change that, either. It’s good the way it is.
I hope it haunts you the way it haunts me.
LYRICS:
You spoke in whispers, but kept comprehensive notes
Your secret diaries seem haunted by your ghost
Assembled memories from ashes and from smokeYour words were burned away from me
We’re reading burning libraries
Burning librariesAfter reading this, you gave it to the fire
You can’t trust information seen in other’s eyes
Today it’s funny, the lengths you went to hideYour words were burned away from me
We’re reading burning libraries
Burning librariesThere are no final words, no going up in smoke
And nothing cast aside remains forever broke
Angels we programmed with eternal microscopesYour words were burned away from me
We’re reading burning libraries
Burning librariesYour words were burned away from me
We’re reading burning libraries
Burning libraries