Bror Lindh: Evening Light in Wintertime (undated)
Good evening, Kibitzers! Welcome to the last Tuesday night of civilization the Biden-Harris Administration. No empty calories consumed this week will count.
As I’m writing on Monday night, I’m hoping that the winds in California don’t get too bad this week and there aren’t any big new fires. You can follow Franks Human for their detailed daily update diaries on the whole situation — today’s diary is here. Many thanks to FH for taking up that job.
I was looking for something entertaining for tonight, and the YouTube Gods heard my plea. The channel @arielcotronea appears to belong to a young musician named Ariel Cotronea, studying at Universidad Nacional de las Artes in Buenos Aires, but I can tell you absolutely nothing else about him, except that there are photos of him playing piano.
Up until a couple of weeks ago, his channel would never have caught my attention. It was pretty quiet, and I’d say the most prevalent subject was tributes to Henry Mancini. Then, abruptly, he appears to have taken up using AI (no idea what program or what his process is) to re-cast Beatles songs in other musical styles entirely. The note under each of them says “A Beatles song reimagined (AI-generated music)”, and adds that it’s “just for fun”. The videos are just a still frame with music, and he does say that each “image was generated using FLUX.1 [dev] (Black Forest Labs)”.
They’re kind of hilarious, if you like that sort of thing, and really quite well-done. There are a few others at the channel — he must be spending his whole summer vacation doing these, because they’ve been coming out every few days. I thought about waiting until there were more, but then I’d just have more trouble narrowing it down. So here are my favorites so far.
(What he’s characterizing as “jazz”, I think we might think of more as “big band” or the like. That still qualifies as jazz, but we tend to apply that word more to later, more bebop-ish stuff. Anyway!)
One After 909, but it's jazz. [1:58]
I Am the Walrus, but it's folk/blues fingerstyle. [3:25]
Love Me Do, but it's jazz. [2:27]
Drive My Car, but it's hard rock. [2:30]
Oh! Darling, but it's Motown. [3:17]
Get Back, but it's jazz. [3:05]
Across The Universe, but it's reggae. [4:01]
Helter Skelter, but it's rockabilly. [3:09]
Can't Buy Me Love, but it's jazz. [2:31]
Strawberry Fields Forever, but it's blues. I think this is my favorite. [4:10]
Alternate diary titles I considered:
- I'll AI Instead
- Being for the Benefit of Mr. AI
- Lucy in AI with Diamonds
- Can't AI Me Love
- P.S. AI Love You
- Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Neural Network