Earlier this year I had the idea to approach the lead singer who wrote all of the lyrics and melodies to the stuff we played back then, and wanted to "reimagine" everything in 2026 using AI. That's the project I want to share here!
The site has a before/after player where you can flip between the original dorm-room recording and the 2026 version mid-song without losing your place, so you can hear exactly what changed. The original 2001 website is preserved and browsable at https://www.fadingmaize.com/2001, rough edges intact.
Working on this, the thing that sparked in my own mind is that it was an experiment in a certain way to use AI. The songs, lyrics, and arrangements are the original human work (in this case from 2001-2003). We wrote the lyrics, we created the melodies, we played the parts, it just didn't sound as good as we heard it in our own heads.
The stuff AI creates is awesome, but it means less if it's just the AI cranking everything out from the ground up. In our case, the AI was only there to help us get the results we originally wanted back in 2001 when we were cooking ramen in our dorm rooms and couldn't afford anything fancy
Being fully transparent about our use of AI, sticking tightly to our original lyrics and melodies, but making full use of AI to give us the studio, session players, and production budget we never had seemed like the right balance of concerns.
I'm super proud of how it turned out and the transparency we've used along the way. Happy to discuss the audio pipeline, the site (Next.js), or what it's like to A/B your 20-year-old self!
p.s. Oh and check this out! I remember this day. Our site was getting absolutely hammered! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPJWlnN9tSE&t=43
I'm sorry to be so negative, it's great you're returning to the material after all these years, but the AI versions I've listened to all have the same smoothed-over quality that loses everything interesting and relatable to my ears in the original versions.
I gotta brag on Chuck a bit more though. I do love the depth to his lyrics and the way he puts them to melodies. I think his stuff, at the core, is excellent. Can't wait to work on some new stuff!
I want to be able to rap like Twista. If I use AI to change my voice and speed it up, it’s kinda fake.
Where’s the originality in that. I’ll never be *that good*, but I have fun doing it.
Now I guess using AI strictly for mastering is OK , but even then the results haven’t been good for me.
I think you nailed it here. The originality happened 25 years ago. That was fun! Then 25 years passed, life went on, and this project gave two old friends a reason to reconnect and see what the technology could do with our old songs. That was fun too!
I have a classical piece I wrote over a decade ago for piano [2] (it’s the instrument I play), but it was always intended to be an orchestral work. Using AI allowed me to sonically experiment with a stringed score which was pretty cool.
It’s basically the equivalent of taking a piece you’ve written and running it through an arranger keyboard or Band-in-a-Box on steroids.
I've read the "how revival works" section, but still have no idea "how the revival works".
("We've used ai" is all I got from both this intro on HN and the we pages I read, though possible I missed some section.)
Can you share?
I.e. Did you take original audio recordings and run it though some audio chain that optimizes the mix and volumes? Did you put the sheets and lyrics into ableton and recreate the music? Did you feed audio files into chatgpt and prompt "make it better"? Something else?
In the interest of transparency, understanding what happened here will significantly guide my own emotional response :). I appreciate the details of 5 core principles, but spending so much time on principles without actual detail on what got done makes me skeptical and even cynical, which may not be the intent. For example, I personally distinguish between a raw photo, edited photo, composite image, and AI regenerated image, and one of the things I'm trying to understand is the path / traceability from human to final audio file.
Thx!
I might have to revisit some of my old songs...
FWIW, I'm (now a hobby) musician and have done studio work. Even the latest and best models have this unmistakable sound.
My musical taste tends toward less produced, rougher/lo-fi recordings, e.g. Guided By Voices. So, it follows that I prefer the original recordings.
There is one aspect that I find slightly dehumanizing -- the AI changed the singer's voice so drastically that I don't recognize the original singer anymore. The uniqueness of the voice has been smoothed out to be much more generic. For me, music (and art in general) is in part an expression of one's identity, so I'd consider this a negative outcome. I'm sure similar things could be said of the instrument performances as well.
But again, this is all just my two cents, and it's a matter of taste. Ultimately if you're happy with the results, that's what matters!