No, I am not a Nazi looking for help among the French, but rather a lyricist seeking a musical composer to work with. I’m not a performance-level guitarist, but I’m skilled enough to write out chords and melodies; my musical skills, however, are nowhere near professional enough to produce all the sounds polished songs require. So how do I go about soliciting a song-writing partner?
I’m certainly willing to have him/her take half credit, and even to rewrite my chords altogether and set a different melody to a tune of mine. That’s not the issue I face. The issue is finding someone simpatico who is inventive and looking for a lyricist.
I’ve tried working with a couple of musician friends but it’s never really worked out. One close friend can’t even listen to my drafts because he stops me 30 seconds in to critique my guitar-playing, which really doesn’t get the point of what I’m trying to show him. That same friend also refuses –on principle, he says—to listen to the versions I’ve gotten an AI program to make for me. “I hate AI,” he says, and then proceeds to denounce the soul-sucking soulless monstrosity AI presents to all artists everywhere.
I think the AI program’s versions are pretty good actually, sometimes better than “pretty good,” but I find Ai tough to really collaborate with—it ignores some of my suggestions (when I prompt it to include a saxophone in the instrumentation, for example, it gives me a sax-less version, even after I repeat my request) and I’m not sure how the rights to an AI collaboration would work. I’d rather work with a person in the same room, at least on occasion. I’ve got another friend, a professional musician, who lives in my hometown, but unfortunately that hometown is 1500 miles from my current address. We see each other every other year or so, so that hasn’t worked out either.
So what do I do? Is there some online venue I could advertise on for what I want? Some IRL venues for me to hang out in? Maybe there’s someone on the Straight Dope who fits my bill? I can include some of the AI clips to give an idea of the sort of lyrics I write and the music I’ve come up with on my own and with AI’s help.