Paul McCartney Uses AI to Revive John Lennon's Voice for Upcoming 'Final Beatles Song'

[Jeff Leites]

https://www.westernjournal.com/paul-mccartney-uses-ai-revive-john-lennons-voice-upcoming-final-beatles-song/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=conservativetribune&utm_content=2023-06-13&utm_campaign=manualpost&fbclid=IwAR29eiisBwo9J_f-m1J7hW00SvWDldr48cQSL9lGgR0wukEMCPkG67fc1bA

[Anderton]

The article linked to above looks like it was more or less lifted from this more complete story that the BBC presented. It fleshes out some of the details. 

 

Bear in mind that Apple Corps and Giles Martin have done some other pretty amazing things in terms of cleaning up older recordings. I did an interview with Chris Jenkins, who oversaw the sound for the Eight Days a Week movie on Hulu, and thought his descriptions of the techniques they used to clean up stuff like the Shea Stadium concert footage to be absolutely fascinating.

 

[bill5]

gag.

 

I'd have much rather he enlist Julian.

[Anderton]

11 hours ago, bill5 said:

gag.

 

I'd have much rather he enlist Julian.

 

I can't know what to think along those lines without knowing McCartney's motives. Maybe it's a tribute. Maybe John's voice will bring in more money. Maybe Julian doesn't sound the same, and would be accused of trading on his father's name. Maybe it's "because we can."

 

I wrote a song a while ago that related to the deceased singer of a band I was in. It was written with his uniquely melodic voice in mind, even though I was fully aware it would never sound the way I heard it in my head. I ended up doing the vocal, but if there had been some way to have him "sing" the song and have it really sound like him, I would have taken the option in a heartbeat.

[ElmerJFudd]

This is quite interesting.   I am unclear on what their method will be.

 

Will AI be used to reconstruct a quality vocal from Lennon's voice on the crappy boom box recorded casette?

Or will Paul sing it and they'll use the AI to alter Paul's voice to sound like John?  

 

I believe both options are possible with the current technology.

 

[David Emm]

I'm hard-pressed to imagine anyone having more creative right to do this than Paul. I know the background stories of personal frictions and happy accidents that form the Beatles' lore. Its too rich and wonderfully influential for the usual arguments to apply, somehow.

 

That said, I can't resist sharing this gem: NatLamp's "Genius Is Pain." 4:13 of Uh-Oh! NOT SAFE FOR WORK, due to the $#@! language. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qrMEEN6WxM

[bill5]

6 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

I can't know what to think along those lines without knowing McCartney's motives. Maybe it's a tribute. Maybe John's voice will bring in more money. Maybe Julian doesn't sound the same, and would be accused of trading on his father's name. Maybe it's "because we can."

 

I wrote a song a while ago that related to the deceased singer of a band I was in. It was written with his uniquely melodic voice in mind, even though I was fully aware it would never sound the way I heard it in my head. I ended up doing the vocal, but if there had been some way to have him "sing" the song and have it really sound like him, I would have taken the option in a heartbeat.

tbh I don't care what his motives are or if the result sounds exactly like Lennon. It isn't Lennon. Let the man go.

[Doerfler]

I heard Sir Paul on the radio while driving to work yesterday talking about this. What he explained, best I could understand, was that the music is fed into AI somehow (I don't know that process), then the machine is told "this" is the guitar, and "that", is the vocal, ditch the guitar. Vocal only track now exists, and yes, it is John Lennon's vocal. 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, bill5 said:

tbh I don't care what his motives are or if the result sounds exactly like Lennon. It isn't Lennon. Let the man go.

 

A (large) part of me agrees with this. A lot of the "hologram duets with dead people" seems ghoulish. But given trhat it's Lennon's voice they'll be using, I'm inclined to give McCartney a pass. Surely he knows he's not much longer for this world, and if he wants to clean up any loose ends, now is the time to do it. For people at large, John Lennon's tragic murder ended the possibility of any kind of closure concerning the Beatles, how they broke up, etc. It was like a movie where the projector broke down 15 minutes before the end.

 

Sometimes it's important to say goodbye in a way that's fitting to the person saying goodbye. Maybe that's what's happening here.

 

 

[bill5]

Yeah I get what you're saying. PS and thank you for saying "ghoulish" because that is my take on it big time, but I felt people might get in a snit if I said so. Again IMO if he really wants to sing with Lennon....ffs get Julian. He sounds almost exactly like his father and there's the sentimental connection as well. Why they never did something together has always baffled me. Can you imagine how electric it would have been to have say McCartney, Starr, and Julian do even so much as a single performance together? Hell even one Beatles song? The crowd would go insane, even though many of them weren't even an idea when the Beatles broke up. 

[ElmerJFudd]

7 hours ago, Doerfler said:

I heard Sir Paul on the radio while driving to work yesterday talking about this. What he explained, best I could understand, was that the music is fed into AI somehow (I don't know that process), then the machine is told "this" is the guitar, and "that", is the vocal, ditch the guitar. Vocal only track now exists, and yes, it is John Lennon's vocal. 

Right ok, yes.  We’ve seen AI software do a very good job of voice extraction from complete arrangements. Much better than previous methods. 
 

https://moises.ai/new/
 

In this case, since the source vocal is off a crappy old cassette recorded with boom box mix, I wonder if AI can also dither up for better fidelity or reconstruct what’s missing when compared to a better situation vocal recording.  Their effort in 1995 with the previous two tracks has to be drenched in reverb to blend in with the better sounding new parts.  

[ElmerJFudd]

8 hours ago, bill5 said:

Yeah I get what you're saying. PS and thank you for saying "ghoulish" because that is my take on it big time, but I felt people might get in a snit if I said so. Again IMO if he really wants to sing with Lennon....ffs get Julian. He sounds almost exactly like his father and there's the sentimental connection as well. Why they never did something together has always baffled me. Can you imagine how electric it would have been to have say McCartney, Starr, and Julian do even so much as a single performance together? Hell even one Beatles song? The crowd would go insane, even though many of them weren't even an idea when the Beatles broke up. 

Because he knows John’s fans want to hear John and the tech that makes it possible makes for a news story. 
 

 

[Ivan May]

Well…the Beatles have already used AI and Lennon’s vocal to record a new Beatles song. Jeff Lynne helped them do it with a few unreleased demos Lennon did in the seventies, and it wasn’t until the Beatles anthology albums came out in 1995 that those songs finally saw the light of day.

[ProfD]

John Lennon's voice today and Jon Bonham's drums tomorrow and Jimmy Hendrix's guitar next year...the floodgates could overflow with a bunch of AI-generated music purely based on capitalism.

 

Paul McCartney will be financially fine if he doesn't make another dime. If this is some way of him closing the final chapter on the Beatles before he leaves the planet....bless his heart. 

 

I doubt it's that deep for McCartney and his legacy. He's had plenty time and opportunities to revisit the Beatles.

 

As they said while working on the Bionic Man..."we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster."

 

Maybe that's the thought behind art-related AI. I still say capitalism. 😁😎

[o0Ampy0o]

I could see Yoko doing this and Paul offering to be a Beatle as a gesture of goodwill at the end of his life. 
 

This is kind of like using John’s DNA to have his child, if that were possible.

 

Who is it carrying the child of their deceased son? 
 

We are in a science fiction reality.

[jerrythek]

It's all in the article that the OP posted, and the more complete article Craig linked.

 

On 6/14/2023 at 4:37 PM, ElmerJFudd said:

This is quite interesting.   I am unclear on what their method will be.

 

Will AI be used to reconstruct a quality vocal from Lennon's voice on the crappy boom box recorded casette?

Or will Paul sing it and they'll use the AI to alter Paul's voice to sound like John?  

 

I believe both options are possible with the current technology.

 

 

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

54 minutes ago, o0Ampy0o said:

I could see Yoko doing this....

I could see Yoko doing this as a cash grab.  Heck I'm honestly surprised Paul didn't put together a "historic Beatles reunion" at some point in the last twenty years, just him and Ringo + a bunch of session musicians.   But I'm a cynical old bastard.

[ProfD]

5 minutes ago, Lou Gehrig Charles said:

Heck I'm honestly surprised Paul didn't put together a "historic Beatles reunion" at some point in the last twenty years, just him and Ringo + a bunch of session musicians.

Exactly.  That timeframe would have been perfect considering the number of Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers still around.😎

[bill5]

  

12 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Because he knows John’s fans want to hear John and the tech that makes it possible makes for a news story. 

 

Except it's not really John; it's "AI John." 

 

 

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

John Lennon's voice today and Jon Bonham's drums tomorrow and Jimmy Hendrix's guitar next year...the floodgates could overflow with a bunch of AI-generated music purely based on capitalism.

Exactly. It's mimicky and IMO a farce. I guess this is just another link the fakey, phony, hollow society we seem to be happily diving into, what with the fake news, the social media/cell phone obsessions, etc. Scary IMO.

 

As for McCarntney never doing any kind of Beatles reunion, that's because it's impossible; the Beatles aren't the Beatles without Lennon. It would be ludicious. 

[ElmerJFudd]

3 hours ago, bill5 said:

  

Except it's not really John; it's "AI John." 

 

 

Exactly. It's mimicky and IMO a farce. I guess this is just another link the fakey, phony, hollow society we seem to be happily diving into, what with the fake news, the social media/cell phone obsessions, etc. Scary IMO.

 

As for McCarntney never doing any kind of Beatles reunion, that's because it's impossible; the Beatles aren't the Beatles without Lennon. It would be ludicious. 

Did we read the same article?  
 

"He [Jackson] was able to extricate John's voice from a ropey little bit of cassette," Sir Paul told Radio 4's Martha Kearney. 

 

"We had John's voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, 'That's the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar'.

 

 The AI software was taught to pull John’s voice from the arrangement (remove  piano, guitar, what have you)  so they could use the solo vocal in a new recording. That tech exists and you or I can use it. I saw recently that Sonar is one of the first DAWs to offer it built in.  But I’ve used moises.ai, it’s quite effective.  Better than any previous methods of filtering.  
 

Alternatively, McCartney eludes to the fact he knows the tech to use AI to re-timbre his own (or someone else’s) to sound like John exists.  But it seems they aren’t doing it that way. 
 

Example: 

 

 

[bill5]

2 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Did we read the same article?  

Ah sorry I did not read, I assumed (and you know what they say about that) - if it's actual recordings of John, by all means, press on. 

[Joe Muscara]

Quote

Sir Paul had received the demo a year earlier from Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. It was one of several songs on a cassette labelled "For Paul" that Lennon had made shortly before his death in 1980.

(my emphasis)

 

This is referencing a cassette that had three songs on it, Free as a Bird, Real Love (both released on the 1995 Anthology), and Now and Then (likely this song, according to the article).

 

So the voice is really John's, and it seems he wanted Paul to hear these three. Perhaps he was thinking of getting back together. He was in a good place, it seems, when he was murdered. He might have been ready.

 

My question is, how is it a Beatles release if there's no George? Does Paul have tapes of George playing what they tried to do with the tune in 1995 before the gave up on the track?

[ElmerJFudd]

2 hours ago, Joe Muscara said:

(my emphasis)

 

This is referencing a cassette that had three songs on it, Free as a Bird, Real Love (both released on the 1995 Anthology), and Now and Then (likely this song, according to the article).

 

So the voice is really John's, and it seems he wanted Paul to hear these three. Perhaps he was thinking of getting back together. He was in a good place, it seems, when he was murdered. He might have been ready.

 

My question is, how is it a Beatles release if there's no George? Does Paul have tapes of George playing what they tried to do with the tune in 1995 before the gave up on the track?

The core song writing was always the pair from the earliest days. George and Ringo always had to put effort into getting their tunes on a record. And often, as can be seen in the boatload of footage, Paul very often would request that the others do “something like this” [gestures, hums, expresses what he wants].  That’s not to say that it’s not a band sound ultimately, or that even within that they collectively shared what they had to offer. Just that John and Paul walk in to a session with their lyrics and a shape of a tune and it grows from there. 

[jerrythek]

3 hours ago, Joe Muscara said:

My question is, how is it a Beatles release if there's no George? Does Paul have tapes of George playing what they tried to do with the tune in 1995 before the gave up on the track?

A good point. Reading the articles it is clear that George wasn't into the tune and did all the sessions begrudgingly. But I want to believe that Paul got a sign-off from Olivia/Dhani to release it as The Beatles, since they operated the band as a complete democracy. Any one nay vote would kill an idea.

 

But, there are certainly Beatles tunes released that all four members didn't play on. Yesterday is an obvious example, but a number of tunes on the White Album come to mind.

 

1 hour ago, ElmerJFudd said:

The core song writing was always the pair from the earliest days. George and Ringo always had to put effort into getting their tunes on a record. And often, as can be seen in the boatload of footage, Paul very often would request that the others do “something like this” [gestures, hums, expresses what he wants].  That’s not to say that it’s not a band sound ultimately, or that even within that they collectively shared what they had to offer. Just that John and Paul walk in to a session with their lyrics and a shape of a tune and it grows from there. 

You're talking about the writing itself, and the arranging. Joe is simply addressing the issue of did George even play a note on the recording to be released. Different point.

 

In the end, no doubt it will be nostalgic to hear (John and Paul singing on the same track?!),  but I am not expecting it to be much of anything. Paul certainly doesn't need the money (meager as it will likely be), but likely he both wants to close this last chapter in his life, and feed his ego (no doubt) with the attention it will garner.

[ElmerJFudd]

20 minutes ago, jerrythek said:

A good point. Reading the articles it is clear that George wasn't into the tune and did all the sessions begrudgingly. But I want to believe that Paul got a sign-off from Olivia/Dani to release it as The Beatles, since they operated the band as a complete democracy. Any one nay vote would kill an idea.

 

But, there are certainly Beatles tunes released that all four members didn't play on. Yesterday is an obvious example, but a number of tunes on the White Album come to mind.

 

You're talking about the writing itself, and the arranging. Joe is simply addressing the issue of did George even play a note on the recording to be released. Different point.

 

In the end, no doubt it will be nostalgic to hear (John and Paul singing on the same track?!),  but I am not expecting it to be much of anything. Paul certainly doesn't need the money (meager as it will likely be), but likely he both wants to close this last chapter in his life, and feed his ego (no doubt) with the attention it will garner.

Me either in the sense that last time (1995/96) they put out Free as a Bird and Real Love in similar fashion.  Studio trickery allowed it to happen.  Nostalgic tracks, nothing more.  Paul’s time is waning, at 80 how many shows or records does he have left in him?  If he wants to revisit the cassette Yoko shared with him one last time, I can understand that and relate to it. Even if another voice inside says, “let it be”.  

[Anderton]

Re-visiting the past is always dicey. For some reason, there's been a renewed interest in the band I was in back in the 60s. The drummer and I are talking about re-mastering the original albums, because the technology has changed so much. I know enough about technology that I could make those songs sound better, and more like they were intended to sound by the band. But there are only so many hours in a day. Why spend it re-visiting the past, when I could work on new material that excites me?

 

I suppose you could say it's selfish that I'd rather do new stuff than give fans an improved version of something they like, but...there are only so many hours in a day. Maybe Paul is prioritizing fan service. There's nothing wrong with that.

[Joe Muscara]

I bet Paul would love to have gotten back together with John and worked on stuff back in the 80s, see if a real reunion would have been feasible, or just work together as old friends and brothers. It's probably more heartbreaking for him than any of us that it was taken away from him so prematurely. This is as close as he can get.

[bill5]

They actually talked about it casually in the 70s when asked (contrary to popular belief, the friction between them didn't last forever), but each were busy doing their solo stuff and it just never materialized.

[Theo Verelst]

A mathematical treatment of signal recognition and synthesis including certainty and error analysis is still hard. It is possible to fingerprint recordings such that given part extraction software will lead to fingerprinted results. It is quite much of a possibility to take studio recordings and make the signals reduced to a certain model (for instance voices) where there is a specified amount of the voice left to get recognized.

 

T

[o0Ampy0o]

John might have been open to doing something with Paul again but I doubt he would have gone for calling it a Beatles reunion or a final Beatles anything. He was always adamant that "The Beatles" was some magical thing taking place that ran its course and can never be again.

 

I was reading an article the other day about how the mind isn't a thing, it is a process. While The Beatles were a band, they were also a process. The times in which it took place was part of the process. The Beatles as a process was deteriorating and the participants were changing before The Beatles broke up. There was still a strong Beatles vibe in their first post-Beatles albums but that was mostly gone by their second. A lot more time and change transpired before John was killed.

 

That cassette just has ideas for songs. When Beatles, they had time to hang out together and they had time goof off in the studio. The thing this release will lack is having several takes of misses and accidents from which to identify the gold and the opportunity to do it perfectly for the record. All Paul has to work with is a clean drawing of a rough idea.