Uneven AIs | note University AI Music Collaboration Club |

🎶December Project Event | The Moment Voice and Video Connect - The Beginning of the MV Story

The "Uneven Apples" in My Memory

The 1983 television drama "Fuzoroi no Ringotachi" (Uneven Apples).

Kiichi Nakai, Saburo Tokito, Shingo Yanagisawa, Satomi Tezuka, Mariko Ishihara, and Shoko Nakajima.

The ensemble drama of life-sized, somewhat clumsy young people they portrayed is still burned into my memory as if it were yesterday.

Because it was a popular drama, it continued for four series, but I was caught up in finding a job, marriage, raising children, and work, so I was only able to follow the first series in real-time.

However, the memory of that "first" series is enough; they were breathing the air of the same era and carrying the same worries as us.

An "Uneven" Session with AI

With my feelings for this drama in mind, I created a song called "Uneven AIs" with AI.

And finally, I was able to turn it into a video.

My initial plan was clear.

"With vocals that make you feel a refreshing summer breeze, like Kiyotaka Sugiyama."

Back then, we longed for the sea and yearned for summer. That is why I gave instructions to the AI music generation tool "Suno," imagining a voice that suits a piercing blue sky and the sea, like Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe.

However, the AI would not easily agree.

No matter how many times I generated it, the male vocals I was looking for never appeared.

A miscalculation, or perhaps a "correction of history"?

While repeating trial and error, my memory was captured by a take that suddenly flowed into my head.

It was not a male, but a female vocal. An ennui, urban, and slightly shadowed singing voice.

"Tomoko Aran"

What came to my mind was the image of Tomoko Aran from 80s city pop.

I was looking for "Kiyotaka Sugiyama (Summer Sea)," but the AI brought me "Tomoko Aran (City Night)."

I wondered. Was my youth really just that "refreshing summer" like it was back then?

Perhaps the "midnight melancholy"—the anxiety about employment and the future, the frustration of things not going as planned—was the reality of those days after all?

The AI may have stripped away the image of my youth that I was unconsciously trying to "revise in my memory" and presented me with this, asking, "Isn't this 'humidity' the real answer?"

Beyond the filter of memory

When we reminisce about our youth, we tend to bundle the joys and sorrows together and beautifully "revise" them.

That might be a "mental filter" necessary for adults to survive.

However, the "Tomoko Aran-style" sound that Suno AI produced this time revived the "atmosphere of the era" before it passed through that filter, in an unexpected way.

Different from the original plan, but strangely convincing, these are the "uneven AIs."

It couldn't become Kiyotaka Sugiyama, but I made a video for this song that Tomoko Aran descended upon.

Please listen to it while overlaying it with the "1980s" in your own memories. For those who weren't born yet, listen with memories from before you were born.

🎶 December Project Event | The moment voice and image connect — The beginning of a story called an MV