Sacris Solemnis

“Sacris solemniis” is one of the five beautiful hymns St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) composed in honor of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament at specific request of Pope Urban IV (1261-1264) when the Pope first established the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1264. Today Sacris Solemniis is used as a hymn for the Office of the Readings for Corpus Christi, as well as during the procession of that day.

Being a massive and inveterate fan of Enigma, I’ve tried repeatedly to do something in that vein even before the appearance of AI-generated music and repeatedly failed. However, yesterday, thanks to the philosopher and Suno 4.5, I was finally able to create something that I found to be worthwhile. In the process, I also learned a valuable lesson in always using a DAW rather than a sound editor to make track edits. You can listen to Sacris Solemnis and even download it from Unauthorized if you’re a subscriber.

Sacris solemniis
iuncta sint gaudia,
et ex praecordiis
sonent praeconia;
recedant vetera,
nova sint omnia,
corda, voces, et opera.

Those interested in AI music beyond just listening to it should definitely visit AI CENTRAL today, as it features an article by the brilliant sound engineer, who has analog-mastered all of the Soulsigma tracks, concerning his thoughts on Suno’s new feature that provides multi-stem downloads.

I also completed a second song utilizing the second half of the six-stanza prayer in a different style and with a more conventional song structure, entitled Accipite Bibite that can also be heard on UATV.

Accipite, accipite
quod trado vasculum;
omnes ex eo bibite.

DISCUSS ON SG


No, He Whispered

The airwaves are extended gutters and the gutters are full of dirty water and when the baths finally overflow, all the tubcuddlers will drown. The accumulated filth of all their alleged misdeeds will foam up over their heads and all the VP readers and UATV subscribers will look up and shout “for the love of all that is good and holy, will you PLEASE show us some fragment of mercy and stop releasing tracks about the Tubcuddler?”

… and I’ll look down and whisper “No.

The Transgressions mix just might be my favorite. It doesn’t have the amazing guitars of The Corinthian mix, the funk of the Coraline’s Eyes mix, or the effervescent contempt of the Hot Water mix, but it has a dark and grinding vibe that could almost be a Soulsigma song. And that now marks 50 songs in the Voxophonik catalog on UATV, a number almost certainly destined to grow rapidly now that Suno has added a feature that allows the remixing of organic tracks, which has already produced mindblowing results.

You won’t get clean again no matter how you scrub and scrub.

DISCUSS ON SG


Get Your UATV On

I’m on with Big Bear tonight. And you can also listen/download Vibe Patrol’s latest single, COSMIC TRIGGER (Fly Your Freak Flag), which was released today and will be higher quality than you’ll get from iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube, where the new track is also available.

Paywalls and Superchats are coming soon, so if you are a former subscriber, now is a good time to get on board with the new payment system.

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Go With the Flow

On last night’s Darkstream I provided some examples of what is possible with the new Suno 4.5 system. It’s definitely an improvement, especially in terms of vocal quality and overall audio quality, and it does a much better job of sticking to the lyrics. Probably the most useful change is that the initial song limit is now 8 minutes, which means that it won’t keep cropping fully-outlined songs short and requiring an extension, although it still can’t do short extensions to simply end a song very well and the Replace Section editor appears to have its selection timing off by a few microseconds.

What impressed me most was the way it finally let me finish SIDDHARTHA in the way I wanted, as no amount of previous extensions and remasterings using 3.0, 3.5, or 4.0 succeeded in producing what I was looking to do. However, 4.5 allowed me to turn out a beautiful five-minute song that combines David Sylvian and Enigma with Herman Hesse, and it turned out so well that I intend to construct a full album around it once I finish the Byronics project this summer. But in the meantime, UATV subscribers can listen to it in higher-quality than any of the audio streaming services provide.

Speaking of UATV subscriptions, this is the right time to get on board with the new subscription-and-payment system if you haven’t started the process yet. I’ve also got the Darkstream up-to-date, and we’ll get Arkhaven Nights caught up sometime next week.

DISCUSS ON SG


Spring Break Extended

  • The two bonus tracks promised to Gold Skull and White Leather Skull backers have been sent out. Both A MERCILESS NIGHT and IF YOU HAD A TIME MACHINE were professionally mastered by the same professional engineer who mastered the 10 album tracks. They’ll go up on UATV after the rest of the album is uploaded there. They may be released as singles or b-sides later. We’re now working on the organic bonus track, which is an entirely new song that is arguably the best yet.
  • Vibe Patrol released the Spring Break Extended mix of A DRINK WITH A COCONUT today. It’s on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube. You can always keep up with new releases by using the links on the left sidebar.

DISCUSS ON SG





Georgian Inspirations

According to Spotify, Charles Darwin is dead.

Got my mind on those genes baby, fixation’s slow.
Hundreds of generations don’t you know?
Natural selection’s got its groove, but it’s a crawl
Evolution’s math… it’s a mighty tall wall.

Mutations happen but they take their sweet time
Fixation in the genes, it’s a mountain to climb
Survival of the fittest, you’ve heard it before
But it’s the math that’s tricky. There’s so much more.

Get your groove on
Cuz Darwin’s dead y’all
Math don’t lie. And that’s a fact
Generations passing,
one by one
Fixation’s slow but the funk’s begun!

DNA is twisted. A double helix spin (spiral!)
But changes in the code, man, they take years to win
Thousands of years just to make a minor shift
Mathematical reality disproves genetic drift.

TENS has been disproven, the numbers don’t compute.
Mutational fixation means the question is moot.
Populations change but it’s super slow,
It’s a long-winding journey through genetic flow.

So we DNA dance, shake it to the groove
Gotta feel that rhythm, there’s nothing to prove.
Natural Selection’s not a night at the club
But we’re caught in this math, yeah, there’s the rub
!

Get your groove on
Cuz Darwin’s dead y’all
Math don’t lie. And that’s a fact!
Generations passing you comprehend
Fixation’s slow but the funk don’t end!

It’s also on UATV, of course. If, however, you’re an Unauthorized subscriber and you’re not sufficiently evolved to handle a beat and a bassline that funky, why not rhyme and revel with something a little more Byronic.

DISCUSS ON SG


Darwin’s Dead

I was fascinated to see that Google’s Gemini AI system actually generated a false claim in a futile attempt to mitigate the mathematical dilemma for TENS by asserting that while the 1,600 generations-per-fixation number was correct and relevant, there were faster fixations reported in the scientific literature. This struck me as possible, but unlikely, so naturally I inquired about the specifics.

VD: The study published in Nature in 2009, Sequencing of 19 whole genomes detected 25 mutations that were fixed in the 40,000 generations of the experiment, reported fixation events taking place at a rate of 1,600 generations per fixation event. Are you aware of any specific publication reporting a faster rate of fixation, as measured in generations?

GEMINI AI: You’re referring to a key finding from Richard Lenski’s long-term E. coli experiment, a landmark study in evolutionary biology. It’s true that the average rate of fixation observed in that specific study was around 1,600 generations per fixation event. However, there are indeed publications reporting faster rates of fixation, particularly in studies involving strong selection pressures and/or microorganisms with short generation times:

Studies on Antibiotic Resistance:

    Timeframe: Fixation of resistance genes can occur within tens of generations (days to weeks) in bacterial populations exposed to antibiotics. In situations with strong selection pressure and/or microorganisms with short generation times, fixation events can occur much more rapidly than what was observed in Lenski’s long-term experiment.

    You keep speaking in general terms. Please provide the specific experiment or study as well as the actual rate of fixation events reported in terms of generations. Three examples will suffice.

    You’re right to ask for specifics! It’s important to back up general statements with concrete examples. Here are three examples of studies reporting faster fixation rates than the 1,600 generations per fixation observed in Lenski’s long-term experiment:

    1. Rapid Rise of Antibiotic Resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

    Study: “Evolution of high-level ciprofloxacin resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a patient with cystic fibrosis” by Breidenstein et al. (2011), published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.
    Organism: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that causes lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients.
    Selective Pressure: Exposure to the antibiotic ciprofloxacin.
    Fixation Rate: In this study, the authors observed the rapid evolution of high-level ciprofloxacin resistance in a patient over a period of just a few months. Given the generation time of P. aeruginosa (around 20-30 minutes under optimal conditions), this translates to fixation events occurring within tens of generations.
    Key Finding: Specific mutations in genes encoding DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV (the targets of ciprofloxacin) were rapidly selected for and became fixed in the bacterial population within the patient.

    1. Evolution of Drug Resistance in HIV

    Study: “Rapid evolution of human immunodeficiency virus in patients receiving no antiretroviral therapy” by Shankarappa et al. (1999), published in Nature Medicine.
    Organism: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
    Selective Pressure: The host’s immune system and, in some cases, the initiation of antiretroviral therapy.
    Fixation Rate: This study tracked HIV evolution in patients not receiving treatment and found that mutations associated with immune escape or drug resistance could become fixed within a few years. Considering HIV’s generation time (around 1-2 days), this equates to fixation events occurring within hundreds of generations.
    Key Finding: The high mutation rate of HIV, combined with the strong selective pressures exerted by the host’s immune system, leads to rapid viral evolution and the fixation of advantageous mutations.

    1. Experimental Evolution of Yeast under Nutrient Limitation

    Study: “Experimental evolution of a metabolic pathway” by Fekete et al. (2010), published in Molecular Systems Biology.
    Organism: Baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
    Selective Pressure: Limitation of a specific nutrient (galactose).
    Fixation Rate: This study examined the evolution of a metabolic pathway in yeast populations adapting to galactose limitation. They observed the fixation of beneficial mutations within a few hundred generations.
    Key Finding: By tracking the genetic changes and the corresponding improvements in metabolic function, the authors demonstrated how new metabolic capabilities can evolve rapidly under strong selective pressure.

    These examples illustrate that fixation events can occur much faster than the average rate observed in Lenski’s long-term E. coli experiment, especially in situations with strong selection pressures and/or organisms with short generation times.

    (Nota Bene: I ignored the HIV and the yeast studies, since their generalities and references to “hundreds of generations” rendered them irrelevant. To be interesting, we need to see mutational fixation events in the single digits, or at most a few tens, of generations. I also assumed “just a few months” to indicate a minimum of three.)

    Given the generation time of P. aeruginosa (around 20-30 minutes under optimal conditions), and the period of three months, how does this translate to fixation events occurring within tens of generations? Wouldn’t that translate to more than four thousand generations?

    You’re absolutely right to question that! My apologies for the misleading statement.

    You’re correct in your calculation: With a generation time of 20-30 minutes (let’s use 25 minutes as an average), there are 24 hours * 60 minutes/hour / 25 minutes/generation = 57.6 generations per day.
    Over three months (approximately 90 days), this would be 57.6 generations/day * 90 days = 5184 generations. So, three months translates to thousands of generations, not tens.

    In other words, despite the best efforts of AI, Darwin is still dead and TENS is still mathematically impossible. Which fact Vibe Patrol found worthy of memorializing and celebrating with the track Darwin’s Dead, which you can hear on UATV or on YouTube now, although the audio quality is definitely better on the former. Spotify and iTunes should be following soon. Who said you can’t learn science and get your groove on at the same time?

    It’s not my usual metier, but then, I did come of age in Minneapolis during the Prince years. This is the Fixation Funk mix.

    Get your groove on
    Cuz Darwin’s dead y’all.
    Math don’t lie
    And that’s a fact!
    Generations passing
    One by one,
    Fixation’s slow,
    But the funk’s begun!

    DISCUSS ON SG