Award-winning composer Paul Leonard-Morgan (Tales from the Loop, Cyberpunk 2077 and multi-collaborator with Philip Glass), partners with multidisciplinary artist SUUVI to create Etudes for Piano & Cello, an album and visual project that stands at the frontier of generative AI filmmaking.
“It’s an album of etudes, which are used to train yourself as a musician, that I composed with SUUVI in mind,” Leonard-Morgan says. “I wanted to write melodic, beautiful music, as opposed to just scales and arpeggios. SUUVI, who is classically trained at The Juilliard School, had a similar thing with cello etudes.”
Instead of relying on the traditional etudes, Leonard-Morgan wanted to write melodic music that helps musicians become better as players. As one of the leading Hollywood film composers (Dredd, Limitless, Fellow Travelers), the Scottish-born composer has worked with leading artists such as No Doubt, Isobel Campbell, Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian and Snow Patrol. Leonard-Morgan’s classical works and compositions include his Celtic Concerto for violin, harp, soprano, whistles and pipes, (commissioned by the Inter-Celtic Festival in Lorient); Eclipsed, premiered by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and his clarinet concerto The Awakening.
SUUVI, a Cuban-Chinese cellist and multidisciplinary artist, spontaneously decided to move to Los Angeles after connecting with Leonard-Morgan.
“Working with Paul has been one of the most rewarding and inspiring experiences in my career, both artistically and personally,” says SUUVI. “Paul and I connected over our shared backgrounds as classically trained musicians who also have a large love for electronic music.
Our goal has been to create a series of works that span everything from classical to electronica and democratize the boundaries between the two worlds.”
Technology is important to both of the artists, who wanted to do something innovative when it came to the visual representation of the album.
“This is the exciting part — showing what can be achieved creatively with AI as art, rather than just prompting it to ‘make a film,’” Leonard-Morgan says.
To this extent, they teamed up with cutting edge filmmakers Blue Dog VFX who used AI as part of their creative process to make a series of short films for the album.
“AI has been demonized as a threat to artistry and humanity, but we view it as a tool that can be used to augment and accelerate the work that humans do,” SUUVI says. “The visual artists at Blue Dog VFX, Paul and I, all share this ethos that technology shouldn’t be feared, but rather embraced, which is what we wanted to represent through these short films that were created with the help of artificial intelligence through a collaborative role alongside human artists.”
About the AI project
Blue Dog VFX, a visual effects collective created by Wes Cronk, Nabil Schiantarelli and Josh Guillaume, whose credits include Deadpool, Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Trek, Sonic The Hedgehog, contacted Leonard-Morgan and asked to use the album to experiment with AI filmmaking. They proposed to use AI as a tool in their palette to experiment with the possibilities and limitations of AI filmmaking, exploring the benefits and drawbacks of generative AI as a tool in existing workflows.
“Paul and SUUVI’s collaboration inspired a slate of films focused around meditative moments in the natural world,” Cronk says. “Our goal was to explore the benefits and drawbacks of generative AI as a tool in creative production, relying on our own existing work and creative input to drive the process. Fleeting moments are crafted through a utilization of photography, filming, editing, and new tools to create a fluid seamless vision.”
They filmed Leonard-Morgan and SUUVI playing the album, doing motion capture on their hands and filming them playing the piano and cello, shooting from various angles so they could incorporate the music and motions into the films. In addition, they did all original photography, so the AI is trained on all original footage. The artists consider responsible use essential while utilizing existing content; reflecting their own creativity through the tool, rather than relying on it to be creative.
“All of the photos taken were from me on my various adventures around California and Colorado,” Wes Cronk says. “The mouse in the first video, as an example, is actually my flip-flop in the sand!”
The software is built on a mountain of work from the thriving open source community around AI tools. The base image generation technology behind Blue Dog VFX’s work is StableDiffusion, and the software used to put it all together is ComfyUI — a container where you can plug in a variety of tools and code to drive the generative AI workflow, including some tools that Cronk wrote to assist in this process.
“The primary tool in ComfyUI that’s enabling these animations is called AnimateDiff — we wouldn’t have open source AI video without it!” Cronk says.
Leonard-Morgan is thrilled about the experiment, a fresh take on etude training for pianists and cellists. The full album drops on September 27 and Leonard-Morgan will release an album of electronic re-imaginings of the etudes on streaming platforms at the end of October. Two singles from the album have already been released. The artist also has sheet music available on his website, which is now available for other performers to learn. A limited edition vinyl will also be available.
About Paul Leonard-Morgan:
From his music for the concert hall and the theater stage to public events and the screen, Paul Leonard-Morgan’s experience and range are the epitome of the skill, versatility, and appeal of a 21st century composer. He is one of the most notable contemporary soundtrack composers, in demand for his use of both orchestra and electronica. Writing music for big, small, and new-media screens, his credits include his collaborations with Philip Glass for Tales from the Loop and The Pigeon Tunnel; the feature films Limitless, Dredd, Last Breath, Best Sellers, Walking With Dinosaurs, The Tomorrow Man; numerous collaborations with Academy Award winner Errol Morris including Wormwood, The B Side, American Dharma; and the video games Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield Hardline.
He garnered a BAFTA award for his first film score, Reflections upon the Origin of the Pineapple, and Emmy, Ivor Novello, and World Soundtrack Award nominations. His expertise extends to the recording studio, where he has collaborated with such leading artists as No Doubt, Isobel Campbell, Mogwai, Simple Minds, Texas, Joy Zipper, Belle & Sebastian and Snow Patrol. Scottish by birth and upbringing, Leonard-Morgan’s classical works are steeped in the musical and poetic traditions of his home. With a mother who was a music teacher, Leonard-Morgan learned numerous instruments as a child, and went on to earn a degree at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. His compositions for the theater include multiple commissions from the National Theatre to score new adaptations of Rona Munro’s history plays The James Plays, which opened at the Edinburgh International Festival & Olivier Theatre and then toured worldwide.
His concert music includes his Celtic Concerto for violin, harp, soprano, whistles and pipes, (commissioned by the Inter-Celtic Festival in Lorient); Eclipsed, premiered by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and his clarinet concerto The Awakening. A public-facing composer, he has also written “Glory of Pursuit,” the official anthem of the US Olympic Committee for the Beijing Olympic Games, and the orchestral anthem for the Queen’s Baton Relay of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
About SUUVI:
SUUVI is a Cuban-Chinese musician and multidisciplinary artist. As a performer, producer, speaker, and creator, she combines her background as a classically trained cellist with a passion for technology, innovation, storytelling, and change to create works and experiences for today’s contemporary culture through live performance, music, visual art, and film. Her work has been featured at Carnegie Hall, La Fondation Louis Vuitton, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA NY), The Fashion Institute of Technology, Lincoln Center, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Berliner Philharmonie, and other renowned performance venues and art institutions worldwide. She has also toured as the featured soloist in Hans Zimmer’s live show and frequently collaborates with dancers and choreographers from companies including American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet, NY City Ballet, The Dutch National Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, BODYTRAFFIC, The National Ballet of Canada to create original works for live performance and film.
