Rayito de Luz

7 days ago

I’ve been inspired by the passion of flamenco music lately. I used to listen to a lot of it and even sang when nobody was around, trying to imitate the passionate inflections of the singers. I listened to both classic and modern flamenco. I’ve always dreamed of singing and playing this music, even went so far to teach myself to play the basics of guitar, but the idea never really took off.

Enter AI to the rumba.

I’ve used Udio to generate a reggaeton song before with my own lyrics, and it came out alright in spite of my linguistic limitations. There’s a lot of rhyming in the genre. Flamenco is a different style so one has to enter a different head space when creating this style of music. Being familiar with flamenco helped me in writing the lyrics by hand. I used some of the calls used in traditional and modern songs. I drafted several versions in Spanish and used a Spanish checker to refine the text’s grammar and spelling. I still ended up making mistakes, so my Spanish speaking paisanos and paisanas will have to excuse me. I did not rely on AI to write the lyrics because flamenco comes from that inspiration called duende and to the extent that I could summon up that spirit in my poetry, I crafted the following words:

Caminando por senderos
Mirándote, Lunita hermosa
Toda la noche y alba
Por luz tan preciosa.

¡Guapa! ¡Guapa!

Otros caminos
Dímelo, luna tierna,
ai que otros caminos tú iluminas?

olé, olé, olé

Ai, esta lujuria me quema
Abrázame y bésame
resplandeciente con tu labios
Dame esta noche, Lunita
En este sendero viejo

Aiii

En este sendero viejo, Lunita,
Dame tu rayito de luz
Dame tu rayo de luz
Dame tu rayito, hermosa

Lorai Lorai Lorai

(See DeepL translation at the end)

I entered these lyrics in Udio AI music generation software. I created different versions of the song with a length of 2:10 mins. I chose two among the best songs, and the one in the video is the one that more closely matched my vision.

Those who speak Spanish will notice a number of errors, some are mine and some are the AI (yes, I’m blaming the AI). In spite of these errors, I think the final product is fantastic and really tickled my creative bone because it matches the mood and style as I thought about it.

I created the graphics and animation with xAI Imagine. The animation clips create their own sound when generated by Imagine, and I prefer not to use it, but in this case, I left the original sound from the clip at the end of the song because I think it matched well with the music.

Creatively, I originally thought about just having a single man dancing and yearning for the moon, but I think we’re all adults and know exactly what this song is all about ;) While I was tempted to animate the entire video with some dance extravaganza, I decided to keep it simple and minimal, so the focus would be on the vocals and instruments.

I put the video together in MS ClipChamp. Thank you for viewing and listening.