Join the generative art community (disco diffusion discord) to continue spreading the generative love. A lot of resources in here - all properly credited to the original authors when possible. I do my best to share resources and works on my twitter too.

General Notes on the AI Art process:

• This doc explores creating art through Google Colabs - notebooks allow anybody to write and execute code through the browser (especially well suited to machine learning, data analysis and education) and run them on Google servers

• Colab Notebooks written by other skilled users are publicly available (like Disco Diffusion) allowing you to create copies and run existing code without requiring the knowledge to write it entirely yourself.

  • You change variables and input your own prompt into the notebook to create new original results

• This is a lot of trial and error

• There are no hard rules

• The outputs become the inputs, re-iterations towards a polished vision

Colab Notebooks:

PyTTI - python text to image notebook

FiLM - Frame Interpolation for Large Images

Jukebox - for generative music

ESRGAN - Image up-scaler

‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’ - A list of many many more notebooks

Loud Disco - Disco diffusion with audio prompts

Lucid Sonic Dreams - Audio reactive visuals from mp3 files

Centipede Diffusion - Latent Diffusion and Disco Diffusion models combined

Multi Preceptor VQGAN + CLIP

Hugging face - a depot for GANs (not a notebook)

Key Notebook Features:

Note for using the notebooks: the ‘Runtime’ button on the top will be your friend; here you can:

• Restart the runtime in case of any crashes/changes

• Check your runtime type (GPU) and change to High-RAM (if you have an account)

• Run all cells once you have inputted your desired settings

To make sure everything is working and to get the download process started while you input your variables, it’s a good idea to hit ‘Run all’ as your first step when working in a notebook. Once you have changed your variables, hit the ‘Restart and Run All’ button (solves the ‘reboot for extra speed’ variable too).

Resources:

• Model comparison study by KaliYuga

• Artist Studies by remi_durant

• SUPER comprehensive style comparisons by kingdomakrillic

• Quick-eyed Sky - YouTube channel covering Disco art, prompt engineering tips…

• Tools & Resources for AI Art - a hub of notebooks used to created AI art - JAX, Disco, other GANs…

• Info on the parameters was partly based on zippy’s wonderful guide - its a must look at for this space

• Prompt Engineering by Matthew McAteer

• A study on punk modifiers by Harmeet

• Unlimited Dream Co on using initial images

• Full prompt variables examples by Euclid

• Prompt sharing reddit

• Artist style cheatsheet by Tobias Würth

• Prompt engineering guide by Phillipuss

• Prompt key words cheatsheet by kingdomakrillic

Disco Diffusion:

Disco Diffusion v5.2

https://colab.research.google.com/github/alembics/disco-diffusion/blob/main/Disco_Diffusion.ipynb

Settings/Variables:

In the Setting section of disco there are a lot of variables to play with. Jumping in an changing a bunch of variables without testing often leads to disappointing results. Below are a few key variables that have some of the biggest effects on the output and on RAM usage. Start messing around with these before exploring the more advanced features (pulled heavily from zippy’s guide)

1. Steps: 50-10000

   1. One of the most important variables, and biggest consumer of memory when set high

   2. Number of iterations, number of times the AI looks at the image and takes a step towards the prompt.

   3. There is a diminishing return for steps, as each step gets smaller in its directional movement. 250-500 is a good range generally, but going higher for detail specific prompts or intentions is possible

2. Width height:

   1. 512x minimum, needs to be in a multiple of x64

   2. Size directly relates to the render time, so smaller images will be less likely to crash and load faster

   3. An AI Upscaler can be used to take small blurry images and enhance them. Free Upscaler linked here

   4. Dimension correlate to prompt intentions, e.g. art of tall trees would be best suited for 512x1024 dimensions

3. Clip Guidance Scale: 1500 - 100000

   1. One of the most important variables, tells the AI how strongly to move towards the prompt at each step.

   2. Correlates to image size

   3. High means more specific, but too high for the relative size and the AI will distort the image

4. TV Scale (total variance denoising): 0 - 1000

   1. Smooths out details of the final image to reduce noise

   2. Set to 0 to turn it off

5. Range Scale: 0 - 1000

   1. Used to adjust color contrast with low values being higher contrast, and high values being lower contrast (reduced color palette)

   2. Set to 0 to turn it off

6. Sat(uration) Scale: 0 - 20000

   1. Adjust saturation, higher values = more saturation and vibracy

   2. Set to 0 to turn it off

7. Cutn_Batches: 1 - 8

   1. The number of ‘areas’ the image is cut into each step

   2. Changes the style, but at the cost of significant render time. Best to leave at 1, unless you are trying to study a specific prompt.

8. Init Image:

   1. If you want to use an image as a starting point rather than random noise, this is the place

   2. Download the image into your google drive file: AI → Disco Diffusion → Init images

   3. On the left side of the colab notebook, click on the ‘files’ icon

   4. Find the folder init images, right click the image you want to use a select ‘copy path’

   5. Paste that path into the init image section of the settings

9. Init Scale: 10 - 20000

   1. How much of your initial image will remain unblurred as initial noise for the diffusion

   2. How strongly the diffusion will stick to the original image at each step

   3. Needs to be balanced against CLIP Guidance Scale - too high and there wont be any changes, too low and the original will be unrecognizable (for better or worse)

10. Skip Steps: any number up to # of steps

    1. Denoising strength starts high and gradually gets lower- the first few steps of any run have so much denoising that 10-15% can be skipped without affecting the final image, while saving some render time

    2. Skip too many steps, and there will be too much noise (poorly defined objects) in the final image

    3. Don’t skip enough steps, and the image will be blown out as CLIP moves too much towards prompts (often resulting in large singular color splotches)

    4. Skipping steps is important if using an initial image, so that it doesn’t get too drowned in the initial noise

Diffusion Models:

Whenever you change which models you are using, you need to restart your runtime (click on Runtime, then any of the restart options, then run again) . Changing models is likely to cause crashes or out of memory problems (CUDA memory error).

In order of fastest/lightest to slowest/most memory consuming:

• VitB32

• RN50

• RN101

• VitB16

• RN50x4

• RN60x16

• RN50x64

• ViTL14

Prompt Engineering:

A prompt is the language input that you write in the colab which forms what you want to see. The diffusion models will look at images and try to pull what it sees to create something new to match your prompt. Understanding how these models work can be frustrating, but there are some methods to hone in on clarity and intentional results.

CLIP - stands for Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training -a transformer model from OpenAI that is used to match text embeddings with image embeddings, it works by scanning the internet for images and their associated captions then taking an average of those images (click here to see what CLIP sees in a search engine

Common Mistakes:

1. Use singular nouns or specific numbers. E.g. ‘android astronauts’ could be anything from 2 to 1000 individual androids, and would come out messy compared to ‘2 android astronauts’

2. CLIP can’t extrapolate ideas for you, avoid vague concepts. E.g. ‘animals one million years from now’ would not generate well captioned images. Instead, something like ‘animals of the future’ would be more suitable.

3. Speak in positives not negatives - a yellow cat on the internet will be captioned with ‘yellow cat’, not as ‘not a brown cat’.

Methods to get specific:

1. Mention the specific medium you want to see. E.g. ‘a matte painting of___’, ‘photorealistic 8k photography of____’ , ‘woodblock engravings of ____’

2. Stylize based on artists/ art hubs you like. ‘Trending on artstation’ is a popular variable that pulls styles that are currently trending on artstation'. E.g. ‘___ by Studio Ghibli’, ‘____ by William Blake and Leonard da Vinci’… Pick an artist that has produced works relating to the prompt you wish to see

3. Think in terms of what has a lot of photos on the internet. E.g. ‘a wizard’ compared to ‘a person who can do magic’.

4. Try throwing dates in there. Anything on the internet is fair game for the AI.

5. Emojis work too

Example list of variables to try adding to your prompts: ‘Kodak portra, maximalist, matte drawing, infrared, DeviantArt HD, ISO 200, quantum wavetracing, ukiyo-e, surrealist, 3840x2160, fauvism, masterpiece, Egyptian art, woodcut, made of ___, holographic, aftereffects, sunrays shine upon it, parallax, depth of field, deviantart, 8k 3D’

Prompt engineering guide by Philipuss

Disco Diffusion Modifiers by Harmeet and Stephen Young - explores modifiers to change the style of the prompts, e.g. ‘by Salvador Dali’ , ‘futuresynth’ , ‘steampunk’…

Getting Intentional:

• e.g. making a music video by matching lyrics to frames

• entering the words of a song/poem as the prompts for a diffusion video

• use original images/animations (or the work of others) to see something you already like in another style

  • e.g. this gif I like - ran through Disco with ‘bioluminescence’ as a prompt

• Golden Ratio:

From this reddit post: The "golden ratio" is ((1+sqrt(5)/2) = approximately 1.618. The table below gives dimensions divisible by 64 (a requirement in DD) that are roughly at this ratio.

Hopefully, this table won't look wonky. I couldn't get the table feature to work.

e.g. 1024x640 - 1.600 ratio

e.g. 1664x1024 - 1.625 ratio

Artists:

To follow, for inspiration, news in the space…

SOMNAI - started Disco Diffusion

Gandamu - also pioneering Disco Diffusion

Heaven’s Last Angel - pytti pioneer

Chris Allen (zippy)- pioneering Disco and guide goat

Euclid - share prompts with full transparency (has a discord for it)

Stephen Young - posts great studies on variables

Roope Rainisto - does a lot - great source for inspiration on creative uses

Surea.i - does studies, I like their style

Sportsracer48 - created the pytti notebooks

KaliYuga - resonance pillar, love her style

There are a lot of others I probably missed, but these folks came to the top of my mind. People share and support actively on twitter, so there is no shortage of inspiration:)

Rishis & Upanishads:

In ancient India, the holy sages, known as rishis, sought enlightenment by exploring within their bodies and minds to discover the supreme divinity hidden deep inside. Their remarkable insights and the special techniques they devised were recorded in Sanskrit scriptures called upanishads. A total of 108 upanishads are included in the Vedas, the main scriptures for all Hindu religious and spiritual practices. Twenty of those upanishads are dedicated to the theory and practice of kundalini yoga. Those yoga upanishads are the ultimate source for the entire body of teachings on kundalini yoga.

Contemporary Kundalini & Translation:

Kundalini yoga became well-known in the West largely as the result of a 1967 book in which Gopi Krishna described his amazing experiences of kundalini. Gopi Krishna was a government employee from North India whose intense meditation had awakened his dormant kundalini with astonishing and sometimes harrowing results. His book reached the shores of America just at the time when the hippies had taken great interest, both in Hindu mysticism and in psychedelic experiences from hallucinogenic drugs like LSD. Gopi Krishna's mind-bending encounters with kundalini seemed to resemble the LSD experiences of the hippies, and this perhaps, attracted them to kundalini yoga. When spiritual teachings leave the lands of their origin and are retold in different cultures and in different languages, they're subject to being revised or altered in various ways. Some changes are necessary, like the translation of Sanskrit scriptures into English. But other changes can muddle or distort the meaning of the original texts. And, all too often, spiritual teachings become totally corrupted when they're misinterpreted by people whose perspectives are utterly foreign to the originals. For example, a famous book on the seven chakras written by C.W. Leadbeater was filled with Western occultism and doctrines of the Theosophical Society of which Leadbeater was member. Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, gave a seminar on kundalini yoga as a method for individuation, which is a special therapeutic process he devised. More recently, Yogi Bhajan brought his highly personalized version of kundalini yoga from India to the United States, replacing its traditional Sanskrit mantras with others from his own Sikh religion.

Westernized Chakras:

Westernized versions of the chakras present them in hues of the rainbow instead of their traditional colors, and associate them with emotions, which the rishis never intended. The New Age movement has commodified the chakras, using them to advertise crystals, colorful stones, scented oils, and self-improvement seminars… The rishis seem to have deliberately left many details up to the imagination of practitioners, and this suggests that the rishis' creative use of deliberate superimposition could legitimately be used by later practitioners as well. Based on this, modern adaptations, like rainbow-hued chakras, could certainly be considered acceptable, so I have to reconsider my earlier condemnation of what I called, distortions and misrepresentations of contemporary Western yogis. If a particular adaptation is truly helpful for practitioners, then it need not be criticized. But we can't be naive; not all adaptations are helpful. Some might even be detrimental, like modifications introduced by unqualified teachers or by gurus with ulterior motives like those who charge a fee for shaktipaat.

Suggestion and Experience Seeking:

Students with intense physical reactions to Kundalini were taught that whenever a chakra is pierced, kundalini will produce spontaneous vocalizations and body movements. This isn't taught in the yoga upanishads. But when students are led to believe that occasional shrieks and jerks are sure signs of progress, a suggestion is planted in their minds that can trigger reactions later. Psychologists say that suggestions like these work in the same way as placebos. A patient's trust in a doctor enables a placebo to actually produce desirable effects. Similarly, student's trust in a guru enables meditation to produce reactions like those we observed. Swami Dayananda was highly critical of the way kundalini yoga is usually taught, and he put the blame on the problem of experience seeking. He said, many modern gurus put far too much emphasis on gaining spiritual experiences, and not enough emphasis on gaining spiritual wisdom. All experiences are temporary, including experiences of kundalini. After a powerful spiritual experience comes and goes, you might remain utterly unchanged, unless you actually learn something from that experience.

Primary and Secondary Cause:

If enlightenment is gained through spiritual knowledge, then what's the point of raising your kundalini and piercing your chakras? To answer this, we have to discern two distinct factors that are required to accomplish anything, factors the rishis called primary cause and secondary cause. If you want to make rotis for lunch from flour and water, the primary cause is fire, since a fire's heat can bake bread. A stove and pan are also needed, but they don't produce heat, so they're considered secondary causes. For any goal, primary and secondary causes are both necessary (reflected by Shiva and Shakti); without a fire, stove, or pan, you won't have any rotis to eat. This demonstrates an important point: Spiritual knowledge is the primary cause for enlightenment, because it can remove the veil of ignorance and reveal the divinity within. But yoga is the secondary cause. So, without yoga, enlightenment is impossible. Both spiritual knowledge and yoga are required, as the Yoga Tattva Upanishad says: Without yogic practice, how can spiritual knowledge free you from suffering? Without spiritual knowledge, how can yogic practice free you from suffering? Both are required for liberation. Many kinds of yogic practices can help you gain enlightenment, including karma yoga – selfless service, raja yoga - meditation, bhakti yoga - devotion, hatha yoga - postures and breathing exercises, and of course, kundalini yoga.

Non-tangible Elements:

The nadis and pranas are not material in nature; they're subtle, non- tangible. Your brain is tangible; it weighs about two pounds. But your mind is not tangible; it has no size or weight. In the same way, the nadis and pranas are non-tangible, subtle, unlike the nerves and blood vessels in your body. There are three main nadis, the sushumna which rises inside your spine from its base to the crown of the head, the ida, which terminates at your left nostril, and the pingala, which terminates at your right nostril.

Chakras:

Do chakras and nadis actually exist inside our bodies, or are they just concepts envisioned by the rishis long ago? When addressing this question, many scholars and practitioners fall into the trap of treating nadis and chakras identically: either both are real, or both are imagined. But, this assumption turns out to be incorrect. First of all, nadis belong to a pre-scientific model of the human nervous system, but the seven chakras are not part of that model, because chakras are not involved in channeling prana throughout the body. Nadis direct the flow of prana, not chakras, which serve a very different purpose. To understand how chakras are different, consider this: Nadis are widely referred to in all 108 upanishads, but chakras are mentioned mostly in the 20 yoga upanishads. This shows that that chakras have a more specialized role than nadis, a role specific to the practice of kundalini yoga. What is that role? Chakras are richly symbolic forms that have been envisioned by the rishis and deliberately superimposed on the body for the sake of meditation, like the deities and sacred places in the body imagined during the practice of inner pilgrimage. Deliberate superimposition, of this sort, is widely used, like when we superimpose the God of the cosmos on statues standing barely three feet tall, or when we superimpose monetary value on little bits of paper. Such symbolism is powerful and useful, as it is in kundalini yoga, when chakras and their associated deities are deliberately superimposed at locations along the spine to serve as focal points for meditation. Now we can see the difference between nadis and chakras. Nadis are part of a model for the human nervous system, which obviously exists. Chakras, on the other hand, are deliberately superimposed on the body, and are to be visualized during meditation. To explain this difference, scholars say we have to differentiate between descriptive statements and prescriptive statements. Descriptive statements describe the nature of existent things, whereas prescriptive statements prescribe or specify what we should or shouldn't do. When we interpret scriptures, it's crucial to correctly determine which statements are descriptive and which are prescriptive. Many modern practitioners believe that chakras truly exist inside their bodies. Fortunately, this belief is extremely helpful in the practice of kundalini yoga. To believe in the divinity of a three-foot tall statue on an altar helps people pray. To believe that these little bits of paper are valuable helps us buy things. And to believe that chakras truly exist inside the body helps practitioners meditate. All these beliefs are helpful. The value of a belief is not in its veracity, but in its ability to help us. Beliefs are not right or wrong; they are helpful or harmful. And to believe in the existence of chakras is an exceedingly helpful belief, one that need not be challenged or dismissed.

Shiva & Shakti:

****The creation of the universe is said to result from the union of Shiva, the masculine principle, and Shakti, the feminine principle. Here, Shiva and Shakti are not the four-armed deities familiar to Hindus. Shiva is the fabric of reality that gives existence to everything, like clay gives existence to pots and bowls. Because clay is inert, a separate creative force is needed to transform it into various objects. Similarly, Shiva lacks the creative force needed to produce the universe. Only when Shiva is accompanied by Shakti's infinite creative power can the universe arise. Shakti infuses everything in the cosmos with energy, including every atom in your body. In this way, Shakti is present within you, and it is this inner presence that is called kundalini shakti.

Samadhi:

Some contend that kundalini yoga is a self-sufficient means for liberation or enlightenment. But, all forms of yoga, including kundalini yoga, are secondary causes for enlightenment. To get enlightened through kundalini yoga alone is like making rotis with a pan and stove, but no fire. The primary cause for enlightenment is spiritual knowledge, which removes the veil of ignorance and reveals your true nature. Kundalini yoga helps you gain that knowledge by leading you to a state of meditative absorption known as samadhi. Samadhi is the goal of many meditation techniques, and for good reason. In that state of absorption, all distracting mental activities are removed, and all that remains is you, your true nature, stripped of everything that's not you. After emerging from samadhi, you have an opportunity to grasp a life-changing lesson from that unique experience -- that your true nature is pure consciousness, utterly independent of your body, mind, and the world around you. In this way, the state of samadhi produced by kundalini yoga can be a gateway to enlightenment.

I fell into a state of absorption, samadhi, just like I had many times before using other techniques. Samadhi is somewhat like being blissfully immersed in deep sleep, except that you remain fully awake. When you wake up from sleep, you know you slept; when you emerge from samadhi, you know you were absorbed. Anyone who experiences samadhi for the first time will find it a great achievement. And anyone who discovers their true nature to be pure consciousness, utterly independent of the mind, body, and world, will find this recognition to be absolutely life changing. Without doubt, many practitioners of kundalini yoga have reached these great heights and were blessed by their efforts. But my prior practice has already blessed me in these ways, so my experience of kundalini's triumphant ascent seemed to lack the tremendous intensity that other practitioners describe.

This technique is rather complex, so it needs lots of time to learn and practice. More than that, kundalini yoga seems like a difficult way to gain a state of absorption that can more easily be reached through other techniques. But then, if there are easier paths to samadhi, why is kundalini yoga so widely taught? Its popularity is very likely in response to the problem of experience seeking. The pursuit of worldly experiences can prevent people from seeking spiritual growth. But, if kundalini yoga promises them exciting new experiences, they might consider practicing it. Then, their practice could lead them to realize that something far more valuable than exciting experiences is within reach. Such a recognition could wean them away from experience seeking, and incline them to pursue enlightenment instead

Bhastrika Pranayama:

It's often called bellows breath, because of its vigorous exhalations. Bellows are used to force air into a fire to raise its temperature. Bhastrika pranayama certainly raised my temperature; it's very energizing. With each exhalation, I also pulsed my abdomen muscles, which shook the organs inside the trunk of my body, where the muladhara chakra is located. This shaking is said to help wake up the serpent sleeping there.

Root Chakra:

Our inner pilgrimage begins with the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine. Mula means root, and this chakra is the root or starting place for this practice. Each of the lowest five chakras represent one of the five elements known in ancient times - earth, water, fire, air, and space - from the most gross, earth, to the most subtle, space. Inside the muladhara chakra, the element earth is represented by a yellow square. It's interesting that the yoga upanishads specify colors for each of the five elements, but they say nothing about the color of each chakra.

Sacral Chakra:

The svadhisthana chakra, also known as the sacral chakra. Svadhisthana means the seat of existence, and this chakra is fittingly located at your seat, the sacrum. It has six petals and is associated with the element water, which is represented by a white crescent moon. Vam is the mantra for the element water. The deity abiding in this chakra is Vishnu, God in its aspect as sustainer of the universe. Just as the element water sustains life, Vishnu sustains the world.

Manipura (Naval) Chakra:

Manipura means abode of gems. It's also called nabhi chakra, because it's located behind the nabhi or navel. It not accurate to call it solar plexus chakra, because that plexus is located well above the navel. The manipura chakra has ten petals and is associated with the element fire, which is represented by a red triangle. Ram is the mantra for the element fire. The deity abiding in this chakra is Rudra, a fierce aspect of Shiva, usually depicted as a warrior or hunter.

Heart Chakra:

Anahata chakra, the so-called heart chakra, located along the spine at chest level. Anahata means that which cannot be struck, injured or killed, referring to one's soul. This chakra has twelve petals and is associated with the element air, aptly so, being near the lungs. The element air is represented by a smoky, six-pointed figure. Yam is the mantra for the element air. The deity abiding in the anahata chakra is a beneficent form of Shiva, depicted as looking in all directions simultaneously, to bless everyone. Shiva is often called god of destruction, but it might be more accurate to call him, god of transformation, purification, and growth, since all these depend on the destruction of a prior condition, so a new and better state can arise.

Throat Chakra:

Vishuddha chakra, located at the throat. Vishuddha means pure, untainted. This chakra has sixteen petals and is associated with the element space, which is represented by a transparent circle. Ham is the mantra for this element. The deity abiding in the vishuddha chakra is the bi-gendered form of Shiva, whose right side is male and left side is female. This form of Shiva reminds us that none of us are exclusively male or female; nature is exuberant in its diversity and avoids such absolute divisions. Meditating on this form helped me accept feminine qualities which are as much a part of me as the masculine ones.

Ajna (Mind) Chakra:

Between my eyebrows. Ajna means a command or order, which shows this chakra's association with the mind, our so-called command center. Even though the ajna chakra is located between the eyebrows, to call it third eye chakra is problematic, since the yoga upanishads make no references to a third eye. The ajna chakra is completely different from the others. It's not associated with a particular deity or any of the five elements. And since it's not associated with an element, it has no mantra, although later traditions associate it with the mantra, om. The ajna chakra stands at the threshold between the five elemental chakras in the body below and the transcendent sahasrara chakra above. From muladhara upwards, each chakra has an increasing number of petals, but the ajna has only two. Even though the rishis don't specify a deity for this chakra, they do prescribe visualizing a linga of light, by which they mean a form of Shiva as pure consciousness within the ajna chakra. But there's a misnomer here - you can't actually meditate on consciousness because as the meditator, you are that very consciousness. You can only meditate on objects in your mind which are illumined by the light of consciousness. So, in Vedanta, to meditate on consciousness means to meditate on the meditator, that is, to reflect on your own essential nature as pure consciousness.

Sahasrara (Crown) Chakra:

Sahasra means one thousand, which is the number of petals in the sahasrara chakra at the crown of the head. The rishis give no further details about this chakra. In fact, in many texts, the sahasrara is not considered a chakra at all. It lies beyond the chakras, outside the body; it's usually depicted on the outer surface of the head, not within it. In Hindu scripture, the number one thousand stands for infinity, suggesting that the sahasrara chakra is infinite in height and breadth, infinite in brilliance, infinite in splendor. When kundalini shakti finally reaches this limitless expanse, it's amazing journey is complete. According to the rishis, after ascending to the sahasrara chakra, kundalini shakti merges into pure consciousness and loses its individuality altogether.

There are plenty of options for this process, as each tool by itself is capable of sorting musical data and creating new playlists by themselves. The combination recommended below is what has worked best for me, but as you get familiar with the tool (dw, the UI is very friendly on all) you might find your own most suitable path!

The majority of people have a deep understanding of their listening profile purely from a subjective perspective. With the emotionality of music this is not something one should move away from. But understanding and harnessing the data available to us can help us broaden our horizons as a music listener, and discover whole new rabbit holes of genres, artists and feelings to explore.

Steps

1. Identify the playlist(s) you want to use as your base material. The data we will be working with will be based off the songs in the playlist.

   (I will be doing an example step by step) e.g. I choose to use this playlist

   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7lJapLbR1ogCx5LHtIW49I?si=25562cf9f19149d1

   
   

2. On Skiley, find that playlist in the playlists tab

Hover over the playlist, then select ‘filter by genre’.

In this case, I see that my top five genres in this playlist are ‘Deep House’, ‘Float House’, ‘Deep Soul House’, ‘Disco House’, and ‘Techno’. Remember these top genres (or write them down) - we need this info for the next step

3. Open Everynoise.com and find those genres. Clicking on them will give you a display of the top artists belong to those genres

e.g. this is the map created for Deep House. Clicking on an artist name preview’s their most listened to track.

At this point in the process you now have access to a lot of valuable information. The buttons on top of Everynoise titled ‘Playlist, Intro, Pulse, Edge…’ are all playlists specific to that genre. If you want to be involved in the playlist creation, this is where you can how start actively listening to new sounds and intentionally curating the playlist. If you want to have the entire process driven by data however, read on. (Note at this point the process becomes increasingly malleable.)

4. Open each Everynoise page for your top 5 genres, and select a playlist for each. Add the contents of each of those playlists into a new playlist that you create

e.g. I would open the Everynoise pages for ‘Deep House’, ‘Float House’, ‘Deep Soul House’, ‘Disco House’, and ‘Techno’. If I was making this playlist for a fellow music head, I might select the ‘Pulse’ playlist option on the top. If it’s for a musical newbie, maybe the ‘Intro’ option. In each playlist, I ctrl+A, then move the contents into a New Playlist.

5. With the mega playlist you just created, now head over to SortYourMusic. This platform gives each track in a playlist a score out of 100 for each of the main dataset collected by Spotify, these are ‘BPM, Energy, Dance, Loud, Valence, Length, Acoustic, Popularity’.

You will use these values to hone in further on the specific variables of music that you like. Refer back to your original playlist, open it in SortYourMusic, and notice what these scores are - e.g. is your average valence low? what is your average danceability score?

Determine your own cutoff values for each variable, e.g. if Valence has a score of 50, I want to do +/- 5 in each direction.

From here, open the New Playlist you created, and filter out all song outside the range of 45 - 55 in Valence. This process can be applied to one dataset, many or all. It is up to you :)

e.g. I opened my original playlist, musical SOC, and noticed my average Valence was quite high around 70. I want to use +/- 10 as cutoff values.

I then open my new playlist, and filter for songs within the range of 60 - 80 in Valence score

6. Now with your filtered playlist, aligned to the original genres you wanted, specified by the data, is starting to sound more and more like the original. You can stop here if you want. Otherwise, one final step is to re-open the playlist in Skiley. Tracks often span many genres, and might include elements you don’t like.

E.g. If I know anything ‘dubby’ isn’t quite my sound, I can repeat Step 2 and re-filter out any genres I don’t want to be a part of the flavor. As an added touch (for presentations sake) you can then arrange the playlist in a way that would be most helpful for the user.

This is a trial and error process I have been putting together over the years. If you have any perspectives or insights aligned to this process or you simply want to talk about it- I’m open for feedback or discussion anytime. Hmu