An important part of starting a new band is choosing an appropriate name. It is crucial that the name be unique, or you could risk at best confusion, and at worst an expensive lawsuit.
I gave the list to the Char-rnn neural network framework, and it was soon producing unique band names for a variety of genres. Below are examples of its output at various temperature (i.e. creativity) settings.
Temperature 1.1
This is about as high as the creativity setting can go before most of the band names are unpronounceable jumbles. These are some fine band names, highly suitable for whatever the heck their genres are supposed to be.
Spice Green Robinson Gloome Schronnana Boofpas The Freights Nighty Daggers The Loveburners of Internal Watch Foxettes Ratimot Secret singer band The Dougloco The Theps Choconard Leach Rhoudemsquat Terrerssky? Flemz Mighty Chipping Baker Bop Gray (band)
Temperature 1.0
With the creativity turned down a bit, the band names are still weird, but a bit more plausible. Their genres can sometimes be identified.
Dr Overhard The Arce (band) The Tree Misters Reilling Ef (rapper) Flim Brothers Ching Mage Nan Edwards (folk singer) Nittle Bizzy The Dinlakoposseps Skins of Space Michael Porker The Lost singers The Nutlet Band The Rogue Orchestra The Fuman.A.I.((band) Vervoly Brown (urtist) Boohalloid (group) The Ballening Birds Lice Stepley
Temperature 0.9
With the creativity turned down a notch further, the band names become even more plausible. You could probably convince me that these exist.
No Andrew Newson Fuzion (band) The Wurfywinders Clay Fights Berry Stitcher Something Rothers The Awl The Thingsons Switch’s Rich Lug Pond Billy The Hums (band) Northern Prince (Indian band) Staff Killer
Temperature 0.6
Turn the creativity down another notch, and we start to edge toward the neural network’s idea of the most quintessential band names. Note that they’re still pretty weird.
Dub Arts Sheet Rose Heart Coil Elliot Horse Big Love The Mothers (band) The Time Stars Hulls of Girls Sucken (band) Electric Sing Show The Pans Symphony No. 3 (Dinish band) Hell Staple (band) Peter Parker Bad Head The Out Cookers Flower Shankar The Hat Coles
Temperature 0.3
Now at a creativity setting of only 0.3, almost all the band names are variations on “The [Noun]”.
The Shines The Deaths The Dance (band) The Livers (band) The Stone Choir The Shake Man (band)
Another strange thing happens, which is that the proportion of sharks goes way, way up. Apparently the neural network thinks that if you’re going to name a band, you can’t go wrong with sharks.
Johnny Shark The Shark Charles Shark Rander The Shark (band) Nicole Shark Shark Gordon Shark Taylor (musician) The Shark Singers Tony Shark
Temperature 0.01
And now we come to the lowest temperature setting, where the neural network’s output consists of the most-quintessential band name, repeated over and over. Throughout most of the training process, this name was “The Stars” and occasionally “The Brothers”, but there was one generation where the neural network repeatedly insisted that there was nothing… nothing more fundamental to music than the banjo-playing skills of:
Steve Martin (musician) Steve Martin (musician) Steve Martin (musician) Steve Martin (musician) Steve Martin (musician) Steve Martin (musician) Steve Martin (musician) Steve Martin (musician)
The Fuman.A.I. is trying to be the next They Might Be Giants, but doesn’t understand the difference between “weird” and “gimmicky.” Brokin’s Killer plays a surprisingly diverse range of genres, including a joke folk/bossa nova concept album.
When I first heard the term CIS being used on Tumblr, I didn’t know it meant being comfortable with your assigned gender. I thought this whole site was talking about the Confederacy of Independent Systems. As in
the Sith’s droid army, and when everyone was saying “CIS scum” they were calling people out on being Sith
Every so often this post dies out and then spikes my activity again
