The neural network will name your next band

lewisandquark:

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.

The neural network is here to help.

Prof. Mark Riedl of Georgia Tech, who recently provided the world a dataset of all the stories with plot summaries on Wikipedia, (enabling this post on neural net story names) now used his Wikipedia-extraction skills to produce a list of all the bands with listed discographies - about 84,000 in all.

I gave the list to the Char-rnnneural 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.

For example, I think these are probably traditional Irish bands?

The Durks of Audun Green
Sherry of Shinking Feavan
The Shurping Laudst

And these might work as metal bands:

Rabidass (band)
Killerlet (musician)
Brokin’s Killer
Flish Lipe
Supervillin
Girl Dead

These are perhaps a bit less scrutable.

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)