A poster of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain hanging in a Seattle business. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The death of Kurt Cobain 27 years ago today left fans of Nirvana forever wondering what new music the celebrated grunge band might have produced over the years. A group has turned to artificial intelligence in search of an answer.

Lost Tapes of the 27 Club is a project which relies mostly on computers to write and perform songs in the styles of musicians who died at age 27, including Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse. According to Rolling Stone, each track was created by AI programs analyzing up to 30 songs by each artist, studying such things as vocal melodies, chord changes, guitar riffs, solos and more to guess what a “new” composition might sound like.

The project was created by Toronto-based Over the Bridge, which helps members of the music industry struggling with mental illness. Their intention is to draw attention to the tragedy of Cobain’s death by suicide and how living musicians can get help with depression.

Using software to try to approximate Cobain’s songwriting and guitar playing, “Drowned in the Sun” does have some Nirvana-esque qualities. The singing duty falls to Eric Hogan, lead singer for Atlanta-based Nevermind, which bills itself as the ultimate Nirvana tribute band.

According to Rolling Stone, the project relied on the Google AI program Magenta, which learns how to compose in the style of given artists by analyzing their works. Previously, Sony has used the software to make a “new” Beatles song.

“Magenta analyzed the artists’ songs as MIDI files, which works similarly to a player-piano scroll by translating pitch and rhythm into a digital code that can be fed through a synthesizer to recreate a song. After examining each artist’s note choices, rhythmic quirks, and preferences for harmony in the MIDI file, the computer creates new music that the staff could pore over to pick the best moments.”

Hogan told the magazine that when he first heard the music he was unsure how he would sing to it.

“I had to have the guy who came up with the AI track mumble and hum [the tune],” he told Rolling Stone. “I would feel weird trying to assume what [Cobain] would do. They had to give me a little bit of a roadmap, and then from there, it was fine.”

Hogan said “Drowned in the Sun” is accurate enough to get a Nirvana vibe, but not so accurate that lawyers are going to come calling.

“Kurt would just sort of write whatever the hell he felt like writing. And if he liked it, then that was a Nirvana song,” Hogan told Rolling Stone. “I can hear certain things in the arrangement of [‘Drowned in the Sun’] like, ‘OK, that’s kind of an ‘In Utero’ vibe right here or a ‘Nevermind’ vibe right here. … I really understood the AI of it.”

“Kurt Cobain: On the Muddy Banks,” is an augmented reality artwork by D.S. Bradford in Cobain’s hometown of Aberdeen, Wash. (Image courtesy of D.S. Bradford)

Meanwhile, in Cobain’s hometown of Aberdeen, Wash., technology is being used for another type of art.

D.S. Bradford has created an image of Cobain as part of his “icon murals” project that uses augmented reality and can be viewed via mobile device when in a specific location in the town.

“Each piece is tied to a place of significance to the music artist portrayed in each work and is viewable in the real world using the GPS coordinates of the location. Once a visitor is in that location, the portal can be accessed by the click of a button,” it says on Bradford’s website.

Bradford also has AR/location-based art for John Lennon, Chris Cornell, Prince and others.

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