As the market gets ever-more saturated, effects pedal names have gotten pretty silly. So silly, in fact, that we might as well let computers automatically generate them based on a database of existing stompbox monikers. Well, that’s exactly what tech blog AI Weirdness got up to, and the results were… well, weird.
The blog’s author, Janelle Shane, fed a neural network 669 pedal names garnered from Harmony Central (with input from ilovefuzz.com), and then allowed the system to get to work, based on its knowledge of letters and words that go together in English.
Shane groups the resultant names into three categories: good, weird and unsettling.
The good ones are actually pretty plausible: A Tale Of Two Reverb Systems, The Horribly Overgrown CIA Chorus, Release the Buffalo FLYBOARD Glamour Box, Blood Orange Overdrive, Mr. Bubblegum Powered By God Tube Distortion and, simply, Booooooom are among our highlights.
Then we come to the weird: Bat Face Down Under, AshesToYourFingerBox, K.S.Aji Sea Slug Chorus, Barton Junior Finger Pan Gelato Espresso Machine and - a rare departure for the revered pickup firm - the Bare Knuckle Biochemistry Professor, Neuroscientist And Librarian.
The unsettling options are almost too philosophical to print on a metal box designed to be stepped on: Love and Sex Are A Mercy Clause, Atomic Brain Check Thank God We’re All Flying Again and Doomed To Think Or Predict in Chord Form.
Come to think of it, these would make pretty good album titles for an early-noughties emo act. Don’t go stealing our idea now.
You can see the full list of results over at AI Weirdness. Shane’s other AI experiments include generating petitions and naming cats (A+, would read again).
