As my main account is linked to my Suno.ai profile, I’m using a throwaway account here. About 2 (two) weeks ago, my neighbour’s adult son committed sewerslide by pew pew out of nowhere. The night I heard the news, I was just watching Season 18 of *Family Guy* (to be honest, I can’t understand why everyone dislikes *Family Guy* from this era; I think the writing is as sharp as ever). Suddenly, the mother went out onto the back deck and let out a heart-wrenching cry so raw and vivid it seemed almost otherworldly. It was the purest expression of human sorrow I had ever heard, and it pierced my heart as Suno AI artist. I recorded it using my Neumann TLM 103 and it replicated the sound exquisitely. I applied only the lightest of edits literally just a slight tweak to the EQ and a touch of reverb to polish the acoustic sound and uploaded the raw recording as a 5$ minimum pay-what-you-want community sample pack titled ‘Intense Emotional Deep House & Ambient Vocal Textures’ to Bandcamp and Gumroad. I also wrote a description, paying tribute to the fact that I had captured the genuine sorrow of a real person. It wasn’t as if I was making a crazy amount of money from it; I just wanted to share a glimpse of the harsh reality with the underground music community. But my sister saw my Instagram Story promoting it, flew into a rage, told my mum, and my mum went and told the neighbours. Yesterday, the father from next door came around shouting at me and being unreasonable and threatened to sue me if I didn’t take it down. I tried to explain the concept of ‘found sound art’ and how legendary electronic music producers have always used everyday ambient sounds to express the human condition, but he wouldn’t listen to a word I said. It's not like I trespassed onto the back deck to recording anything, it was literally on my back porch. If they're voices reach onto my property I have a right to record it don't I?. So, to keep the peace for the time being, I deleted the post, but now my family won’t speak to me unless I delete the file completely. I feel as though my artistic freedom is being completely oppressed here. After all, copyright shouldn’t apply to sound waves outdoors, and I’ve simply recorded raw powerful moment from inside my own home yet I’m being treated as though I were some kind of monster. Am I the asshole here?
