Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler has embraced AI technology when creating new songs for his upcoming solo album. The metal legend has utilized the help of an AI singer to present tracks to real-life vocalists who will contribute to the forthcoming LP.
Butler — who released three solo albums under the monikers g//z/r, geezer, and GZR from 1995 through 2005 — was asked if he was working on new solo material during a Q&A session at the recent Steel City Con in Monroeville, Pennsylvania.
“Oh, gosh, I’ve got tons of stuff,” he responded (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).”Since we finished the last Sabbath show [at ‘Back to the Beginning’ in July], I’ve just been going through all the stuff that I’ve written since the ’80s onwards and updating everything. And what held me back before, I didn’t have a singer when I’m at home, but AI came along. [laughs] So all my songs now, I’ve updated them all and I’m using an AI singer to bring all the lyrics out.”
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He continued, “So, now I can take it to singers that I’m gonna be working with and go, ‘This is what I want on the album,’ so they’ve got a better idea. Before I was just, like, playing them a bass riff or something, going, ‘Can you sing to this?’ And they’d be going, ‘Yeah.’ [Laughs] But it’s so much better now, ’cause you can sit in your studio and do everything on AI, and then take it to proper musicians and let them take over. It’s really helped me. A lot of people think it’s cheating.”
When further asked about his songwriting process, Butler focused on Black Sabbath, answering, “With Sabbath, we’d sit down in a room together and just jam and jam and jam until somebody came up with something that we could work with. Once we had a good riff to write to, we’d finish the music part of it. Ozzy [Osbourne] would sing his vocal line, then I’d write the lyrics. So, it mainly came from jamming.”
Butler, who ranks No. 21 on Consequence‘s list of the 100 Greatest Bassists of All Time, released his first solo album, Plastic Planet, in 1995 with Fear Factory’s Burton C. Bell on vocals. His second two albums — 1997’s Black Science and 2005’s Ohmwork — featured Clark Brown on vocals.
See Geezer Butler’s Q&A session at Steel City Con below.
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