[Solaria II] Filia Fraudis (WIP original song)

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Filia Fraudis (feat. Solaria II)

Soundcloud - Filia Fraudis

Lyrics: me (with ChatGPT’s assistance to translate to Latin)
Vocals: Solaria II
Music: Suno (instrumental stem from Suno-generated song)

This is my very first track and is still WIP.

I never used Synthesizer V (or anything else similar) or a DAW before, learning on the fly as I go.
To my untrained ears, the vocal track is shaping up and is already starting to sound good, but I am pretty sure it can be made better yet.
To those who have more experience than me at this (that should probably be most of you!), would you have suggestions as to what I could do next to improve this song? Either within Synthesizer V or the post-processing in my DAW.
I’ve got a compressor, delay and EQ, but still learning how they work. It defenitely sounds better than the raw output from Synthesizer V, but is most likely not optimal yet.

If you know Latin and spot mistakes, please let me know so I can correct them!
It went through numerous review/validation/correction passes with ChatGPT, but some mistakes might still be present. Take note that it is written in poetic language, so it make uses of ellipses, word inversions and such, but according to ChatGPT, these are acceptable under poetic license.

Prononciation mistakes are possible too. I used mostly the Suno song as reference, referring to the IPA when I had doubts. The Suno song was inconsistent as to the use of classical vs ecclesiastical. It should all be ecclesiastical, and I fixed the inconsistencies I found.

Below are the lyrics of the song. They represent a fictional 14th century prophecy I created as a central part of a story I am working on.

Filia Fraudis

Dies veniet, Dominus Fraudis,
Regnabit orbe, potestatis.
Via sequenda, fati clavis,
Filia Fraudis cardinalis.

Ritus obscurus certe eveniet,
Orbem hunc et inferos iunget.
Nascetur infans cum nota certa,
Filia Fraudis erit vocata.

Argenteus draco volans per caelum,
Interficietur, ruet ad exitum.
Ultimum ignem spiritu exhalans,
Sigillum hostis omnibus monstrans.

Filia Fraudis draconis casum
Praedicet; fatum hoc certum,
Hoc eventu vires excitabit,
Illam ad fatum deducit.

Mori necesse erit atque ire,
Ad dominum obscurum perveniet.
Iter rursus ab umbris redier,
Veritas cognita, nomen firmum.

Vires solutae ferent insaniam,
Et ad mortem ducent per viam.
Fatum suum complens artem accipiat,
Illam per artem fatum fugiat.

Dominus Fraudis in hunc mundum vocient,
Filia Fraudis se volens illi tradat,
Corde, corpore, anima donet,
Sic fatum suum totum impleat.

Sic Dominus Fraudis hunc mundum veniet,
Ipse et Filia Fraudis in unum aeternum.

3 Likes
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It’s an interesting idea. Big props for doing the vocals in Latin… I guess. I would think your listening audience would be a bit limited. That said, the vocals sound OK at this point. Several parts are pushing the edge of Solaria’s upper range and sound strained and less real. I don’t use Solaria much, but I hear her in other people’s work and she can get pretty high. I don’t know what people do with the Parameters in those places, but you might try some adjustments (Tension, Bold) to make it less thin and screechy in those spots. As for the song itself, it does tend to run on and on, especially since there’s no lyrical hook I can hold on to or follow a story arc. On the plus side, it does have nice drive and energy.

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Thanks for listening and for your feedback!

Yes, maybe my audience would be limited, but my target audience is actually myself. I create my music first and formost for my own listening enjoyment, and if others like it too, that’s noce, but not my main goal.

This song is one of my two more experimental songs, from it being in Latin, but also it does not follow a typical song structure with verses and chorus. It does not event have a chorus, and that might be part of what made it feel to you like its running on and on (in addition to being in Latin). And that is because it did not start out as a song, but as an ancient (fictionnal) prophecy in a story I am working on. A few months ago, I had the idea to use Suno to create a (single) theme song for my story. Then I got inspired for another song, and one more, and I ended up with a 16 songs album about themes from my story.

For this one, I wondered what result I would get if I tried to input the prophecy’s text as lyrics for a Suno song, not expecting too much. But it turns out Suno handled Latin unexpectedly well, except for not being consistant regarding the use of classical vs ecclesiastical prononciation, and form the numerous generations I tried, I got this version when I liked very much, even though its not exactly mainstream.

Now I set myself to use the Suno generated songs as prototypes to rebuild a song not AI generated with virtual instrments in my DAW and Synthesizer V for vocals, starting with the vocals.

I chose this one as the first song to rebuild the vocals in Synth V because this was the one that would push Solaria to her limits the most, and also I wanted to know how well it would do with the Latin lyrics. If Solaria can handle this one, then she can probably handle all the others.

Thanks for pointing out about the upper range, I will experiment a bit with vocal modes and parameters and see what works best. Perhaps tone down Power and Passionate a bit in these areas.

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I’m right there with you in terms of creating music to satisfy my own vision before worrying about any wider audience. Many of my pieces likewise skip the verse/chorus structure. While not in Latin, I did a piece a while ago using several cantos from Dante’s Divine Comedy as lyrics. Though I admit I did use an English translation, and played with a few words and phrases to try and make it more of a “song” than a recitation. Stream Danté's Purgatorio by Keith Parks | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
One other counterintuitive thought - you might try more Power and Passionate in Solaria’s upper range, rather than less, to give her voice more body.
So for those of us who are not you, do you have an English translation of the Latin? ;^)

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I had the same thought about maybe using more power rather than less.

I’ll go check your link later tonight, in the meantime, her is the English version.

This is not a 100% word for word translation. I kept it close to the Latin words, but adjusted slightly for better English word flow.

A day will come where The Lord of Lies
will rule over this world.
A path to be followed, key to this fate,
Where the Daughter of Lies will be pivotal.

A dark ritual will occur,
An union of this world and the next.
A child will be born bearing a mark,
The Daughter of Lies she will be called.

A silver dragon flying through the skies,
will be slain and fall to its demise.
It’s last dying fiery breath,
It’s nemesis’ mark, it will show to all.

The fall of the dragon The Daughter of Lies
will foretell, an inevitable fate.
This event will awaken her powers,
and set her on her destiny.

It will be necessary to die and go,
To reach the dark lord.
A journey back from the darkness,
A truth revealed, a name established.

Powers unbound will lead to madness,
And eventually death,
If she fulfills her destiny, she will gain the skill,
That will allow her to avoid this fate.

“They” will summon The Lord of Lies.
The Daughter of Lies will willingly pledge herself to him,
In her heart, body and soul.
Thus will her destiny be fulfilled.

Thus will the Lord of Lies come to this world,
He and The Daughter of Lies eternally joined.

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Indeed in your song, like in mine, the source material doesn’t always lend itself well to a verse/chorus structure, but may nevertherless make an interesting concept for a song. While not really my type of music (I am usually more inclined towards rock and metal), it does sound good, and (at least to my newbie ears) appears well made. The mood of the song appears to fit the mood of the lyrics. Is your song made with a Synth V voice? If so, I wouldn’t event have suspected it if not coming from a SynthV-related discussion!

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Since you’re still tweaking - if you don’t mind some feedback… IMO the vocals are much too hot in the mix - they should float over the top, not dominate. Maybe also add a bit of space/reverb to help them blend - you want the perception that the singer in in the same physical place as the band.

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Thanks for your feedback, no I don’t mind them at all, on the contrary, they are welcome! I am new to this and I want to learn how to improve.
When you say the vocals are too hot, you mean too loud compared the the music? I did make an adjustment to the relative loudness of both tracks, but apparently not enough. I’ll try that, thanks.
And yes I think you are right about the reverb. I have a bit of delay, but after listening to the track a few more times, I feel it might indeed be too weak.
That gives me good hints at what to try next :slight_smile:

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Hello, a friend of mine teaches Latin at a secondary school. Should I ask him to have a look at the lyrics and send him the link?

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I would someday like to do a more extended piece from that source material as lyrics. Yes, that is the SynthV voice of Natalie.

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If you don’t mind and he doesn’t either, maybe, but I’ll admit it will get me a little anxious (I just hope he doesn’t say its complete rubbish!).
If you do show him, he should keep in mind that this is fictional poetic work, and as such, does not always follow standard constructs and uses poetic license. The lyrics are sometimes elliptic or make use of hyperbaton. I admit, I had to look up the meaning of that word when I asked ChatGPT to review the Latin version. It is a figure of speech that transposes the natural word order in a sentence. Highly inflected languages where the sentence meaning does not closely depend on word order, such as Latin and ancient Greek, allow for more flexibility in that regards, and this is considered perhaps as the most distinctively alien feature regarding Latin word order (quoting wikipedia here).

And to answer the comment you wrote in the thread of your song, this song will not find its place in my project, it already has its integral part in it!
The prophecy is the very core of the story I am working on, story upon which all my songs are based. The lyrics for 16 songs are already written, with a new one in progress, and I have a Suno-generated prototype for all of them.
The next part of what I would like to do is to create a human-made “cover” of the Suno prototypes, using Synth V for vocals along with virtual instruments in a DAW, so that the final song does not contain AI-generated tracks anymore.

You said the Latin verses make you expect very dark things. Yes, the story is kinda dark indeed.

The main character, Lilly, is investigating a series of strange and mysterious events that have one element in common: a mysterious symbol, the same one she sees in the troubled nightmares she has been having since she was a child, the same one she has as a birthmark on her shoulder. Her most recent dream, unlike all those before she could not remember, was crystal clear, and she witnessed a tragic event (the “fall of the silver dragon” which is actually a plane crash) before it actually happened. The fires of the accident strangely formed a shape that looked very much like that symbol again. She also has come across fragments of the prophecy, and knows she is somehow connected to all this.

Through her investigation, she will unravel the truths – and the lies – surrounding her very existence, and learn the dark secret buried deep within her: she is the half-blooded spawn of a demon lord. She will have to learn to cope with this new reality and the clashing duality within her. Meanwhile, the Lord of Lies worshippers in this world will attempt to tip her over to her dark side, in order to push her towards the path required by the prophecy and bring their master into this world, thus completing the plan they have set in motion 20 years earlier when they triggered Lilly’s birth. And Lilly will learn the hard way the brutal truth that her entire life was a cobweb of lies and manipulation around her, designed to trap her into that outcome. But ultimately, rather than follow the path set for her by others, her free-will will prevail over destiny and prophecy, and she will thread her own path, make her own destiny, beating them at their own game – she’s The Daughter of Lies after all, it’s in her blood. But given the moral compass of her human soul, she has the free-will to use it to do good rather than evil.

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Ok, i’ll send him the lyrics.
Thank you for explaining me your project! Wow, that’s epic, gigantic. For me, it seems to be more a script for a new three-part novel à la Lord of the Rings. Astonishing. Or have you already published similar things? You look quite young. And you’ve poured it all into 17 songs?! Are the songs connected by a narrator who tells the things that can not be told in the songs? Arjen Lucassen = Ayreon does such things, but I find narration disturbing. Genesis in “Lamb lies down oon Broadway” printed the story in prose in the double-album cover’s inner side.
Well, I hope I’ll hear of the progress you’re making with your project now and then!

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Funny you mention a trilogy and LotR: LotR is one of my favorite book series (along with Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time), and I am indeed planning a trilogy. The descirption I gave above is for the first part. But, while it will have it’s epic moments, it will be nowhere near the extensive scope and world building these works have. As primarily a supernatural mystery thriller set in our contemporary world (plus a bit in the Underworld), it does not call for creating an entire fantasy world with its people and history.

And no, I have never published - or even written - anything yet. I always had a vivid imagination, creating characters and stories in my head, and now I have decided to try making something concrete out of it.

I am not too keen on narrative parts connecting the songs either, and there is no narrative around the songs. While they are about themes from my story, they are not the story. In fact, when writing the lyrics, I tried to keep spoilers to a minimal level. Some spoilers are of course unavoidable due to topic of the song, but they don’t actually reveal the plot twists of the story for the most part.

More song will come form time to time as I complete the vocals conversion to Synth V. I have one almost ready :slight_smile: It’s called “Creature of the Night” and, while primarily gothic metal, it contains some violon parts (in a style inspired a little from Lindsey Stirling), a little like you did with the bagpipes in your song.

As for the story itself, that is a very long way off. At the rate I am going, it may well take a few years to complete. With full time job, a wife and 3 kids, free time is unfortunately in too short supply! And I am not rushing, taking my time, plus the related side projects such as the songs. After all, Tolkien did take 17 years to write The Lord of the Rings! I have the outline of the first part complete, but I want to complete the plan for the other two before I get to the actual writing, as what will happen in these might require adjustments in the first part, such as planting seeds.

BTW, I am probably not as young as you seem to think. Not old either, more like in the middle, I’m in my mid-fourties.