Vocal Coach Reacts to - Ren - Hi Ren 

I think its awesome that you go and thank the reactors for sharing your music. I just found you today through the reactors I follow and I have listened to this song so many time in a row just in the last 3 hours. Thank you for sharing your art with the world.

You can do no wrong, dear Ren. You walk in knowledge the internal monologue is a little shiite, equipped with 4k videos of all your failures, whilst there's barely one photo of a great moment. A parasitic mind, with malevolent intent. Keep right on brother you inspire because you are free....oh and a feckin genius....that helps.

It's a shame that some of the greatest music comes from the darkest aspects of life and human experiences.

Love his musical expression in literary form. It is refreshing and really helpful for those who understand the message he conveys!!!

Just wanted to say that I hate and love you for this piece you wrote. It cuts pretty close to the bone, so I'm sure you'll understand what I mean by that. Perhaps I'll ever reach a place anywhere similar to that of tranquility. But until then it most definitely still feels like an eternal battle.

I think she actually did, it just cut off the recording so we don't see that part. Could be wrong.

@@TheJohmac That would appear to be the case, yes. She mentions as much, at least.

She didn't watch the ending? Wtf. This isn't just a song. You have to watch the whole thing (Edit, I commented before watching the whole thing. My bad)

@@zachhenderson7982 She _did_ watch the ending, the recording just got cut off.

Seriously! There's not a soul on earth that couldn't be uplifted by that monologue. Trauma/illness/mental health issues or not, just the sheer difficulty level of being human and the absolute breathtaking beauty of what it is to be sentient life complete with entire spectrums of dark and light washes over me everytime i listen to that monologue. I tend to neener at the gods and blow a raspberry at the angels (fallen or not) that i have the sublime honor of being spectacularly human :)

Ren has enclosed the lyrics in his pinned comment in the original video.

I was wondering about that, coz he always says he has no label. Thanks fir clearing that up. No wonder he is jaded with them all

​@@sharonlee4622 he talked about it in an interview recently with Justin Hawkins that the label thing wasn't as ominous as a lot of fans make it out to be. He had like a three-year contract with Sony... But then he got sick for a very long time and the time limit of the contract just ran out. They didn't drop him because of his health issues... the three-year time limit expired and so the contract voided, basically. He is absolutely NOT jaded and completely understands why he wasn't able to finish the album that he started with the producers at Sony. He does feel guilty that the producers put so much time and effort into the songs that he was able to create with them but he's not upset or angry about the fact that the contract voided. Not in current day, anyway.

@@AnxietyRat thanks 😊

Great observation

Thanks for sharing. Hugs

@@rva thank you. It's been a rough ride. We have kinda figured out stuff started when I was 4 & got Ross River virus & had a massive fever. After that I would say I had no energy, I would get chest pains, my limbs were so painful but it was called "being lazy & having growing pains". When I started high school I just didn't fit in & got really depressed. It was "puberty blues" but several attempts to unalive over the years later & yup I understand things better now, I'm on the right meds for the things that work with meds. Being in domestic violence & I've been assaulted twice in street violence my body is really falling apart, I just turned 44 2 weeks ago & I know for sure the best years are behind me, I walk with a cane now. But I'm really glad Ren is getting help, here in Australia they're really funny about Lyme disease as well. Lots of drs don't even believe in it (same with fibro, also was denied welfare as I didn't make every lifestyle choice to improve the condition which apparently, according to the people who make decisions on others health yet aren't doctors themselves, should clear up in 14 years. Like ugh we used to do well here, stuff was modelled on nhs there but for some reason the powers that be want to have us like America. Medical gaslighting is real & if a dr is doing it to you chances are they do it to a lot of people. Great reaction

Your food choices are doing it to you. Change it slowly. Look into carnivore.😜

@skulijakobsson5116 you have zero idea about what my life has been like. Keep your opinions to yourself. Chronically ill people don't need to be told hundreds of times about what works, what doesn't, what to eat, what not to eat. If it works don't you think I would be doing it?

@@shirazzza have you tried the carnivore diet?

Absolutely true 100%

I hear the spirit of what you're saying but I regret to inform you that it isn't true. The AI really only has two limitations at the moment: (1) Its knowledge is limited to what/how much data it's trained on, and (2) AI doesn't have a will of its own, therefore it still only operates as a tool for artists, not a replacement for artists. I.e., AI doesn't "want" to make art or music. In fact, it doesn't "want" anything because it's just code. If you don't tell the AI to make art, it won't. That being said, the AI can already create visual art that looks awesome, it writes text really, REALLY well (better than 80% of actual humans I know), and I've heard a bunch of different music and voice AI progs that are emerging and converging as we speak (and which I predict you'll see a lot more about later this year). And, I gotta tell you, some of them sound really good. Like, to the point that, even now, I think I could put together a song with the AI progs EVEN IN THEIR CURRENT STATE and you wouldn't be able to tell that a human didn't write and record the song. Tbh, I will be surprised if there's not a top 10 song written and performed completely by/with AI in the next few years. I know there are a lot of people scared of AI and who (desperately, imo) take every opportunity to point out any small shortcomings in what AI can currently do, usually followed up with some snarky variation of "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about AI taking over any time soon, lol..." or "See! AI can't do what the human spirit can!" But this ignores what many of us see very clearly: This is still extremely early days for AI. I mean, think back to the first mobile phones. Or, hell, think back to just your first phone (unless you're a teen or something). Think about how much telephone and communications tech has advanced just in the past 10 years. Or how 'bout the internet? I'm old enough to remember the world before the internet, cellphones, home computers, etc. And yet, just across one small portion of my lifetime, how far have those technologies advanced? How much have they advanced in just the past 5-10 years? How much have they changed society? Technology of any kind does nothing but advance and get better and better and AI's no exception. I've been using the AI art progs since they went public and, I gotta tell ya: It's moving and advancing FAST. Especially the open source stuff! The public-driven advancements alone are moving so fast they're almost impossible to keep up with, never mind the pro stuff happening behind closed doors. Basically, what you see AI doing today -- in only the first year it's been widely available to the public and open source -- is already crazy and yet what it does today is going to look archaic and old-school 6 months from now. A year from now? Two years from now? Forget it. Any hopes people were holding out that AI wouldn't be able to do what humans can do will fade in the harsh light of reality as the tech keeps advancing. I get it. Humans want to be special. We want to think that we're the special center of the universe and the things we can do -- particularly art and music -- are these magical things that require "the human spirit" to replicate. But the truth is that all art is, at it's base, patterns and abstractions. And I'm saying this as a lifelong artist! In the very near future (much nearer than many expect, I believe), I think more and more people will start to see -- assuming they open their eyes and pull their fingers out of their ears -- that great artistry can, at the very least, be imitated by AI to a point that a human viewer/listener couldn't tell the difference (and to the point that a lot of middling artists would be easily outdone). You might argue that art - visual or musical or whatever - MIGHT be patterns and abstractions BUT the core of art is using the medium to express emotion... and an AI doesn't have emotion, so it can't do that. This is partially right in that AI doesn't feel emotion, but also partially wrong in the fact that, just because AI can't feel emotion doesn't mean it can't do a pitch-perfect imitation of it. In fact, if you know what you're doing with prompt-engineering and have a good AI workflow, the AI can already make very striking, emotional images. The AI doesn't FEEL the emotion in your picture but if you tell it an emotion to portray, it knows how to do that because there are millions of examples of that emotion in the AI's database. It understands how to convey the emotion to a human even if it doesn't actually feel the emotion itself. And that's today! Wait and see what it can do a year from now! Music is similar and, in some ways, I'd argue, at least as easy to replicate emotion with as visual art. Music is math. All those emotions you feel in your favorite songs? Those emotions are the result of particular patterns of notes, chords, etc. At the absolutely simplest level (because I don't know what your musical ability is or isn't), I could tell an AI to write a song using a minor progression and a human listener will hear the melancholy in the music even if the AI doesn't feel melancholy because that's what minor chords do. Train an AI on enough songs and music theory and there's absolutely no reason it couldn't write a song that would make you cry. And, should we ever reach true General AI (rather than these mini neural nets and super advanced chatbots we currently have), then even the question of "will" and "desire" that I brought up at the beginning of this comment would change. I'm not trying to be a dick here. I hear what you're saying. But the idea people have that human artistic expression is somehow magical and beyond the ability to engineer...? Sorry. I don't know if you've been using any of the AI tools at all or if you're just repeating things you've heard (from people with their own personal biases and insecurities about AI) but, if you haven't, I'd be willing to bet they already are capable of way more than you think. And, if you have tried them out and learned anything about them, then I don't see how you could possibly not realize how fast they're advancing or how quickly they're going to be able to do everything we can do and more. To be clear, though, this is not an all-or-nothing situation. Even if AI can suddenly make the most beautiful art and music, that's no reason for you or any other human artist to stop expressing yourself through art or music. If the feeling that you're somehow less "special" because an AI can create art as well as (or better than) you causes you to say, "Well, then I've wasted my life practicing my art, going to school for it, etc! Why even make art anymore?" then I'd argue that you weren't really an artist to begin with. A true artist creates because they HAVE TO create, not because their friends all think they're really cool when they draw chibi versions of Yu-Gi-Oh! characters or whatever. If AI makes you quit art or music, you were never going to get anywhere with it anyway because you're not an actual artist at your core. You're just a technician who learned a money-making party trick and then threw a tantrum and went home when technology finally outpaced you. It's a mistake to take an "us vs. AI" stand because it's a losing proposition. Tech never goes backwards and it never goes back in the bottle (until something even more powerful replaces it). Right now, while tons of "artists" are complaining about AI, signing petitions, spreading misinformation (AI doesn't "steal" anyone's images, and it's not just collaging parts of other images together; those are lies mostly propagated by people who've never even tried one of the AI progs), other artists like myself are learning the new AI tools, developing our skills with the tools as they develop (which, as I said, is FAST and non-stop right now), and finding all the best ways to incorporate the AI tools into our personal artistic processes. So, the only thing these artists fighting against AI are going to accomplish is making sure that, a year or two from now, whenever they finally give up the pipe dream of stopping technological progress, they're all 1-2 years behind the rest of us in the AI learning curve. TL;DR: This is still early days of AI. If you've tried any AI tools recently -- and not just once, casually, with no knowledge of how to make them work best -- then you know that they're already capable of doing what a lot of artists can do (and what many can't). AI tech is developing faster than most people think and there are a lot of tools coming down the pipe that will just keep expanding what it can do and what media it can do it with. Yes, it's true that AI couldn't create a song like "Hi Ren" right now. Give the AI a year of tech-advancement though and the answer may be very, VERY different.

@@johnplaysgames3120 Great response, but I'll always take humans over AI when it comes to creating art.

I totally agree that clincher at the end had me saying, "oh hell no! Nooooo!!"Then I learn Screeches girlfriend was busy, remember his guy friend was not home ...Ren said Screech's gf was busy with his guy friend who didn't answer his knocks...even another layer not referenced in the trilogy.

Yep and WITHOUT captions!

My favorite song by him, though crutch is a close 2nd. The subject matter on Chalk outlines is important as well.

@@joshuaanderson1197 Check out "How to Be Me." It's incredible.

Just got to this one. Heart-wrenching lyrics and performances.

And please listen to For Joe, Suicide, Fred Again mashup, Back on 74/Message in a bottle, and so many more.....you are missing a year of brilliant beautiful, funny, deep, soulful (and more..) music by Ren.. Great reaction to this song! 🙂

He's here in Canada? Whereabouts?

@@peterscott3276 Calgary

@@ChristopherRobertHills that's amazing I'm only a few hours away. Ren, reach out I'll buy you a coffee sometime 🤣

The tale of Jenny and Screech, and then Hunger, just for some variations on style. And then ... everything else.

Yes

Keep stepping forwards 💙

If you don't invite all of yourself in, the demon takes two chairs -Swordfather

It was recorded live . It wasn't one take.

@@seandan7873 I read that is was one take, it just took four takes to get that one take he felt was good enough.

@@lisahuff818 apparently so for the audio, visuals you see at least 2 takes spliced together for closeups and wide shots.

@@lisahuff818I've read that too. I mean, it's not true but I've read it.

@@znk0r This is correct. All the audio except the monologue is 1 continuous track. The head shots at the end are the only visuals that are not from that 1 performance. No way to get the close ups and the wide shots at the same time without getting the handheld camera in the shot.

Thank you for breaking this down. I didn't know the whole situation. What a story to make such a come back from

I totally agree!

Yeah. I don’t get why she cut out so much of the video.

You are so welcome! Hugs 2 all

My pleasure 😊 thanks ⚡️

No to the constraints of boxes!

He has said in a couple of interviews that he had stress-induced psychosis due to the stress Lyme disease was putting on his body. He did NOT have medication induced psychosis from the psychotropic drugs that he was put on. Stress-induced psychosis and medication induced psychosis are two very different triggers that cause psychosis to happen ... It was not the antidepressants ( SSRIs) that he was put on that caused his psychotic break. It was the VERY high levels of pain that he was in due to Lyme. He's also never mentioned being put on antipsychotics I've only heard him mention antidepressants. But yeah, some antidepressants CAN cause psychosis if it's the wrong medication for your unique brain chemistry. But it's very very rare.

@@AnxietyRat look up neuroborreliosis psychosis: "It has been well documented that Bb infections that have progressed to neuroborreliosis can present with a wide array of psychiatric symptoms including psychotic and mood symptoms including: Paranoia, delusions, olfactory, auditory and visual hallucinations, major depression, catatonia, and mania."

@Message__RebeccaVocal_Athlete seems legit.

That's really sweet! Thank you poppet

Thank you so much!

@@rva I've always found certain pain very cathartic. This made me cry, I felt something deep inside was being washed. Thx again ❤️

You clearly haven't seen The Charismatic Voice reaction and to this.

Thanks darling. Hugs to you

Thanks so much 🙏

Thank you so much!!

@@rva 🥰🥰🎶🎶