Shaman of the Night — Kyle Abent

Tracklist

20 songs, 3 more waiting in the folder

Scale is the one the generator wrote in. Meters and tempo are as recorded.

01 Dwell Central C Ionian + D♯ Pentatonic Major 9/84/4113 bpm 113 bpm 3:25
02 Escaping Fight or Flight D Blues + C Pentatonic Minor 4/42/4141 bpm 141 bpm 2:58
03 What Outlives Us G♯ Pentatonic Major 4/46/89/8141 bpm 141 bpm 2:17
04 No Way Out of My Own Head A♯ Pentatonic Minor + G♯ Pentatonic Minor 4/4140 bpm 140 bpm 2:14
05 Later Can Wait B Ionian 4/46/83/4164 bpm 164 bpm 2:40
06 Truce B Pentatonic Major 4/43/46/8171 bpm 171 bpm 2:26
07 One Eye Open F♯ Phrygian 4/46/815/16113–120 bpm 113–120 bpm 3:07
08 Breaking the Spell B Lydian 3/47/813/1615/164/4130–141 bpm 130–141 bpm 2:43
09 Under the Ice C♯ Lydian 4/46/815/16121–151 bpm 121–151 bpm 2:41
10 Fresh Air A♯ Dominant 7th 7/813/163/84/4113–137 bpm 113–137 bpm 2:50
11 Our True Nature is Spirit C♯ Pentatonic Major 2/49/84/46/8113 bpm 113 bpm 2:56
12 None of this is Real G♯ Pentatonic Major 6/83/44/49/8138–163 bpm 138–163 bpm 2:31
13 Diagnosed with Thinking A♯ Roumanian Minor 3/413/163/84/4112–113 bpm 112–113 bpm 2:55
14 Not Asleep, Just Elsewhere D♯ Spanish Gypsy 6/82/43/47/164/4113–131 bpm 113–131 bpm 3:02
15 Awareness has no Address G♯ Phrygian 7/813/163/84/4113 bpm 113 bpm 3:29
16 Allergic to Gravity B Ionian 4/46/82/4113 bpm 113 bpm 2:56
17 Time Stays Behind C Mixolydian + F Lydian 6/82/47/163/44/4130–137 bpm 130–137 bpm 2:47
18 Back on the Clock E Pentatonic Blues + B Pentatonic Minor 4/4122 bpm 122 bpm 2:26
19 Happy Place G Pentatonic Major 2/44/4113 bpm 113 bpm 3:29
20 Stay Forever G Pentatonic Major 2/44/4113 bpm 113 bpm 3:21

The recording

9 days at the guitar, 202 saved takes

6.7hplaying time65,326 notes plucked

165false startstakes under 30%, never saved

11perfect takes15 of 20 finals at 99% or better

59%played after 10 PMpeak hour 12 AM

Aug 23, 20269 days · 19-day spanSep 10, 2026

The folder: 23 songs generated · 20 recorded · 3 waiting · none played and cut. On God's Flesh: 49 generated, 20 kept, 9 played and cut.

Album 5

The story

The last song of God's Flesh was recorded on July 12, 2026. The first song of Shaman of the Night was recorded on August 23. For the six weeks between I did not write music: I rewrote the thing that writes it, and I have kept rewriting it between recording nights since. These 20 songs came out of successive versions of that rebuild.

Every album so far has been a test of SongCreator, and God's Flesh had shown me where it failed: 49 songs went into that album's folder and 20 made the record. The test songs I threw away this summer died the same three ways. A melody would camp on one note for a whole bar. A phrase would leap seven frets after a rest, somewhere my hand simply could not be yet. Or the song would open on two pitches and never earn the right to be picked up a second time. So I spent the summer turning each of those failures into something the software could measure, and then into something it refuses to ship.

The biggest change is that the generator now knows my hands. It carries a model of my reach and my fatigue, fitted from my own recorded plays: how far I can jump on a short note, how long a rest buys my hand back, that a spot I have already been to is one I can find again, and that a seven-fret leap is worse than a two-fret drift. Two separate systems used to guess where my hand was; now one owner tracks it, and a slide between neighbouring frets is finally scored as a slide, not a jump. The result I can measure: the sudden post-rest jumps in the harmony line that ended most of my takes fell by 92%.

Then the melodies. The hook a song is built from grew from five notes to seven. Phrases answer each other now, question and reply, and they are drawn on the song's own sections instead of a fixed template. The one-note drones that were still slipping through in August are gone: zero in the last 178 test songs, down from about one in eighteen. The rhythm guitar can state whether a song is major or minor instead of hiding behind power chords, and the three-note power chord that had never actually been generated finally is.

I also stopped trusting my old rules about what makes a song good, and went to the data instead. I ranked every song I have ever written by how often I came back to play it, and the songs I replay repeat themselves far more than the generator was allowed to. That changed what the scoring is allowed to punish. Meters fluctuate inside sections again, tempo follows the meter changes, and the twelve-bar blues form is switched off, because I never wrote to it.

Every one of those failures I used to catch by ear is now a check the software runs before I sit down to listen. Since the last note of God's Flesh that has added up to 1,667 commits, 322 of them on the generator alone, and the share of test songs that pass every check rose from 39% to 59%. The proof is what has not happened: on God's Flesh I sat down and played 29 songs and rejected 9 of them. On this album that number is 0 — the album closed at 20 of 23 songs generated: 3 were never recorded, one of them started three times and left unfinished, all 20 in E♭, the tuning that converted worst of all on the last record.

20 songs, recorded across 9 nights — 59% of the takes between ten at night and five in the morning. Hence the name.

Against the last record

God's Flesh to Shaman of the Night

The same measures for both records, from the same data. Accuracy rows count Lead + AltLead only.

Measure	God's Flesh	Shaman of the Night
Songs	20	20
Days recording, first take to last	121	19
Recording days	15	9
Saved plays per song Lead + AltLead	14.3	7.8
First-play accuracy average of each song's first take	71.7%	62.7%
Plays to a 94% median	2	2.5
Final take at 99% or better songs	17	15
False starts per song takes under 30%; a floor, tracked from Sep 1, 2026	—	8.2
Playing that left no saved take	—	66 min
Takes after 10 PM	26%	59%
Peak hour	10 PM	12 AM
Tempo range BPM	90–158	112–171
Meters per song	3.4	3.1
Songs in 4/4 only	1	2
Scale families	6	11
Notes per minute, lead	106	119
Average song	3:02	2:52
Tunings	4	1

Mastery curve

Accuracy per saved play

Difficulty landscape

Tempo against the plays each song needed

90%+ avg 75–89% under 75%Number = track

Every number Per-song results, time signatures, scales, false starts and the biggest improvements. Lead + AltLead only; Rhythm is excluded until its detection leaves alpha.

#SongScaleLenPlaysFalse startsBestAvg

1 Dwell Central C Ionian +1 Len 3:25 Plays 5 False starts — Best 99.7% Avg 86.6%

2 Escaping Fight or Flight D Blues +1 Len 2:58 Plays 5 False starts — Best 98.9% Avg 80.0%

3 What Outlives Us G♯ Pentatonic Major Len 2:17 Plays 11 False starts — Best 99.3% Avg 59.0%

4 No Way Out of My Own Head A♯ Pentatonic Minor +1 Len 2:14 Plays 7 False starts — Best 95.5% Avg 70.2%

5 Later Can Wait B Ionian Len 2:40 Plays 5 False starts — Best 99.6% Avg 75.2%

6 Truce B Pentatonic Major Len 2:26 Plays 4 False starts 3 Best 97.8% Avg 68.0%

7 One Eye Open F♯ Phrygian Len 3:07 Plays 16 False starts 25 Best 99.4% Avg 58.9%

8 Breaking the Spell B Lydian Len 2:43 Plays 11 False starts 15 Best 97.4% Avg 55.4%

9 Under the Ice C♯ Lydian Len 2:41 Plays 11 False starts 15 Best 99.7% Avg 68.8%

10 Fresh Air A♯ Dominant 7th Len 2:50 Plays 13 False starts 4 Best 99.7% Avg 67.3%

11 Our True Nature is Spirit C♯ Pentatonic Major Len 2:56 Plays 3 False starts 10 Best 100% Avg 93.0%

12 None of this is Real G♯ Pentatonic Major Len 2:31 Plays 6 False starts 3 Best 99.3% Avg 61.0%

13 Diagnosed with Thinking A♯ Roumanian Minor Len 2:55 Plays 8 False starts 24 Best 100% Avg 63.7%

14 Not Asleep, Just Elsewhere D♯ Spanish Gypsy Len 3:02 Plays 9 False starts 25 Best 100% Avg 63.3%

15 Awareness has no Address G♯ Phrygian Len 3:29 Plays 15 False starts 31 Best 100% Avg 55.7%

16 Allergic to Gravity B Ionian Len 2:56 Plays 3 False starts 10 Best 100% Avg 88.3%

17 Time Stays Behind C Mixolydian +1 Len 2:47 Plays 11 False starts 12 Best 98.8% Avg 66.7%

18 Back on the Clock E Pentatonic Blues +1 Len 2:26 Plays 3 False starts 2 Best 99.6% Avg 81.4%

19 Happy Place G Pentatonic Major Len 3:29 Plays 6 False starts 7 Best 100% Avg 73.7%

20 Stay Forever G Pentatonic Major Len 3:21 Plays 4 False starts 4 Best 100% Avg 83.0%

Total, Lead + AltLead57:12156165

A false start is a take the game refused to save for finishing under 30%. They are a floor, not a census: a take has to get ten notes in to be written down, so the instant restarts are missing, and tracking only began with track 6 (Truce) on Sep 1, 2026: every false start on tracks 1–5 went unrecorded, so those rows show a dash.

Breaking the Spell reads low because I played its lines with slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs. The note detector currently wants a fresh pick attack for every note, so legato phrasing counts as a miss even when the pitch is right. The 97% take is the one where I picked everything.

The music

18,477 notes on the charts 20 songs × 3 parts
57.2 min of lead guitar about 171.5 min across all three parts
2:52 average song shortest 2:14, longest 3:29
112–171 BPM average 128
147 notes a minute at the fastest Time Stays Behind
103 at the calmest Allergic to Gravity
1,161 notes in the biggest song Time Stays Behind

Time signatures

4/433.5% · 20 songs
6/819.1% · 10 songs
2/418.1% · 7 songs
3/47.1% · 7 songs
13/166.8% · 4 songs
7/85.0% · 3 songs
15/163.8% · 3 songs
9/83.2% · 4 songs
3/82.1% · 3 songs
7/161.3% · 2 songs

2,157 bars, 10 meters; 2 of 20 songs stay in 4/4 (No Way Out of My Own Head, Back on the Clock). Most meters in one song: Breaking the Spell (3/4, 7/8, 13/16, 15/16, 4/4).

The scales

7 Pentatonic Major Dwell Central, What Outlives Us, Truce, Our True Nature is Spirit, None of this is Real, Happy Place, Stay Forever
3 Pentatonic Minor Escaping Fight or Flight, No Way Out of My Own Head, Back on the Clock
3 Ionian Dwell Central, Later Can Wait, Allergic to Gravity
3 Lydian Breaking the Spell, Under the Ice, Time Stays Behind
2 Phrygian One Eye Open, Awareness has no Address
2 Blues Escaping Fight or Flight, Back on the Clock
1 Dominant 7th Fresh Air
1 Roumanian Minor Diagnosed with Thinking
1 Spanish Gypsy Not Asleep, Just Elsewhere
1 Mixolydian Time Stays Behind
1 Pentatonic Blues Back on the Clock

The playing

66.5% accuracy over every lead take 35,740 hits, 17,965 misses
3.5× through the whole album, note for note
31 plays at 99% or better
443 notes in the longest streak Happy Place, AltLead
2 plays to a 94%, at the median opened above 94%: Dwell Central, Escaping Fight or Flight, What Outlives Us, Back on the Clock, Happy Place
Fret 7 most played 7,585 notes
17.7% of judged notes were chords
Sep 9 busiest day 40 plays, 13,509 notes

The improvement

+68% Stay Forever Lead: 32% to 100%
+66% What Outlives Us AltLead: 33% to 99%
+65% Breaking the Spell AltLead: 32% to 97%
+65% Awareness has no Address Lead: 35% to 100%
+64% Escaping Fight or Flight AltLead: 34% to 98%

False starts

165 of 321 tries never reached 30% 51.4%
66 min of playing left no saved take
100% median accuracy up to the choke clean until the note it died on
39 notes in the median false start about 19.9 s

More

The other records

Page data regenerated 2026-09-28 11:54.