My thought on AI’s effect on music
I was watching Rick Beato’s YouTube on what’s happening with AI and music a bit ago… and I had some thoughts, which I first started tossing around in a text discussion with a friend on it, then started putting in different places like Facebook etc, then realized I wanted to pursue it some more…
Interesting that his kids knew it was AI, I wonder why that is….
I think the thing that saves us here is that none of these AI models can model on things that have not previously been done. AI gathers what it “knows” from Large Language Models (LLM’s), and so it cannot build something without a database of examples to build from. So, who knew that there was going to be a sound like Nirvana’s until there was? Who knew there was gonna be a sound like Led Zeppelin until there was, basically fill in the blank of anybody that was sort of really unique and original.
So the thing that is the problem in commercial (ized) right now is that corporations have done everything they can to make sure that Music is as homogenized and bland as possible, so it’s easier for them to sell into their existing distribution/advertising pipes. If my thinking is correct, this will likely change, because it will make listening to Corporate/Commercial music uninteresting (more so) because people can come up with whatever they want via AI and then just make a playlist out of it as Beato says in his video.
But new and hella original stuff? That’s going to be very difficult for AI to deal with until it gets good models for it, which will mean that a new mode of music or something that’s quite different from what has been put into their models, has to build up copycats/derivatives and a “database” from which to generate an LLM from etc. etc. .
In this version of the pressure on music from AI, AI can never fully replace humans since it cannot come up with distinctly new and original music on it’s own, because that’s not how it works. As it works now, it pulls from the previous, so it will always be derivative, or at least as AI is done NOW. Of course this is really the first real iteration of it, so evolution being what it is, that will change, and maybe the basis for my thinking will have to change as well.
So perhaps for a time, this could be a good thing, for MUSIC.
For the recorded music business, yeh, not so good, in fact for MANY musicians and artists also, it will be catastrophic. People who make their living generating music for TV shows/movies/videogames, basically any kind of secondary or background music use, they’re clearly fucked, as the corporations will IMMEDIATELY begin to use this to generate perfectly functional background music that they “own”, and thus will not have to pay for, and that will be the end of that cottage industry and I mean FAST. There’s a good chance that a very FEW jobs will be created overseeing that process, which will likely be filled by some of the current producers of that type of material since they’re very good at taking the direction from the corporate entity and filling the requirements as described, which makes them the perfect people to design request prompts to AI, but everyone else in that business? Doomed.
Probably the only place where musicianship will matter going forward is going to be live in living rooms to concert arenas, with the caveat that “live” is already very compromised in many cases. While a whole other discussion can be had on that subject, fact remains that there is something that happens live that is kind of magical, and I have a hard time seeing that change because of AI, tho of course we never know what the future holds.
In the favor of the existing systems is the fact that because all AI output is derivative from what has been put into it, there’s a very good legal basis for stopping the use of this kind of software because of copyright protections. Which is what the newspapers are attempting right now, so that will be very interesting to watch. But this thing is racing like a 70mph forest fire, and the courts are notoriously slow in cases like this, so while cases shamble along through the system, AI will be setting up systems that will become such an entrenched part of business and life, that it will become impossible to come back from it.
All that said, it’s pretty shocking how good it’s getting already, as you can hear in the Beato piece.
Good luck out there my friends, it could be a long music winter in AI land.
Investing in Life instead of Death/Fear.
In reading an article in Wired Magazine about a man named Nathan Wolfe who has been predicting a pandemic like our current Covid situation for years, and his and other people’s efforts to bring that kind of thinking to the insurance/reinsurance business, I was struck by the realization that all of the thinking appeared to be about how to insure companies against these events, and no effort was being put into more life-affirming proactive efforts. Massive effort is being put into research about all kinds of negative fallout to companies in the event of natural catastrophes and how to protect them financially from those events, and NO effort is being put into changing the business models to insulate them from those events by changing the nature of their business and/or how they conduct those businesses.
Then I realized that this kind of thinking runs throughout our Western culture, seeing life in terms of financial repercussions, and how to protect against those damages, but very little relative effort being put into mitigating our “on the ground” exposure to them, and stopping them before they start. No changing practices at companies, no building publicly funded programs to insulate the public from consequences, no investment in technologies that would mitigate or eliminate the actual threats themselves, (think Global Warming as a primary example, something that we actually could literally prevent before it happens – more), literally almost all of our thinking is of the negative and reactive type, not the positive proactive type.
And of course thinking along these lines led me to the “why” of our societal non-response to this problem, which is rooted in the very simple dollar cost, which is itself rooted in our current culture’s conviction that the only measurement of value that society shall use is money, and that no other measure has any merit.
And of course now we see the fallout from that type of thinking, particularly and spectacularly in the case of the USA, where our level of commitment to money and profit and the rights associated with being able to continue to exercise our business and lives in pursuit OF money and profit, has led to the USA being the global leader in the Covid pandemic and deaths from it. And the reasons for those results can be traced directly to our culture’s obsession with money and the pursuit of it, while placing it equal to or above even HUMAN LIVES in terms of how we value it as a society.
I find this remarkable, that we have elevated a fictional made up tool to become equal to or more valuable than human lives and the experiences that make up those lives. But it appears to be true, at least in the USA, certainly our “leaders” and the “Shareholder Class” believe it to be true, and are willing to sacrifice sizable numbers of human lives and cause untold amounts of great suffering amongst those whom they feel are less deserving than they in order to continue the pursuit of money/profit.
Even more astonishing, those leaders and business owners/investors have managed to convince a very large segment of the American public to join them in this viewpoint, even while that stance puts them and their friends and families at risk of disease and even death as a result of that economic choice.
I often wonder if the obsession with money is why all businesses are fascinated only by financial responses to natural calamities, and how to lower risk by offloading it into insurance and C.Y.A.-style reactions, and NO effort is put into proactive efforts to stop or mitigate catastrophe before it happens. Well, in truth I don’t wonder, I’m fairly certain this is the basic truth of it.
I often wonder about the quality of human life we could have if we added human lives and our personal experiences of those lives to our system of measuring the “success” of those lives.
For example, how much better would the human experience be if the entire world decided that we were going to prioritize switching to free sustainable energy within say a decade, and we would leave fossil fuel/coal/gas/etc forever and energy would be generated by solar/thermal/wind/etc, and would be free to all who needed it. That kind of thing could actually be done, we’d just all have to agree to put aside “profit” for a moment and decide to save our planet/ourselves as a reasonable priority.
But we’re under the spell of the False Religion of Profit Above All Else, including our future, and the lives of our children and their’s and so on…and so nothing is done. And that spell is a created thing, a desired thing, a need created by the Very Rich to allow them to create and then control a system that allows them to order society along lines that benefit only them, and create a modern feudal society in which they are the Lords, and we the Vassals.
We live in Fear so much of the time, fear of losing our livelihood, our freedoms, our health, our lives, but because of our allegiance to the false Gawd Of Profit we are ensuring that we will indeed lose all of those things.
We are investing in our own Doom, the very thing we Fear.
We are Magicians.
When I was playing with Christopher Cross some years ago, there was a section of the show where Christopher would go out and do a few songs by himself solo, and then I would take an acoustic guitar out there with him and we’d do a few songs singing and playing together like that. It was quite a thing for me as a guy from Juneau, Alaska, who was very scruffy and often poorly mannered but happened to end up being pretty good at playing bass and singing while I did it, quite a thing to find myself singing and playing guitar with a guy like that.
I remember when I first heard “Sailing” when it came out back then, driving along the highway in Juneau that connected downtown Juneau to what was called “out the road”, or “the Valley”, which is the part where the Mendenhall Glacier is if you’ve been there. Driving along and that song started, and out over the water there was a hole in the clouds that had lit up a part of the water out over the Gastineau Channel, a kind of “god-hole” that was really beautiful…..I was just slain by the sound, and I never forgot that moment. So finding myself on tour with him, doing that part of the show with him, I would often just be kinda shocked it was happening, and that kind of moment has happened to varying degrees with EVERY artist I’ve had the opportunity to work with,. Although I don’t like the way the term “grateful’ is just tossed around like it’s proof of caring, in this case it’s the right word, I’m grateful to have done the things I’ve been able to do.
Anyway I digress… so while Christopher was playing the first few songs by himself, I would always grab someone and say, “Do you know how good at THIS that guy is?!? If you saw that at like Genghis Cohen or Largo or really any venue that is known for singer/songwriters getting up and playing a song by themselves, your goddam HEAD WOULD EXPLODE! You’d be like ” who the HELL is this guy and why isn’t he huge?!?!?”. And of course in the end he was, and he IS. But the point is that as he sat there playing, everyone would kind of gather round in a way, their attention getting closer and the room would get smaller and more and more intimate, and everyone was there together in that room, sharing in that moment.
There’s almost nothing else that does that like music does, and it’s MAGIC, literal actual MAGIC.
What we musicians do does things to and for people that almost nothing else can. We help provide a release valve, we help define moments, we provide a soundtrack to someone’s life that will resonate and transport them like nothing else except smell can (science!), we provide a method of understanding, a sense of not being alone and that someone understands, a sense of comfort, feelings of urgency, a lifting of spirits, and balm for the soul.
That’s actual MAGIC. Or it is to me, literally Human Magic.
I say this a lot to my fellow musicians, to varying reactions ranging from vehement agreement to “Check Please!”. Mostly it depends on who you’re talking to, and mostly it’s related to whether they are a Touring Sideman (someone who is hired to go out on concert tours and support an artist who is playing live venues), or someone who is trying to write and perform their own music, and/or someone who is involved in the creation and recording of someone else’s music (sessions players, producers etc).
Those are typically different mindsets, (not always, but typically), with the Touring Sidemen often not very interested in those aspects, and the Session Types at least understanding that point of view and trying to create something special that will sound like MUSIC to them and the listener, and then the creators/ARTISTS being almost ONLY concerned with trying to create MAGIC at all times, even if the reason is only to generate income, because they know income tends to follow MAGIC around quite often.
But for me, I think that even in the Touring situation, it’s still MAGIC. We’re still helping that moment happen, that release, that communal moment, that healing and power, and in fact when you’re Touring, if you’re paying attention you can see it happening every night. Every night out there SOMEONE is having that moment of clarity, or that moment of release of a pent up anguish, or a memory has been jogged loose, or they finally understand something that didn’t make sense till that moment.
A guy I used to play with in Christopher’s band named Dave Beyer, who played drums with Christopher for most of the time I was with Christopher, said something to me once I appreciated and never forgot: “Every night at some point while Christopher is speaking in between songs, I try to look around for those 30 seconds or so at what I’m doing, really see how unique and special this is, and how amazing it is to be here now doing this.” And every show I’ve done after I’ve tried to remember to do that, because for all I know it could be the last time I ever have a chance to do this, and it may really matter that I was paying attention, not letting it just go by like it didn’t matter.
And that was the energy and focus I would put into it, like it mattered (*Past tense because it’s Covid times, and there’s none of all this happening at all right now!). Trying to actively PLAY every note, hit everything as right as I could, sing as in tune as I could, bring as MUCH game as I could to all parts of what I was doing, trying to make it MUSIC and MAGIC as much as I could. I’m sure I wasn’t always as successful as I would like, and there were/are many technical issues that can get in the way, but the more you push towards that, the more likely it is that you’ll succeed!
I had a MAGIC moment that I always refer to in talk about this subject….
I was playing in a Borders Bookstore Cafe (remember those?!?!), on the road supporting my 2 CD releases I’ve made on my own (another whole world of stories for another time), and I was playing a song called “The Lady’s Song” which for me is about my Grandmother dying, and how bad I was at handling that. In the audience that evening was a guy with what I guess was his wife and 2 children, and during that song the guy’s wheels just suddenly came off, seemingly all at once. Full on sobbing crying family gathering around him, utterly emotional and without caring about being in public. At the end of the show he came up while I was signing and selling my CD’s, bought both of my CD’s for each of his family members, and told me that he had not grieved yet for his mother who had died some fair amount of time before, and that something about that song and that moment had gotten him thinking about it, and suddenly it all opened up on him, and he had started the real grieving process in that moment. I gave him a hug and told him that that was what I was there for, and thanked him for what I thought was a wonderful thing to share with me, and that in a way he had given me the best kind of compliment he could give me.
For ME, that was MAGIC as well.
To be able to help like that, to be able to bring that to someone, THAT is what we do.
I would just like to put it out there, what we do is MAGIC. Remembering that and understanding the human power of that, respecting it and giving it to our audiences, sharing that with them, that’s a really wonderful thing we can do, not everyone gets that opportunity.
I just watched the Christchurch Terrorist’s video….
Selling your life……
I had a conversation with a younger person the other day, we were talking about the concept of Wage Slavery, and how most people don’t really conceptualize their lives in that context, but that it does apply to many, (and in recent years more and more) of us.
He had an interesting take on it, a difference in how he saw it that I hadn’t ever really seen, and that was that we are SELLING our lives to someone when we go to work for them. He saw that more in the case where someone joins a long term type of job, like a corporation or a law firm, any kind of job that is a long term, possibly even life long commitment.
The point for him was that if most people saw the work that they do to earn money in this light, they would immediately begin to question whether or not they were getting fair value for essentially selling your life to someone else, and whether that is a good use of your life.
Now obviously most people aren’t thinking of it in those terms, and as obviously there’s a clear need to have money in our society in order to function within it, as without money you’re going to have a pretty rough time eating and keeping a roof over your head, tho alternatively you could go live in the woods somewhere scrounging for food like Davy Crockett and wrestling bears if you’d rather.
So thinking about your career in THOSE terms, that you’re selling your life, essentially so that someone else can become even richer, that’s a really clear way to look at the value you derive from working in that way, and I think it’s pretty good discussion to have with yourself.
Money, being the man-made fiction that it is, has no ACTUAL value, only the percieved value society has assigned to it, and we all sort of “agree” to assign it that value and operate under that agreement.
But what happens to the other values that make up the experience of being human? Like, what’s the money value of watching your child being born, or the “value” in dollars of a sunset, or hearing your child’s honest clear laughter, or any number of feelings and experiences that are the essence of being a human? While society has a tendency to rate ALL of our lives in terms of dollars, I don’t think any of us would say that there’s a money number that makes sense in those contexts.
So why are we only valuing what we do as work in that way? Are we only experiencing our lives in one way by using that metric as the main way to measure our lives? What about all the things that we can’t attach a dollar figure to?
I think it’s a good point to consider when we go to work for someone else and sell them our lives…
