Let's get real

Are we going to let A. affect our I. on this project?

The lamp has been well and truly rubbed and the Genie is not going back in the bottle, A.I. is here, it’s popped up in all sorts of situations and processes in my working life, so there is no escaping it for me at present if we want to keep paying the bills.

But how much are we willing to let it affect this music project?

We have neatly reached the final of these topics we originally set out to cover, at year end, how neat and tidy, you’d almost think we planned it (Secret we didn’t, total fluke, I barely know what day it is.)

• Why and how did I start writing songs and what are they about (generally, not every song I have ever written).

• Who collaborated on the first six tracks with me and how we worked together.

• My dubious relationship with A.I. and thoughts on it. Where it has touched this project so far and where it hasn’t (A.I. has not touched the recording of the first 6 tracks, I know I was there…)

What I am about to reveal are my current musings on A.I. with the caveat that I am still finding out about the technology, its possible relationship with what we want to do and don’t want to do artistically (this may become a bone of contention) and musically, I include in this visual supporting material i.e. music videos, promotional videos and images. These may well change and often, do as I dig deeper and learn more.

Let’s start by getting the very easy and definitive lines drawn for me at present. There has been no involvement and there is no intention for there to be any A.I. involvement in the writing and recording of our music. Erm! Do I have to fact check here already?

So the process currently of writing to recording, I’ll summarise as I have already covered this in a bit more detail in earlier posts

• Sit down with acoustic guitar, fiddle around until I hit on a progression or a riff I like

• Hum over it until it turns into a line, what does the line mean to me? and build, sometimes I already know the subject matter I’m heading towards

• Record on phone or camera a very very rough draft of song

• Now it gets a bit sketchy, for the demo to pass to the collaborators, I take this idea to GarageBand and underpin the idea with a built in drummer or I use a Trio + pedal which creates drum parts and bass parts from what I play into it and record that.

• Get with the previously labelled Real Intelligence system, in this case Dan and Pete, and create the final version with shiny clever bits in, where we rewrite the GarageBand or Trio + parts. See previous post…

• Record final song. Dan’s process is very organic, we play and mic everything we can and then other effects may be added after the main body of the song is recorded.

• Dan at present mixes everything as far as I’m aware using the same sort of techniques I’ve always seen him use over the last 10+ years

• Then it goes to a mastering engineer. Honestly I have no idea whether the mastering is done with any A.I. intervention, but the sound is generally very close to Dan’s mix with the levels at streaming/radio quality.

The process is pretty organic, although I was made aware when I turned up to a venue to check it for sound for a possible video and announced flippantly “I’ll just set the band up” and got the Trio + out, there was a physical reaction of revulsion from someone in the room. I later found out he was a drummer, oops!

So I am conscious that these are ‘Artificial’ inputs into the process that I have normalised, where I draw the line is that I want to know the creative process as a whole is driven by a person or people when listening to music, I want a piece of someone, it connects the music in a personal way, an emotional way. When I know these things I understand the importance of supporting them because I want them to be able to do more, so I buy the vinyl or CD, go see them live, buy merch, watch them on YouTube, and listen to their music somewhere other than Spotify.

This is how I/we want to create music.

Getting music from a vending machine is not the way I want to consume music, I want to know the musical food was prepared and cooked with thought and emotion. It should be clearly identified if music was created fully with A.I. because I want to make a conscious choice to ‘get Real’.

I’m still learning though and can see production tools are changing, I noticed the NPR Tiny Desk sessions are now sponsored by Moises, creating a symbiotic relationship between the rawest form of music performance with the new world order of music creation and it raised questions for me. Reading their blurb they are putting forward the equivalent of ethically farmed A.I. music production but I’m not sure what that means yet? Tools learning to help and enhance music creation and production, people still involved just aided? I have no judgement on them, I’m assessing the situation. I do understand the progress of technology to aid production of anything, I’ve been involved in that field my whole working life, but this technology is different, the previous shifts tended to move the workforce to a new set of skills and jobs around supporting the new technology. A.I. is aiming at self reliance coupled with the fact that the next step in its evolution requires a different kind of farming all together. Again I’m still finding out but it looks like this self reliance requires City equivalent power consumption and water cooling (Do your own fact checking here.) Definitely not an ethically farmed free range egg landing on our plates. So now I want to know how the underlying technology that is aiding the process is delivered? Is it hosted in a battery farm or is it free range? (I have no idea what free range looks like right now).

….and now I move into murkier territory, video production. The video for the first single was consciously taken from footage taken while recording the first 6 tracks as a statement to create music with musicians and producer….

….but we are at a juncture. I have an idea for the next single video, the song is called ‘I Won’t Lie’ and the story of the song transformed a little while discussing the backstory of the song with my son-in-law. So the general premise after reading several Substack and news articles is around people building personal relationships with Chat Bots (The irony of the post I’m writing is not lost.).

The storyboard goes, different people start a conversation shown on a phone screen, cuts to people meeting and chatting as if a ‘real’ rather than virtual relationship is building and as the video progresses it becomes more evident that the relationship exists solely within their phones, the final scenes are of the people meeting and connecting in the physical world. I discussed the idea, checked out a few videographers only to find they could reduce the cost by not requiring a physical cafe setting or social setting and not needing people to act in it, because they can create everything within the comfort of their office using, yes you guessed it A.I.

At this point I decided, I want to know if its software driven, can I create my vision better than someone else and so spent the last 2 months using prompts to build images, then creating prompts to build 5-10 seconds of footage for each scene from those images. I have now arrived at something… a music video, it wasn’t a one button or one prompt process there was lots of trial and error the A.I. involved in this, from my experience gets it wrong more often than it gets it right but it feels like it’s my vision and video editing.

So this is full disclosure, no A.I. as far as I can help it at present with the music creation and recording. As for video, I am as yet undecided, this video may be used as a storyboard if I can figure out a way to fund and co-ordinate a live action video, but at the moment I am wrestling with my own wavering on video. Why do I not see it as clearly as I see the music creation side? Is it the drive to see the story brought to life within my financial boundaries that’s clouding my judgement? The same overarching ethical A.I. questions are still valid. If I find it is all tied to the battery farm model I must stop, but they are not there yet as far as I am aware but you can help me fill in the gaps. Please link any articles for good or for bad to this subject you know of, as I want to be educated.

I’ve included the video here. The single doesn’t come out officially until the beginning of January. The imperfections in the video were not always intentional highlighting the limits as I find them at present but I found they added something to the story of straddling the real and virtual world and the many faces projected on to these bots.

Well done you made it, I really appreciate you taking the time to read and watch.

We look forward to seeing you all in the New Year, and definitely let us know of anything you think we should be reading on this subject.

Goodbye 2025!