August 24ths

8/24/1998            

Read article by drummer who does jungle grooves. It’s interesting how a new way of working creates new ways of thinking about music—such that new composers want to learn cutting-edge techniques, much in the same way composers in the 17th century wanted to learn about harmony, melody, and counterpoint using the equal-tempered tuning. And the new cut-and-paste techniques are really no less intricate.

[8/24/2025. AI is certainly a new way of working. All artists are presented with a new world of creativity. In music, some may have never used any kind of electronic gear or a computer to make music. In 1998, any music magazine was all about gear and using computers. In my view, purity doesn’t go very far as a strategy in itself in terms of creativity being a generative phenomenon. Imagine still recording on a cassette recorder from the 1970s]. “Apathy is probably never good. I think it’s important to go back and see what was important to other generations, but more importantly, your generation.”

8/24/1999            

Interesting: paintings of photos of photo-realistic paintings.

[8/24/2024: The corollary in music is to create an orchestral arrangement of ambient music or other music that only exists in an electronic form, then make it purely electronic again, or use AI to make variations.]  

Humans are inclined to reject things that are different than things they’re used to, at least initially. [AI solves this to some degree because the output of AI-generated art is not experimental as we have known it. There’s no La Monte Young of AI].   

8/24/2002

Diversey Harbor:

8/24/2010 

Field audio: Michigan and Madison West to El, 6P

8/24/2017

Music could do well to follow the art world and create periods or movements as “-isms”. To a certain extent, there have been overlaps in the past (Warhol and 60s pop, Jazz and Abstract Expressionism and pure abstraction before that, as well as overlaps with classical music and art).  But a contrived revolution, just for the sake of doing it, usually doesn’t work. Revolutions are unique alignments, similar to eclipses: They are happening all the time, but you’re not there to witness them.     

8/24/2018

I realize that art and music diverge at various points, and I wouldn’t want to suggest that they directly inform one another with any equivalence. The corollary is useful up to a point.

[8/24/2024: AI is the best shortcut that has ever existed. Skill is no longer necessary–or is evolving into other skills that are really more about learning existing software, as opposed to having ideas for software that does something unique. We are now all going along with The Program].    

[8/24/2025: This is “The Big Sort” for music, where we’re all trying to figure out how to be unique with AI in the loop. It’s a matter of finding places where AI doesn’t work. It certainly does work for pop music, so we don’t have to create song hooks, we can work on the lyrics. In my experience generated lyrics are stupid right out of the can, but pop lyrics don’t have to mean anything because most people don’t hear them. I realized that it doesn't work for things like music you’ve heard in a dream. It’s not like you’d write a prompt about your dream and it would create the one you heard. So there’s no magic in AI–or a different magic].