8/29/2026
Posts
Figured Basses (AI Version)
A cheesy cutout album you found for 50 cents recorded circa 1973. Amazing that a drummer finally was able to play it.
Expecting the Call (AI Jazz)
A "Mingused" blues, harmonizing a blues scale with extended chords. Amazing how good the AI spins are, even with the free model. It has a hard time sussing the chords, but then learns them.
Universal Speech Rhythms
The rhythmic grouping of eighth-quarter-eighth (or quarter-eighth-eighth or eighth-eighth-quarter) beginning on a downbeat is one of the most common speech rhythms, probably in any language. Displacing them an eighth note in either direction makes the words unintelligible ("ships arrive" becomes "ships A-rrive", "jumbo jet" becomes "jumBO jet"), but there are other words that could be mapped to that rhythm, e.g. "container". Obviously it doesn't matter in instrumental music, but speech rhythms can become rhythmic building blocks. Some words with the 8-4-8 (or 8-8-4) schema: Ships arrive Walk the streets In my youth Got around Thinking that Better than Still alive
Curio No. 103
Slippery Slope , based on Dynaxiom 2878. The vibe is Barrett-era Floyd with the characteristic descending chromatic lines. *** How Suno spins it:
Creative Evolution
I have always worked combinatorially, i.e., each creative act is somehow connected to others, either spontaneously (when I am aware of them) or later when I associate them with existing works. This works the same for my music as well as art projects. I also have always kept lists of ideas, titles, strategies, and so on, which I go back to very often. Electronic notebooks, such as Evernote have made this easier (perhaps too easy), but I used to keep paper journals and sketchbooks. There are two basic ways to add cohesion to creativity: 1) create the work then serialize; 2) create similar pieces in an existing series. This also works in music where you can compose first, then add to a collection (album) or define the framework for the album and fill it in accordingly. I don’t think there’s anything that I do, either through design methodologies, or through improvisation that doesn’t fit with something I’ve done before. I know there are some artists who like to make something they’ve neve...
Be Bach (AI Version)
Typically I would have transcribed a sax solo and attempt to play it on the bass. In this case I paraphrased a Bach Partita in a Be Bop style and for the bass, but this is a sax version of the head played on the bass.
Woman From Mercury
Approximately 1991. AI adds a horn arrangement that I never conceived of at the time.
Daily Rhythm 0823
Juxtaposed lines: 8/23/1963, Friday Single release, “She Loves You”. 8/23/1995 (Eno Diary) New Oblique Strategy: “When is it for? Who is it for?” *** It's interesting that when I uploaded the riff Suno flagged it because "She loves you" was in it. Now with LLMs in the loop of music, a band can own words. I used "she loves you" in a riff and Suno flagged it. The Beatles now own those words such that you could be pulled over for using it in a conversation. So why make anything, especially it it involves days or weeks of work? Why not just copyright a color ?
On Being Eclectic
I’ve always been restless and eclectic. I never really stick with one thing for very long. It’s not that I lose interest and never want to do it again; it’s just that there are too many other things to explore. You could say that it’s kind of impulsive and that I’m not thinking things through, but as an artist, I don’t think it would be very enjoyable or interesting to want to stick to one thing. There are artists who have only done one thing, and I admire their work. The artist I always cite is Peter Halley , who’s done essentially the same piece his entire career. I know lately he’s been doing other things, and there have been other singularly focused artists who have branched out. But I’m different because I do lots of different things and alternate between them, sometimes doing them all simultaneously. Over the past 5 or 10 years, I’ve kind of returned to skill, having spent quite a bit of time doing things that are more abstract and postmodern, which don’t involve a lot of sk...
Eclipse (8/21/2017)
Black-out lyric idea: An example of how to use AI in the flow of composition, starting with a black-out lyric, generating the music, then deriving another piece from the AI musical elements, in this case a classical piece. The angular harmony is what interested me to want to reverse engineer this. AI music is terrible at harmonic invention, but sometimes you get these kinds of "happy accidents". I put that in quotes because I don't think they're either in this case: Firstly, because the harmony is sadly mysterious, and secondly, because I think AI-generated content isn't capable of generating them. The only way I see them happening is if they are synchronistic in some way, where it presents a solution in the moment in the flow of time, just as something happens at the moment of totality. It's obvious I was using a Pink Floyd vibe.
Function Before Form
Charles Sheeler - Industrial Study No. 2, 1935 8/19/2024 Abstracted lines from 8/19 diary entries: Function before form Start with a basic sound Think that they were art Looking at them close and far Roman or Egyptian art Brightly-colored African art Going back to nature Going back to the roots *** Orchestral: 8/19/2026 (AI Version):
Windblown World
8/18/1948 (Jack Kerouac Journal--paraphrased) Jack goes to New York with Tom, jazz club for bop, smoked pot, and pondered epigonism [an imitation of an artist by a subsequent generation], existence of “atomic disease”: “There is something definitely afoot, a madness, one not unlike the late Roman cult-madnesses.” Run through AI: Extrapolated lyric: Took off for New York Went out with his other girl Enemy of the bourgeois Back to the windblown world Madness of a Roman cult Shadow of the bomb Fell to your knees From atomic disease Jazz club for bop Smoked a lot Pondered beat religion Go back to Kerouac Back to the windblown world Addicted to the city Intellectual juice The splitting of the atom Electrons on the loose Survival paranoia Post-nuclear rage Despair in France The existential age The haunting sound of a breathless saxophone It comes around when you'r...
Once Upon a Time...The End
A 1986 jazz head with AI treatment. It's the first time this has ever been performed after 40 years.
Harmonic Cycling
A harmonic etude of ii-I-Vs through the circle of 4ths. The complete cycle modulating up in 4ths through all 12 keys: D-/C/G G-/F/C C-/Bb/F F-/Eb/Bb Bb-/Ab/Eb Eb-/Db/Ab G#-/F#/C# C#-/B/F# F#-/E/B B-/A/E E-/D/A A-/G/D
On the Other Side of the Year
Summer is a plain A plateau of life Everything in full bloom In the maximum light The sun made marks On a window sill The angle changed It caused a chill The summer leaves The flowers a clock Antipode to a country road On the other side of the year If you play a movie backwards It won't end up as it started It tells a different story To follow it is harder It's that time of year You notice the night A fading of light Disappearing from sight Take a turn With the calendar birds Hope to see you near On the other side of the year A time for reading novels Obscured by clouds Seasonal tales Never read aloud Tilt and rotation Light/dark shift Shadows of the day Shift and drift The summer leaves The flowers a clock Antipode to a country road On the other side of the year *** My pics: Speedo, Alibi, Vapor Cone
Curio No. 102
Seed is the phrase " hunting ghosts in broad daylight", from this AI-generated diary entry by Thomas Sullivan, a fictitious character living in Chicago in 1886. So it goes from AI to human back to AI in the AI versions. 8/5/1886 I find myself hunting ghosts in broad daylight. Yesterday, wandering near where Miller’s store once stood, I searched for some trace of the black bunting from Lincoln’s mourning. Nothing. Glass and granite have consumed every landmark of my younger self. Time moves differently now—not the urgent acceleration I felt in ‘75, but a strange compression. Decades telescope into moments. I remember the weight of thirty years like yesterday’s coat, yet cannot recall what I ate for breakfast. AI Versions: