Why Do We Stop?

 

AI music creates an absurd situation for artists and musicians. The longer you've been using it, the more you've gotten used to using it, and it's in the flow of your creative activities. But since we don't have control over the variables in manual art making, we are slaves to whatever options are available. The results are pretty interesting, and I like using AI music generators as I can experiment with lyric ideas. AI doesn’t parse them the way that I personally would. Since I'm a trained musician, I have lots of options. But when you use AI music generators, you have limited options, but the results are interesting, which is different from manual creativity, where you have a lot of options, and the results aren't always so interesting–and it's more work to shape them so that you can feel satisfied with the results. 

Since the 1980s, I've juggled writing classical music and pop music, and I'm still continuing to do it today. it can create conflicts, but it also keeps the music alive in a lot of ways. I think if I had to stick to one genre, either in art or music, I would get bored. 

Since AI music is more of a listening activity, it's nice that you can generate something that will lift your mood, and perhaps give you more ideas on the other things that you're doing. But the problem is that it's creating too much content, and you have to make a concerted effort to find the meaning. If I generate 20 versions of a song, that means that I have to sort through those results and find the best ones. Historically, we've consumed music in packages. so we listen to singles and albums. We had terrestrial radio, which had a fairly small number of songs that would repeat in rotation every day, perhaps 50, at the most 100, and now we're paralyzed by all the options that we have. It's a challenge for content creators to create things that have meaning. 

What I like about AI music is that I can create lyrics that are meaningful, and then try to create one to three iterations that can become kind of a package–an EP or an album. I think that's the best way rather than scrolling. Music takes time to absorb, and so you have to strive for saturation, which is different from art, where you can glance at something for a few seconds, and you can get the gist of it. But even in a museum situation, you are in a “scrolling” situation as well, and you have to make decisions on what to look at. 

As to meaningful lyrics, this one is inspired by the Why Do We Stop? piece: why do we stop doing certain things in our lives? Why is it that artists stop making art, or musicians stop making music? There have been many artists in the past who have created art throughout their lives up until the time that they died, because somehow they found meaning in it, and the idea that you would stop something abruptly and do something else would be an idea that you couldn't grasp, because it's how you found meaning in your life. At least you did personally in the midst of everybody trying to find the signal. Once you have found the signal, why shut down the signal? So the lyrics are "philosophical pop", which have lyrics that cause you to think about them, but absurd or ironic in that the musical setting is Pop. One would presume it would be more appropriately folk or classical. But the thing with AI generators is that you don't have any control over it. The "singers" don't understand the words. 

These are songs I would have listened to in the 1980s and 1990s on WXRT in Chicago, the radio that I played along with. But with AI music, I'm more of a listener, and I really want to be more involved in the writing of the music. But it's convenient to create a radio station for yourself, based on things that interest you, and perhaps interesting to others, so that they can get it into the rotation of their lives. 

***

I never stopped
(Taking a photograph)
I never stopped
(Making a film)

We never stopped
(Looking for happiness)
It might have flopped
Why did we stop?
The best way
To keep  on going
Is to not stop
(Why do we stop?)

Where a river stops
And starts again
Where it stopped
Is where you begin
Before it's if
And then it's when
Even if the bottom drops
You' ll never stop

I never stopped
(Taking a photograph)
I never stopped
(Making a film)
We never stopped
(Looking for happiness)
It might have topped
Why did we stop? 

***

• 01: The first iteration. Interesting ending
• 02: A good dud. Starts the song with dummy lyrics. Who would do that? Bad sound quality. Too short. (Is anything too short these days?)
• 03. The best spin--very Queen or Blur. Again, bridge in the wrong place, or could have the song form ABCB
• 04. Bridge premature and in the wrong place. Needs a song doctor. Stupid ending not on the expected tonic
• 05. Great castrati
• 07. Good 90s pop but too short. You can cover these to extend them, but who would? That's the thing with AI music, people have performed them but it's an arm and a leg from various "people"--never a whole person or a whole band.