Lee Barry Composition Diary

 Seed:    Score:  Audio, including AI versions. It's interesting how it develops them, but nothing I would ever do. They sound like marching band arrangements that would never be easily played. No one would want to make a score and parts for it. It words as sesquicentennial music.

  If it wasn't for AI music I wouldn't have had an interest in writing lyrics. I have kept a running list of lines and couplets for decades but there was no incentive to use them. With the  Songdays, I had started to use them just for the speech rhythms, to be converted to instrumental riffs for use in classical music. I've always been a "singer-songwriter" who hated singing, and now I can experiment with many different ways of creating potentially singable words and phrases, drawn from prose, e.g. lines from letters as cryptic "black-out" poetry (or libretto), distilled to pop lyrics.  The source for this was a June, 16, 1895 William James letter.  

  How AI interprets it:   

 

 

 Seed:   ***  

 

 Calculations   

 Seed is the rhythm of a found voice, "Catch you on the next deep dive"  AI-generated versions, all over-the-top and corny:

  I started experimenting with AI on some of my orchestral pieces. At first, it's interesting, but it's never what I want, and it's always the same clichés–the John Williams-style scoring.  It's always the case with AI-generated music that it's an approximation of what you might want. Sometimes it suffices, but it will never be the one that you originally thought of. With the Curios, I only want a piece of music that's a minute or less in duration, and AI extends it. It can extrapolate what you've already written and can suggest ideas, but you need to get into the weeds and do it yourself. I played a number of these for a friend, and he immediately liked them. I can see why because it's a complete work, and when you play mine against it, it pales in comparison. With the 250-series pieces, I’m scoring things only for brass ensembles, and AI is making a complete orchestral arrangement out of them. That's not what I want. I know that you could probably ...

 Seed:    Score:   AI-generated Audio:

   Seed:                The seedling: The AI-generated version from the seedlng: 

 Slot Canyon  

 Seed:    The "real" music:   The AI interpretation--way over the top, but is the "Revolution" cliche sound. 

A comparison between how I parse a lyric and how AI does it. I've noticed that AI frequently drops either the first eighth or quarter at the beginning of a bar on the vocals, or the vocal is very rubato and floats above the groove and ignores bar lines or accents. This is because it's squeezing the vocal stems to fit the riff stems. This is not how music is typically written or how we sing. The "I've said" line is the same in both but AI displaces it 2 beats, so it is picking up on human speech rhythms. I've said Never say never I've said Never say never I've said Never say never Many times before Many times before   The AI version:

 

 

Photographs for (AI) music (Walker Evans)  Blind is based on Dynaxiom 3384: Nostalgia can make us blind to the shadows. Back To Egypt is a re-make of a 1998 song, done in a Blues/Gospel style. It's interesting to hear "someone else" cover your songs.

   

  6/5/2025  A song about cults.  The bridge is self-referential, talking about selling it. I took a long time to get the LLM to understand that, even when it was clearly marked in the lyric as [Bridge].  It also took several weeks to refine the lyric, so the Tan Van version is the final lyric and and Steel Shadows was the first draft. "It manifests when you know in your bones that something isn't right, or something doesn't seem true to you, but you go along with it due to external pressure from authorities or groups. Examples include being sold "snake oil" remedies despite an inner feeling of disbelief, or continuing to smoke because it was fashionable despite feeling it was wrong." (Emmy van Duerzen)  *** Follow the leader He'll sell you a bridge See you all down at Choctaw Ridge Sell you down the river Sell you a bridge See you all down at Choctaw Ridge Blessings that we're after Lessons from before Swimming back and forth From shore to shore  Hea...

  Based on the diary entry:   5/21/1997 Cold/windy, 50 It’s been such a cold spring that the birch trees don’t even have buds yet. Such a cold spring The birch trees are bare   Seed:     

A new "wordrum" where speech rhythms become the seed for the piece. Here's it could be a marching band riff or just a snare riff.

Mostly thoughts on AI music drawn from Volume III . As robotic as these podcasts are, they are useful in analysis.