Woman From Mercury
Approximately 1991. AI adds a horn arrangement that I never conceived of at the time.
Posts
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):
Atomic Disease
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:
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:
Prog AI
I still think AI music is in its talking head stage; we really don’t know what to do with it. It usually takes about 10 years for a new technology to get its sea legs. Eventually, lots of people will be using it legitimately, unless the courts decide otherwise. In the meantime, there's going to be a lot of smaller shifts that will increase the options, such as choosing keys and meters. If there was an option to create a song in 5/8 or 7/8 it would be interesting to see what it does with language. Would people generate prog? Perhaps. Would you subscribe to Rush AI for $50 a month?
Hold Music
Cindy Sherman--Untitled #90 AI music gives you many options on what you can do with language. You'd never get a singer who would be willing to sing a lyric that was just a hold menu, and do it in 6 languages, including Esperanto. Now that so many people are using AI-generators, the possibility of the same music accompanying different lyrics is more probable. So you have to attempt something different. (The second verses switch languages: English in Spanish, Spanish in French, French in German, German in Italian, Italian in Esperanto)