8/3/2026
Posts
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?
Curio No. 4A
Diminished and Whole-Tone clashes--the shortest Curio so far. All are a minute or shorter.
October 3rds
10/3/1994 “Perfect World” finished, a somewhat angry and sarcastic song about the illusion of heaven on earth. But we can live in a place where innocent delusion provides some degree of comfort and happiness, and where hope of a future made of gold will someday be reality. [10/3/2025: In a recent interview Joan Baez said that she has had to embrace denial to find a modicum of normalcy. That seemed shocking coming from her. I once worked with a lyricist who wrote a piece titled Embrace Denial : “Its hopefulness, it deadens the pain…” I also did an AI-generated version of this in the "early days" of AI music, just a year ago and it has evolved exponentially. These are actually good guitar solos, and who played them? It sounds like Michael Schenker, which is why I included the cover of UFO Phenomenon ]. 10/3/2016 You can’t make a whole lifetime (even an artistic practice) out of just-in-time thinking. You have to tap into some kind o...
September 3rds
9/3/2010 On Geddy Lee: Aside from his strident vocal style, Lee’s real talent may be how he can fuse the complex prosody in Peart’s lyrics with a contrapuntal bass line, something that does not come automatically or naturally without practice. Singing against a busy bass line can be a bit more tricky than singing and strumming a guitar. Performing the two parts together forces the negotiation of words, phrases, narrative and meaning with the bar line. If the lyrics are too wordy, all the words need to be packed into sometimes jerky metric schemes. This may be the reason that Rush uses odd meters so naturally, as it allows the rhythm of the language to flow naturally —in a kind of rock recitative. I don’t suspect much of their music was written at a piano or with an acoustic guitar—I think it was Lee singing against a bass as an accompaniment instrument. Some people can’t conceive of writing songs on a bass, but I suspect he did. [9/3/2025: Lyric “packing” seems...
July 3rds
The other side of the year 7/3/1930 (Edward Weston Diary) Morning walk near Point Lobos with Becking. “The scientist and the artist coming together for the avowed purpose of getting each other’s viewpoint, on mutually exciting ground.” Songday Seed: How AI interprets it: 7/3/1999 WXRT Flashback to 1967. I love listening to this stuff, not so much that I enjoy the music itself, but rather, thinking about that particular time and what led people to write and record the way they did. Zawinul’s Mercy Mercy, Mercy (the live Recording): I wonder if the crowd noise was coached or added later like a laugh track. What was going on on the stage that the audience would react that way? (Idea: Add another layer on top of recorded tracks, such as live audience sounds, as a way to put the music in a different context). Hendrix’s Foxy Lady: Hard-panning The vocals, tracks left “dirty”mics left on—lots of bleed....
June 3rds
6/3/1886 (Thomas Sullivan diary) A year since war’s end. Veterans’ reunion at Turner Hall in evening. War stories grow more heroic with each telling. Land speculation fever grips the city. Men who sold shoes now trade in prairie lots. The westward ride carries us all. 6/3/1967, Saturday (Beatles Studio Diary) Studio Two: Tracks on George’s “I Don’t Know”. “It was for the first time on a Beatle recording, a bass guitar superimposition only, something which would become more commonplace during and after 1967. 6/3/2021 The “wide horizons” approach to creativity: One reason you want both science and spirituality in your artwork or your music is that it widens your horizon. You get to access different levels, and you can take and leave whatever you want. If you’re not interested in certain aspects of scien...
May 3rds
5/3/2006 A lot of pop music is just playing a cliche really well. [5/3/2026: AI music is full of these cliches but so far I haven't detected anything that sounds exactly the same. On guitar, there is a fairly big set of cliche riffs that you'll always want to use]. 5/3/2017 I used to love to dance before I became a musician. Sometimes I find myself reacting with music rhythmically, but it’s not dancing. Even in classical there are some pieces you can dance to, and are written specifically as dances (Gigue, Gavotte). The Pulcinella Suite by Stravinsky is very “danceable” in some sections. Once you’ve done lots of writing you can lose your ability to dance. Words and music are its cure. Since music composition is more like writing words, the composer gets stuck in the frontal lobe. [5/3/2024: I still think words and music are a “cure”. There is a primal connection between the two, as evidenced by aphasia patients still able to recall music. Very often I’ll get song ideas from re...
February 3rds
Black out lyrics, with the rhythms in the words driving the music: 2/3/2022 The fact that there is a lag of several months between the genesis of songs and when mixes are made compromises the integrity of the idea of one song a month. Concepts are like working with oils, or paint that never dries. That's typical of conceptual thinking, i.e. the appearance that the ideas remain loyal to the original intentions, but in reality change hundreds of times, a moving target basically. Concepts can be problematic sometimes because you feel you have to adhere to them religiously. Same thing with lyrics: I've found that every singer needs bespoke words. Freddie Mercury was a good singer because his vocal apparatus, overbite, etc. made certain words possible. (Every singer needs a "word wardrobe" ("wordrobe"). 2/3/2024 After I’ve finished an album there’s a period where I’m not doing music at all–I’m rather getting ideas and I’m jotting them down, but I’m not intens...
January 3rds
1/3/1998 Some Picasso quotes: About children's work: When I was their age I could draw like them, but it has taken me a whole lifetime to learn how to draw like them. [This perhaps has to do with learning how to be more of a right-hemispheric person--if that is even possible. People that become this is usually the result of getting struck by lightning--like the orthopedic surgeon who became a pianist and composer and became known for The Lightning Sonata ]. My paintings are never done. That would sentence them to premature death. We invented cubism. We had no intention of inventing cubism, but simply of expressing what was in us. Don't expect me to repeat myself. My past does not interest me anymore. Rather than recopy myself, I would prefer to recopy others. At least I would bring something new to them. I like discovery too much… What after all is a painter? He is a collector who wants to make a collection by doing the paintings he saw in others’ collections. That's how ...
November 3rds
Riff based on the 11/3/1914 Wittgenstein diary entry, an interesting juxtaposition of Steely Dan and WWI. "Russians making advances. Hears cannon thunder and sees the lightning flash." [50 years later, there’s a popular musical group that plays electric instruments, emerging on the heels of the next World War, making effete music]. 11/3/1965 (Beatles Recording Sessions—"Michelle") A day spent recording this beautiful new Paul McCartney ballad….George asked me what I thought of the Beatles singing a song with French lyrics and I got the impression that with me being a young chap he was sounding me out, perhaps because they weren't too sure themselves. I said it sounded very pleasant, which it certainly did!" Russians (11-3-1914) by meta4s 11/3/2012 Autumn Sky (NW Indiana from Navy Pier--South Shore) 11/3/2021 One of the more interesting aspects of working on the Music For Photographs album was doing the research for the photographs. For Still 21 the...
August 3rds
8/3/2010 Dappled garden (Art Institute south garden) 8/3/2011 New lap steel. A blues/country/work song idea using a lap steel in open G minor. The "language" motif: The Short: Footage is from John Ford's 3 Bad Men . 8/3/2022 Quartet for “1966”. Decade Highways It’s only later in your life when you have access to both the side streets and the highways in your life. If you were born in the 1960s and an adolescent in the 70s, those are the side streets of your life. Then there’s the highway of the 1960s. I didn’t access the highway of the 1960s until the late 1970s, at which time I was “on the road” with the other generations that have been on those roads for a long time, including the highway of the 1950s and 1940s. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that I actually started to be influenced by the 1960...