I make music in ways that interest me, and in ways that I can get my head around – bad grammar, but what it means in practice is that with every song I produce I make a bunch of mistakes, and learn something about myself or about music, or about the creative process. And then I get a little bit better at it. That is what makes it worthwhile.
Introducing “Painting music”
Called “Painting Music”, my latest album has been a solid slog for the past six months. I’ve done nothing but work on the nine tracks and then produce the lyrical videos for those songs. After having the songs mixed and mastered – with the sound engineers dealing with the weirdness of it all as best they can! – it is now ready to be launched. (Or unleashed on the world.)
Why start here?
The seeds from which these songs grew are little snippets of sound that were generated on online platforms that specialize in aurally representing movements or brush strokes through Artificial Intelligence programs. A mouthful, that, but it simply means that you make a movement with your mouse on a screen, and get a snatch of sound that may have chords, a melody, or a beat. What you do with it, is the catch. I believe I have made something from these bits and pieces that is at least interesting, at best, beautiful.
Never be boring
In the search for the ultimate Ear Candy – the most enticing, most moving chords and melodies, you can use a machine-generated sound that has been engineered to be exquisite and delightful, or a sample which has had proven success.
However, using and relying on that kind of sample might be an error in judgment:
“The uncanny perfection that these recording and compositional technologies make possible can be pleasing. But metronomic accuracy can also be too easy to achieve this way, and the facile perfection is often obvious, ubiquitous, and ultimately boring.”
– David Byrne, How Music Works, p. 135
Byrne’s comment hits the nail on the head. In the end, I realized that the parts of the songs that appealed to me most are the ones that I wrote from scratch – the melodies, verses, bridges, variations, transitions and breakdowns: the completely original parts, some beautiful, some best deleted. This is because there is a connection between one’s feelings and the music that one uses to express those feelings. It is a direct, visceral connection that cannot be faked or generated by appropriating it from elsewhere else.
I like the parts that I created because they come from within me, from my soul, from everything I have heard, everything I have learned and know, everything I feel and want to say.
When I wrote these pieces, I realized that I no longer need to use loops and samples from the Logic Pro library, or an A.I.-driven platform, or anywhere else – I can, but I can also write better ones.
I’ll be releasing the audio files as well as the lyrical videos of the nine songs, one by one over the next few weeks. I hope you like them as much as I do.
Tracks cover art
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