On Music and AI

The looming threat of AI in music creation tools: songwriting with Suno -> mixing with iZotope -> mastering with Landr - has materialized a small but painful pebble in my shoe.  I’ve worked my whole life to understand subtleties in music that most people don’t need to think much about.  Now there are an array of tools that appeal to those people, who simply want their art to be presentable and are being offered a much quicker and cheaper route toward professional polish.

I’ve dabbled with these tools - it feels like it’s part of my job to understand them.  To be fair, they’re pretty good at taking a rough stab at whatever you’re asking them to do.  They get things clear, they get things loud, scoop out the mud, fill in the blanks. It makes me sad. 

Not because I’m going to be out of work, but because intuition is being taken away from the artist.  The art is being devolved into a task to complete rather than a journey to take, a journey with many winding and interconnected paths and choices to make.  Getting more punch out of a kick drum, ad-libbing a 2nd verse because you can’t figure it out, choosing a mastering engineer based on their portfolio - each one of these (and each of thousands of other decisions) provides a moment to interface with your intuition.  And using AI to streamline the process isn’t making the intuitive process easier, it’s just bypassing 90% of it. 

Intuition is at the center of creation.  After learning the technique in any field of expertise, following and growing your intuition while utilizing that technique is the path to richness, uniqueness, and purpose.  Intuition also opens up the escape hatch away from overreliance on technology,  government, religion, or any other oppressive force in this world (or in your mind).  A personalized escape from anything that tells you “this is the only way.”

I used to sous chef for the excellent Nia Lee, who taught me about tuning into your ancestors’ guidance when cooking - even when deciding something as small as how much salt will be in a dish.  This simple practice helped me see the through-line between all creative acts; how listening to your intuition, your ancestors, and your body can give you answers to questions big and small (answers that can, in turn, connect you more deeply to your intuition, your ancestors, and your body).  That anyone would want to skip all of this in order to create 10 songs a day with Suno is what makes me sad. 

I don’t believe this is what people really want. It’s evident in our collective dismay at our growing addictions to our phones, our lack of connection, and desire for grounding and place in this world.  To lose agency and intuition is to lose the joy and creativity of life; whether that’s found through improvising breakfast with whatever’s in your fridge, or fine-tuning the loudness of an album. 

Eventually, I’m convinced that streamlining any creative process via AI (shoutout to my visual artists / graphic designers as well) will make people yearn for the things that are being taken away from them in that process.  So why don’t I stop somewhere along my journey and take this pesky pebble out?  Keep trudging up this mountain and the next, but without a bleeding foot?  Lately I’m finding that the threat of AI is most useful to me as a reminder that I am made of history, intuition, and most obviously, blood.