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How did this get made?
I was minding my business, scrolling and trolling on Substack Notes, when what to my wondering eyes should appear? A (now deleted) Note from
hoping for AI to create a Curtis Mayfield type jam to accompany a Rick Ross style beat using a recent quote from a political candidate as an intro. I took this as a challenge, thinking that I, a human (as far as I know), could do a better job than a non-human.Why was I so eager to respond? Well, first, I think Elijah is cool, and secondly, this gets at a core issue for artists: there is a misalignment between the supply of creative work and the economic value of creative work. More pointedly, creators are supplying artistic content (songs, performances, writing, visual art, film, digital media, etc.) in extreme volumes without fair compensation. At the same time, the value of arts and cultural production is a giant sector of the economy.
Creative output clearly has economic value and the vast majority of artists do not benefit from that value. It is a simple market failure.
Another challenge is that artists not only compete with each other, they also compete with all published material on record—meaning all art ever created. Your potential audience may very well be choosing to pay for Beowulf over your novel. Mozart and Beethoven do very well on Spotify.
I believe that society (meaning people) would be better off if living artists were situated to benefit from the market demand for art and creativity. Would it not be easier to set up markets to match artists with those looking to publish an image, prose or a song than to invest speculative hundreds of billions in software that plagiarizes human creativity? There are plenty of ideas and policy solutions that could help this situation, though the political will or the systems change needed seems far fetched at this juncture.
I do think the Substack subscription model has potential to help.
Taking the inputs for creative work out of the hands of artists and putting it in the hands of technology companies does not help. Many more would prosper if artists could benefit from the demand for creative work. This does not mean banning technology—far from it. This is about a systems change that adequately compensates individuals for their input into the value of the content.
A systems change seems unlikely in the foreseeable future, but there should be more robust dialogue instead of capitulation and automatically valuing your creative output at 0. Your activity on social platforms of any kind (yes, that includes Substack) has a monetary value to those companies. If you are contributing to their platform as active users or otherwise without being paid, you are being exploited.
In short, there is an insane number of people creating music and I’m certain that many can quickly fulfill a request to make a beat, make a song, or otherwise. If the market could link the demand in an efficient way, human music on demand would cost less and be a more sustainable economic model than blowing unfathomable amounts on tech infrastructure to benefit corporations monetizing code. Also, this creates something original and gives people added meaning to their lives. There is seemingly little discussion about the social cost of AI; a cost which might be greater than any possible profits.
There is absolutely no need to automate creative work in a way that cuts out artists. However, software tools can and should allow artists to create efficiently. When these tools are called “AI” that’s where the lines get blurry.
No…I meant how did you make it?
Oh, sorry for the rant.
After a little googling to verify the references, I listened to Rick Ross’ Teflon Don and the tracks mentioned by Elijah.
I found a drum sample with the soul groove that was close enough. I manipulated the drum track with plugins and I manually cut out snare hits to get it closer to what I wanted.
The beat is a sample of a real drummer and it has an actual groove which might be the most important part. With the beat in place I did what any human would do—jam.
Initially, I didn’t take Elijah’s Curtis Mayfield request seriously enough and the guitar parts were more Miter than Mayfield. This means more noodly and less smooth and funky. I used a version of a soft synth—an ARP Axxe emulation and found a present patch that sounded cool.
My favorite instrument that I own is a Berhinger 2600. It is a remake of the classic ARP 2600 and it is useful as both a synth and an amplifier. It is all over many of my Miter recordings. Initially, I ran both the guitars and bass through it on this track. When pushed a bit, I think the saturated guitars sound great.
I am not sure how or why, but while working on the baseline with an electric bass through the 2600, it induced spacey feedback that I was able to manipulate. I honestly have no technical explanation for it, so it was probably an alien or nosferatu.
After sending the draft to Elijah, he gave me some feedback around getting it closer to Curtis Mayfield in style. Easier said than done, but I gave it a shot. This time I plugged into an amp, used a phaser and overdrive pedal with my Blues Junior amp while playing my telecaster. I ended up taking many of the heavier and busier synths out to give the guitars some more breathing room and that did the trick.
Another thing that I want to do in my music is to elevate groove and make things less robotic. This is sometimes difficult to do alongside making it sound tight and professional. One reason I’m proud of this track is that it has a tight groove.
This track, created several months ago, was centered around the “you better thank a union member” sample which now feels a bit painful and distant given certain election outcomes. I wanted to substitute a different spoken word overdub and went to the trusty old Library of Congress for public domain audio samples. The majority of the spoken word comes from an 1960s Isaac Asimov speech about the origins of science fiction1. It all fits together in interesting ways, including words from Kamala, but that’s for you to contemplate dear reader/listener.
Etc.
That’s a wrap for the year, and the completion of 24 songs over the course of 24 months so far in this wacky project. Not to mention plenty of bonus material and collaborations that went bed, bath and beyond the call of duty modern warfare.
My available time to do this is scarce and getting scarcer, so I greatly appreciate any time that you’ve taken to listen or read. I plan on continuing the one song/essay/story a month pace for the foreseeable future. Please like, share and subscribe to help me keep it keepin’ on.
Want to hear some of my thoughts on the Substack experience as a writer/musician? Check this out:
Yours 4eva,
RS
Crane, Maurice A, and Isaac Asimov. Speech by Isaac Asimov, New York, New York. [Unknown] Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/afccal000207/.
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