how to make enemies and alienate musicians

I'm about to embark on a project that I suspect will earn me the enduring, red-hot enmity of a great many people, including some whose opinions I respect.

I'm going to use artificial intelligence to make music.

More specifically, I've been experimenting with Suno, an AI music-generation platform, to create "recordings" of songs I've written. And I'm planning to take those "recordings" and distribute them through DistroKid, which will make them available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and other streaming services.

I realize that, for some people, this puts me somewhere on the moral spectrum between a scab and a puppy strangler.

But hear me out.

First, a little background.

I'm a songwriter. I'm not a musician.

Well, that's not entirely true. I play guitar (badly), and I can sing (badly). Whether anyone would want to listen to me doing either is another question. My talent, such as it is, lies primarily in writing songs: coming up with lyrics, melodies, chord progressions, and the occasional musical idea that I think is worth sharing with the world.

But there's a problem.

Writing a song and making a good recording of that song are two very different things.

If I want a professional-quality recording, I generally need to hire musicians, singers, producers, and engineers. And those people, quite reasonably, expect to be paid for their work.

I've done this before. In 2023, I released an album called Music No One Else Can Hear, consisting of fourteen songs (seventeen tracks, as there were a few alternate versions) that I wrote or co-wrote. I hired people to turn those songs into recordings I could be proud of.

It was a wonderful experience. It was also expensive.

And there's another complication. Sometimes I want to hear a song performed in different ways. Maybe a song I originally imagined as folk-rock would work better as country. Or punk. Or a big, overblown theatrical production featuring a singer who sounds as though he's trying to cough up a carburetor.

With human musicians, every one of those experiments potentially costs money. Sometimes quite a lot of money.

With Suno, I can experiment to my heart's content, or at least until I exhaust my monthly allotment of credits.

I can provide a song I've written, complete with its melody and chord structure, and ask Suno to produce a "recording" in a particular style. I can revise the instructions, change the arrangement, try different vocal approaches, and generate multiple versions until I find something I like.

Is this creative?

I've heard the argument that AI-generated music involves no creativity. And I think that's wrong  -- at least in my particular case.

The creative work I'm primarily interested in is songwriting.

When I hire a musician to record one of my songs, I don't cease to be creative because somebody else is performing it. I wrote the song. I made decisions about how I wanted it to sound. The musician contributes his or her own creativity, skill, and interpretation, and the result is a collaboration.

When I use Suno, I still wrote the song. I still make decisions about how I want it to sound. I still listen critically, reject versions that don't work, revise my instructions, and try again.

Obviously, there's a difference. A human musician brings judgment, experience, imagination, and an individual artistic sensibility to the project. Suno is software. I'm not suggesting that those contributions are equivalent.

But I don't see why using software to realize my musical ideas somehow invalidates the creativity that went into writing those songs in the first place.

And, frankly, I don't think anyone would object if I used Suno strictly to produce demos.

That's one of my motivations. I'd love to have good-quality demos of my songs that I could send to performers, producers, or publishers who might be interested in recording them. A good demo can help someone hear the potential in a song, and Suno makes it possible to create one without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars. In fact, I have cowritten a couple songs for movies that are now in preproduction, and used Suno to generate "recordings" that I could use as proofs of concept.

But here's where things get more controversial.

I'm not planning to stop at demos.

I'm planning to distribute some of these "recordings" commercially.

I know. Fetch the pitchforks.

Why?

Because I like my songs, and I'd like other people to hear them. And if I can produce a version that sounds good to me, why shouldn't I make it available?

I'm not under any illusion that I'm about to become a streaming sensation. I have no expectation of making a fortune. Indeed, based on my experience with streaming royalties, I suspect that the financial rewards will be sufficient to purchase a moderately priced sandwich, provided I don't insist on cheese.

But that's not really the point.

The point is to get the songs out there.

Now, I understand that there are legitimate objections to AI-generated music. There are serious questions about the material used to train these systems, the rights of musicians and other creators, and the potential for AI to displace people who make their living creating and performing music.

I don't dismiss those concerns.

In fact, there's an obvious tension here. I'm a songwriter. I believe songwriters deserve recognition and compensation for their work. I would be understandably unhappy if someone used my songs without permission or compensation. So I can't simply wave away the concerns of other creators because this particular technology happens to be useful to me.

But I also don't think that every use of AI in music is inherently illegitimate.

I'm not asking Suno to write my songs for me. I'm using it, primarily, to create performances of songs I've already written. There may be occasional exceptions where I provide lyrics and experiment with AI-generated melodies, but the project is fundamentally about getting my own songwriting heard.

And I'm not pretending that I assembled a band, hired a singer, and recorded these tracks in a studio. I'm perfectly happy to tell people exactly how the "recordings" were made.

Which brings me to the quotation marks.

You'll notice that I've been putting the word "recordings" in quotes throughout this post. That's deliberate. These are not recordings of actual musicians performing actual music in the traditional sense. They are computer-generated audio tracks that simulate such performances.

They may sound like recordings. They may serve the same purpose as recordings. But I think the distinction is worth preserving.

At least for now.

Ultimately, I don't know where this experiment will lead. Perhaps I'll create a few "recordings," distribute them, and discover that nobody cares. Perhaps I'll discover that some of my songs work much better in genres I'd never previously considered. Perhaps a performer will hear one and decide to make a real recording of it.

Or perhaps I'll simply have a collection of versions of my songs that I enjoy listening to.

Any of those outcomes would be fine with me.

And if the whole project earns me the enduring, red-hot enmity of musicians everywhere?

Well, at least I'll have a soundtrack for it.

Even if nobody actually played on it.

cinema history class: zombi 3 (1988

The session: The Dead are Alive!
Keith shows us four Italian ripoffs of Dawn of the Dead 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: Zombi 3 (1988)
Directed by Lucio Fulci & Bruno Mattei

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Completely unfamiliar.

Plot Synopsis:
In the Philipines, soldiers and tourists struggle to survive a growing outbreak of a disease that turns people into flesh-eating zombies. Meanwhile, the military tries to contain the spreading disaster.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
Zombi 3 (1988), an Italian horror film, combines the zombie genre with the action movie. The result? Kind of crappy, actually. But not entirely without its charms.

The plot involves a deadly experimental virus that gets loose in the Philippines, turning people into flesh-eating zombies. Naturally, the military's efforts to contain the outbreak only make things worse. From there, we get a lot of people running around, shooting things, getting eaten, and occasionally doing things that make absolutely no sense.

I thought the acting was pretty bad, but the others pointed out that much of what I was reacting to might have been the dubbing. Fair enough. Bad dubbing can make a perfectly competent performance look ridiculous. On the other hand, it doesn't explain the numerous things that simply didn't make sense. There were plenty of moments when I found myself wondering why someone was doing something, how something had happened, or whether the filmmakers had simply decided that explanations were an unnecessary luxury.

And then there was the flying zombie head.

WTF?

At one point, a severed zombie head actually flies through the air to attack someone. This happens exactly once, which is once more than it should have. I don't know whether the filmmakers thought this was frightening, exciting, or just a really neat idea they had come up with over lunch. Whatever the reasoning, I would have been happier without it.

Then there was the pregnant woman whose abdomen produces a zombie baby that comes flying out, in an obvious attempt to borrow a little magic from Alien. Except that Alien managed to make its chestburster scene genuinely horrifying. Here, it was mostly gross, ridiculous, and derivative.

Still, I don't want to suggest that the movie was a complete waste of time. There was a lot of creative gore, and some of the effects were quite impressive. Whatever else one might say about the filmmakers, they certainly weren't lacking in imagination when it came to finding new and disgusting things to do to the human body.

And the movie was relentless. There was always something happening. Even when I couldn't quite follow what was going on, I was generally interested in seeing what would happen next. In that sense, the combination of action movie and zombie movie worked reasonably well. These weren't your traditional slow, shambling zombies, either. They were fast, aggressive, and energetic, anticipating the sort of zombies we'd later see in 28 Days Later. There wasn't much opportunity to get bored.

The ending, however, was a major disappointment.

As the movie progressed, I had worked out an elaborate scenario for how everything would end, involving nuclear weapons and a suitably spectacular conclusion to the escalating catastrophe. I was rather pleased with my idea. Unfortunately, the filmmakers apparently hadn't consulted me. Instead, we got an understated non-ending that seemed particularly anticlimactic after all the mayhem that preceded it.

So, ultimately, Zombi 3 was a pretty bad movie that nevertheless managed to be entertaining in spots. It had lousy dialogue (or lousy dubbing), questionable logic, some absurdly stupid moments, and a disappointing ending. But it also had plenty of action, some inventive gore, and enough energy to keep things moving.

And, of course, Joe gave it a ten. If they had used the ending I concocted, he would have given it a twelve -- if Bobbo would have allowed it, which he wouldn't have. But that's another story.

happy tunesday! one crime, two songs and a musical makeover

One of the things that has long fascinated me about music is the subject of cover songs. What happens when one artist takes a song recorded by another artist and makes it their own? Sometimes the result is a fairly faithful reproduction of the original. Sometimes the arrangement changes dramatically. And sometimes the new version changes the entire feel of the song, even though the lyrics remain essentially unchanged.

But what happens when an artist covers himself?

For this Tunesday, I want to look at two Simon & Garfunkel songs: "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." and "Somewhere They Can't Find Me."

They're really two versions of the same story. And while they have an awful lot in common, the differences are fascinating.

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964)

"Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." was the title track of Simon & Garfunkel's first album, released in October 1964. It's a gentle, acoustic folk song, built around Paul Simon's guitar and the duo's beautiful vocal harmonies.

The story is told from the perspective of a young man lying in bed beside the woman he loves. It's the middle of the night, and she's sleeping peacefully. He's awake, contemplating his actions and his future.

He's robbed a liquor store, and now he's a fugitive. He knows he has to leave before the police catch him, and that means abandoning the woman he loves and the life they've shared.

What makes the song so affecting is its sadness. The protagonist knows he's made a terrible mistake, and he knows that mistake is going to cost him the life he had. He's made up his mind to run, but there's no excitement about the prospect. Instead, he seems overwhelmed by the enormity of what he's losing.

There's no bravado here. No thrill of being an outlaw. Just a man lying awake in the middle of the night, mourning what he's thrown away, even as he prepares to flee.

Somewhere They Can't Find Me (1966)

In January 1966, Simon & Garfunkel released their second album, Sounds of Silence. By then, their musical direction had changed considerably.

Their first album had been firmly rooted in the folk tradition. But after producer Tom Wilson added electric instrumentation to "The Sound of Silence," turning it into a major hit, the duo moved toward a more contemporary folk-rock sound.

And on that second album, tucked between "Kathy's Song" and the instrumental "Anji," is a song called "Somewhere They Can't Find Me."

If you've heard "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.," the lyrics will sound awfully familiar.

In fact, the verses are essentially the same. We have the same man, the same sleeping woman, the same liquor store robbery, and the same impending departure.

But Paul Simon has rewritten the music and added a chorus.

And the result is an entirely different song.

Gone is the gentle, mournful acoustic arrangement. In its place is a driving, energetic folk-rock number. The rhythm is more urgent, the vocals more forceful, and the new chorus emphasizes the protagonist's determination to escape.

The man in "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." sounds devastated by what he's done and what he's about to lose. The man in "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" sounds determined to get away.

Both men are planning to run. Both are leaving behind someone they love. And both presumably have reason to regret the circumstances that brought them to this point.

But the emphasis has shifted.

In the original, we hear the sorrow of a man who has to leave.

In the remake, we hear the determination of a man who has to escape.

Same Story, Different Man?

What's particularly interesting to me is that the underlying story hasn't really changed.

The facts are identical. The protagonist committed a crime. He's lying beside the woman he loves. He knows he has to flee, and he's going to do it.

But the music changes how we perceive him.

In the first version, I hear a man overwhelmed by regret. He knows he's destroyed something precious, and the music invites us to share his sorrow. His decision to run is already made, but that doesn't make leaving any easier.

In the second, I hear a man whose attention is focused less on what he's leaving behind and more on getting away. The sadness may still be there, but the music pushes it into the background. What comes through most strongly is urgency and resolve.

It's almost as though we're hearing the same man at two different emotional moments in the same night. In one, he's consumed by the sadness of leaving. In the other, he's focused on the practical necessity of escape.

Or perhaps they're two entirely different personalities responding to the same predicament.

Either way, the transformation is accomplished primarily through the music, not the words.

And that, to me, is the fascinating part.

Why Did Simon Revisit the Song?

I don't have a definitive explanation from Paul Simon himself for why he decided to rewrite "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." Of course, I'm not searching for one.

But the timing offers a plausible explanation.

The first Simon & Garfunkel album was not initially successful, and the duo temporarily went their separate ways. Then "The Sound of Silence" became a hit after being transformed from an acoustic folk recording into a folk-rock single.

Suddenly, Simon & Garfunkel were back together, recording a second album in a musical environment very different from the one in which they'd made their first.

Reworking an earlier composition in their new style would have made a certain amount of sense. And "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" fits comfortably into the sound of Sounds of Silence.

Still, I wonder what Simon was thinking. Did he believe the original song had untapped potential? Did he simply like the story and want to try telling it differently? Or did he think the new arrangement was a better way of expressing what he'd wanted to say all along?

I don't know.

But I'm glad he did it.

Covering Yourself

I tend to be fascinated by cover versions. In fact, when I first had a radio show in college, it focused on covers. I would play two versions of the same song back to back. Then two versions of another. My listeners, assuming there were any, got an hour and a half of that.

But artists also revisit their own material. They change arrangements, rewrite melodies, alter tempos, and sometimes produce recordings that bear surprisingly little resemblance to their earlier versions.

This particular example has always fascinated me because Simon & Garfunkel didn't simply record a faster or more heavily orchestrated version of "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." They effectively created a new song out of the old one.

And the result demonstrates something important about songwriting.

The lyrics tell us what happened. The music tells us how to feel about it.

Here, Paul Simon gave us two different emotional interpretations of the same events.

In one, we hear a man preparing to flee, heartbroken over the life he's destroyed.

In the other, we hear a man preparing to flee, determined to make his escape.

Same crime. Same woman. Same decision.

Two very different songs.

And that's what makes this particular musical makeover so interesting to me.

cinema history class: nightmare city (1980)

The session: The Dead are Alive!
Keith shows us four Italian ripoffs of Dawn of the Dead 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 3: Nightmare City (1980)
Directed by Umberto Lenzi

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Completely unfamiliar.

Plot Synopsis:
A bunch of stuff happens -- Presumably a lot of it has to do with zombies or somesuch. The trailer makes it look really good!

Reaction and Other Folderol:
I missed this one, as I was with my family celebrating Asher's 18th birthday. So I really don't have anything useful to say about this. But I'm posting this for the sake of completeness. I assume that Joe would have given it a 10 if he had been there.

Oh, and Keith will be pissed off at me for even posting this.

happy tunesday! heaven was saving you for me

Happy Tunesday!

I'd like to get back in the habit of posting something musical every Tuesday. And what better way to start with "Heaven Was Saving You for Me"? Of course, no promises that I'll keep it up? What's next? The return of Zmedsday?

This is a song I wrote for Sharon and Josh for the first dance at their wedding. I'd been sitting on the title for over thirty years, not sure what to do with it. I really liked it, but every time I tried to use it as a song title, I couldn't get something that I liked. It seemed like a good first dance song title for a wedding. But it also sounded like it could be a great bit of Meat Loaf bombast.

Then Sharon and Josh got engaged. Then they started seriously talking about dates. Then they had a date and venue booked. Then I thought -- "Hey! I have a song idea!" What made it really super is that the title suggested an angle for the song -- something that is perfectly appropriate for Sharon and Josh. She's a Jewish kid from suburban Queens. He's an immigrant who spent his formative years in rural Guyana. So when I wrote the song I leaned into the fact that they managed to meet and work together despite their differences. The challenge was in making it personal and yet general enough. Like, I wanted to reference her research without something as literal as "I was studying what happens as human hands decompose." I think I succeeded. As for the actual performance? A big shoutout to JT Curtis and Emily Seibert. Heck, a shoutout to Eytan Mirsky for putting me in touch with JT. JT produced the track and did the arrangement (in consultation with me) played all the instruments and sang the male vocals. Emily Seibert did the female vocals. I also note that Emily was JT's recommendation. I have to tell you, JT was very professional and easy to work with. He was reliable, and turned in a great finished product. I never actually met Emily, but I was thrilled with her vocal performance. If you find yourself having a song in need of recording, I can't recommend them highly enough. JT's Bandcamp site is here. It's just too bad he's not hawking downloads of my song. And Emily's website is here.