A few weeks ago, I generated an album of music (YouTube/Spotify/Apple Music) with Suno, an AI music generation platform. I was talking to a friend about Suno recently and how he doesn't mind coding with AI or even generating random images with AI but generating music felt repulsive. I thought about this and I think here's where I'm at- generating something removes a lot of control over what comes out, removes a lot of the process that goes into creating, and produces something that isn't yours¹. We were jamming the other night and that got me thinking on the distinction between the act of creating and the creation itself.

I think depending on how you think about the craft of creation in these areas, the value you place and the way you interact with the final product, will ultimately influence how you feel about such a disruption to the "traditional" way of creation. I don't think it's a huge leap to suggest that software engineers mostly feel less attached to the code they write than artists to the masterpieces they paint. Code can be very personal, just as any form of writing and creation, but the primary purpose is a means to and end of getting something else done, rather than to produce the code alone. Getting that thing done can be achieved in many different ways, different programming languages, applications, etc. Music and art feel like the very opposite end of the spectrum to many people- it's deeply personal, there's no one accepted or "solved" way to do a certain thing, in fact, deviating from the norm is often encouraged and what finds success. Something like the creation of fabrics or clothing might be somewhere between, there is an art to it, but it's also something that is incredibly practical.

With the music I've created with AI, the word 'created' here isn't one-for-one with music I created without AI. The things in common are:

• Coming up with an idea or motivation for a song
• Thinking about roughly how I want it to sound and how it should make you feel
• Iterating on parts I like and don't like

What's different:

• Coming up with chord progressions, melodies, harmonies, drum beats
• Playing with a bunch of different instruments or synth patches to find the right one
• Writing lyrics + not having someone to produce vocals for the track
• Iteration time / time to be able to completely change aspects of it

When I created journey by fictional artist fraktur, I feel what came out was more of a reflection of what's in my head and less a reflection on my technical prowess or music production skills. It allows me to express things beyond the capabilities I have in composing and producing music (despite doing that for well over a decade.) I deliberately did not put my name as the artist because that would imply I am the performer- no; I'm essentially the ghostwriter or ideas person here.

I think a mental shift is required to dial in the appreciation of what's been done here; I did make this music in the sense that without me it wouldn't exist, and the message of the song is one that I wanted to put out into the world, it's personal to me. I also think it's okay that it isn't (and isn't trying to be) transformative, "better" than what I could do without AI, or the best thing in the world - it sounds good, it's not winning any awards. And I'm happy with that. It complements but doesn't replace my own music production.

A different kind of creativity went into producing the music video for night drivin', one of my favorite songs from the album. Doubling down on AI tool usage, I used nano banana and Veo3 to generate the content for composition in DaVinci Resolve.

Many more hours went into this production, because a lot more smaller elements had to be painstakingly built up to be put together into the final thing. But I'm thrilled with how it turned out!

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¹ At the very least, not entirely. Glossing over the philosophical, practical, and legal aspects of 'ownership', or the fact that I see this as not black-and-white; i.e., all art is derivative, etc.