Transcript
Speaker: everybody, welcome to Dissonant Echoes, the official Hauntology Records podcast. I'm here to host today. My name's Alan and this is Adrian, co-host, owner of the label. And we have today a guest, ah my bandmate, Gabe from Little Strings.
Speaker: And he's got other projects as well, like Acacius and our previous metalcore band. um It's good to have you, man. How's it going? It's going pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker: I've been listening to a lot of music, writing a lot of music. Yeah, you're off of school right now, right? Yeah. um Yeah, which means I get a a lot of ah free time to go and just write whatever I want or whatever I feel like.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that's awesome. um I know that we're not like announcing anything new, but we are working on some new stuff together. So um we'll just leave that nugget out there for people that care. But um what have you been doing other than music? Anything fun?
Speaker: about it Usually probably just work and preparing for possibly, um continuing or off to get my four-year degree. So kind of like preparation for stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right. You said you were thinking about ah what was the degree again? Music technology. Right. Which is really cool. um You know, you already know a lot of the kind of recording side of that, but there's other stuff you can definitely get out of that. I'm sure like the, you know, the writing classes and whatnot. So that's cool.
Speaker: Absolutely. Well, I hope that goes well for you. Well, thank you. um i I haven't been up to a whole lot lately. I've just been working on music here and there, but um nothing that's like coming out soon, I don't think.
Speaker: um I've been focusing on playing bass a lot lately. That's been the main thing that's been driving me. is you know I mean, for anybody that knows me, you know I'm a vocalist, I'm a guitarist, but for a few years, my main thing was playing bass.
Speaker: I was really serious about it. And so I've put the time in before, but even though I've put in time, like I really have to get back and like focus on the fingerstyle technique because you lose that if you don't practice.
Speaker: you know It's pretty easy to play bass with a pick, but getting back into the technical side of the fingerstyle playing takes some concerted effort. I've been doing that for the last few weeks, having a lot of fun with that.
Speaker: um And I finally got a P base too, which if you're watching, you can see it right there. That's one of those things where it's like, you can say you're a basis, but if you don't have a P base, then you're kind of a con man. Pretty much.
Speaker: And it comes from the guy who doesn't have a P-Base. Yeah. Well, I mean, I wanted one my whole life because I remember seeing Mike Durant from ah Green Day and ah as well as Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy because that was the kind of basic music I used to listen to.
Speaker: remember them playing those basses and I just was always like, I got to have one. But it took me 20 years to actually do it. You know, i'm ah and I'm joking about not being a real bassist if you don't have one, but it is kind of like the textbook most generic definition of a bass guitar. It's got that sound to it. Oh, it definitely sounds the best out of all my basses for sure. But yeah, that's what I've been up to.
Speaker: um Can't really think of anything else to announce for... Oh, announcements, right. Adrian, what have you been up to? And then we'll get into announcements for the label.
Speaker: ah Nothing, dude. Just busy busy with the label, busy with orders, busy making tapes. Yeah. But just working and just making tapes mostly. Yeah.
Speaker: Not much else. Everybody, you need to buy these tapes Adrian's making. Yeah. he's He's doing a good job with it. I know that nobody's buying physical media right now, but if you're listening to this and you're a tape person, we've got a lot of them on the store. So go check out the band camp.
Speaker: yeah know we're all We're almost out of the Witness, the first run tapes. But I just managed to sell a couple of vinyl, which was awesome.
Speaker: But yeah, so if you can pick up some tapes, that'd be sick. Yeah, definitely. um Which is a great segue into the announcements for the label Witness is out, the new album. Everybody should check that out because if you are a fan of what Adrian does with Icy Satan,
Speaker: This is kind of the continuation or another side of that, I would say. Because he did the instruments and Sean from Teach Them To Weep did the vocals. So go check that album out.
Speaker: And then also, um by the time you're listening to this, the new Pull the Strings EP will be out. um And it is the last EP that was solely written by me um because now Gabe's in the band.
Speaker: Great. I get to ruin it. Yeah, no, you're not going to ruin it. um But yeah, everybody check that out. All the proceeds for that album go to Mosh for Lives, which is a local nonprofit that I'm familiar with.
Speaker: And they promoted some of my shows with Psygnosis. But yeah, they just basically do outreach and provide assistance for people that need mental health care. And so I really appreciate what they do. And so all the proceeds from this release are going to a good cause. So you should definitely buy it for that reason, at least even if you hate the music. So yeah, that's all the announcements I think we've got right now, guys.
Speaker: um So I guess we'll start talking about what we've been listening to, which I think I'm pretty underprepared for this one. So I'm going to go last. Gabe, what have you been listening to, man? All right. So I've been listening to, lot of like post metal stuff post metal adjacent stuff.
Speaker: So, um, there's this band I kind of found called a conjurer and, um, they're like post metal and sludge metal, maybe even little black metal because they have some blast beats and a couple other songs, but,
Speaker: They have, like, some absolutely sick music. And don't know. I've been, uh, really enjoying just some stuff. They have, like, three albums, but just across their discussion discography.
Speaker: And, um, Amin Ra. Amin Ra is the big one. Like, specifically, like, Mass 4. or That album is just brutal and desperate, but super atmospheric at the same time.
Speaker: And then, uh, I've been listening to The Ocean. like very It's post-metal again, but like very progressive. And those are kind of like the three. And of course Cult of Luna.
Speaker: I've actually been going back to their first album. it's Even for a first album, it's such a good album. It's just brutal, raw, and sludgy.
Speaker: kind what I've been listening Yeah, out of all those, I think Cult of Luna is the only one I've really listened to, and I definitely did enjoy it. You know, I'm not a huge post-metal guy, but it's good stuff for sure.
Speaker: Like, I can definitely appreciate it. um and i don't think I've heard any of those bands before. Surprising. Yeah, well, I think you would probably like Cult of Luna at the very least. Probably.
Speaker: Especially maybe their earlier albums first, because very heavy, very... ah brutal, but still like pretty atmospheric at the same time. And also they feel live. If you know what I mean? Like they feel like they were tracked live. They might not have been, but they, they have movement to them. Like it's not to the click.
Speaker: I think 2006 album probably was because I think they recorded it all in the barn. They even mic'd up the outside of the bar so you can hear like in really quiet sections, like rain dripping off the shed or whatever. It's, uh, that's a pretty unique thing, but I think they record most of their early stuff live.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, what about you, Adrian? Uh, don't know. I kind of, it's an older record, but, uh, it's called bees made honey in the vein tree, the band. And, uh,
Speaker: the record is grandmother. It's a, I don't know. It's like post rock doom. I don't know. It's hardest. It's kind of hard to define that one.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't know, but it's a, it's a, it's a different kind. It's, I don't, I've never really heard band quite like it, but just been listening to that one a lot.
Speaker: So where'd you find that one? Oh, that's a good question. if i were I found them like years ago. um think it was on a where post rock dwells or something. It was one of those ah promotion channels on YouTube.
Speaker: Gotcha. But yeah, I've just been listening to it. It was one of the first ah vinyl I bought. um I've been going back and listening to that one again lately. It's kind of got like a slow,
Speaker: do me sound to it in the opening track. The closing tracks a little bit faster pace. And then it ends kind of like softly, which is pretty nice.
Speaker: So um um let me look at the tags, what they call it. Yeah. Do metal, post metal, post rock, psychedelic rock. It's a, yeah. Check it out. It's really good.
Speaker: Yeah. Grandmother bees made honey in the vein tree. Gotcha. Definitely never heard of that one. um And I know that you are not a post-hardcore guy, so you probably won't be familiar with any of the stuff I've been listening to. Gabe might know some of this. i kind of doubt it, though.
Speaker: um But i've I've been going back into the discography of Interlace Audio. I think that's the name of Chris's studio. Chris Cromet, the producer from Portland. I've been listening to some of his studio's older work.
Speaker: Bands like Icarus the Owl and Artifex Perio. um but Those two albums I really like right now from those bands is this one right here. It's called Ailments and Antidotes from 2011 by Artifacts Perio.
Speaker: It's like it's post-hardcore, but it's also a little bit like bluesy, which is cool. There's no screaming. It's kind of softer post-hardcore, but it definitely has that sound that you expect from the producer of Vance Gavin Dance.
Speaker: So that's a good one. And then also the the album Pilotwaves by Icarus the Owl, which came out in 2015. That's a really good one. Everybody needs to check out the song I Am the DeLorean, especially if you like Dance Gavin Dance or anything like that.
Speaker: um I'm going to just say right off the bat, the singer is very, i don't know he's very expressive. um You might say a little bit flamboyant with the way that he sings. And so it's not going to be for everybody, but it grew on me over the years. And I finally, this this album clicked with me quite a lot.
Speaker: And other than that, I've just been listening to jazz. Like I've been listening to kind of fusion and jazz. um There's this album, ah Dream of Form by Scott Murphy. And I found it because Yannick Guzdala plays bass on it.
Speaker: um And that's ah that's a great little EP or album that came out last year. And I don't actually own it yet, but there's one that I've been listening to just on Bandcamp like so much that I can't listen to it anymore because it kicks you off after a little while.
Speaker: I got to pick that one Buy that thing, man. Yeah, I know. I've got to. um And it's a Matt Ulery, Mother Harp. Came out just a couple months ago, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker: Which is like, I told you about this one, Gabe. It's like post-punk meets jazz. Oh, yeah. And I just like it because it's got all the stuff I like to hear from a jazz ensemble, including trumpet, which, you know, I love.
Speaker: um And it's got a very prominent P bass in the mix, which I really like, too. So it's just, you know, from a mix standpoint, that really satisfies me just to listen to those elements put together in music. But also the compositions are great, too. yeah Sadly, no metal right now. haven't been listening to any of my usual, like, dissonant death metal or stuff like that. I'm just taking a break from that.
Speaker: you ah You ever listen to Alan Holdsworth? Yeah. um I'm not super familiar. um Like, I probably couldn't even name any of his albums.
Speaker: i have I know the kind of Alan Holdsworth sound pretty well because I've heard several of his songs over the years. Yeah. um it's When it comes to fusion, that's probably as good as I've heard, you know? Dude, he's killer.
Speaker: ah It's so crazy like what he's doing. I mean, these guitar solos have influenced all of progressive metal for life. Yeah. yeah He's like, he's your favorite guitarist, guitarist. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I've seen some videos on YouTube of people playing it, and I'm like, this is impossible to ah is yeah At first it sounds like he's just hidden random notes and then you see a system. It's like, what is going on? Like, yeah it's like, I don't know. I've seen him try to discuss like the scales. He's it's like, he's like on another planet. It's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah. When I think of the Alan Holdsworth sound, I think of, playing strange scales to begin with, but playing notes from like several octaves, note after note, so that it sounds like really alien, you know? Yeah, it's so so out there. i love it.
Speaker: Well, that's a really good shot. I got to check more Alan Holdsworth out for sure. um i know that everybody that was playing with him and his bands were also monsters monsters too, so.
Speaker: All right. Well, guys, today we have... um A rather serious and possibly controversial topic to talk about, which is ai and music or just AI in audio and music.
Speaker: ah Sorry, audio and video together, I would say. Because like... I just want start by saying this. I remember very vividly and you do too, Adrian, we've talked about it. I remember in 2020, 2021, when AI was super weird, the visuals didn't make any sense.
Speaker: And anybody that told you that it was going to take over the jobs of actual creative people, it sounded like a joke basically. And fast forward to now and Google has just released VO3 and it,
Speaker: and it I mean, I can still tell that it's AI, but it is a huge leap from what we had in 2020 and 2021. Like it is a massive improvement.
Speaker: As far as I know, it still can't do and entire, like for example, TV show where it makes editable scenes that you can put in like lot of not logic that you can put in, um, premiere or Da Vinci or whatever, and like have like tracks and like move things around. It can't do all that yet.
Speaker: Um, but it can make like a final product that looks a lot better than what we were dealing with just a couple of years ago. So it's pretty scary from that standpoint, but there's possibly some hope that we can talk about.
Speaker: And then there's possibly some really dire news or not news, but really dire kind of, uh, just, just the way I see things going and from talking to a bunch of different people over the last few days about this.
Speaker: Um, I'll let the conversation go wherever you guys want to go, but just for like a little bit of kind of food for thought, let me go to my notes here. Um,
Speaker: there i mean, we're musicians, right? We work with music. We work with audio. I think that certain jobs are going to be predominantly AI yeah and music.
Speaker: And one of them, I think the first one to go is going to be mastering, which sucks. I mean, I'm a mastering engineer. It's a very specific job. But unfortunately, it's also the most scientific job out of all of music creation where there's almost like an exact science to it at this point.
Speaker: So yeah, that's going to be the first one to go. ah Mastering engineers are going to be replaced by AI rapidly. It's already very good. Like services like Lander are very good. Then mixing engineers.
Speaker: And then eventually just creative people are going to start being replaced in certain aspects, especially for like video game companies and like things like that. So that's where we that's where I want to start the conversation. And either of you that have anything to say, just go for it at this point.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I think personally, ah a lot of the a lot of the art that's going to be replaced is going to be mostly kind of like corporate art, like jingles and stuff like that.
Speaker: um Obviously, you know, it's not going to remove all human elements. Like people are still going to create, but most people that are going to use AI,
Speaker: like never even wanted to use artists to begin with. right So like these companies that are like using artist music and art like videos and stuff like that, like they for them, it's it's purely like profit driven. So like they're going to use that before then they would actually try to like you know pay artists.
Speaker: um And given like there's so much free content as there is, you know, like we make stock videos. it's that's not That's not too far removed from ah AI in my opinion. like is like the Nobody's getting paid when we we create these videos, you know, like even even though like ah it ah the videos are made by people, it's so ah still kind of it's still kind of similar.
Speaker: ah but I think for now, like it's really important for artists to really focus on community and building their communities if they want to kind of stay relevant in the industry.
Speaker: Yeah. Any thoughts about that, Gabe? No, um, I do think, yeah, like you said, um, corporations side of that's just going to be a lot more of the first, at least the first major push for, um, um,
Speaker: removed just using ai tools for like like jingles um art and other stuff like that and you know it's kind of similar to stock videos and i would also say that uh um
Speaker: there's always going to be in like the you know smaller circles there's always going to still be that um want or desire for like an actual human human created thing, human input.
Speaker: Um, if anything, it's gonna, like, if you have more AI slob, it's gonna, um, push, like, make us in like high demand for like actual human, you know, soul and element and something you create.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's, that's absolutely true, but here's the problem. I am a musician who has spent years of my life, decades of my life, learning instruments, learning the technology to create music, learning how to make, how to write songs.
Speaker: You know, I put a lot of my, most of my life into this, right? Even somebody like me, I am using certain tools that take my taste and my preferences kind of out of the equation.
Speaker: um, There's two specific plugins that I really enjoy using and I see it only going further from here. ah The ones that I like are the Sonnable Smart Collection, like they have Smart Comp and Smart EQ.
Speaker: And it literally just makes the decisions for you. You know, it's like FabFilter plugins, but instead of changing all the settings yourself, you just let it listen to the track and then it just settings are set for you. You can tweak it from there.
Speaker: But it takes your your taste and your decision making out of the process to a degree. um There's also the Waves Factory Equalizer that I just made a video on my channel about. And I really like those plugins. Like they get results faster for me. And so I like to use them.
Speaker: Not for everything, but for certain things. So if my taste is starting to be devalued by me, how can I expect it to be continued to be valued by other people? You know, I mean, it's just convenience. I mean, look, I get that people are going to continue to want art to be made by people, but people are using tools to make human-made art that are AI assisted, we'll say for now. That's where it's at right now. The industry is mostly focused on AI assisted tools.
Speaker: But, you know, my worry is not just for, you know, the industry and my future making money in the industry, but for myself and my ethics, my worry is what happens when the entire DAW is powered by AI?
Speaker: What happens, you know, when we just... have ideas in our head and they're uploaded from like a chip in our brain or something. I know that's like far out, but then you don't even have to learn an instrument.
Speaker: You know, I mean, that's kind of where my, my worries are. And it's like, maybe I'm, maybe that's never going to happen and that's great. But I just, I just see it going further and further and eventually less and less of my own creativity is going to even be in the process, you know?
Speaker: Yeah. I like the slow dystopian, spiral downward but for uh it's definitely not slow this is like acceleration is so like yeah it's just technology's rapidly getting better and better uh this is i mean there's there's been a lot of people discussing this for the last 50 years you know like technology i mean even the industrial revolution you know how many people how many riots were there there's like i think a lot of not not a lot of people died but like
Speaker: They were like you know destroying factories and stuff because of technology taking jobs. It is a real concern. you know like And the the the longer it takes to make this leap, like the more suffering there will be. right like i don't know. like for For me, honestly, like AI and art is one of my least concerns.
Speaker: ai and like everyday life. like my My wife gets confused by videos. She thinks that are actually real videos. you know like That's more concerning to me. and like like chat GPT and stuff like that. Like, you know, we discussed this before, like, what if it starts telling people like to do bad things, you know, like that's more concerning than, than just like the music and art aspect of AI.
Speaker: But certainly. Yeah. ah But like, yeah, I mean, AI could take over dolls and stuff, but we can always go backwards, you know, like we can go back to recording on cassette tape, you know,
Speaker: Like, you record. ah i have ah i have a CD thing that I could record directly on just like it's an eight track thing. I don't know. like um But what I think your concern is like, will there be a big enough demand or will people just kind of be like ah just making their own music through a chip in their brain?
Speaker: I mean, like that may happen. Yeah. you know Yeah, it's just, um you know, I mean, that is my, like, i'm concerned um I'm concerned about it on two levels. Like I said, I'm concerned about it as as a professional audio person. Yeah. Just trying to make a living from this because, like, there's nothing else in the world that I would rather do than be a mixing mastering engineer.
Speaker: But those jobs are some of the first that are going to be, you know, taken over by AI as far as I can see it. um And there's a, let me explain that a little bit more. um So when you upload a song to like Lander, which is an AI mastering service, I just did this yesterday to test it out.
Speaker: It detects the the genre of the song, the subgenre of the song, and then you can give it a few parameters like how loud you want it to be and whether you want it to be dark or bright.
Speaker: And then it just does ah phenomenal job. but I'm a mastering engineer. I'm telling you, it does a good job. It's crazy how it's scaring me that it's like as good as I can do after two hours of mastering in five seconds.
Speaker: Well, it's more like 30 seconds. And it's like mastering used to be this like kind of really revered and respected kind of, you know, um trade where it's like, you have to learn a lot of esoteric things to be able to really do a good job. You have to understand the physics of speakers. You have to understand like averages and you have to understand like what people are actually listening to things on and all this. And all that is just a set of data that is easily worked into an AI.
Speaker: So like, That's the first one that's going. It's doing a doing a good job. I'm telling you now, like people I've heard back in like 2018, I was hearing people say that Lander was doing just as good a job at mastering as a human and it's only gotten better.
Speaker: So there's that, which sucks because it's, you know, that's what I want to do for a living. But hey, I mean, if it's going to be a non-existent job field, then okay. I mean, i just have to reorient myself.
Speaker: And, you know, I think that mixing is a little bit more complicated to pull off because with mixing, it's more creative. And one of the things I've heard somebody say recently is they don't think that it's going to fully take over creative things until it can explain why it makes the decisions it makes.
Speaker: people want to know why the AI is choosing to do things. Like what's the reasoning for, like what's the inspiration kind of thing, which it obviously doesn't really have like inspiration, but it has a data set and it has averages and it has all that.
Speaker: So. and I think it's, I think, I think AI, as far as this, this realm is concerned, and think they're kind of already experiencing issues where like,
Speaker: It costs a lot of money to perform these operations um and able to collect as much data as as is. like i don't know I don't know if it's going to be able to continue. ah i'm not I'm not sure if it's going to be able to continue the way it is, but it's also like learning from itself.
Speaker: And I think eventually, it's it's all going to kind of sound like it. it It may affect the quality of the sound. like Everything's going to kind of sound the same. so you still might have opportunity, especially given we're making like kind of like gritty, raw black metal.
Speaker: Finding that niche where people want like this very like specific sound, like you might have like the benefit over like AI in that regard. you know That's what I'm saying. like You find the narrow enough community that want that raw black metal sound, you could still have work. you know like For now, it's definitely not there. Like you take something like Suno, which is a AI music generator.
Speaker: I told it the other day, ah gave it a prompt to make depressive post black metal. And the composition was spot on, but the actual sound of it was really far off from what people would want.
Speaker: It was too clean. It was too produced. So, yeah, but it'll get there. It'll eventually be able to do that. But at the same time, it's, like Adrian said, it's like just going to start sounding all the same at a certain point.
Speaker: Like all it can do, it's just going sound all the same without, you know, um as opposed to an actual human, like mixing, mastering or writing music.
Speaker: Cause even in mastering with like, Oh, the EQ here or the level of compression, you can break the rules and, you know, do something different, make it sound,
Speaker: slightly different so well when it yes it is kind of like you know i i certainly am caught very cautious of it i don't think it's going to outright replace everything because if anything what am i an uneducated guess what i would think would happen is there would be like a um counter movement from like a new like whether be artists or musicians, kind of like similar to, um, like, uh, well, a lot in a history. Like, uh, I did one of my college papers on this, but, uh, like the age of enlightenment and how romanticism was like built as response to everything presented there. And I know I kind of see something maybe similar after happening where we get, um, a new movement that is, um,
Speaker: you know, going back kind like a two point over a man where it's going back to that human and um abandoning the machine and going back to the human kind of. Well, I have to give credit to Amplaw, which is a music platform that is an alternative to Bandcamp and they have a strict no AI art policy.
Speaker: Now I've gotten into the weeds with this on them before in the discord about what about stuff like Logic Drummer? Can we use Logic Drummer, which is not clear what it is, whether it's generative AI or whether it's just training on itself. We're not sure still.
Speaker: um The general consensus is like, if it's something that was the the the deciding factor between you could release this music or you couldn't, then it's okay. But otherwise, no AI.
Speaker: And I really appreciate that. That's part of this movement you're talking about, Gabe. People are pushing back. People are very anti-AI and it's, there's no wonder why. I mean, we don't want it to take all of our jobs. We don't want it to rob all of our desire to create in the first place.
Speaker: You know, people are always going to be artists for a hobby and that's, it's the best hobby you can have. So, I mean, that's, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm always going to keep music as a hobby, no matter what. I'll always record songs, write songs, mix them, mash them myself without AI, you know, um as a hobby, but.
Speaker: I just see it being harder and harder and harder to make money off of music. And it's already very hard to make money off of music. yeah Maybe it's a good thing. I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't be making money off of music. i don't know. That kind of seems stupid though.
Speaker: I mean, like ah the this, this whole point is the same thing about photography. And like people kind of like dismiss it, but like there was a lot of people that made portraits. like they They painted them, drew them, and they lost their jobs.
Speaker: It's a legit concern. you know That was a whole industry to to make portraits, and photography kind of destroyed it. yeah that Does that mean we would get rid of photography?
Speaker: Obviously not. Well, it is interesting, because that like um Another thing like art history taught me is that also led to like artists now, like some artists like having more freedom in a way.
Speaker: Cause then they were like, oh well a camera can do this. So I'm literally going to do what I want to do for portrait or what you would call portrait. And you get into like, like impressionism, post impressionism and stuff like that. And that's also a, my art professor brought that up. And that was another interesting thought too is, okay. So, but you know, if AI like decides to do this,
Speaker: what is something we can do now that since the AI does this, what is, what does this maybe, um, in some ways for you stuff to do? And I'm not saying going to be the case for like everything, but it's an interesting thought.
Speaker: Yeah. My, my thing with AI is like AI has so much potential beyond replicating human. You know, like it should be trying to replicate things that humans, not replicate, but trying to create things that humans wouldn't even think of.
Speaker: like That's like the greater potential for AI for me as far as art is concerned. Absolutely. Do things that humans wouldn't do. That would be much better use than like trying to replicate your favorite pop song.
Speaker: you know like Yeah. Yeah, that's what AI should trying to I'm it is funny for like the occasional meme song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have quite a few of those a you that are quite funny. And I think at most that's what it should be used for in the artistic sense is just doing goofy stuff. You don't, you know, that's not meant to be replacing anything.
Speaker: It's just meant to be funny or something like that. Yeah. Things that like people wouldn't do, like that's cool. but Yeah. doing stuff that people are doing, like, what's the point of that to me?
Speaker: We've talked about it before with even just like making like drum machines sound inhuman because they are inhuman. Like you might as well go really hard and do really fast drums if you want, do whatever you want that humans could or couldn't do with a drum machine. Basically it was the thought that you brought up before.
Speaker: Yeah. Which makes a lot of sense. um Instead of trying to make it as perfectly or imperfectly rather human sounding as possible. um But what about if the drum machine started using samples that were not acoustic drums, but yet still sounded really cool and interesting?
Speaker: You know, there's ah like you said there's a lot of potential for for AI to to just be more interesting than copying and replicating human stuff. It's already been done a thousand times.
Speaker: And I'm not against it. Like I said, I use a couple of plugins that are AI assisted. um You know, it's when it helps me, like I appreciate the help, just like I appreciate my light bulb turning on and letting me see in my room, like technology is not a bad thing, but I'm just worried for my future and the future and people that want to do this. You know, like I, I really want to be a mastering engineer, but that field, I just see it going away as, as it is right now.
Speaker: i mixing like we were talking about, yeah, I can see that staying around a little bit longer. you know i could see that being around in 100 years because like you said, there's always going to be weird kind of niches that you can you can get into and also like people are going to want to work with a human still and then there's all these reasons why it'll stick around but it'll just be harder than ever to make living doing it.
Speaker: I think for you, like the mastering thing, like as if you like bundle it with your mixing services, like you'll always have you know, like you'll always have jobs for mastering, you know, like,
Speaker: ah I mean, you you do a really great job with with what you do. So I think as long as you find that narrow enough niche, like where people are, you'll find people that won want to work with you that that won't want to work with AI. I mean, like, look how massive the pushback on AI is in the metal scene right now. Yeah.
Speaker: you know It's huge. like People don't want it. you know In the pop genres, I could see them carrying less, ah like more popular, not just pop. But like definitely, a in like especially like the grittier metal scene, I can see, I see a huge pushback everywhere. you know, it's every comment section, everything like people really hate ai So I think you're going to be okay for a while. For a while. Yeah. my I mean, here's the thing is like i said, eventually AI will be trained on gritty metal and weird production and and and micro genres and stuff.
Speaker: And then we'll have to figure out what we're going to do as a revolt to that, I guess, like Gabe said, which, you know, if that's how it has to go down, then okay, we'll go to war with AI, you know, but terma are all over and it's hard for me to not be super negative about it sometimes because I just, I want things to stay kind of how they are, but that's not going to happen.
Speaker: You know, it's just not going to be the case. So we're going to have to adapt in some way. I'm just not sure what that's going to look like yet. Yeah. I mean, it's, it, Dude, my job's going to get replaced. like They already have machines that do what I do.
Speaker: you know i just put boxes on a pallet all day. why yeah they have a whole um There's another warehouse in my company that does the exact job that I'm doing. like It's eventually going to go away. Technology it's just constantly evolving to like replace jobs.
Speaker: like That's what it is, man. Yeah, automation and AI are continually changing jobs. I wouldn't say that's ah that it's replaced every job that it's ever been in and introduced into, but it is definitely changing the jobs, you know. And that's why one of my thoughts was maybe I should start learning how AI music tools are made so that I can start working on those as like a backup plan. But it kind of feels like joining joining the opposite army or something. I don't know.
Speaker: <unk> weird. it's This is the other side of things I wanted to talk to you guys about, which is just the ethical side of it. um You know, like I said, I use some AI tools, AI-assisted tools. But it's like I was talking to Sleep Rogue, which is an electronic artist, and um they said something really poignant, which was that... i don't know how to say that word, poignant?
Speaker: Anyway, magnet. I think you um They said... Anytime there's an easy button for something in music, it kind of defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place because the whole point is to learn how to do something and then do it in your own way to express yourself.
Speaker: So on that note, I'm kind of starting to think that I should really weed these tools out of my workflow altogether. ah Like make it, even if it's kind of worse, the end product, at least I did it. And it was my judgment call that have to, to have the human element there because otherwise all I'm doing is I'm,
Speaker: replacing some of my decision-making in my taste with numbers, with averages of like what people usually do. i mean, like how far can you go with that? Like, you're going to start singing into a can that like, it's like a piece of plastic. You know i mean?
Speaker: um i get what you're saying, but like, ah I don't know. I don't think we should outright dismiss ah technology. Yeah.
Speaker: You know, like we're still recording on laptops and stuff, you know i mean? Like, yeah and just plugging directly in. I don't even use a microphone for my guitar, you know, like, um it's like, where do you draw the line? Where's the distinction?
Speaker: You know, what's what's easy? what you know, like, how hard do you want to make it, you know? There's a lot of great music technology that uses neural networks, which is a type of machine learning.
Speaker: Like, for instance, there's the neural amp modeler, which I love. It sounds awesome. And how it works is it takes a three-minute-long file of audio, and you send that through your real amp that you set up with a microphone, and you record that.
Speaker: And then it takes the resulting audio and trains it with a neural network and creates a, you know, a plugin that you can play through so that you can play through that amp. And it sounds really good. sounds way better than some of the earlier neural DSP stuff. So I really like that technology. So I'm not against it all and completely on principle. Like I want to embrace it when it makes sense. I just don't want it to like suck the creativity and the inspiration out of the process of making art in the first place, which it hasn't done, but it does seem like a fine line. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Another thing is, well, um with these, like, AI tools, like, I mean, sure, they're here to assist, but I wonder if there's ways you can take them and, my like, do something absolutely ridiculous with them.
Speaker: And then that, in turn, you know, because you're intentionally, like, breaking it or whatever, that... um you know, leads to your creative decision to like do something crazy with it.
Speaker: And that, don't know if I'm making sense or not, but yeah, you got to find the the edges of like what the technology can accomplish and push. Yeah. I get that. Yeah. We were talking about that.
Speaker: We were trying to like, think of like ways to like create music that was like anti-human in a way. like Stuff that you can't like even really hear. you Right.
Speaker: Stuff above 20K or whatever. Yeah, we were trying to think of things that we could do like you know Because like I've used AI art before and like ah for like album covers.
Speaker: It was before I even really thought about it. But like... the In the beginning, AI was so weird. yeah That's what was like appealing to to me. let says like This is not human.
Speaker: It's just so weird. It's uncanny. you know But like now it just it's so polished, it kind of it's lost a lot of its appeal for me. Right. The uncanny would be what I like for.
Speaker: I think that's what it excelled at. It excelled at the weird line between yeah like what is why does it think the need to make this uncanny thing? I think that's like very interesting or, i mean, there's other ways that it can, um, help you when writing music for like giving you an idea. Like there's certain, like,
Speaker: chat GPT modules that you'll be like, oh, like write me a song outline. And then you can look at this and it's kind of like already organized. and You can just like copy and paste it and then just edit like write in your own like what you want to do with the song.
Speaker: And like yeah started trying that. And basically I just because it generates me a template already. Sometimes that's hard. I don't like creating my own like like template for outlining stuff or whatever. So just have it half of that battle done then write in what I want it to do. And now it's already organized for me to see and everything. And that's like obviously lot of certain people that would be too far for certain people that would be like, well, you have to ah write the song like from scratch.
Speaker: But I don't see it that way. i see and so I see things that can help you create as good things. um It's not much different than what I do with Easy Drummer. Easy Drummer has a bunch of um beats that are sections of songs and they're labeled by like intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, etc.
Speaker: And ive I build most of my songs with those with those middies from the midi packs. And it's the same idea basically, except it's getting me even further down the road towards the finished song. So there's, there's nothing, there's no shame in that. And I will say,
Speaker: The one thing that rubs me a little bit wrong about using chat GPT for that, as opposed to a tool that was completely assembled by humans, is that when when you're using an Easy Drummer, those drums were played by somebody still.
Speaker: You can edit them and whatever, but the beats were still played by somebody. And so like it bothers me that I don't have a real drummer and on most of my music. So I like the fact that at the very least, I can kind of mix and match different real drummers' beats.
Speaker: But what are you talking about, opposed to like that you've generated a lot. like Yeah, exactly. that's generous that's true And I'm not a big fan of Logic Drummer for that reason.
Speaker: um Sorry, I cut you off there. what were you saying? ah You have to actually put it like the drum track together. Like even just with the MIDI, you have to make that decision of, does this sound good? Does this not sound good?
Speaker: How does this work within the song? And um yeah like people have been using MIDI drum packs for like forever now, right? There's like whole sites where you're buying MIDI groups.
Speaker: right there might be an actual drummer you go have fun rearrange it you know as long as and that helps a lot of people creatively so but it's like not like here listen to my track and do it all for me you know what i mean yeah and see we're talking about the ethics of it here this is the fine line that i keep coming back to where it's like you want some aspect of every part of your song to have human input You know, that's that's the goal, at least for most people. I would say right now, most of us, we draw a line at, well, you didn't do this at all. You just copied and pasted it from an AI and put it in your song and said you made it.
Speaker: That's the issue most of us have, right? So I feel like, you know, a structure is one thing. You still have to come up with all the music to go in that structure. So I don't see a problem with that. and Generating whole parts, that's where my...
Speaker: That's where red alert starts to go off. I completely rearranged the structure in it. i mean I just use it for like easy templates, like um visual to sort it out. and yeah Rewrite everything down.
Speaker: i mean I don't see that much different than like just if you had a book that gave you a template, you know, like it's, cause it's, cause it's just pulling from stuff like that anyway. Like yeah it's, it's, it, that does, that doesn't bother me at all.
Speaker: I think that's perfectly fine. Like it just bounces. You're basically just bouncing ideas off of like information that I don't know, if like it's not a problem at all to me. Yeah.
Speaker: And it can like, um, like give you like a baseline tempo or BPM to start with, and I'll see that and I'll be like, okay, I'm going to try it at this, like slightly adjusted, and then, you know, actually rerecord everything myself. But, you know, that's just that's a good use of like, at least if you like to write music, sometimes from more of like an outline perspective, like AI is good at helping you not, you know, making maybe making the decisions you know, much less, but like helping you along and like organizing your ideas.
Speaker: It's good for that, but just don't, you know, like generate this song and be like, Hey, check out this song I generated. Like is then, you know, like I'm going to release it on Spotify or whatever, yada, yada, yada. I'm like, don't do that.
Speaker: That's, that's cringe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, what were you going to say, Adrian? No, the whole like, also like you kind of brought up this the Spotify thing. Like, I almost feel like that would have been better if people just in mass started doing that because Spotify would have really turned to shit.
Speaker: Because if everybody started uploading all their AI slop, it would have ah just ruined Spotify and people, maybe people would be more inclined to go to like band camp and ample, especially ample since the slop can't be there.
Speaker: Yeah. You know? So, you know, like, as I know, Spotify is not going to pay hour AI artists. Right. Like that's, I think that's their new policy. They're, they're pushing back against it.
Speaker: So like, I also don't think you can copyright ai which I think is, I mean, that's, that's good. But so man, if people just started uploading like crazy to streaming services, all their AI slop.
Speaker: Yeah. That might actually help our real artists in the long run. You've given me an idea. collection lyme artist profile like just like worth of like AI garbage.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, i don't know the tech, I don't know where the tech is at right now as far as like detecting AI, but I imagine it's probably pretty good because it's easy to hear. So it should be easy to detect.
Speaker: Um, Yeah, I don't know. I just feel like, I mean, the streaming thing is a whole nother subject, but yeah I guess where it comes down to it for me is like, I want to remember that one thing that Sleep Broke told me, which is like, if there's an easy button for music and you use it, it defeats the purpose of making music, right?
Speaker: So like, I just don't want to use easy buttons, basically. I want to go through the process of learning an instrument, writing a song, recording it, and putting it out there myself, even if it's garbage. I want it to be something I did.
Speaker: So, I mean, that that's the main important thing at the end of the day about this for me is is there's always going to be people that, I would say most people, even people that listen to like just pop and country and R&B and hip hop and all that stuff. I would say even those people still know why it matters that a human made the art and still can understand that.
Speaker: Um, so it's actually kind of a small group of people that would hear all this AI garbage on Spotify, for example, and be totally fine with it. It's pretty small group. I would say, um, it'd be like people over like 40 years old and people that are not musicians and people that, you know, like it'd be a pretty small group, I would think.
Speaker: So yeah, with that in mind, I would just, I would just like to think that, even if it's impossible to make money from music, that there's always going to be this, like, like Gabe said in the beginning, there's always going to be this, this counter movement. There's going to be this rejection of like, this isn't art. It's not human made. It's not art.
Speaker: And I think that, I think that we're on ah good track for us going that way. And that is basically what I said at the beginning when I said, there's some hope it's that that's basically it. I think even if you can't make money from some of these musical jobs anymore, the actual product, the art itself,
Speaker: um you know, it's hopefully even if it gets harder to just to to distinguish between ai and human um on principle, people will still prefer human. Yeah. I think what Gabe was saying about the, ah like a community that's pushing back. and I think that's really how we got to like focus is trying to build people like they're in the anti-AI movement for music in general. Like it's kind of like,
Speaker: is like a reverse, like, was it Dadaism? Yeah. Like creating anti-art. It's kind of like like the reverse of that. We're like trying to create human art that's like anti-anti. Like, people kind of consider ai anti-art. So like, yeah, that's what we're trying to do. no ah ah I think that's what we need to do. Just like try to, especially in the the genres that we're in i I think it AI art is going to,
Speaker: have a lot of trouble breaking into you know yeah I think there's a little bit is because these communities are very tight knit it seems you know especially like genres like punk and stuff you know so or like post metal that's just a very human you know centric genre yeah just feels like you know like a human needs to make this thing with like black metal stuff like yeah or like the black metal stuff we all do right like the weird experimental dissonant atmospheric post all of that just needs to have a ah kind of like human behind it some random guy in his basement and you know just writing away yeah and honestly like even in the worst case scenario where we're not you know making money from it and like and any like people can't distinguish between it
Speaker: Like the act of creating it, art and music itself is kind of the, I don't know, that will, I think we'll have that to like the end of time, the ability to create something and, you know, the watch to like have it be human and, well, at least you be,
Speaker: you create your own thing, even if it's not heard or you just the fact that you created that's, you know, it's like that thing that, you know, we get taught growing up, at least a lot of people do. I know I was where it's like, you should tell the truth because even if nobody else cares, at least you can know that you told the truth kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah. Um, absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, there's, like I said, people will always keep making real genuine human music as a hobby, which is fantastic.
Speaker: um There's no better hobby to have, you know, whether you're a visual artist or a filmmaker or a musician or a I don't know, whether you design video games or whatever kind of art you make, I think you know, actually putting in the time to learn your craft and express yourself through that craft that you've learned is is timeless.
Speaker: And also it just goes back to like, but it's a spiritual act, you know, creation. So, I mean, it's always going to be kind of more important to people than just the easy button, just generate this, generate that.
Speaker: And now I'm entertained forever. Like that's never going to do it for us because, you know, we have this need innately to kind of reflect the fact that we exist, we have to create something else that exists, you know?
Speaker: Exactly. but And one thing it will never take away like an actual live show. Like something you show up, you mosh to, like that AI will never be able take that away.
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty true. I don't see how that would happen. I mean, we do have like live stream shows, but even those it's pretty hard to fake. We got holograms and like the gorillas.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. But they play live still today. Um, they have a screen that has the like, uh, animations, but then there's like, as far as I know, they're still on stage playing. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.
Speaker: I think they are. I've seen a couple of lives. ah Okay, cool. All right. That's good. Yeah. Very weird to show up to watch a cartoon. Yeah. I mean, some people would enjoy that too, but yeah I definitely prefer having the band on stage and everything. So, yeah, I think we covered it guys. um I feel a little bit less depressed, which is good. Yeah. This one, this was a good one.
Speaker: Yeah, like I said, none of us are experts, so don't crucify us in the comments, please. yes Yeah, I could be horribly wrong about everything. Absolutely, we could be. But but that said, even though even though I want you to be easy on us, definitely let us know how you feel about this in the comments. like we We encourage that. so Yeah, for sure. You guys can bully me. It's fine.
Speaker: think um So yeah, with that said, i think we pretty much wrapped it up here. So I appreciate everybody coming and checking out the podcast again. This was episode 13, I believe. Yeah.
Speaker: Nice. Sounds right. um Which, you know, is pretty cool because we started this back in like December and it's almost, it's almost June now. This will come out in July. We're at episode 13. So yeah, we're trucking along still. We're not going to give up anytime soon.
Speaker: um Definitely subscribe and share the podcast with somebody if you don't mind, if you enjoyed it. And, ah you know, if you look in the description, we have a discord server you can join. um and And I think that's pretty much it. So yeah, appreciate everybody stopping by for another episode.
Speaker: All right. Yep. Thank you, everybody, once again for checking out Dissonant Echoes, the official Hauntology Records podcast. And we're going play you out with a song from Gabe's band Acacius. I almost forgot the name.
Speaker: Very, very good band. This is a great song. It's a longer one at like seven minutes, but sit back and enjoy. Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Was it me who chose to take things
Speaker: But trust can give when you've had me? But love can I give when you've got me? We're straight from me, don't hold you up
Speaker: Break me down, drag me under and just take what you want
Speaker: We've taken ourselves to the gift of time. We've taken ourselves to the gift of time.
Speaker: You fracture out the fall
Speaker: Drink me down, drink me under me where there's no light or sound But we won't be found Drink me down, drink me under And just take what you're
Speaker: To take this
