Each week, I first summarize my adventures in making music. Lately, I have been composing tracks for the Disquiet Junto, the Naviar Records Haiku Music Challenge and, this year for the first time, Weekly Beats. I also have other projects and collaborations I will share occasionally.
I also bring together the perspective I shared in posts on social media (currently Mastodon) about the music industry in the section: Music + Tech + Law. These thoughts are intended to come from me as a consumer of, and participant in, the entertainment business. However, I cannot completely separate the thoughts I generate from the part of my brain I use for my day job as a lawyer experienced in technology contracts and intellectual property.*
My Music
This was a tough week to stay motivated, but I made sure to put some time into this track each day, even if it was just for a small amount of time and even if it didn't feel like I was making progress. I started out in Ableton Note again, but instead of building out only a beat like last week, I used four tracks to create a beat and four tracks to write parts for bass, pad, chords and stabs. I thought that gave me a pretty good foundation to work from so I brought it over to my computer, but I still struggled with the arrangement as I added different elements. I found myself toiling away in Session View so I moved over to Arrangement View to see if I could find some inspiration that way. In the end I found an arrangement that works, but the song feels like a "radio edit" of a longer track and I just ran out of time to figure out that longer mix. That is okay. I accept that the Weekly Beats project is about getting things done rather than getting things perfect. I do really like the beat and I might call on some of the ideas I came up with this week in the future.
Music + Tech + Law
A headline on MusicTech this week stated: "The music streaming revolution is here, thanks to these new streaming platforms." I did not realize the music streaming revolution was here! Mostly because I had never heard of the platforms highlighted by the article: Qobuz, Marine Snow and sonu.stream. I put out a quick poll on Mastodon to see if I was missing something obvious and six people responded that they had not used any of these platforms. I mostly follow other musicians, so I think if I expanded my research I would confirm that the revolution is not quite here yet.
I love the observation by Rick Beato mentioned at the end of this article where he notes that songs containing “organic” sounds - recordings of real instruments played by human musicians with all of their flaws in sound and timing - are starting to become more prevalent in popular music, where using perfectly pitched quantized sounds is currently the norm.
Thought experiments can be useful tools to work through real issues. But when these researchers present the problem at hand (Could an AI replace all music ever recorded with Taylor Swift covers?) as if it could only arise from a “rogue AI system,” it is easily dismissed by other experts. That hides the real threat of some well-funded business determining it could make money with technology that erases the original contributions to a piece of music by certain artists and replaces them with others without the consent of the original artists.
*My opinions are not my employer’s and this material does not create an attorney-client relationship, is not intended to convey legal or ethics advice, and does not guarantee the same or similar results in all cases.