I Could Have Been The World's Worst Guitarist

It's easier to make music than ever, but harder to make a living from it. We've never had it so... bad?

Back when I was at primary school one of the teachers set up an after-school guitar club. There were only a handful of places on it, and quite a few of my classmates applied. Three of my mates got accepted, I didn’t, and that was that.

I wonder what might have been had I got into guitar club, could my music career have taken a different, more creative path? Possibly, but it’s more likely I’d have got bored and given up, never to touch the instrument again. Periodically I’ve tried to pick up the guitar since, as a teenager I managed to learn the opening notes to Pretty Vacant (which I thought bolstered my punk credentials) and the bass notes to Walking On The Moon (which definitely did not) but just didn’t have the patience for much more. Throughout my twenties and thirties I attempted to learn the keyboard, but again just couldn’t pick it up. It was only with the help of a composer friend and a very loose interpretation of graphical scores that I passed the composition module on my course at university. Essentially, I soon realised my strengths lied in writing about and selling music rather than making it.

One thing that’s caught my eye recently was the site Suno - you might have seen their tech-bro founder in the music press claiming to want to make a billion people musicians - or one in every seven people on the planet. Could someone like me use the power of AI to become a competent dance artist? I thought (in the interests of research - let me be the first to say I am pretty much an AI-skeptic) I would give it a go and see what I could make.

My first effort from the prompt “a song that sounds like Ricardo Villalobos Dexter” was this. The system called it Endless Nights (which isn’t a bad shout for a track inspired by a man who regularly plays 8 hour long DJ sets), gave it a crappy artwork and tagged it “electronic hypnotic deep house” which was close enough.

The track itself is four minutes of pretty generic electronica. It didn’t really sound like deep house, it certainly didn’t sound much like Dexter. There’s nothing particularly unique or interesting in the track, and if you heard it played out you’d forget it pretty much straight away.

https://suno.com/song/faadf83e-bb6a-43a9-bd69-85bf42b36e78

I thought I’d give it a second chance and asked it for “a Birmingham techno track”. This one was slightly better. Tagged “rhythmic techno electronic” Urban Night Lights was pretty hard and fast, and if I was fucked I’d probably enjoy it, but again there’s nothing about it that really stands out. It’s pretty obvious what it’s inspired by, and I’d be a little bit pissed if I was one of the established producers in that scene hearing this for the first time.

https://suno.com/song/7e1621fd-7ed2-4d92-ac98-fae98f6fa1f8

As always the question in music comes down to “how do I get paid for this”, and that’s the grey area with this stuff. If I uploaded Urban Night Lights to Spotify and Beatport then I’d start to earn royalties for any streams or downloads it attracted. I didn’t ask it to sound like a specific artist, but I can think of a few people who’s music it’s clearly trying to emulate. Should they be paid for my creation? Probably not, but really neither should I. It’s all well and good Spotify threatening to fine distributors for tracks with fake streams, but shouldn’t they also take a stand against fake music? Why does this music need uploading to Spotify in the first place? I take no pride in having made it, I’ve put no effort into it’s creation, it’s just a few minutes of meaningless music. I’m not saying all music needs meaning, but all music - from the tech house tracks that make up the Beatport Top 10 to long classical movements - is made with a purpose, whether that’s to entertain in the club, or show off compositional skill.

Something like 100,000 tracks get uploaded to Spotify each week, far more than any one person can listen to. Only a small handful of those will reach Spotify’s royalty threshold, and an even smaller handful will get any kind of editorial support. As a way of making money I’d have more chance panning for gold in my local river.

So if I’m not getting paid for this - and I haven’t paid Suno any money to make the track (although I imagine their business model is to charge people to use the system eventually, and I’d be astounded if they didn’t add in a paid distro option to send tracks out to DSP’s for a small fee) then what’s the point? The guys up in Birmingham who’ve put blood, sweat and tears (plus countless thousands of pounds) into their music careers aren’t even getting recognised for these blatant copies of their works, and that doesn’t seem fair to me.

If - as Tony Wilson once said - “jazz is the last refuge of the untalented” then what does that make music created by AI? What does that say about the people using AI to make music? I’m yet to see many of the benefits toted by AI, but maybe I’m too skeptical. Rest assured I won’t be distributing these tracks anywhere, and out of my own moral code I’ll probably delete them a week or so after this newsletter goes out.

Twenty AI-Funk Greats

Onto this weeks new music then, playlist as usual at the end, Bandcamp &/or store links in the text.

Actress - Statik [Smalltown Supersound]

Actress is maybe *the* British producer of this Century. That’s a big shout, but the man rarely misses (funnily enough given the subject of today’s newsletter Actress has been a big advocate of AI, releasing an AI-assited album as Young Paint a few years ago). Hazyville, Splaszh and RIP are three of the best electronic music albums of any generation, and his work since then hasn’t really let up much either. This new one harks back to those earlier albums, theres a haze about some of the tracks that has become his trademark really. I’m looking forward to spending some proper time with this one.

Anni Hogan - Destress of Permanence [Downwards]

Did I mention this one already? I can’t remember. Anyway it’s out now on vinyl via Downwards. One of the big problems with Spotify is how it takes the metadata you give it literally, so Anni Hogan’s catalogue is spread over a range of artist profiles. Anni Hogan, Annie Hogan, Ann-Margaret Hogan - someone involved give me a shout and I’ll tell you how to tidy this all up! Anyway, these are foggy, long-form tracks that pulse and burrow their way into your consciousness. One to drift away to.

MICROCORPS - MACROCORPSE 2021-2024 [The Tapeworm]

One of my favourite labels is The Tapeworm. Over the past however many years they’ve released a whole series of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cassettes from a range of artists. I’ll probably do a deep dive of some of my favourites at some point. Alexander Tucker’s MICROCORPS project brings the latest release to the label, with eight brittle, mutating techno tracks that he’s created over the past few years. Mixing electronics with distorted vocal samples and the sonic debris of a droning cello (reminiscent of his work as part of the NONEXISTENT trio), these tracks are hypnotic, rhthymic and like everything on the Tapeworm, utterly essential. This one’s not on Spotify (but I’ve added some of his previous tracks with the likes of Nik Colk Void & Astrud Steehouder to the playlist) so you’ll have to head to Bandcamp for it later today.

Bark Psychosis - Hex [Fire Records]

A timely reissue of one of the essential post-rock albums of the 90’s, this has influenced pretty much a whole wave of music since. Kinda mad that after this Graham Sutton turned his hand to DnB as Boymerang.

Sumgii - Soon Come [Swamp 81]

I’m not gonna lie, I haven’t really thought much about Swamp 81 for a while. They put out some incredible records in the past, but things have been a bit quiet lately. There was a pretty overlooked Neil Landstrumm 7” last year but not much else. Hopefully this is the start of a Swamp resurgence.

Silas - Wot [Sneaker Social Club]

One label that has been putting out some bangers lately is Sneaker Social Club. This one from Silas caught my eye mainly cause the artwork looks like a Basic Channel record. The music isn’t a million miles away either, just a bit quicker. Deep dubby broken trax for the clubs.

That’s all for this week. Thanks as always for reading, sharing, subscribing and commenting. I appreciate it all!