We're absolutely loving the release "Could Be Wrong"! What was the songwriting and production process for it like?
Hey there! Thanks so much for having me and thanks for showing the track some love. This whole project has really just been borne out of pure experimentation, and in that respect, the process just comes from the gut. I see it as an exercise in putting my creative mind in a situation it hasn't been in before.
Your music has an incredibly unique sound to it, where does the inspiration for it come from? Do you have any idols that you look up to?
The inspiration comes from everywhere! I love the medium of music because the sound is such an immediate, in-the-moment gut response. In that vein, I idolize anyone who has been able to wield that power to move people across genres from Hip Hop to Classical, to Grindcore. It's all about being able to help people construct an entire world in their minds, to get them to tap into imagination. Shout out to Tom Waits, David Bowie, Outkast, Sonic Youth, Miles Davis, and Black Sabbath though ;)
It's very cool you essentially created a songwriting partner that's AI. What's the workflow with it like? Do you find it inspiring?
Yea! It's crazy because it really started as an exercise in programming that panned out better than I thought, I utilize algorithms trained on a dataset made up of hundreds of thousands of compositions, which in turn can generate MIDI files based on what it learned. From there, I listen through the generated material and pick out sections that speak to me and basically sample it. Since it is all MIDI, I can split the different voices out to different sounds, that is plug the bass notes into a bass synth and the lead notes into a lead synth and so on. After I have a skeleton sketch from the algo, I add some human touches to it. In "Could Be Wrong" the algo wrote the bass, all of the synth sounds, and the drums, while I added the piano and Corina Seas added her amazing vocals and lyrics.
How has developing this AI helped you grow as an artist? Have you run into any difficulties working this way? How would you change your current workflow to help make more music?
It has really just helped me get out of the rut and get back to jumping into the process you know? My favorite way to write music is just jamming, putting ideas out there, and then refining the good ones. It brought that live approach to electronic music production for me, but honestly, like anyone's approach, it has shown its limitations. What started as a strict experiment to see if I could make a decent track from AI-generated content has turned into another tool I can use in the creative process, and in that way, I am starting to treat it as such. I am far more willing to meld the content to the track rather than building the track around it.
Read our full review of "Could Be Wrong" here.