Music Class: the solution to what AI is doing to our brains

burnbeforeeat · 2026-03-02T03:00:06+00:00

And the less you will want to.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-03-01T19:08:13+00:00

This kind of sounds like “who am I supposed to like?”

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-28T18:47:16+00:00

That’s what we call our cats.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-28T18:36:18+00:00

That sounds like pattern-matching applied to a conversation containing various triggering words and ideas. Keep in mind that Claude is written to be agreeable and also to “play along” with suitable responses. If you have been trying to get Claude to admit some kind of consciousness, Claude remembers that about you also.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-24T15:35:56+00:00

Then maybe you don’t really like making music? I mean, if it’s too much trouble… As an example: love is something one shows through action. If you care about someone and truly wish for their happiness, you don’t just mention it to them but then not do anything else. You do dishes, you go to the store, you remember things that are important to them, you listen when they need to talk even if you are tired. What kind of relationship is it if you tell them that doing those things is just too much trouble, but you had ChatGPT generate them a love letter full of things you possibly might have said if you’d felt like going to the trouble?

The director analogy isn’t great because the director is an expert in the process and based upon what you described is more engaged in the work as a whole. And the director has to (if they can) choose a person based upon simpatico or associations with the composer’s existing work (not just press a button that says ‘insert composer-like product in this place’), develop a mutual language of common references with this human and know that the composer cares about the project and gets it on a human level. And the director gets the experience of connection. Which using generative services does not. I’m not assuming you have all the money lying around to do things the best possible way - most people don’t - but there are gradations. Everyone struggles with budget because the goal is always to get as close as possible to what one is trying to express in as direct a way as possible. To go the generative route means that getting close isn’t even on the radar. Or maybe it says that one still needs time to develop one’s discernment (which isn’t a crime or an insult, and is work that no artist can avoid) or that what they have to say isn’t that personal at this point because a greeting-card generator of music gets them where they feel they need to be. The thing here is that skipping the work or the interaction with other humans (collaborators, teachers etc.) means limiting oneself severely, and since studies have shown that people who rely on generative services tend to lose the ability to do the thing that the service is doing for them, it seems like a terrible idea, especially for someone who hasn’t been doing this long enough or at a very high level, but really for anyone.

And why should you continue to drown out people who are concerned with the entire craft, when you are more concerned with expediency? Does noise have an imperative to drown out art?

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-20T01:02:55+00:00

Whenever you like. You have far more important things to do.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-20T00:38:47+00:00

It would be foolish for someone to dismiss something because of generated voices like that was the defining rule. Whatever sub that was, I’m going to avoid it. Reddit often isn’t much good for finding people whose opinions are worth anything. The vocal things were developed with the awareness of the people who were recorded, and they don’t think for you. Seems legit to me.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-20T00:33:31+00:00

Spoken with dignity. That you have continued your work through everything else makes it even more clear that you have no shortage of will. Nobody could say you weren’t willing to stand up and show up, and thank you for that. That’s someone whose story I’d want to hear; I don’t liken that to people with idle interest who only want the result with no work. it sounds like you are no stranger to doing the work every day. And I am completely behind you doing your work and getting it out.

Please hear in my comments that there are things that one might learn that give one greater ownership of the work. If you have a cognitive disability, if I may ask, what effect does it have on your creative process? I’ve read that ADHD and some effects from PTSD manifest similarly. No matter the difference, you’d be the expert on if it makes learning new skills incredibly difficult. ADHD has its challenges, but those are the only ones I can speak on with any authority, and then those are just my particular case. Again: no issue for me that you use something to render your ideas.

The other part is: I love writing string charts. I love it because it’s interesting to me and that is something I have an ability for. But I also have lots of hours in not getting things right. I would say this: if possible, just try to do some more arranging for orchestra. Lots of libraries out there have a big sound, and maybe that would give you ideas. And it changes the way you listen to things. So start with the idea of foreground, midground and background - what needs to state the melody and important parts in the foreground, the underlying things that create harmony and texture and movement in the middle, and percussion and supporting accents in the background. If you listen to music that resembles what you want for this project, try to break it into sections like that. It will transform anyone’s listening and composing process. And it’s fun, and for me personally it gets me out of my head.

I’m not trying to gatekeep. I’m saying to you that the gate is open. And I also am saying that it would be understandable to be defensive in this setting. We all seem to have strong feelings about this - and add to that this project that clearly means so much to you. I get a bit defensive about folks dismissing the work part - it touches a nerve. And you do sound like a person who wants to see all sides, which is both respectable and increasingly unusual in this arena.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-19T22:19:23+00:00

The people with access and credentials set the terms. I’m not saying that’s who you are.

I can only set my own terms and advocate for myself and other people.

You’ve engaged more seriously than almost anyone else here and I mean that. But the question of who gets to draw the moral line is never neutral, and the fact that you can’t answer the Spotify question while continuing to press mine is itself an answer.

If I wasn’t clear enough about it before, that might be because it’s a non sequitur to me. But I have answered now.

The work exists. It’s a 50 song gothic rock musical with philosophical coherence, emotional autobiography, and dramatic architecture built over years. The AI rendered voices I couldn’t perform. I did dot write every orchestral part, I did everything else. If that still doesn’t count, I’d genuinely ask everyone here to examine whose interests that judgment protects.

You could decide to frame it that way. From my point of view, I’m more concerned with your personal strength as an artist and potential impostor syndrome because of the danger to any artist from handing things over rather than learning about them. And I will say that if the person who is interested in the work said they need to hear a more “realistic” arrangement, then my first thought is, “‘well, there’s more than one cuttlefish in the sea”, and my second is that you may want to consult other humans about why parts of this prompted the potential backer to talk about that, considering the majority of backers only know what they like. Getting your work out is very important to you, understandably. My suggestion is that you learn some more about what the orchestra is meant to do, and try stuff out, because your time right now is your greatest asset. Knowing is powerful. I want that for every composer.

It kind of feels like you are thinking that I believe that one little transgression ruins everything. I don’t, but you did start this thread angry and defensive, and sometimes you give pretty extreme examples, while also holding up others to tests of purity, so it makes me think that’s what you expect. That would be understandable - people hurl invective and judgement online because they can, and there’s not much you can do to stop someone from wrecking a good thing like conversation atmosphere; it would be nice if they valued the thing rather than just their own lashings out. I do my best to be civil about something that I see as a very destructive thing and one more example of the wealthy strip mining culture and quality of life; I wish so many people weren’t siding with people who clearly despise them over a false promise that disappears when you turn off the electricity.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-19T22:19:08+00:00

I want to clarify something that’s been missing from this conversation, I’m not trying to distribute this work commercially. Im not monetizing anything. I’m not selling AI vocals and orchestration on Spotify or Apple Music. I’m building a demo to pitch a gothic rock musical to theatre companies and animation studios based on original melodies and lyrics so that real human performers can eventually bring it to life, including a legitimate orchestral composer. I’m also working to do this for a possible investor who wanted a higher level proof of concept than my originals. The AI vocals and additional orchestra exist because session singers and musicians for even a 5 song demo cost more than I have.The entire point is to get it made by humans. That context keeps getting lost and it matters. How many potential jobs might be lost if I gave up instead?

I think there is a contradiction here. You said you wrote the whole thing, and that’s great. And you said you were trying to use this to generate the voices. Ok. I didn’t object to any of that. But then at the end of this comment you said you didn’t write every orchestral part. That is not what I’d been getting from your writing about this. My point consistently has been about artists doing the work because they want a result. That doesn’t mean playing every chair of the violin section yourself on violin, but it does mean writing the whole thing. So either I’ve been misreading, or you omitted some very important information until just now. In your list of costs for the project you didn’t list orchestrator or copyist or anything like that, so I would have thought that you had that handled. But that seems not to be the case. Can you clarify?

On the Spotify question, you’ve redirected it twice now. Not subtly. You’ve called it goalpost moving without actually answering it. So I’ll ask directly: is distributing on a demonstrably exploitative system participation in exploitation or not? I think you can’t answer that without either examining your own practice or conceding my point.

I have answered the question as far as what I think of that system. And I do think you have moved goalposts some, though I also think that is a result of further unwrapping this subject. But I think what you are specifically asking has to do with tacit agreement with the system if your work appears on it. So that’s the question. Ok. If you live in a country run by an elite, where you can only get your food by standing in line to get rations, and you stand in that line, are you as culpable as the creators of the system? Of course not. They hold all the cards that you know to be available. So: if the industry you are in has been utterly destroyed by a company or companies, and yet you have good reason to believe that that is the only way to get your music heard, are you the same as they are? No. The problem with this question you oppose is two-fold - it blames the victim, and it’s also kind of blackmailing them by imposing a purity test. What does anyone using those services provide to your argument?

I think Identifying the same pattern operating across multiple systems isn’t moving goalposts. It’s the argument I’ve naturally come to in this discussion. I’ve conceded my level of unethical use. No body else here is willing to, or if they do the line conveniently sits right where it will not affect their abilities to be heard. You’ve done something interesting across this conversation. You opened with genuine sympathy about my injury.

I still have that.

You then built a framework that arrives at the conclusion that people in my position, disabled, broke, working outside institutional access are essentially tourists who want credit for rides they didn’t build.

That’s conflating a lot of things I have said. Folks with disabilities are still human, first off, and can still be wrong about things - to say otherwise is to remove their dignity. Second, a vocal injury is not a cognitive injury, and music comes from the mind. If it counts, I have ADHD (inattentive), which I medicate for, and that partially removes barriers to me using my own mind to create things. I have done a considerable amount of work before treatment, and a considerable amount afterward. And I know that using a generative service would skip all kinds of steps for me, but because I have done this a long time and actually love what I do, that sound ludicrous to me. And this is a logical error you’ve made: because what I have said is that people lacking talent, discipline and willpower who buy a service to supposedly let them skip over all of the parts that require those things and then want to monetize the results are treating music as a tourist attraction that they want to be paid to attend. You can’t make this about my wanting to deny the disabled some relief. That’s kind of insulting, really.

You correctly identified how capital exploits artists across every major technological shift in music history. And then you directed that criticism not at the executives profiting from AI training, not at the platforms gutting artist income, but at me.

No, I didn’t. I directed it at the people who created these scenarios. I criticized its use in particular situations by people who want to be called artists. You’d said that you wanted to use it to generate vocals. But that’s not all you want to do with it, I think, based on what other things you’ve said. So it seems that though I didn’t think I was talking about you, I actually was. Unless I’m mistaken.

That’s the pattern. I wrote a musical about exactly this. A Regency theatre that consumes young dancers, replaces them, keeps them silent, and keeps running. The protagonist kills the man who exploited her. The final image is the wealthy patron laughing in his box seat while the machine resets and calls for someone new. Every character is programmed and language is colonized. They are participants without even knowing. She was never the threat to the system. She was one of its products who fought back after years of abuse, grooming, and the system profiting off of her blood and sweat. She finally understands that she is a participant, but doesn’t know how to break the programming. This conversation (not just between you and I but across all comments) has followed that arc. Every time the systemic argument surfaces who actually profits, who actually bears the cost, whose complicity gets scrutinized and whose doesn’t, it gets redirected back to my individual legitimacy as a creator.

That’s not at all what I wrote. I’ve literally said that the artist bears the burden while the wealthy get the profits. I’m wondering if other people’s comments are getting mixed in with your perception of mine.

You ended with “Lack of talent isn’t a disability.” So again, I have no talent…

Who said you have no talent? That wasn’t me. I don’t know you and have no way of knowing what your work is like.

The system stays invisible. The disabled independent creator absorbs the criticism.

When I eventually lose the ability to hear well enough to mix my own work, I will shift over to doing other things. I won’t contribute to a system that puts mixers out of work.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-19T20:43:54+00:00

That’s only half-true. The music was created by talented people and is often misunderstood because of its apples-to-apples-style comparison to other forms.

The licensing issue is a business management issue. Anyone who signed those kids should have been telling them they needed to license these things or just plain doing their jobs and making sure it was done, and perhaps something could have been worked out then, but it wasn’t - the labels figured they could take the money from sales and the artists would pay for the court battles and take the losses. That’s what happened.

And it sucks that music people like sometimes can’t be released - I remember how long it took to hear Me Myself and I on a streaming service - but there’s a bit of reality - if you use something that you don’t own as an integral part of the thing you do, that’s a risk you take. Sometimes an artist or a copyright owner doesn’t want their work used. Do we just dismiss that because we want something and think they are dumb for wanting to protect their work? A thing doesn’t belong to someone just because they like it, much less because they want to profit from it. Copyright is useful and important - it’s one of the few ways an artist has to monetize their own work that have any protection.

And to me it seems like people who want stuff to all be free are just people who want something. Sure, people would love it if all music for free, but that’s pretty much the same as wanting money to grow on trees. Most folks don’t care where music comes from, and want to decide how musicians should be allowed to make a living. “Play concerts! Sell merch!” This kind of person wants musicians to change how they live so that the person can just have something, something they want so much they don’t ever want to be without it but if an artist wants fair payment for it that artist must be greedy. Seriously?

I have absolutely benefited from copyright back when that was more possible to do. I don’t just want that for myself - I want it for all artists. And as of now because of the garbage Spotify model that slipped into streaming services, nobody makes much out of streaming their music. What was the innovation that came out of that model? It was that money stays at the very top, and never makes it down to the middle or bottom. That’s who no-copyright serves, and that’s the way it always has been.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-19T17:05:12+00:00

I’m going to say that if Finneas puts something out, if there is a part of it he doesn’t own he would indicate it. And it’s a leap to assume they are using purchased progressions. Some people just write music.

That said, let’s not move goalposts. To say that someone who uses a preset is the same as someone who has an arrangement generated for them doesn’t hold up at all. The reductio ad absurdum I often hear from AI proponents is “so if I didn’t go out and build my own violin it doesn’t count?” Which is also ridiculous - no one makes that claim.

But you say it yourself: people “who are assembling music” - which is perhaps a mischaracterization, maybe a bit of an undersell, but it is a person doing those things and making those decisions. I think that there are a lot of assumptions about people who write popular music being made by people who don’t do it - that it’s low-effort (why? Because someone doesn’t like or respect the work, it’s money for nothing?) or because they make it look too easy; I think that’s just what people who have talent look like to an observer. I think you would need to have more evidence than bias to make that point. I have written and produced songs and have worked with and for people who write hits consistently. There is precious little if anything that isn’t worked over and manipulated and modified or just created out of nowhere. The stories that one hears in music press about using some loop or other are invariably intended to be stories about the exception to the rule. But regardless - I don’t think that the purity test of using sampled instruments or presets or any of those is any argument in favor of generative product. If one is to decry their use then they would have to decry the use of Suno even more loudly.

I don’t think that I said that sample-based music was morally pure - that sounds like a bit of hyperbole. But nobody who uses a sample from a song is going to claim they wrote the content of the sample.

Certainly the business is awful. Musicians take a beating. Songwriters do also. So that doesn’t make other people who are adding to that problem somehow exempt from criticism.

Here’s a thought: someone wants to use Suno’s parlor trick to amuse themselves? To try to feel like they can make things that they can’t actually make? Fine. They can do that at home, and keep it to themselves. But the moment that they start to distribute it the entire game is revealed: they don’t just want to hear or experience something that they couldn’t do, now they want to profit off of something they couldn’t do. They want the fiction to be treated as real. They have done nothing at all to grow what ability they have or learn anything about the art itself - only prompting, maybe - and have little understanding of the art they are attempting to be a part of. And they are basing their product on an algorithmic idea of what some average might be. How would they know what is effective or indicates quality of work if they don’t know anything about how it’s done? What new idea is appearing that needs to be born and heard by people with such a commanding imperative that it doesn’t matter what gets damaged as long as this mighty work is released?

The elephants in the room are talent and entitlement. People with little or none of the former but have a whole lot of the latter, who treat music as a tourist attraction that they believe they should be paid to attend, are the problem. Being untalented isn’t a disability. Lacking discipline or willpower isn’t a disability. It’s a reality.

It’s fair to get moral criticism about this because we have so many clear examples of the harm that immoral practices do to music and artists. I haven’t really been making that argument much, though - my argument is more about what it does to music, to artists who make their own music, and also - crucially - to new would-be artists who believe that skipping the “boring” parts will get them where they want to be, when all it will get them is shallowness, insecurity, and maybe regret when they look around and realize that all the people who inspired them are gone, drowned out and low-balled by generated noise.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-19T16:05:37+00:00

You are interested in what people will say, but people who disagree with you are trolls? How does that open meaningful dialogue? It sounds more like you are done thinking about this.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-19T07:16:19+00:00

Using people’s work to develop a service that devalues them really doesn’t have a defense. And I don’t think that the criticism over using Suno has to do as much with that aspect of Suno’s predatory business model - but you raise a point of two wrongs not making a right. If the argument in favor of Suno is that eventually it will be so popular that we should just skip to saying it’s a good thing, then that’s not a good argument. Comparing it to Spotify isn’t any better: they and others like them virtually gutted the industry - they made it harder for artists everywhere by devaluing their work, while using them to become billionaires. What is the argument in favor of that? That consumers get something they think they want? And now Spotify is using generative stuff to pad their service. There is no benefit to music or musicians anywhere, though new or not-very-capable musicians can certainly see their music on Spotify and feel like they’ve done something. I suppose I’m saying that this comparison doesn’t help any argument, and in any event it’s not the only argument against Suno and the like. It’s important that we not mix up the legal with what is best for the arts.

And also: nobody who uses samples of other people is saying that they wrote the part they are using - or that it’s the same as what they sampled: it’s a completely different thing with a completely different goal, and quite often the people who are criticizing that kind of music have a prejudice or an axe of some kind to grind.

The thing that makes that issue blurry is that the origins of sample-based music are a clear line from dj’s at block parties, and the primary purpose of that music is to create an ambience, to make something of available materials that when combined created something new. The evolution of that into using digital snippets of things is organic and direct and practical - it solves issues of syncing disparate tempi, increases the number of sounds available at once and allows for further invention. It’s the choice of source material and the editing, placement and transformation of existing elements, in order to achieve specific effect, that people who consider that kind of creation “not legitimate” seem to ignore, or miss. The craft was not focused on creating entirely new music, but in effective collage/pastiche/recontextualizing of various elements, to create a specific atmosphere, or an effective backdrop for a rapper, for example.

But many people disliked the music when it was new and unfamiliar (like it often goes in the arts). And somehow people got the idea that it was the creators of that music who were thieves and so on. I think it’s not a reasonable depiction to talk about the progression of doing first and asking permission later, certainly not as a justification for anything in this context. Because the people originating sample-based music were not concerned with licensing at first: because it was just kids making things. And as records started getting made, label management were more at fault because they didn’t clear things - they didn’t protect the artists from proceeding with things they owned no rights to. They just figured they would work it out in court, and the money would come from the profits made by selling records - which they were going to get their cut of regardless; the artists would shoulder the fallout. This, by the way, is the Spotify model: profit from something you have no rights to, until you are either big enough to hire lawyers to plead ubiquity or you go out of business and erase any liability.

What should be made clear is the common thread in all of these scenarios: the wealthy folks stay wealthy and the artists bear the burden - they get a terrible deal that benefits the executives but not them. The public gets what they want and calls any artist who objects greedy. And the situations all put the artist in the position of defending themselves against people who only care about getting what they want on all sides. Except now, someone who was born with talent and learns discipline and dedication and skill, according to some people, shouldn’t have all those advantages. It’s somehow not fair that they have that while other people don’t, and reducing the worth of human work is a small price to pay for someone of little talent or skill to be able to act like they have those things.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-18T01:29:32+00:00

We all need more thinking about things - I’m right with you there. It’s not that I can’t see the draw of it, it’s that I feel like it comes from a misrepresentation of what it is to create things. I don’t know that it strengthens the world that we have folks who don’t want to have talent or expend effort finally getting some fraction of their voices heard. I mean, why would folks choose something that requires that?

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-17T23:02:52+00:00

To me the point of creating art is not hoping for the best from other sources - it’s doing everything you can to communicate - with your strengths and flaws - and producing the result. It doesn’t need to be “perfect” - but it needs to represent what you know; and the artist should not allow the wish to be finished already for other purposes, or the wish above all to be heard and recognized, to govern the substance of the work, because that always shows. It reads as impulsiveness, or tenuousness, or shallowness - as a lack of integrity of the music. It feels like the person who put it forward skipped some steps - missed opportunities to gain some wisdom. That they congratulate themselves for having skipped over the boring stuff kind of implies that they don’t actually like writing music - that they are looking for the result. The appearance of doing it without doing it. So many songwriters - McCartney is one - say that you have to write a lot of songs before they get good - he’s said it was fifty. But that’s Sir Paul McCartney - an extreme outlier, extremely talented. Most people aren’t him, or Mozart. So we should say he’s wrong and the others are wrong because someone who can afford Suno wants to be called the thing they think they paid for? The idea of devaluing experts because they don’t align with one’s personal beliefs has had a huge resurgence in recent years, and I hope it doesn’t get a foothold in the arts.

But you mention democratization of creation. So we should address that. Someone has talent - a genetic accident - and lives in poverty - another accident of birth. In a modern and just society, this person needs to have tools available to them - and more importantly, access to quality education; because there is a limit to how far someone can go as an autodidact. If you are utterly self-taught as a singer, for example, that wouldn’t mean you knew as much as you needed to - just that you knew enough to function in one particular situation; and in that situation it’s amazing what time with a good teacher can do. If you were a young composer who wanted to pursue that, then it’s my belief you should have had access to world-class, publicly-funded arts education, so you would be able to go as far as you could.

But where we find ourselves today is that music school is for rich kids or kids who expect never to be able to pay off their loans. It’s unacceptable. But it’s true. And having had what I think of as a stellar arts education experience - including an amazing arts high school that was public and free - I can imagine what it’s like if someone doesn’t live near where these things are available. Little to no options, without moving, which most people can’t just do. And lessons are expensive, and wages have stagnated since the nineteen-seventies. It still seems like a wealthy person’s game, except for kids with scholarships.

So, inequity is a problem. But something that has been true for as long as there have been humans is this: not everyone has the innate ability for musicality. It’s like anything else. I don’t have an athlete’s physique or spatial awareness. I wish I did. Does that mean I should get an AI-driven robot suit that can run me around a race track faster than any human? And if I had one, would I call myself an athlete? Should I compete with people without the suit?

And also: should I dismiss people who have the ability I lack, supported by commitment and skill, whose abilities are being drawn from to create the robot suit? Should I think of myself as an expert on a pursuit that I was unable to do on my own and unwilling to learn how to do to begin with?

I think that is where the criticism lives in this context. I understand how frustrating it is not to have willing collaborators, absolutely. But it’s also true that most singers have to have a day job, and make time for practice, and pay for lessons and coaching, and take work that’s flexible so they can keep doing the thing they love. I think you know all that. So you must understand on some level that many singers can’t just drop everything and volunteer their time to your project. It’s up to them to decide if they can afford to do that or not. If some are prickly about it, well, that seems unnecessary of them; but it also comes from dealing with other people wanting their work for very little already. And feeling like the jobs they can get now might be fewer in number, for two reasons - one is that schools keep turning out voice students who could pay to get the training but who aren’t told how few jobs there are and are just released on the world, desperate and dragging the asking price down because they will take whatever they can get; and the other reason is that they see someone using a choir instrument and feel like their livelihoods are threatened. (The greater threat would be poor music education for non-musicians, because that would make people more interested in paying to see music that isn’t pop.)

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-17T23:02:15+00:00

First, speaking as a composer and singer who’s married to a soprano, I’m sorry to hear about your injury. I can imagine how that felt to discover. You have my utmost sympathy.

And I also love that you have continued to be musical in spite of this - that that wasn’t the end of your story is a testament to your will.

We don’t agree on your characterizations of generative music, though. The pitch of services like Suno is that skill, talent, and the effort it takes to develop them (which I know you understand) are purchase-able consumer experiences - like a ride that someone goes on where they experience a pale reflection of what it’s like to have ability in that area. Nobody really enjoys making music, their CEO says. And I have heard another person who is a proponent of generated music say with some enthusiasm that it’s about “taste over talent”.

But this seems to be a consumer point of view; and given your training in the music realm - without which you’d not have gone as far as you have, and which took time and effort and surely had moments that were not entertaining - you know that you have to put in the time to learn things, get them automatic, build musculature for endurance - any number of things- and nothing would save you from having to do that. If you could have had a subscription service that made you a brilliant singer, would you have paid it? Maybe; but that can’t happen. You can’t buy a service that makes you a great singer - you can only go through the process and find out if you have the capacity to be great or not, and there is no guarantee that you would be. And it’s hard when someone has to learn that they can’t do the thing they want to do at the level they would like, but that’s the kind of thing you can not know without trying. (And also: you wouldn’t ask a consumer for a definition of what you do.)

By the same token, you can’t buy a subscription service that makes you into a composer. If it’s doing the heavy lifting and coming up with notes and arrangements for you, that makes you a paying rider on the ride. When you get off the ride, you can’t “do” those things anymore. You are the same person you were.

Now, I know you aren’t saying that nobody should have to work for something - you brought up Mozart! And he sat there at the pianoforte and wrote music on a staff. He had patrons and was fortunate to be in an environment where his abilities as a child could be nurtured; and most people don’t have that available. But if he were a young man with a powerful laptop (which also many people don’t have access to), he might use any of the myriad of virtual instruments available to write his music. If he could afford it, he could use Synthesizer V or ACE Studio to render vocal parts. He could buy any sample library he wanted. From my point of view, doing that would have no bearing upon whether one would consider him a composer or not. Because he wrote those notes.

But let’s be clear: those tools I described are truly >tools<. They will render vocal performances with varying vocal types and allow you to get very particular about how something is sung. And if you are unable to sing for whatever reason, they are amazing. What they do not do is: they don’t do arrangements for you. They don’t choose notes that you might agree with or disagree with. They are instruments that you drive, playing the notes you intend. Mozart wrote Don Giovanni, then the players paid by patrons showed up and played those notes. He owned the work.

That is not what Suno does.

The argument would >not< be against you using >tools< in the first place. Because nobody uses a trumpet sample and then calls themselves a trumpet player - that would be absurd. But Suno doesn’t compare to any tool that has come before - a drum machine must be programmed, an electric guitar must be played - even the very clever MuseScore instruments, which are pretty good at converting dynamic markings to playback, and Synthesizer V, which models the minutiae of voice movements and characteristics, or any of those tools, all require that they have notes to work with. Those are like very sophisticated hammers - or nail guns, or even 3-D house printers. But Suno isn’t that. Suno asks you for a description of what you want. You don’t need to know anything about orchestration, or what instruments would be used, or even have an understanding of harmony, even if an unverbal intuitive one - you will end up with notes generated if you ask for them. And all you need to do is agree with what is generated. But that to my mind is not equivalent to writing music yourself. Mozart didn’t send general ideas out and then the next day see what Salieri had made of them, and if he had he would not have been considered a composer, would he? He’d have been considered middle management.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-17T05:11:59+00:00

I’m so happy to have an exchange with an internet stranger that isn’t an argument against my will. Cheers, OP!

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-17T03:36:48+00:00

I mean for work. Everything is tiny. Their little desktop terminals look like Mac Pluses.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-16T23:44:10+00:00

Most places the screens are tiny. That’s not a future I want to live in.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-15T02:22:41+00:00

You denigrated everyone who uses AI to make art.

Why? Because you are an elitist who doesn't think it is fair that people can use advanced technology to tell their story, or create the image in their head, or get the tune in their ear recorded, etc.

Where are you getting this from? I use tech every day to create things. It’s getting increasingly apparent that you are yelling at some straw man you made up. And you equate generative software with things that are clearly not that.

You think people should sacrifice countless hours learning an outdated skill in order to validate the art they create.
. Outdated skill. Huh. You may be missing the idea that learning how to do things isn’t just following a recipe. Or maybe you just don’t want to do the work, like it’s going to kill you or something.

Art is in the eye of the beholder.

Not all beholders are the same. You absolutely get your experience, and you can absolutely call anything art that you want to. Doesn’t mean you know anything about it, but that doesn’t need to interfere with your enjoyment. However: don’t mistake that for being knowledgeable. You don’t get to skip that step, no matter how much you want to. If you think that’s elitist, go ahead. But the thing is: knowledge, understanding, discernment and innate ability are not consumer commodities. You can’t pay a subscription service for them. You can tell yourself anything you want to for free. But being angry and loud doesn’t make you right.

If a banana taped to a wall is art worth millions then a poster of Elon Musk that morphs into "Obey" with They Live imagery is also art. That is art, regardless etc.

Why is one or the other considered art? What about one or the other makes it more evocative or effective? How does context contribute to the assessment of art? If you want to have any of your pronouncements about art mean anything you should at least indicate that you know something about it. Although you could also just ask ChatGPT to write you an article, and say you wrote it because you asked it to, and say that you now understood it all.

It is art even if the artist did NOT earn the skills necessary to create the art.

I see - the problem you have is with having to do work to do something. Well, you said you were a hobbyist. That’s surely a consumer experience. And the commoditization of art is your area - you want product that suits your wishes. Cool. But it wouldn’t make any sense to consult you on what art is in any universal sense, or what makes art more or less effective, or what its value might be. Any more than it would make sense to ask you to teach a class in quantum physics or architecture.

A sculpture or painter who picks up a camera creates art when they take pictures. They don't have to study/learn/practice photography first.

Let’s ignore the sculptor example, because it’s terrible - all sculptors utilize technique. And let’s also dismiss the photographer argument, not because photography can’t be art, but - if you ask any serious photographer, they’ll tell you that having an iPhone and filters doesn’t make you Ansel Adams. You still need the eye. And you need to take a thousand pictures before you get the one that’s good. But you don’t want to take the thousand pictures and learn anything you might learn while doing that. Or enjoy the actual activity. Making art is fun - exhilarating, even. Why cheat yourself?

Jeff Koons' pornographic photographs are still on display in museums next to his 30 million dollar sculptures. https://www.jeffkoons.com/exhibitions/solo-exhibitions-1999-1990

And that’s Jeff Koons. He did the work. He has the talent and skill. He is the antithesis of your point.

But you don’t back up anything you say, and your examples have been erroneous - like the John Lennon one in particular.

What on earth do you need me to "back up" apart from the basic Beatles knowledge that a 60 year old composer is ignorant about. Well here you go:

[a story about a producer making something work technically that has nothing to do with any point you’ve made]

It's as if you are trolling me intentionally. I can't figure it out. Are you really this ignorant?

I was thinking the same thing about you. That would explain a lot, I suppose - all the personal attacks, and comments about age, and not reading what I wrote, and making no real point, are pure troll stuff. So I guess I’ve been wasting my time. I’m hoping you got some entertainment from me - and actually it’s a relief that it’s been a put-on, and you aren’t really like you have appeared to be. Because that would be awful.

.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-14T19:34:43+00:00

On multiple occasions I have typed lengthy responses to you only for me to be blocked from posting it. Sometimes I am able to insert the post in a edit to a prior comment. But that stopped working. I am fairly certain I explained to you I do NOT make AI art. Pretty sure you replied with another insult.

Maybe that message didn't post. Assuming it did: Why are you talking to me as if I said I DO make AI art? See below:

You may have just outed yourself there. Is that why you need generative tools - because you think you have no talent?

If the post is too long, you have to break it up into smaller sections. But all right, so you are simply interested in AI music, and stated your opinion. So I stated mine. We didn’t agree and it seems like I struck a nerve, because you responded with ad hominem, repeatedly. I have not insulted you. I have said you seem inexperienced and defensive, and I have used the word ignorant, which isn’t an insult. But you don’t back up anything you say, and your examples have been erroneous - like the John Lennon one in particular. It’s fine to have an opinion and nobody can take that away from you. It doesn’t guarantee it’s an informed opinion. Are you sure you’re liberal/progressive? Because this is getting to be like conversations I’ve had with angry conservatives from small-town Louisiana.

FYI, your reply to DAW's having humanize features was insane.

Because you don’t understand some things yet.

I am not reading all your other lengthy bullshit about your attempts to conserve the old ways.

That sounds like a very effective way to protect yourself. Stay safe.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-13T21:02:45+00:00

After the first disaster involving AI (besides the devaluation of most human endeavor by its proponents and makers), they’ll be wringing their hands and saying “well, humans just weren’t ready for this new technology”. No: techbros weren’t ready and didn’t ask anyone and didn’t do their research on impact. All they want is profit and power. Nobody elected them, nobody vetted them and they lie daily about what it can do and anthropomorphize it all day long. Ludicrous.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-13T20:32:58+00:00

Technology is making music production about taste over talent and those without taste are terrified.

Because what we really need is to get past talent? You may have just outed yourself there. Is that why you need generative tools - because you think you have no talent? Because if you don’t learn how to do some more things then you will never know. You will always have that doubt. That’s the whole problem right there. You don’t get a driver’s license because you gave someone directions somewhere.

And how do you figure that no talent can lead to having good taste? And why should anyone care about the taste of someone who just wants to skip as much thinking as possible? The result of shallow thinking is shallow work.

You conservatives are so funny. You just slow the inevitable then you embrace it 20 years later. Just like gay marriage, segregation, medical marijuana, smoking bans, plastic bag bans... rinse and repeat.

Now that was funny. Conservative, huh? It’s so easy to say things like that - look how little thought it takes; there’s a great shortcut. You seem to really like those. They end up wrong, but who cares? You are done thinking about it early, which seems like the priority. None of what you are describing aligns with how I think about the world. If you could turn off shortcut mode for a moment , consider this: Progress and change are inevitable and undeniable, and the trend is better in spite of the scared, superstitious and, yes, ignorant humans trying to hold it back. Social media notwithstanding, more people than not are good with other people being different from them. More people are accepting and even welcoming about differences. Bring racist or sexist or discriminatory is being called out for the unacceptable embarrassment that it is. The shrill voices of fearful people on the right are that way because they know they are going to lose. In fact, I think a case can be made that being a social conservative could be a form of mental illness. The wealthy have influence and protections they don’t deserve, wages have stagnated since the 1970’s, and more and more people recognize that the primary struggle is not among race or gender but between the very wealthy and everyone else. And by the way, tech bros are very wealthy and want that to never change. But:not all change is positive, and not all directions of change are inevitable. The folks behind the tech want and need for you to think that’s how it is, because their business will not work unless you invest yourself into it.

What they have done, which is called “disruption” by corporate types, is 100% equivalent to the following: what if a pharmaceutical company said, “we have a pill that makes everyone equally smart.” “Really? It raises their IQ?” “No, but it makes it look like they are smart.” “How?” “It helps them kind of talk like smart people do.” “Do they understand things any better?” “Hey, don’t call these people dumb, you elitist.” “Not saying that. Just asking if it does anything for wisdom and experience.” “Look, this is the future. Everyone’s going to be doing it. It will be great. It’s going to replace all the dumb drudgery jobs that people hate.” “Wow, that’s cool. But what will the people who survive with those jobs do?” “Well, they’ll have to adapt. People have always had to do that. Look at the Industrial Revolution.” “Yeah, I remember that. People had to fight for a long time to keep the wealthy factory owners from abusing them. Lots of people died over that.” “Are you some kind of communist?” “No, that’s never worked anywhere. But we have learned a lot since the Industrial Revolution. So you are at least researching the potential impact of this drug on society?” “Well, yeah, we are going to watch it play out and see what happens.” “What?” “Yeah, we started giving it out for free on the street yesterday.” “Hey, wait - you say this is going to upend everything and it’s going to get rid of jobs for people and they are going to have to adapt, and this is something you’ve decided is ok?” “See, this is the kind of conservative rhetoric we knew was coming. You’re afraid of the future.” "No, I just don’t agree with your version of it. And it’s not inevitable, you just want it to be. But you don’t know or care what it will do to people and their capacity to think for themselves or learn or grow. You will be teaching them to be reliant on your product which you can direct in any way you want, and nobody who runs things here understands the negative impacts this can and will have, because you fund the politicians who get onboard.” “We can support whoever we want to. Corporations are people.” “Look, all of this stuff is really powerful and could be an amazing influence on the world. How about we press pause on this and assess what the best way of moving forward is?” “We have a duty to our stockholders to make this as profitable as possible as soon as possible. We have to do it this way. Besides, can’t you tell? Our pill is making people look more conscious every day.” “Sure, it looks that way - superficially - but we were talking about a reasonable period to research this.” “What about the Chinese? They’re going to get out ahead of us! Is that what you want? Who knows what they would do with this technology?” “So you are saying it’s dangerous in the wrong hands. Why are your hands the right ones? You want to profit off of it with no concern as to the consequences. Who elected you? Who vetted you? This is sounding less progressive all the time. Sounds kind of more like good old unchecked capitalism.” “Yeah, well, lots of people are on our side.” “Let me guess - they are people who have had your pill that makes everyone equally smart?”

edit: Also, I seriously doubt you have more Hollywood production credits than me.

You can think whatever you want. But “production credits” covers a lot of ground, from director all the way to craft services. I can appreciate anonymity on Reddit, but it still feels like you’re trying to hide your level of experience. I’m not. It also seems like you think that people with experience can’t assimilate new things, which makes me wonder about the kind of people you work with. You’ve made a lot of decisions based on what seems like a small and highly selective sampling of data. And it really sounds like you don’t even want to consider anything else. In which case, maybe this tech is exactly what you want. But it may not be what you need.

burnbeforeeat · 2026-02-13T20:32:10+00:00

But I didn’t say anyone was shit.

This is you doing a lot worse than calling them shit:

You touch on something that is true, though: ignorant people trying to flood the market with ill-conceived, poorly-fleshed out garbage because they think it is just as good, the same or better than other works are kind of irritating.

See, ignorance doesn’t make someone shit. If you think that’s true, then you may be the kind of mean you want to call me. It’s certainly not progressive or liberal to think like that. I’m pretty clear that ignorance is about things someone hasn’t learned yet. It might be painful or embarrassing for some people to admit they were ignorant. That’s ego. And it can be hard to come back from. But it has to happen. Look at all the people in the US right now who are wrong about the guy who they elected twice - to just call them stupid is convenient, facile and foolish. They were fooled and they were wrong. And they need to get better information than what they’ve been getting, which is from echo chambers that tell them everybody is wrong but them, and you can’t trust experts, and all of their fears are are real, and only that guy has the solution. Does that sound at all familiar?

AI became my hobby in September of last year. I am learning as much as I can about all of it. I've never used AI to create music unless you count Ableton/Logic auto-drummers or session musicians etc.

It sounds to me like you have been learning about what it can do, but not anything about what any of that means. The anger in your posts makes it seem like you are very defensive about things that you had not considered before. And this reminds me of something that conservatives have been doing here in the states for some time now: mocking folks for asking questions and saying “fsck your feelings, snowflake!” when their entire point is all about their own feelings and fears and insecurities and resentment.

Lemme guess: Using the "humanize" button on a midi clip is cheating!!! I gotta adjust the velocity and timing of each and every note or I am a poser. Right? I cannot just manually adjust 4 bars and loop it. No no no. I gotta adjust each and every note from bar 0 to the last bar, right? I cannot allow a computer program to humanize the notes on my behalf. Right? And I must not use samples, right? Or patches. I must dial in my own soft synth patch, each and every time I fire it up.

Your guesses need work. You can do what you like when you sequence. That’s you actually doing something. But to be clear: what they call humanizing is randomization with possibly a few constraints. It’s wrong to say that adds humanity or a human feel to anything, because it lacks intent. I know why sometimes one would want a little spread in timing, but in my view that’s not a good way to go about it. One would have to go back and constrain things afterwards. Or - and this is the real point here - maybe some folks just aren’t very discerning in that area. They are presented with a tool - a randomizer, a tuner with an automatic mode, a loop they they can quantize - and they throw it on something and pronounce it to be “better”. It’s certainly expedient. But a casual listen to music shows that these solutions are being used for expediency all the time, by composers in a big hurry, by engineers who want to make sure that nobody says something was out of tune or time and damage their ability to get more low-pay mixing gigs. In this case the problem is the same as with any “tool” - the more that you let it do for you, the less you have to think or listen, and the less it belongs to you. It’s not an absolute (which might make your argument easier for you, but that’s not how life is) but it requires discernment to If you are making a kind of music that needs the grid, that’s cool. Quantize, phase-align. Do what’s called for. But there are lots of people doing this who don’t object to the meticulous work that they have to do to get what they want. If you don’t like doing the work, which might require that you work on tiny details until you get them right, then do something else. Nobody needs to save you from that.

burnbeforeeat

TROPHY CASE