Hopefully, nothing will drop suddenly out of the sky and land on Earth, but you never know… if things look okay, go ahead and take a chance on reading this.
So, tonight, instead of making new songs — I already have plenty, and some would say too many — I spent a few hours reviewing the songs that are already up on youtube.
I hung them improperly, meaning that I dumped twenty at a time on my channel, which the algorhythms apparently dislike, and so I have very little interest in my latest project, but I’m used to that.
At some point, youtube will start presenting my videos, but until then, you can’t watch what you can’t see, so I’m inviting you to go to my channel, and specifically to my videos page on my youtube channel. I’ll post it here:
Then you can listen to the videos as you will. One thing for certain — they do NOT all sound alike, as someone said the other day, to which I would answer, you don’t know how to listen.
Most folks can’t tell the difference between a trombone and a cello, especially if they can’t see them being played. It’s a chore to actually listen to music.
It’s not just the words, it’s the feel, the arrangement and the timing.
If you use Suno rightly, you’ll have plenty to do with the outcome, and the decision, which version to take?
It would really help me if you would listen to the songs I’ve posted on my channel, and let me know which ones you would like to see as a download on bandcamp — here’s our page on bandcamp, in case you didn’t know:
You can listen free to the hundreds of songs we’ve posted up there, ready for instant download.
There have been comments about the music being too something or other, and my answer is that due to covid and other bad things, I can’t meet with the band to make music, and frankly, I’m just not physically up to it.
The Suno program allows me to write my songs and see them posted where people can see and hear them.
To those who condemn me for using ai, I say just go to the bandcamp page and realize that those hundreds of albums were our band’s work over a period of some 45 years using standard acoustic gear and some electric — bass and guitars — and several vocalists, plus the genius of Oz Fritz, our engineer and mix artist, so there.
What I mean is, bug off the bitchin’ and try it for yourself. If you’re 83 like I am, you’ll appreciate working on a song where you can suddenly get up and go take a leak without leaving the stage, because you’re not on it to begin with.
I’ll be sharing my tricks of the trade in song writing and production at the workshop next week — don’t neglect signing up, it helps us organize the event a lot better, when we know for sure who’s coming.
Many people think that the Suno program is just the push of a button, but it isn’t so. There’s a lot of control you can exert in the prompts, and the lyrics are yours, and that’s the whole point — it’s poetry set to music, not pop songs, but true bardic lays harking back to the days of the troubadour.
I think I’ve made my point. I have made hundreds of songs with acoustic instruments, synthesizers, and all manner of percussion.
I have 12 guitars, because I have a limit to the number of guitars I will own — just one more.
Still, I can’t play them as I used to, and even then I was never professional class, just an amateur who played a few dozen instruments, some of them well.
So I can’t off the bat think of any other complaints from my youtube listings — oh, wait a minute, I do recall someone mentioning that the music sounded stiff and unreal.
I have news for you. On occasion, a side-man will cough or repeat a phrase, and there are changes up and down, and lots of little quirks that go into the music, but you have to know how to listen, and how to hear.
I’ve tucked Work Ideas into the songs, and in some cases, that’s the only way you’ll get them, so if you don’t listen, you won’t get those ideas from anywhere else.
Pretty soon, everyone will be doing what I’m doing, because already the live vocals are processed and autotuned and enhanced — tell me they’re not.
And that goes back to the 70s, it’s not a new thing.
Face it, it’s a cellphone dominated world.
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And now it’s time to board the Bardo bus for a little tour around Bardotown!
Everybody aboard? Okay, let’s go!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby