Oh Please, Not an AI Music Composer

A Hamilton player piano:
 an old-fashioned music machine.

Facebook just fed me an advertisement for an AI music composer -- an AI engine that will write music for you. Does nobody remember George Orwell's 1984? In that dystopian novel, all of the pop music was written by computers. It was glurge that appealed to the masses, and pacified them, but it was emphatically not high art.

So far, I'm not all that impressed with AI. I know it's "the future," and I know "the future is now," but frankly, the way most humans wield AI is clumsy and talentless. We are excited about the sloppy software, and B-grade graphics that people have generated using AI. And we've read story after story about people using AI to make resumes, term papers, book reports, newspaper articles, speeches, and even legal briefs -- all of them marred by sloppy logic, inaccurate "facts" and analyses, made-up references, and so on.

If AI music promises to be of the same quality as the rest of this garbage, then I will only listen to musc created before 2025, thankyouverymuch.

To be clear, ultimately it's not the AI engine or Large Language Model (LLM) that's the problem. The AI is just a tool. The problem lies with the human using the tool.

Most of you are too young to remember the original Apple Macintosh computer. It was released in 1984 -- gasp okay, that's ironic. Anyway, the Mac came with a suite of software including a desktop publishing program called Aldus PageMaker. This was really putting power in the hands of the people. Suddenly, any idiot could be a desktop publisher.

And do you know what? Every idiot became a desktop publisher. The world was papered with ugly, lousy, amateur posters and newsletters and banners. You could spot a PageMaker document a mile away, not because of any defects in the software, but because of the human who had used PageMaker with all the skill of a lefthanded troll to create such an ugly document.

Now we're seeing the same misuse of AI. We're already seeing the PageMaker-quality output in words, in images, and in video. Are you ready to hear it in music? With AI, any idiot can become a composer.

I read today that composer John Williams has just finished writing a piano concerto. The man is 93 years old. He has a lifetime of talent and experience behind him. AI music may be able to imitate his compositions, but it will never match his genius or the quality of his work. There is no shortcut to that kind of quality.

The Next Christmas Album You Need to Buy

It may seem strange to talk about a Christmas album right now. In fact, trying to buy Christmas music right now is like trying to buy home heating oil #2. The refineries have stopped making heating oil, switching over to gasoline for the summer, and they won't go back to heating oil until September. In the same way, this is the wrong season for retailers to be putting Christmas music on the shelves and advertising it. All of their Christmas CDs are in the warehouse, where they will remain until Thanksgiving.

Or Halloween.

Or Labor Day.

Unless you're an online retailer. Then it's Christmas all year long.

But I digress. (I'm allowed to do that. E' il mio gioco; le regole, le faccio io.) Let's talk about Christmas music.

Last December, I heard a music review on National Public Radio, of a new Christmas album by Sting, called If On a Winter's Night... . (Yes, the ellipsis is part of the title.) The reviewer played clips of some of the songs, and talked about a few of the tracks, enough to make me want to buy the CD. So I did.

I think I played it once last winter, and not even all the way through. But it's been sitting on my shelf for six months now, and I recently decided to try it again. It's much more listenable the second (and third) time around.

If you're in the mood for Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song or John Denver and the Muppets' The Twelve Days of Christmas, this album just won't do it for you. It's a very introspective album. Each song invites the listener to go with Sting, deep into the emotions and the thoughts that are the underpinnings of The True Meaning of Christmas.

There's no catchy Winter Wonderland in this album, and no Beach Boys harmonies. Even Natalie Cole's beautiful rendition of Mary, Did You Know doesn't dig as deep as the lyrics on this album, and Natalie's Mary does dig deep. Each song on this album takes one emotion, and examines it in the light of the season, to a depth (sometimes a surprisingly dark depth) that may make the casual listener uncomfortable.

But don't listen to the album casually. Allow yourself the luxury of really getting into it. And take time to read the accompanying booklet.

The music, both the composition and performance, are superb. Because it isn't tied to the rhythms of the traditional carols like Silent Night, or the contemporary jingles like Winter Wonderland, the music is as deeply introspective as the lyrics, and the music matches the lyrics in magical ways. Besides that, Sting takes advantage of the opportunity to showcase his musical talent, to do some virtuoso things that you won't hear on commercial radio.

It may be too deep, too dark, for you. Borrow it or sample it before you decide to buy. Don't plan on playing it at a Christmas party. It's not that kind of music. It will kill the party in a hurry. But on a winter's night, when you're home alone or with the one person in the world who understands you, put it on and allow Sting to pull you in to a different kind of Christmas experience.

Arriba, middle child

Our middle child went out into the world today to seek her fortune.

My sweet wife and I were blessed with five children.

The first, a boy, is protected by the might of the US military. In fact, he is part of the might of the US military. In school, his squadron's motto was "First takes care of its own." The US military does indeed take care of its own, and so we trust that he is both safe and successful. His future is also well in hand, whether in or out of the military.

The second, a girl, is married with two children. She has the luxury in today's world of being a stay-at-home mother. She and her husband have had an adventurous life so far, and their future is secure with a government job and all the associated benefits. They have successfully sold their first house, and will soon move to a new location.

The fourth, also a girl, is in the middle of an 18-month mission, after which she will return to her university studies. God holds her in the hollow of His hand, and angels guard her footsteps until her mission is completed.

The last, a boy, is in his final year of high school. He is on track to fulfill his lifelong ambition of becoming a doctor, an ambition that he is pursuing with the same singlemindedness that has taken his older brother to success in the military.

But the middle child -- ah. Tradition holds that the middle child is the bellwether of the family, and that the success or failure of the family can be judged by the success or failure of the middle child. Our middle child left this morning, in the pre-dawn darkness, to seek her fortune in the world.

She has been preparing for this date, consciously or unconsciously, for 25 years. Her preparations have taken her to Europe, to South America, and all over the United States, have placed her in the spotlight on countless stages, and have made her a Joan of Arc to hundreds -- no, thousands -- of eager youth and young adults. Now, as her preparations come to an end and the Rest of Her Life begins, she goes to make her mark in the world as a middle school teacher.

That doesn't sound like much. In fact, at first, it sounds rather anticlimactic. Believe me, the world won't know what hit it.

She will be taking over and reviving the vocal music and drama programs at a middle school in Colorado Springs. That wasn't her plan: her plan was to teach at a high school in Boston, Seattle, Austin, or someplace else with energy and ambitions to match her own. But, like tardy suitors, Boston, Seattle and Austin made their moves too late. She couldn't wait around for them, and she had already made a commitment to Colorado Springs before the others came calling. Perhaps in the future they will have their turn.

We acknowledge the hand of God in our middle child's life. Everything that has happened to her has happened because of Him. She followed her dreams, and she made her own choices, but the choices and the opportunities were put there by God, as were the challenges and the obstacles.

The financial problems that are afflicting the nation have reached all the way down into our family. As we struggle with our own future, we look with hope and anticipation to our middle child, as we watch her taillights disappear down the road.

And the thought that keeps passing through my mind? It isn't "As the middle child goes, so goes the family." No, it's "Watch out, world. Here she comes."