GenAI and Expand

This album took over two years from songwriting to release. It’s been two tumultuous years not just for me, but for most entire creative industries. Today, you could point a Generative AI at The Egg and ask for a song, and it’ll give you one that probably totally slaps. That is not what I did here. [See track 12.]

I made this album from the ground up. Every track. My very talented friend Giovanna produced the cover art. Given the chance to start over and do it all again, I’d do it the same way. (Well, OK… next time I’ll find a drummer.) Regardless of the ethics around asking an LLM to basically remix others’ work without their consent, the fact is: It’s just so goddamn fun and satisfying to do it myself. And revealing yourself to the world through actual music is such a different experience from, what… refining and executing a prompt? What if I told you a machine had written this stuff? I don’t think it would hit you as hard. And I do hope some of these tracks hit you HARD.

I will say: I bounced the track ordering off Gemini and integrated some of its feedback. I think the whole project is stronger for it. But even then, key pieces still needed to be moved and reordered by me. This was all long after the songs were actually produced.

So I hope you enjoy Expand and all its human imperfections. And if you coax some system into remixing Expand into a club banger on a whim, don’t get me wrong: I absolutely want to hear it… if it slaps.