AI and Music for Working Musicians: Tool, Threat, or Bandmate?

Gig gab episode 536 for monday june 1st national barefoot day 2026.

David i feel like every day is national barefoot day for you

Oh it absolutely is oh yeah no

i i uh i will wear shoes when i have

to but definitely not when i'm playing drums yeah

never never ever never talk to

me more about that we'll talk about that hang on let me say hi to you yeah okay

greetings folks and welcome to gigab the show by for and about working musicians

here in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton and with me as you've already

heard here in a slightly different part of durham new hampshire is stew diaz stew.

Diaz a slightly different part i'm four feet away

From you that's right which.

Definitely is the different

Part it's a different part of durham yeah that's correct yeah uh yes i am it's

so the barefoot thing with the drums i always you've you've probably noticed.

I know music together yeah yeah

And i will wear socks if it's cold but definitely no shoes okay and it started

because when i was a kid no.

Outdoor gigs in the winter

Oh no outdoor gigs are fine i could just wear wear socks okay like it's fine

but i don't i you know so i never wore shoes at home we never were like in the

house generally And so when I started playing gigs,

I would get to the gig and realize that I had to like raise my stool and change

my snare from where it was.

Cause I, I didn't have a practice kit, you know, and a gigging kit or anything, right?

I was bringing my drums like that was it. And, uh,

And it took a couple of gigs for me to realize, I was like, why is this not

right? And I was like, oh, I have shoes on.

And it was like, I'll just take

my shoes off for the gig. And then everything's the same as it is at home.

And I mean, I leave them behind the drums. Like I don't run around the club barefoot.

It's happened, mind you.

But I usually don't run around the clubs barefoot or anything like that.

Did you find that when you started playing drums with shoes on that the weight

distribution just like wasn't right? like it didn't it's

Very different yeah yeah yeah like if i if i sound check my drums with shoes

on i know that i'm gonna hit the bass drum softer that later you know than i

do well because the shoes like it's a whole different yes the.

Mechanics are different that's so wild yeah that's so

in in my old band there was a trombone player

that refused to wear shoes and he

wouldn't like he wasn't like a jerk about it meaning like if he

was going to a restaurant or whatever he would put it on because

he wasn't like he wasn't like trying to make like over

the top point or anything but he just he was like i've found and this was like

winter like it would be snow on the ground he would walk around barefoot and

he was just like walking barefoot i don't know why but it makes my feet not sweat oh i was like

Oh, okay.

There's a, there's a thing. There's a condition. I, I, I know someone who has

this, that causes like extra sweaty palms and feet.

And, and, oh yeah.

No, it's, maybe it's that, I mean, it's a thing.

I can't think, I can't remember the name of it, but, but there is a treatment

called Iontophoresis. And for some reason that name comes to my head.

So that requires electricity in some way.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is electricity that you shock the pores.

I was going to say, I've known other phoresises. Right.

They require electricity. But that's really interesting. Gigab podiatrist fans.

Well, I mean, if a musician's got sweaty hands, you might want to look into iantophoresis.

No, of course. That is not a judgment in any way. I was just saying. it is

The first time we've said iontophoresis on this show though.

Yeah yeah wow sure i was gonna say if there are gig gab listeners who are podiatrists

please help just let us know help clear it up yeah because i'm a dumbass

Uh so yeah anyway yeah yeah no i've

always and and now like i am

very comfortable barefoot and i've learned to be

comfortable like in front of a crowd barefoot for obvious

reasons it's just developed and so when i'm giving like a a presentation at

a conference or something i generally will take my shoes off i'll leave socks

on so it's not super weird but like if i'm on you know a carpeted stage at a

conference or whatever i take my shoes off as i'm walking on stage that's outrageously.

Cool yeah honestly that's kind of swaggy

Yeah i've never had anybody ask me about it and most people aren't going to

notice like you know the way stages are you can't necessarily see people's shoes but.

Well i also like i also i know that every single musician has their own thing

that just they do and when they explain it to someone else they're like like

it's rare that other musicians are like that's super weird they're usually like huh

That's really interesting it's interesting that's all it is yeah it's it's yeah

and i'm aware for for me that this is my my personal quirk oh it's fine.

Like so my musical personal quirk is i only use guitar picks that are gigantic

Oh like i've never noticed huge.

Like yeah just the the big old triangle ones like an equilateral triangle ones

you know like not not we're not talking isosceles here

Uh yeah.

We're they are i i and i don't know why probably because i have big hands i

don't know sure it's hard to

I have seen i like i do recall being

at gigs and and i'm now assuming

they were gigs with you but but i never dawned

up where i i remember or maybe you know a pick was

was errantly left here in my studio after a

series of rehearsals and i find it it's this big monster

triangle i'm like okay whatever like i guess somebody uses

that like you know so i've definitely seen it but it

and it it was notable but also this is really important not only have we said

for the first time in 12 years the word iontophoresis on this show but we have

also said equilateral and isosceles on the show for the first time so yes we're

like six minutes in we're killing.

It and not only have we said iontophoresis we've said it like five

Times oh it's a lot yeah yeah yeah people won't leave this episode with that

that word now you now when you see it you'll know how to pronounce it i.

Am in an iontophoretic state

Well that's the leads that i've hooked up to the chairs too that's that's uh so when.

I texted you i don't know if it was a week ago or two weeks ago i never know

because It was my brain, just.

Plus linear time, it's a construct for our feeble human brains.

It's not really important, no.

But I texted you saying,

I think it will be really fun to talk about AI relative to music with you because

my guess, and I have not confirmed this,

is that we will have differing opinions on it in some ways and overlapping opinions

in other ways. I would agree.

That's my guess, too.

Yeah. And so I was just curious. So we can pick any flavor, right?

But what I'd love to ask you is, right now, AI exists within musical tools.

There's AI mastering, there's AI mixing.

There's a lot of AI-based plugins and compressors. Yes.

But there's also AI that generates music.

um and i was just curious on you know sort of what you see as the value or lack

thereof of this technology in the space and maybe if you can parse it out and

just kind of say all right

these use cases make sense these use cases don't because i feel like it gets

talked about as a blanket

Thing the blanket's terrible and.

It doesn't make

Sense no yes okay so

we're absolutely in agreement on that because it

right ai is not a blanket

term or if you're if i am not going to use ai as a blanket term because it it

it doesn't serve any it certainly doesn't serve me and it doesn't serve the

way that I want to like speak with and educate our audience and all that here. So.

I know AI stands for artificial intelligence in the world.

I really like to think of it the way I employ it. And I use AI.

If a day goes by where I haven't used AI in some form, that's a rare day right now.

Interesting. But now I'm speaking as the blanket term, but we'll talk specifics.

but i don't treat ai like artificial

intelligence i treat it like assistive intelligence okay right where it is i

mean if i'm let's say i'm using a chat bot like a like a chat jbt or claude

or whatever if i'm using claude i'm i'm treating it like my assistant my my i call it my you know

imbecilic intern sure that that has

no emotion and is fine being

told to iterate the same task

15 times in a row and it doesn't give me any lip right if i ask a human if a

human creates me something you know if i say i need a report on the use of of

ai in you know in mixing or right you know it'll go and create that for me right

now if i have if that's all i ask it for i'm probably going to get a pretty bad report, right?

The more you put into it, the more context you give it, the better the output.

But I can tell it to ask me questions. And, you know, I've obviously been using

it long enough that I know how to do that.

But let's say I go through the process and I have it, you know,

I give it the context I want to give it, and then I have it create me a report. Yeah.

If I don't like something about that report, I can say, well,

let's fix this, remove this, change this, tweak this.

Yeah.

If I had a human do that by the sixth iteration, like that gets to be tough. Yeah, of course.

You're managing emotions at this point, not, not, not abilities,

but, but we as humans start to see that as like, oh my gosh, I'm not worthy.

Like this person didn't, didn't like what I created. It's like,

no, I, I just didn't give you enough information.

Like you didn't know not to include this. So you included it.

Now I'm just telling you, oh, I have a correction to offer to my initial instructions.

Right. That's really all I'm doing here is just correcting myself and making you do more work.

That doesn't work well with with we humans. Right.

Yeah. But with with the robots, it's totally great.

And so, you know, for a chatbot, I use it that way.

But it is assistive intelligence. It is my assistant. I never I will use it for this episode.

i will take the like the things we talked

about and the transcript of the show and feed it

in and have it create me a draft of the

blog post that's going to go along with the show whoa right

so because that way i don't have to remember what we

talked about it's going to do it now i'm going

to read that post and and edit but

i what i i have my favorite

ways to describe that type of use of ai the chatbot kind of thing is it is the

best procrastinate procrastination eliminator that i have ever found because

no longer am i suffering from blank page syndrome yeah it fills the blank page

and it might fill it with crap.

Yeah but you can edit

Crap i can edit crap and once i once i read the crap now i'm emotionally invested

in editing the crap and there's no longer any like it doesn't require willpower

it's like i want to fix this is terrible i.

Want to fix this that's fascinating so that reminds me of um

A while ago, Neil Gaiman was asked, like, how do you deal with writer's block?

And he was like, this is going to sound like a really just reductive answer and really stupid.

But you just write. You just write anything.

Write anything. Because when you write something, it exists.

And you can fix, you can tweak something that exists. But if you prevent yourself

from making anything, then you have nothing to work with. Right.

You can't edit nothing.

Editing nothing doesn't work. We all know that. Yeah, right.

So that's one way I will use AI.

For things like AI plugins, though, I want to...

Prior to us calling this AI, what, you know, four years ago,

we called it machine learning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right? Right. Which we've been using for a very long time. Oh, yeah.

All of these plugins that have a neural network in them, all that means is...

You understand data over a long period of time and formulate your responses based on that data.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's right.

Well, I guess what I'm trying to...

I know you know this.

I'm trying to hone in on a more specific thing.

Because the thing that, where I think we might disagree a little bit is there is,

because AI has the ability to generate art based on prompts.

Yes.

I think that the average person, in a way that I think is healthy,

has been given access to a set of skills that they have never had before.

but what i worry about and think about and really kind of eats me up is if we value

this art which is made by a human and spent a lot of years working to learn how to make and time

thinking about how to make and really pouring your heart and soul into it and

it's taken let's just say it's a painting, and it's taken three months to finish this painting,

and an AI does a 85% rendering of that painting

in 28 seconds.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, it really interests me what that does to the value of art.

So,

i have thoughts on this i figured you would yeah the beauty of this is that,

i the the audience for art is other humans right now like we're not marketing

this to up to to like robots right not.

Yet no yeah

Yeah i mean it's like i don't know i i

can't um i know it could happen at this

very moment i can't imagine i can't come up with a scenario

where it makes sense to to market art to robots

but in today's world we market art to

humans yes and so the final arbiter of whether something is value whether art

in and i'm speaking with art as a blanket term you know so it could be a painting

could be music it could be a you know a book anything right a play,

the final arbiter of whether art has value is

humans and humans and mass if you

want to turn it into like a career or something right right

right you know but but it could be like there's a

lot of people who writes most of the best songwriters write

songs for themselves and only for themselves and then

it turns out hey look millions of people like this too you know that's fine

but right but you know but it is in in in that scenario in all scenarios humans

are the final arbiters of this so we have seen ai created art and again i i i,

I want to say AI assisted creation of art because it all started with a human prompt.

Yeah, no, I get that.

Right. And that human prompt, I think, is more important than most people who

want to dismiss AI realize.

But be that as it may, we've seen songs released on Spotify that no one at the

time of their release knew were AI assisted in the creation.

And let's be clear. A.I. was doing the heavy lifting a, you know,

in terms of the the effort put in a human wrote the prompt and basically said,

write a song that, you know, look at the body of music that exists.

Right. Write a song that is, you know, going to appeal to the masses,

use the formulas, distill down the formulas of, say, the entire Beatles catalog.

and right you know or all of power pop or all of pop music or say something

right right and those songs have gotten you know tens of millions of streams

on spotify so there is the ability to create to use ai to assist in the creation

of music that people like.

And you're right in the sense that that's still humans being the arbiter of

what they like but here's where i'll push back

Oh, yes. There's room to push back here.

Do you think that music and art writ large that is generated by AI should be

identified as AI generated?

You know, I am reminded, I'm an old man.

I'm not that old. No, you're not. No, but I was...

in the workforce just entering the workforce when photoshop came into being okay okay and,

the conversations that i'm hearing happen about ai that the negative conversations

that i'm hearing happen about this is negative this is exploratory i didn't

know this what you and i are having is exploratory but but then i i separate

from what you and i are having i.

Just wanted to be yes oh for

Sure the negative conversations that i'm

hearing about ai you could almost verbatim just

take ai out and replace it with photoshop and and and this i i was saying i

was having this conversation with someone who's you know a couple decades younger

than me recently and they were like wait what are you talking about like photoshop

like yeah because what happened was,

everybody said oh all these you know photo

editors like people who worked as photo editors are

going to lose their jobs and this is going to take art away

and like it's not going to be human anymore and those of us that were kind of

already in the technology space are sort of used to this to a degree and it

was like i don't think so like i i don't know how to use photo i'm a i'm really

good with computers and i'm terrible with photoshop like i have no facility with this it.

Still takes compositional skill and an artistic

Eye. It's a tool, yes. And will it take the jobs of some people? Yes.

Most of the people for whom it takes the job are people that refuse to use the

tool or learn how to use the tool, right?

Not all. Sure, but I guess more what I'm asking is for things that are generated,

do you think there's value in it being identified as...

Well, that was, that was where I was going with this. Like, should you have,

but I'm glad you brought me back on track cause I was completely lost. So this is good.

I'm just going to admit to that because anybody listening is going to be like,

I don't think Dave remembered where he was going. love.

Talking with you

That's true um but like should something

have been labeled as this was photo

should we label something today where someone

took a photograph and you know with a camera that already has so much ai or

machine learning in it right like every picture you take with your phone already

has ai applied to it like you can't turn it off but in and most cameras now too,

but I digress, not really, but you know, should we, should we be labeling these

things with all the technology that was used to enhance them and bring them to you?

And if we did that, like, or, or do we cherry pick and we say,

well, we currently, we don't like AI, so we're going to ask to put an AI label on it.

And I mean, if, if you upload anything

to Instagram or YouTube using their professional tools these days.

100% of those uploads, you are asked, was this generated with AI?

Like, yeah, it's already there. Like, they want to know.

And it's like, no, but I used Photoshop or I used Pixelmator or I used,

you know, a freaking, you know, AI plug-in to clean up the sound so that the

person who had a crappy mic on a recent interview actually sounded good.

Well, sure, but I mean, I think.

I know what you're saying.

Where I'm coming from is I have a, I am not, I am, I'm definitely a Luddite.

There's no question there.

But I am not really absolutely not against AI on a blanket level.

Like I think there, you know, just speaking for myself, there are narrow use

cases where I think it is very good in being assistive to us.

However, it's gotten very good, and it can create the likeness of people.

I know.

That's where I get a little bit iffy, right?

Because just follow me on this really stupid hypothetical, okay?

Someone says, can you write I Ain't No Joke in the style of 1967 Beatles, right?

us living in the world now we would

know hey yeah john and paul

didn't write that one yeah 45 years from now i don't know that's true right

so that's true like and do we do we care i mean i do i know that i do that's

a half rhetorical question because i think we should like i don't think it should be

any famous person without any person that the like whether

They're famous or not yeah yeah.

Like it's and i i guess that's that is kind of my big well

That's a that's a different i mean to me that's a that's that's that's a different

topic i i'm i mean it's a subset of the same topic but like but it's that's important.

You're talking about using it right like i have no problem with If an AI can

figure out within these five songs that I've recorded what the best way to master them is,

because it's better at that than me.

I mean, there's humans that are better than me at doing that,

but that's going to be better at doing that than me.

Then that's something I'm totally okay with. If AI is great at finding feedback,

Like within a mixing session. about uh the guy that developed the d feedback

plug-in great freaking amazing.

That's awesome oh it's um you would love

The way he built this thing too yeah.

Yeah the the the thing that i've been grappling with and i i feel like we've

talked so little about like music music so far that i feel like weirdly well

Let's talk about music let me let me share an example with you.

Okay okay we'll let me just finish this one please one

little thought for sure the the problem with

this technology relative to social media relative to the internet relative to

photoshop other disruptive technologies is this technology wasn't really built

it was grown yeah like think about the way that AIs were developed, they were grown,

and they are based on human thought.

And the problem is the rate at which an AI can output

Things is way different than the rate at which a human can output things.

And if AIs are trained on the sum total of the Internet.

Yeah, and more.

Not worry that eventually an AI will be trained on things that are more AI.

Oh, that's the problem right now. Well, yeah, because most of the major models

that are out there, the models from Anthropic or OpenAI or Google or any of those.

have already ingested everything that

they can they've been by ingested i mean

yeah trained on yeah all the things

and so now they are actually create

they are having the models create more content

to train future models

like this is an intentional thing not

this isn't an accidental thing this is intentional

that's crazy right and but it's like you

know it it comes back to the prompt and i'm not necessarily saying

that this is a good thing but what's happening is they're they're

engineering these prompts that are very complex

but saying what are the things you know come up with the things that are missing

from the data set that you were trained on and generate them so that we can

train data future data sets better than you were trained yeah i which is like

okay but it to your point it.

Feels it feels i don't know if this word has ever showed up on gig gab maybe

it's the first uh three times the first uh it feels aroborotic

Aroborotic i don't even know what that word means so it's definitely the first time is.

A snake that eats its own tail

Oh yeah oh it does yeah is aroborotic a word i mean it sounds No,

it's not. It's titillating. It's not over.

Sorry. We were about to talk about music stuff, and you were going to give me an example.

Yeah. So...

um i before we before i

before i give the example i want to i want to say something yeah

set it up i don't i think

there is limited utility for

me in machine generated music um i i don't I don't need that in my life,

but in most cases, however,

like I do another podcast called business brain.

We do two episodes a week and you know, the world of entrepreneurs is full of people.

Oh, there we are. Okay. I don't know what's going on with the computer today.

The world of entrepreneurs is full of people using AI. Yeah.

Right? And so our Friday episodes are actually Friday-i episodes.

Whoa. Right. But we're always talking about- Clearly.

I need to listen to this because you have a very nuanced view of this technology.

Yeah. Oh, and we're constantly digging into it. And so for that show,

I had Suno generate a theme song for it.

Okay. And I just, I told it, I'm like, I want a 30 second theme song.

It created one that was, you know, 92 seconds long. Like, it's not a great engine

for like that specific use case, but that's really the best I was able to find

with it. But I'm going to share an example of somebody who did way better than me.

But I came up with this, you know, it came up with this theme song.

It was like, okay, then I took, again, you know, now I don't have a blank slate

anymore. i liked it gave it came up with three of them or something this.

Is what you're talking about earlier with the iteration iteration

Right well i i tried to iterate and it was like it

was like going back three years and trying to iterate on an image

that chat gpt created like the the iterations just got worse and worse it was

terrible so i took the original one and i pulled it into logic and i started

slicing and dicing right and i i made a theme song that's 20 something seconds

long and it like here let me i'll play like a little snippet of it here i mean.

This is the thing

If and this is it singing and all that stuff so you.

Can make ai do dilla it's all over for us

Man yeah that's it well but here's like so here's how business brain starts every week welcome.

Back it's business brain

Right i mean it's you know,

it's it's it's peppy it's poppy we were.

We were talking about kenny logins earlier today It doesn't cut any longer time.

And then it opens up.

That's the theme song for Business Brain, right?

and it has our you know we our catchphrase on

that show is live a charmed life and so it says that in there

if you heard that right so like it did it it built

some fine pieces and then i i chopped and

sliced and diced and it was like okay this works for this but

we are very up front with the fact that ai created this

this silly little catchy song yeah i also have been working but thus far unsuccessful

the cover band that i play with casual gravity i want to have uh walk-on music

but i want it to be our own theme song and so i've been working on building

a theme song with it but the the the fun part is it's.

A dream of mine i used to like when i was a kid i loved wrestling so much that

i was like if and there was this like every time stone cold steve austin came

out you heard the glass shatter yeah and i was like if only every time i walked into a room that's what

Happened exactly and so like and i'm stealing this idea from the band bowling

for soup because they have theme music that clearly they wrote.

It's been, I mean, they've had it for far longer than we've had Suno or anything. But...

they it it's like a whole thing and it goes on for a couple

minutes it gives them time to get on stage and like you know get their stuff

on the ones that do stacy's mom well they cover

stacy's mom everybody thinks they did stacy's mom so

they wound up starting to cover it but but in fact no that

was written by adam schlesinger of fountains of way yeah yeah but they cover

stacy's mom because people are like well they think we wrote it but they they

they they did like girl all the bad guys want oh god right you know okay and

they're they're super tongue-in-cheek this Bowling for Soup is like sophomoric humor.

Jarrett Reddick is a stand-up comedian. He's their lead singer and so he is great with people.

So they have this stupid theme song. It's like the best band in the world is

Bowling for Soup and like it's this whole thing.

It's fine, you know. And it ends though with a chant that eventually is faded

out, but I think it could go on forever.

Like I think, you know, it fades out when they give the signal like we're ready to start the show.

But the chant is bowling for soup, a bowling for soup, right?

And so now the crowd is chanting bowling for soup because they've been led into it by this stupid song.

So I was like, I've got to steal that idea. And so I fed this into Suno and like I've failed.

Well, I haven't succeeded yet. So I was going to say I failed more times than

I've succeeded. But that's like, you know, a hundred to zero.

I'm going to get there or it's going to get me close enough that I'm like, screw it.

I have enough pieces here that my brain's going and I'm just gonna like create

the song here or whatever.

But so I've done that. And like I said, greater and lesser degrees,

Jack Tempchin. Do you know who Jack Tempchin? Does that name mean anything to

you? It doesn't mean anything to me.

He is a songwriter, and he has been writing songs since the 60s.

You certainly know of at least one of the songs that he's written,

Peaceful Easy Feeling. Oh, yeah. He wrote with the Eagles all the time.

Great. Okay.

So he certainly has his stamp on songwriting in rock and roll.

Right. Yeah, for sure. Or whatever you want to call the Eagles.

Like they, they were rock rock and roll. Then they're classic rock.

Now they pop culture band.

They would, they would be called a country band today. Right.

Right. But you know, we didn't, we didn't have that kind of country back then. So anyway.

uh very popular band very popular songs that he's written and uh he i actually

invited him on the show because of what he did and he said no i'm i i just enjoy

my life i don't do interviews anymore uh i enjoy my life hanging out on the

beach and writing songs and i'm like i love that,

like i can't argue with dream that's like the best decline letter i've ever gotten,

Like, I have nothing to say to that.

But the reason I invited him on is because his most recent record,

he wrote a bunch of songs and fed them into Suno and had Suno play all of the

instruments, sing all of the harmonies.

And what he got to do was experiment with, well, I want once let's try this

song is like a New Orleans groove or let's try the same song with a,

you know, like an old school funk groove or whatever.

And it added horns and did all the things. And so he has published a record

of songs that he wrote and then he fed him into Suno and Suno has a remix tool

and it was just him with an acoustic guitar.

You know, he didn't there was no production value on what he did.

and put it into suno and now you

have jack temption album with suno as the backing band okay so that so they

became like you know it was it was like they the suno replaced an entire not

just studio in la from the 70s but right the group of you know top top notch

musicians or musicians i.

That does sound like a really interesting exercise thought exercise maybe one would say but

So years ago, Beck put out this record called Song Reader. Okay?

Yep.

And it was a total sort of, like the music is insane, but it was a total gimmicky thing.

Okay.

It was a record that he released only by sheet music.

Oh, okay. Interesting.

He released this record just by sheet music and has never put out a recording

of him singing it. But a bunch of other famous people did tunes from the record.

So there is an official Beck release of this record where like Jack Black is

doing one song and like Lord Huron is doing another song.

And it's and just the reason that I bring that up is right.

you're saying what jack uh jack tempchin did was say here's this set of songs

give it to me in this style in this style and this style and like it's

Similar to this thing.

Yeah this is maybe 15 years yeah but

Similar idea like.

Funny thing is like the reason i like it so much is there's a profound humanity

to it and i don't know that you can model jack black he's he's one of one i

Mean i mean so i i as a podcaster i have played with some of the tools that

will model your voice right and they i actually don't have any examples teed

up otherwise i'd play one here They sound like my voice,

but the inflection sounds like the best of it,

and there's new things all the time coming out that...

You know, in theory, improve the model. And so my my co-host with Business Brain

did this with with his voice recently.

And he asked me, he's like, tell me honestly what you think.

Like, does this sound like me?

And it's like, yeah, it sounds a lot like you. But what it sounds like you is reading an audio book.

there's no emotion it's like and and

there was even one point in in what he said where he was like i would you know

i i i forget what it was but it was something that should that was that was

like hyperbolic that you know i i would drive my car off a cliff if if i were

to find out this but it was i would drive my car it was like he was.

Reading a book but it was just like it the the tough thing

right that i that i think i'm getting at is like

you can you can get speech patterns and tonality but the the oh my god i dare

any ai to model nicholas cage he's so crazy the choices he makes are so out

of left field i feel the same way about jack black right yeah

For sure when.

He chooses to emphasize a thing he's just kind of like you know and and you

never know when it's going to happen it's not in a predictable way right so

that's where i'm like the the music generative stuff

I'm a little iffy on because there have been cool

experiments when people are like can you write me this song Indiclub by 50 Cent

as like a 70s shaft like and I listen to it and I'm like

this is good it definitely answered the prompt that

Right asked of it right it.

Doesn't feel good though

Well that and that's that's that's where i come back to

that humans are the final arbiters right yeah but you

know if you it has

been proven by the music industry that one

human deciding that a song is going

to be popular is all it takes for

a song to and then and then playing it for

people over and over again right i mean you go back to

the the days where we the only place we've learned about music was

on the radio right you know there would be

someone at a record label that would say okay this is the next hit yeah

and and they would filter through and decide this was hit

worthy but then they would just go and market it to

every you know the top 100 radio stations in that

genre and suddenly everybody knew the song and

familiarity is the most important thing

for most of humanity obviously you

know there's there's exceptions to this right but you hear something

often enough and whether you like it or not like is kind of a a weird term but

your familiarity with it makes it comfortable to you it's like oh i i know this

i i right And so you can clearly do the same thing with AI because it happened.

They fed it into Spotify.

And for whatever reason, the Spotify algorithm decided this is something I'm

going to expose to lots more people.

Who knows? Maybe they paid to put it on some playlists because that's a way

to get things out on Spotify. I don't know.

I'm pretty fascinated by that as a thought experiment because...

To me, not all music is built the same.

Right. Oh, thank goodness for that.

I understand if you fed it, now that's what I love about music one through 25, right?

Yep. You could have it spit out a really serviceable pop song.

But how do you model funkadelic that's not always, not everyone's even in tune all the time.

Right. You know, but the charm of the music is that it's that the I don't care,

just you take this raw screaming emotion that I'm putting in your dang face right now.

And these sounds are just waves on an ocean.

They're just going to hit you and you're not going to remember a damn thing,

but you remember how I made you feel.

But that can happen with human created music. Not but. And.

That can happen with human created music too. I remember the first time that I heard the band Goose.

They are a jam band that's, you know, relatively young, you know,

in their in their career.

They are from the same place that you and I come from.

They're from Norwalk, Connecticut and played a lot of the same crappy clubs

that I played growing up. So I was fascinated by this band. Right.

Because it's like, oh, I've got it. There's their kindred spirits. Yeah, for sure.

And I we bought tickets to go see him or whatever. And like,

yeah, I want to experience him live. I want to see what this is like. Sure.

sort of prepare for it i started playing some of their music and the

thought that i had and i've shared with this with some people who are

kind of into these bands and they many not

all of them some people really like goose and i love that for them

like that's great i didn't dislike goose but it didn't

do anything for me it didn't resonate with me and the way

i described that as a term of efficiency and also

to get reactions out of people as i said this but

it but it was correct it just all was distilled down

dave the gadfly exactly was this sounds like somebody took the entirety of fish's

catalog fed it into an llm and it spit out more songs like this right right

that's what it was just it was it was too um clinical that's.

So funny to me because you're just like imagine you're just like i'm gonna throw

this out there and see what comes back right

Yeah oh i'm People are going to yell at me about this right now. It's fine.

Feedback at gigdabpodcast.com. I know that I'm like that. My opinion doesn't

match everybody else's.

And, and like, I, I'm going to, and this is in all seriousness, music, art in general,

music being one form of art is one place where confirmation bias is.

is good like if i think i like something i get to like it and yeah because because

it's subjective there's no objective thing where you can say dave you're wrong

about that you can say dave i don't i don't agree i don't also like that yeah

exactly but that i i love that i.

You know i've always had that view of music meaning oh

Of course because it's true it.

Just boy there's you know like there's when you're when you're coming up right

like you'll hear some version of oh yeah

this band sucks or this band sucks or you know fallout boy sucks and or metallica

sucks or whatever and and i mean when you're young you say that stuff

Oh of course and it becomes part of your part of your culture it's it's how

you identify with other friends right and things like that yeah and.

Now here's the thing i adore dave growl i do not enjoy listening to the foo

fighters at all yeah i really don't i don't think they shouldn't exist i know

i'm in the minority here because a lot of people love the foo fighters

I didn't understand the foo fighters until i saw them live they're a great live

band that may be true that that was it right i don't ever listen to them here

at home but if you said foo fighters are playing down the street tonight i have tickets I'd be like,

I am there, and you should go too. You're going to love it.

And it's one of those things where it's like, you can't, like,

I certainly would never poo-poo anyone for loving the Foo Fighters.

Of course. You should love them.

They just don't move me. But I also know that a band that I adore,

the Bad Plus, for example, that we went to see together. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. They are weird.

They are weird.

They are not for everyone.

Right. At all. Not, no. And, like, nothing should be for everyone.

and that's what I'm saying here too is like AI created music for me would I use it,

To represent as like here's a

song I'm gonna go play with my band live like I I don't know like why that's

the I don't understand I I can't see a world where I would choose to like Have

a I write me an album not help me produce an album or whatever And then you

go play the thing and then I go play the thing that it's written.

It's like well, why would I do that? however,

what's the difference between doing that versus going out and playing cover

music aka music that someone else has written.

That is a i've

Never thought about.

This argument i've never

Thought about this.

Before so that's i mean that's a really interesting point um

but i guess my thought

there would be it's getting

hairier and hairier every day for sure but you at least know if you're in a

cover band that the music has been written by other humans you think you know

well that's that what you're that's correct you think you know but before a

certain period of time right

If you're in a classic rock cover band you're safe right right yeah uh.

You definitely

If you're in a funkadelic cover band you're safe.

Right and that's why there's no funkadella cover bands well there's

Many reasons why there's no funkadella cover bands.

Um no but yeah my like you the the thing that i'm trying to hone in and again

i haven't like fully formulated my thoughts yeah it's been so fascinating talking

to you because you have such a great perspective on this but i don't have fully

Formulated thoughts either it's just.

The value of performing something that is generated

whether it's by a human or whether it's not by a human what is the difference

if you're physically performing it and i think there is a difference but i cannot

articulate it in this moment it

Feels wrong to me like that's what i was trying to say and

then as the words were coming out i'm like but yet i i go

play like tribute gigs or cover gigs i mean your diaspora stuff like like right

this is all music that by design was written by someone else like it's it's

there's no we are embracing that is certainly not apologizing for it like but

in any shape so yeah it's I will say this though,

The advent of AI is going to evolve the jobs that are available for humans to do.

It will replace some humans. It will replace some humans jobs.

But this is nothing new. Like, you know, go back to the industrial revolution.

Right. This happens. This is how technology works.

Humans adapt and new jobs exist that we didn't know could exist today.

Correct. Exactly. healthy i i there's

also a world where ai does enough of

the sort of grunt work that we

get to do less of that and and maybe we

get to work we get to spend less time

working um i certainly i

am more efficient as someone who

does work right now because i can produce more

because i've got ai doing some of

the it's assisting me right you know but but

there's a world where it's like well do we do you know maybe

the 40 hour work week we don't need to do that we

mean the 10 hour work week or the 15 hour work week right like because we've

got the the robots doing doing the rest of it i i don't know right but you know

there's that that is one one end point or one point on this path we won't necessarily

get to that but as i've been thinking about this you know i have i have certain skills, right?

I, I, I made a big career, uh, leveraging my ability to troubleshoot technology

and explain technology to people, right?

That's one of the things that I've, that's one of the big things I've done.

The other thing that I do that has value is I play the drums. I perform music.

It is possible that not too long from now, that could be my most valuable skill.

I mean, like it might be, and it might be an extremely valuable skill.

Like, because if we've got the robots kind of taking care of all of the things

that we need to take care of, well, now, you know, we're in a bit of like a renaissance.

We get to like chill and go enjoy that which humans can create, which is.

And make more art for the AI to ingest.

Of course. but but like we get

to there is something if covid lockdowns proved one thing i'll say to us but

certainly to me it was the value of sharing space with another human we could

easily have done away with conferences

right we had the opportunity many conferences were on their way out i.

Could not agree with you more i could not like this is just the the covid there

were a bunch of trends in our society happening that COVID just brought to bear.

And some of them were kind of dark realizations to me initially.

And then when I thought about them, I was like, no, this is a good thing.

Because one of the things that bothered me the most was music was the first thing to go away.

Well, conferences too.

And it was the last thing to come back.

Yeah, the first thing that went away for me was South by Southwest was canceled.

That was the, that was, and then like five minutes later, gigs were canceled.

Like it was pretty coincidental.

It was the last thing to come back. And I had this,

I think- But it came back.

Ill perception.

a flawed perception, let me say, that people didn't value music because it was

the first thing to go away.

And I could not have been more wrong. Sure.

I mean, I played a show last week that was absolutely packed.

And there is an appetite for live performance. Oh, yeah.

There really is. And the conference industry should have gone away.

Like, it's expensive to throw a conference.

It's expensive to send people to a conference, to attend it,

like all of those things.

The cost of like booths and rigging and all this stuff.

The whole thing, it's just a money pit.

However, and it went away during COVID, right? Conferences were done for at

least 18 months. Oh, yeah.

Right? Like I remember going to a conference in July of 2021 that was almost

canceled then, but it wasn't. And so I went and it was in Nashville and it was like lightly attended.

Cause like the Delta variant came out the week before and everybody was like,

I don't think we should go. And they were probably right. I don't know.

Whatever. You know, we were going to go, it was fine. I also went to some concerts

in Nashville that week. So like, it was like, I'm going to go anyway.

You're just like, I was like, I'm for a penny.

That's right. Yeah, exactly. They were outdoor concerts. It was going to be

all right. I guess that was what I said to myself.

But anyway, and I love the hell out of them, but it, it,

Like the conference industry now, it took a little while to kind of revamp it,

you know, ramp back up and figure itself out.

But like CES this year, which is one of the largest conferences that happens,

was as big. It had as many people as it had in 2019 this year.

So it's like this week and we moved everything to Zoom and we were doing like

during COVID, we were doing all the things like CES was held remotely.

i like to say people like to say virtually when the

two humans are engaging with each other there's nothing virtual about that it's

remote yeah yeah but it's not virtual so anyway they you know there were remote

conferences and that was that was cool like it was it was innovative it was

necessary all of that you know but for there is something about what you and

i are doing right now sharing,

space in the same with each other that is part of our humanity.

There is something biological to this.

This is why I was so adamant. We were like, we can definitely do it remotely.

Oh, I do it remotely all the time.

I was like, nah.

It's better this way.

I wouldn't come in to mess around.

It's different. There's things about the remote that are logistically easier.

Obviously, you don't have to get in your car. Somebody doesn't need to get on

a plane or whatever. Right.

But but but certainly this is a different vibe and people listening will hear

I'm guessing a different pacing in how we're interacting with each other. Yeah.

Right. We're not waiting. We know when the other person needs to speak.

There's all that stuff. And so I.

We've proven that human in-person human connection is vital to us.

Yeah, I think so. And I mean, I also think that your point is spot on in that

like those natural sort of beats in a conversation where it's not like,

well, it's my turn to speak now.

Yes. So I shall speak a thought.

That's not how humans work. It just isn't. And it is really funny because you'll

see like, and again, I'm not,

I know that these things can be iterated, but I've seen AI written scripts and

the first drafts are always just like,

Yeah, you guys thought that this was a way that humans thought?

Ah, I shall make my way to the kitchen and cut off the edges of this sliced

bread with which I will make a grilled cheese sandwich.

I have AI write me scripts for pretty much every ad I read on every podcast.

Yeah.

Well the reason is i uh i

noticed that i as a human the way

the ads work on on podcasts today host read

ads which is the type where me you know the host reads the ad we get

talking points a list of bullet points yeah you get the copy the cop well but

there's talking points you know talk about these things in your own words right

yeah make this your own and but then the end of it is the the verbatim call

to action like you know they want so it's fine i get it like they're paying

They should get their message delivered the way they want.

But what I found was, even though I had the freedom to say it in my own words,

if I was doing an ad for, you know, whatever, Banzoogle month after month after month. Yeah.

I was I was delivering something that was very similar to what I delivered last

month, even though I was doing it off the cuff.

Yeah. Because it's me in my human brain and our human brains are built to find shortcuts to things.

And once we find something that works, we stick with a pattern.

Yeah.

And I was like, oh, man, like I'm boring. Like my audience is going to tune

out during this because it's not different from what they've already heard three times.

And so I was like, wait, what if I take the PDF of talking points and I feed

it to, you know, chat to PT or Claude or whatever?

I mean, it started with chat to PT. I use Claude now because it's Claude's for what I do way better.

you know I just feed the PDF in and I say make me an ad for GigGab and make

it different from the last one and it's like,

and I read and I tell it put a little Easter egg in make sure you add you know

we always say always be performing at the end of an episode put that into the

ad script somewhere fit it in or whatever make sure you hit the CTA make it

60 seconds you know or whatever,

yeah and it's great I love it now I generally read the scripts It's verbatim,

but I've trained it on me over years.

But I will, if it's got something that's not in my voice, I'll adapt it while I'm reading it.

Yeah, this is so fascinating.

But it helps me keep it interesting and keep it fresh.

Do you ever like look at the thing that it spit out and you're just like,

huh. Yes. This is what you think I am.

Yes, sometimes.

That is wild.

Sometimes, yes.

Because it's not of...

It's in a weird way, like a mirror,

but not a mirror in which you see your body, but you see your brain.

Right. And that is terrifying.

But yeah, I mean, I like there are some times I will say if you go back and

listen to any ads that I've done.

Look at it. You're like, damn, that is some shit.

I would say I never I never look at it first. Most of the time,

what you're hearing on the show is me reading the script for the first time.

I'm just literally reading it and finding out what it's having me say,

uh, just for efficiency.

Like I, like, I don't like, you know, I got stuff to do.

I keep going. So, but sometimes I'll see it and I'll say something and be like, Oh no, no, no, no, no.

But I edit, like I prerecord the ads.

It's so funny to me because like that part of it is, is really like on like

Bill Burr's show he reads all of the copy

I know even.

The parts that say where they say please don't read this part of the copy he'll

say please don't read this part of the copy

I probably am speaking out of school here um i know i am friends with a lot

of the people who buy ads in the podcast business yeah because what backbeat

media does is sell ads in the podcast business so i have i am friends with all of these media buyers.

If you ask them about Bill Burr, especially at a cocktail party,

you get some interesting opinions.

Oh, I bet. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing I will say.

Because Bill Burr does it in his Bill Burr way. Zip.

I will never forget that ever in my life because

They have to tell their clients, like if it's an ad agency, you know,

working with a brand and the brand's like, oh, wow, Bill Burr's show looks like

the numbers look great on that show.

And they're like, you have to understand something.

What you are buying, there are no make goods. There are no like you fixes.

There's no fixes.

And you will want it to have been fixed, but it will not be.

And you will pay for it. So just so you know.

I just, I love it because,

But it works.

It works because I like, I remember the ads that I hear on bill Burr's podcast

more than the content of the podcast.

Right. Well, and that's, I mean, like, especially on Mac geek cab and business brain too.

When we started doing, when I started experimenting with the AI ads,

I told our listeners what I was doing because that those are shows about like

tech and AI. And I'm like, you know, it became a.

Technology that i'm messing with and see

What ai is gonna make dave say this episode listen to the ads well it worked

like we saw performance increase because people are like i want to see what

ai is going to make dave say what stupid thing.

Was so funny because like yeah one of the i don't

even may have to believe this out but one of the the companies that advertised

on bill burr for a while was me undies yeah and he came up with this little

hilarious jingle for me undies that is so insane that I cannot imagine the company

was in any way happy with it.

But then like people are singing this MeUndies jingle that was not written by

the company that Bill Burr just made up.

I'm sure I don't have any inside information on this. So I can,

I have no comment to make. Great.

All right, let's talk once we're done with this episode. Okay, oh, what?

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um,

No, it like, but, but this is when you embrace it, when, you know,

I mean, Bill Burr's not using AI to do it. Bill Burr's just using Bill Burr to do it.

But an AI trained on every MeUndies ad raid.

Exactly.

Could it generate a new MeUndies, MeUndies, you know, like a jingle? I don't know.

Why not?

Um it's we're also like the the thing that is that has me very concerned is like right now we're on

we're not in the part of ai where it's actually ruined things like the the internet there

Are people there are people writing emails disagreeing with you but uh but keep

i agree with you keep going feedback at giggabpodcast.com.

There is there was a moment in the arc of the internet where you were just like

oh okay travel agents as a career that's that's done that's done that's gone

oh yeah for sure that just doesn't exist yeah yeah it's it's begun with ai but

News how to related websites.

Yeah um

Three years ago saw their traffic reduced down to like 15 percent.

So but i yeah i think we started but i don't think we've gotten to that sort

of that inflection point where it's just like okay i agree this part of the

economy just doesn't exist anymore right okay just i'm sorry that it's the case

it doesn't exist anymore it's how

It's how it works with any kind of technology.

Yeah right and i'm i'm i'm the reason that i'm more hesitant with it than with

ai than i was with the internet and then with the rise of social media and then

Social Media 2.0 is because,

Most of the content was human generated.

There was at least the ability for a clear demarcation between reality and unreality.

And that's what worries me about the moment that we're in right now.

It's blurry.

The line between what is real and what isn't is very blurry.

And that might be, that's not a problem with the technology.

I think there just needs to be a regulation that says, if you're creating the

likeness of someone, you have to say that you're creating it.

Or you have to have the rights to create it.

Like, to me. That would be an amazing situation. But we are miles away from that.

I don't know that we're, well, miles maybe. But the journey has begun, right?

Matthew McConaughey has trademarked his, all right, right?

like that you cannot use some like i

he can yell at me for using i mean i i used it

the right way you know with with the way you're supposed to but but like he

if you made a commercial or something using that right he can come after you

yeah um i believe it's gosh where is it i think it's the The Dutch have come up with,

have passed legislation saying that you cannot use the likeness of someone without

their express permission.

That is, I mean, I would be so on board with that. I agree. I also think that

it should, in a way, be retroactive in a sense that you should not be able to

create the likeness of dead people.

i really don't

Certainly not without the permission from their estate from their estate whatever

yeah yeah for sure oh i agree that's.

I i think that's horrible like being able to take

Here's elvis well.

Not just that like

Yeah but what happens what okay like what happens to.

The scam potential of this

Well what happens to the group of elvis impersonators like that i mean but.

This that may Maybe a wave of jobs that just goes

Away. Goes away.

Right? Like we were talking about that with travel agents or sax players from

rock songs from the 80s. You know?

They just, they just, they just, like you get to an event horizon and that job just goes away.

Elvis impersonators and sax players from rock songs in the 80s.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah i mean you're not wrong it's funny because it's true.

But like i the the

the interesting downstream effects of this are i

think one of the things that makes me feel pretty good

it's like i feel like my ability to destroy

a guitar your ability to smash a drum there's

always going to be the visceral want and need for that but where i really get

worried is what is being displaced by this stuff is those tasks that are automated

when someone first goes to a studio to intern.

Yes.

And they're learning how to set up the board.

Oh, well, no, you're totally right.

Like those jobs are going away. And so if you want to be a good recording engineer,

like I understand that we've made it easy to do that at home.

But in a big studio, how do you get between...

I know how to do this at home versus I know how to place mics,

set up physical compressors, set up physical preamps, um, and run all of this

gear and make a good record.

Right. Because right now those are the jobs in music that I'm seeing go away.

Like I'm like, I've even seen reports that like there's AI mixing engineers for live gigs.

Oh, I think for, um,

And certainly for like, you know, the club that you go play where there's a

half competent engineer,

house engineer there that, you know, knows the room, doesn't really pay attention

all night, is more interested in talking with the bartender because they've been friends for years.

That person's job's gone.

Well, yeah, I mean, right. But like.

As it should be.

As it should be. Yes. Yes, there are already AI mixers.

There are live engineers that you will pay any amount of money to make sure

that it's that person's brain and talent doing the engine.

I texted four of them the other night when I got to a gig. Of course,

they don't live anywhere near here, and they're out on the road doing arenas and stadiums.

But I was like, you don't happen to be in northern New Hampshire tonight, do you?

There's just people that I trust implicitly. Like there's obviously Mike Marshawn,

Davis Thurston, just like these are people who I'm just like,

I don't care how good AI gets. I do not care at all.

I will never, if these two people are available to do this and I have the budget

for them, I will pick them every time.

Yep. And we've had Davis Thurston on GigGab a couple of times.

So I'll put the link to that.

He's the best.

He's the best. He's great. He really is great. Well, even with a like for me on stage.

I, I've certainly done gigs as I'm sure you have where there is no sound.

And you are the sound engineer, right? And you have to do what I call the Braille

mix, which is the mixed metaphor.

But you're, you know, you're, you're sonically blind to what's happening out in the room.

And you just have to kind of like dial in what you think is right.

And then trust what you're hearing from people that don't really understand

sound, but understand what they like and trying to translate what they're telling

you into what adjustments you can do.

could make potentially which is what we wound up with the other night uh and

you know on on those gigs i certainly would love an ai mixer now the way that

that would need to work is you'd have to have a mic out in the room right i mean i can't imagine to.

Respond to the information

Yes to capture the information and respond to it but even with that,

i would want a human out there to confirm that it's not making it terrible.

Right because like what if the the what if the decision

is like well typically for these gigs the drums are at this volume and the guitar

is at this volume well fine but elliott smith is playing here and there's a

djembe and an acoustic guitar yeah so all of a sudden you hear only djembe at a gazillion yeah

110 db it's like you know 50 feet from the stage it's like that's not necessary here.

Yeah also gig gab listeners i don't think just know that i know that elliot

smith didn't do duo gigs with just him and a djembe just i mean i need that

to be registered sure uh on the record there's an outrageous hypothetical where

i was like trying to grab any acoustic yeah but

Like that you know That's the kind of thing is it's like I would need a human

out there the first dozen times in a dozen different rooms before I was like, okay,

I am going to plan to trust this.

Obviously, in a scenario where it's like, hey, guess what?

We told you we have an engineer, but we really don't.

Okay, great. Thank goodness we have. I would want somebody out there to know.

I'm so fascinated by this because I wonder if this is going to give rise to-

AI consultants, meaning like people who are like, I've done this forever.

I will let you at a very steep cost, let you train an AI on me doing this because

I've done this forever and I'm killer at it.

But because I know you're eventually going to phase me out.

Yeah, I got to charge you a lot. The cost is high.

That's right. I'm curious if that's a type of thing that's going to happen.

So I'm going to ask some of the, well, I mean, because we do the show,

I have gotten to know many of the top engineers in the world, right?

I've listened to a lot of those episodes.

Right, the Robert Scovilles and the Brad Maddox and the Pooch and Froggy and

like these people that are mixing all the bands whose names you already know.

I'm curious. I need to ask them now about this because this is a because this

this is a world where that that's one of the first jobs that's going to be replaced.

Now, I don't know if their jobs at that level, like would Kenny Chesney choose?

No, to be like, I'm going to save a couple of bucks and and not have a front of house.

No, but I think like a local hundred and fifty person venue,

A hundred percent, you know, a hundred percent. And probably to their benefit,

it would probably sound better.

And you know what I'm thinking?

But then you don't build someone up to become the next guy that can go and mix

arenas, right? You've got to start somewhere.

It's really fascinating because I also wonder if like, because that is so clearly on the horizon,

if a downstream consequence of that is that more venues will have house gear

and require, you know, of a certain size, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kenny Chesney's will always bring their own stuff.

Maybe.

But there are venues that are like, no, you use our house gear because we have

a button that we press and it makes it sound good. Right, right.

Well, I mean, that already happens.

I mean, there are venues that have house stuff, But there's no venue that enforces you using it.

I'm trying to think if I've been to a venue where they're like, no, you must.

I guess I've never tested that theory because what I would bring is,

I would bring my own mixer and use a splitter and they can take what they want

and I can take what I want.

You and me are different people.

I understand. Most of the people listening to this show are like you and me.

We try to make as few trips into a venue as possible.

I optimized my life about how do I get everything so I can put it in one bag,

have a guitar, an amp that's light enough to carry it, and a backpack and get it into the gig.

It's why I will almost always opt to play the house kit.

Oh yeah.

Even though.

I will always, always. Even if it, even.

I've been very blessed in that most of the time when there's a house amp,

it's like a Fender Deluxe.

That drum set at the press room, it needs help.

Yeah, but it does sound great, though.

It does. It needs new heads. I keep thinking the next time I'm playing a gig

at the press room, I'm just going to buy new heads for it and donate them.

They don't need to pay me or anything. I'm just going to change it.

I'm not going to tell anybody. I'm just going to take care of it.

But other than that, they're good drums.

But it's that thing of like, okay, well, now what optionality is or isn't on the table?

Because you're obviously right, right? Like a big venue and arena,

someone who's selling that type of show out.

Of course, they're going to be able to have everything they want their way.

But you're touring the country. You're from Morristown, New Jersey.

You're playing the Stone Church.

You're playing the Stone Church. yeah you know you don't have like you can't

be you can't be like no we're we're bringing our own sound engineer or we require

there to be a human sound engineer like i don't just don't know that you have that poll you

Don't have that budget is like.

Well yeah poll equals

Budget in this scenario right and i.

Think what what really we're looking at is i an emergent industry and it's it's

going to be this way for a bunch of things like this.

Like, I think it's going to be true for visual people who do visuals for live shows and stuff too.

Um, but we're, we're, they're going to say, here is my fee.

I will do this. You can have a 12 week or you can have a 24 week or you can

have a 36 week and this is my fee and you can have your AI trained on me and

I will show up to work fully knowing that I'm going away.

No, a better way. I love this idea, but I have an iteration on the model.

If I were to be contracted for something like this, and I wouldn't be for the

things, at least not the jobs we're describing, I would not charge for the 12-week

thing or the 24-week thing or the 36-week thing.

I would come in and train your system, and I want a residual on every performance

that happens there using my programming.

Like, that's all. That's the fee.

is i come in i'll do it there's no maybe maybe there's an upfront charge but

it's it's better it's better business to not do an upfront charge i just i want

i want 10 of every show that comes through here.

You're so right i mean look this is the reason that the writer's strike happened

right because when a lot of those people got those jobs they weren't considering

streaming as a realistic uh money-making proposition and i think you're so right

like i think that that's the way that it probably will have to work it

Has to work that.

Way right because you're saying you're taking my brain equity yes and i've

Learned all these things like which is great and now you want to leverage it

also great also great let's come to an arrangement where everybody's compensated.

Right and and you get the the stew diaz mix or you get the dave hamilton mix

and maybe it's the case that like venues that do different genres are like this

is our jazz guy yes this is our right

And the jazz guy gets a cut of that night and i don't right i'm the rock guy

or whatever you know whatever.

Yeah yeah yeah this is really fascinating yeah

Yeah all right well we've been at this for for an hour and 17 minutes.

Jesus i thought it was like 25 minutes i don't know i texted you a single sentence two weeks ago.

I knew we'd have a lot to talk about.

Really? An hour, 17 minutes? That is outrageous.

It's an hour and 18 now, but who's

counting? It turns out the computer's counting so that I don't have to.

Oh, this has been great, though. Yeah. Where can people find you, Stu?

So people can find me online at diaspora-radio or hyphen radio.

Sorry, diaspora-radio.com.

They can find me on Instagram at Stuart Diaz plays music sometimes.

And I'm going to put in a quick plug real quick. Please.

June 19th, I will be giving a talk at Creative Mornings.

and every month there's a theme and this month's theme is create is curate which i have a particular

expertise in um so if anyone is in kittery june 19th at the dance hall at 9

a.m i'll be giving a talk on curation the act of it and how we all curate in our lives day to day i

Love it that's great yeah man and and there's a diaspora show coming up for

people who are local this month.

Yes yeah uh next month in june we'll be doing a jagged little pill by alanis

morissette nice um i i personally won't be part of it because uh i'm getting married uh and uh i

Can't attend because my daughter's getting married literally the night of the gig so yeah yeah.

Um so so so i I won't be there, but my partner in crime, Nick for enough will

be there and, and it'll be him and Gino Librio. It's going to be awesome.

Oh, that's great.

And then in July, I will be checking something off of my bucket list because for the first time,

We will be doing a Funkadelic album.

Oh, no kidding.

Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Fall On.

No kidding. Oh, that's exciting.

They are my favorite band of all time.

I know.

I am very excited to go crazy.

I'm surprised it took, this is the fifth year of Diaspora, right?

I'm surprised it took five years for you to slot Funkadelic in.

There's a very specific reason. um it's

because i wanted to make sure that the representation within

the band met the representation within

funkadelic okay um so i have

a couple friends coming in from out of town cool um i

wanted to make sure that it was like it

was as crazy and as like representative as it could possibly be and it's it's

it's a little bit different because it's men and women and yeah it's we i wanted

it to be like this this this freak show amazing i hope it will be yeah

I i think it will be it sounds like it will be that's awesome.

Yeah stew

Thank you this is a blast man um you know there there is there are three words

that we say at the end of every episode.

I think i remember them i

Was going to ask you if you remembered them but uh yeah go ahead always.

Be performing that's

It thanks for hanging out folks make sure to check out stew at diaspora-radio.com

the links are in the show notes at giggappodcast.com and uh i'll see you next

week yeah fun stuff later that.

Was awesome but you need to get to talk about the backpack

Nope next time the backpack.