Warning: I’m having a bad day
It is rather disappointing, when you are used to doing things yourself, to find there is something that you cannot do —or at least, not without spending an age and several mental well-beings doing it.
This appears the same for me when creating music, or when trying to license music.
I also seem to be very bad at finding people to collaborate with.
Music and serendipity
I’ve always loved music, I don’t understand how you cannot but love music.
It’s energy keeps me going when all else fails.
I have tried over the years in multiple different ways to make various audio concoctions myself, but there is something about my brain that never thinks it’s any good and eventually gets frustrated and gives up.
Just for the record: I don’t usually give up on anything. Some of my personal projects have been going for decades, with no signs of a white flag yet. So, this behaviour with music is weird.
I’m lucky, in that I’ve had whatever mindset it takes to be good at picking up technical and creative skills. That luck is always tempered with curse-level blessings too, so it’s definitely not all rainbow silver linings. I mean, my brain is also the exact reason why I’m terrible at parties, and any moments in life that can trigger negative visions —which, unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of scope for.
I give that disclaimer because yes, I’m going to complain about the one element I cannot do myself, when other people aren’t as lucky. Sorry, I am going to do it because it’s not about me.
It’s about optimisation and being sensible.
And if there is anything my brain doesn’t like, it is nonsense like that.
Put simply. There should be a better way to do this.
Being ever-optimistic is hard
So, I find it overarchingly frustrating when I can write a draft that I’m proud of, I can edit that draft and turn it into a book that I can’t wait to release, I can set-up a company and everything entailed to publish said book, I can build the website that sells it, I can build multiple websites around it, I can launch the infrastructure that powers those site with fine tuned control, I can plan, film, edit and master the videos that I need to advertise said book and websites. I can even use music to good effect in these videos. But can I actually get hold of the music I want to use?
No.
I’ve tried with big companies, I tried with the smaller companies. I don’t know if people just don’t read email, or they think I’m some kind of scam, but I never get anywhere. I’ve even tried with smaller creators, and I can understand, just like me they have a lot to deal with. But… no one seems interested.
I don’t get it.
If I’d made music, I’d want people to hear it.
But perhaps that’s what I’m missing, perhaps they don’t want their music associated with what I see as a harmless book? No idea. Perhaps, like I fear, email really is just terrible and should have died a death years ago. Who knows?
If anyone is reading this thinking I’m talking specifically about them. I’m not. This is the whole general vibe of what I’ve been dealing with for decades. I’ve always lacked finding people to collaborate with. Not sure why. Perhaps I’m just hideously annoying and I don’t see it. 😅
Put simply. Why is it so hard to find or contact the artist you like, or, even just subscribe to a payment channel that allows you to license their work for declared projects?
Anyway…
So, I’m left with a choice.
Use royalty free music
Royalty free music can be quite good —but… the major problem is trying to find the good stuff that fits to your idea. That rarely happens. And of course, most of the rest of it is truly terrible. This probably again falls down to how ‘search’ is always bad, and the future will undoubtedly bring us round to AI… please don’t attack me, read on.
Even when you find a good piece of royalty free music, it is difficult to ‘bend’ it to what you need. I’ve had to cut and splice tracks before, and it takes a lot of effort to hide the cuts because you cannot modify the music easily.
Hire a music creator
My experience in this area is that I either keep to my budget, and the music just isn’t what I want —no matter the revisions. Or I push my budget and get nearer to something good, but then find that actually it’s far more expensive than it first appeared. I’m really fine to pay the right amount though, especially if this is for something long standing. For example, that’s exactly what I’d do for one of my online games. But am I okay to pay out £300+ just for 30s of music that’s going to appear on a social short?
No, sorry —that’s madness. I’ve already spent a lot towards the book itself.
Use AI
Of course, I have the choice of using AI, which, in the world of authors and books (and pretty much everything) is despised. Understandably in some areas, not so understandable in others. This mostly comes from people not actually understanding the various differences in how models work —but that’s always been the case with technical elements. People don’t understand, and often don’t want to.
Before you judge me. I’m a software engineer. I’ve been being told my job is over for longer than most, and guess what —I’m still here. Don’t believe the hype. When I see a model that can replace a human I’ll be the first to run for the hills (perhaps I’ll find some music there) but until then, these are just CEOs trying to inflate their stocks. Companies that have fired people and replaced them with AI (absolute fools) are hiring people back.
For me, AI usage for certain things is fine when it comes to marketing if you are small. Budgets are very tight, you don’t have employees, your choice to use AI is not stealing anyone’s job… because the job/task wouldn’t exist if it weren’t made possible with AI in the first place.
That’s the key point, it should only be used for the mundane, not the art form.
It should only be used as a tool, not to replace the human.
And it should be used with effort.
You could argue I am using it for the art form by making music, but this isn’t music I expect people to sit back and chill to, or to go to a club and dance. It is just utilising nice audio to catch attention. If I could do that and make it special i.e. a collaboration or a favourite track, that’s brilliant, but that’s what I’ve tried. And if I can’t —then it is just a mundane thing to me.
True, you could argue the impact on the environment, or the fact you are helping some of these dodgy companies get larger. Those are more compelling in this space. But whether or not AI is being used, it is still burning that hole in the environment. Like an escalator that just keeps rolling with no one on it. My lack of support isn’t going to change anything, one iota. But… if I manage to get my books read, perhaps I will make a difference.
To be clear, that isn’t the same for all environmental arguments. For example, not driving your car where you can, is helping.
The dodgy company angle is very true, but then I have made certain to avoid AI companies that I see doing things I disagree with, and use models that have been trained in better ways, even my own.
I do find the extreme version of this ‘focus’ rather misses the point however, especially when people state that all AI is evil. Nearly every massive company is doing something bad, small companies are too. And machine learning is a wide scope, some of it is definitely the opposite of evil.
I find that you either go and live in a cave somewhere, or you are already entangled in a world constructed by the highly competitive and money obsessed. All you can do is apply sense, and make certain choices. You cannot avoid it all, unless you don’t want to make anything. I know that’s what these companies rely on, but if there was a choice of world order, I’d happily look at the catalog.
As it stands I’ve dreamed of telling stories my whole life (I seem to have a brain geared towards tearing itself apart if I don’t), and I don’t like it —any more than you do— that these massive conglomerates have essentially taken over and control the discourse. But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to accept it and hide in the shadows.
If you disagree, then hey, that’s all good. But if you read my series, you might understand where I’m coming from in the end.
Dammit!
So, as usual, I find the best way forward is a balance. To that particular end, I’ve used a mix of the above. I’m sure whatever I do I’ll rub someone up the wrong way, sobeit. All I’m trying to do is write a book, I wish I could just sit down and write it, I wish I could spend my days being endlessly creative (I would, and I would happily pay every creator I could afford). But that’s not how things work, and it has been the saddest part of my life learning that.
Who on earth is using AI to write their books?!
For marketing… marketing. That’s all I’ve used it for! The part that Douglas Adams poked fun at with annoyance, the part that Bill Hicks specifically attacks in his work, the part that Douglas Hicks and Bill Adams have never been allowed to share their views over —because the don’t have a ‘platform’. The part that no one should really care about, but the world seems to only have become more obsessed with… I don’t care about marketing, and neither should you.
You should care about what you are buying, and if you buy my book, you will only be buying years and years of hard work, crazy thoughts, midnight shivers, pulled rugs, chaotic rewrites, misunderstandings, understandings, sky revelations, and hopefully just the right amount of silliness so that you don’t descend into ‘bad day’ rants like this one.
MESSAGE ENDS.
Use strudel.cc
An uptick at the end, just because that’s what I like, I have been experimenting with strudel.cc —and out of all the programmatic music solutions I’ve used. This does seem to be the one that even I can make progress on. So, perhaps I will be changing my tune in the future. If I get to a place where I can then make my own music, to hell with conglomerates and collaborators, then I’m sure I’ll find something else to grumble about.
Probably the creative loneliness… dammit!
MESSAGE … ENDS.
