Wrangling Pianos on Robot Ranch
Early most mornings lately, I’ve been helping songwriter, former bandmate and advertising colleague Charlie Hopper produce some songs he’s written over the years. Some he wrote while trying to sell them to The Business in Nashville, and documented at McSweeny’s as DISPATCHES FROM A GUY TRYING UNSUCCESSFULLY TO SELL A SONG IN NASHVILLE. It’s well worth a read.
He’s based in Indiana, and I’m in Studio City. A while back I shipped him a mic and he’s been using it to record demos of a bunch of his unrecorded back catalog. He emails the demo to me, which I then expand into arranged and (ultimately one day, with luck,) fully produced songs, with drums parts, basses and lead guitars, organs and the occasional truck horn.
This morning he responded to my demo of a song of his I really like, called The Former Home of Country Music Star Steve Wariner, which from title alone should tell you he’s a story-telling songwriter with a lot of heart and humor. And he seemed blown away:
“ARE YOU HIDING YOUR TALENTS AS A STUDIO-MUSICIAN-QUALITY KEYBOARD PLAYER? The piano on Steve Wariner is so tasty! So well-executed and thought-through. Restrained but present. Thank you. And frankly, Wow.”
Now, I play a decent lead guitar, am a reasonably strong bassist, and occasional right-handed pianist. But I had to tell him the truth.
This time, it was a robot.
Now, It’s not generative AI (and generative AI in music is doing plenty of frightening things that are very different than what I’m describing here), but it is a “performance” of parameters and styles I set up using a tool in Logic Pro that Apple calls “Session Players” with behaviors that are informed by musical tradition and machine learning. For now, Session Players are drummers, pianists/organists and bassists. But that’s sure to expand. So is all this musically “ethical?”
Here’s what happens in a Piano Session Player in Logic Pro. First, I create a session player track, and choose a specific player “character” (and there’s several to choose from); this one’s called “Freely,” and it has that “Piano from Nick Lowe’s The Rose of England” thing I like.
Then I choose how I want it to play — a fair amount of movement within the octaves, whether to use one or two hands, roughly how many fills and flourishes to add and in what sort of voicing (2,3 or 4 voices, or inversions) should be used to play them; where (using the hand sliders) on the keyboard I want the hands to “home” from. Also how soft or intense, simple or busy I want it to be. (And all this can be changed measure by measure, or even by beat.)
Next, I go to the timeline and enter each chord change. (I know this seems more work-intensive than simply, you know, playing it, but I simply don’t play as well as the robot. Below I’m entering a C(6)sus2 (because it’s pretty and i can’t make my brain do that on a piano). Then, tap the space bar and the piano will use all the parameters above to play (in Freely’s style) figures for the chords I’ve chosen in that measure below:
If for some reason I don’t like what it …performs(?), I can change the parameters and see what else it does, until either I like it, can live with it, or I need to take matters into my own (terrible) hands. If so, I can convert any Player region (or just a slice of one) into a MIDI region (green), and place the notes exactly where I want them.
So, it’s still a fair amount of work to get what I want. Not like typing a prompt into a form field and getting a counterfeit Billie Eilish hit pooped out the other end.
But as an old, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Partly because I’ve been using Apple’s “Drummer” for well over a decade, and really haven’t thought much about it, even though I know it’s doing much the same thing as is happening here, just without a key and chording.
Apple’s Session Players use the same vocabulary you’d use to direct a real session player and their playing styles. And I’m actually learning some things about chord structure, interaction and theory I didn’t know before, and that’s been very positive.
And, hey, aren’t I just kind of doing the same thing the guy did who built a music box did two centuries ago?
But the Session Player tool is creating its own surprises, sort of 3rd party surprises that a hired player would offer up, and Charlie and I now have to curate, or reject it — and that’s very different than just feeling it and playing it, hearing and responding to other instruments and players on the track.
Even if you’re playing in exactly the same style the Session Player is. It’s not ever going to be jazz. And it’s never going to be John, Paul and George responsively trading riffs on The End.
But increasingly, and I kinda hate this for the folks coming up from behind, but all this is going to be what creative person’s career looks like from here on out. Very different to my 40ish years of making things – music, illustration, design, TV spots, radio, MLB ballpark logos – via problem solving, learning, craft and execution. Now? Curation, programming and prompts. I wrote about all this a few months ago, and I’m increasingly not sure what my old art school is gonna teach moving forward.
But for now I’m still learning things and making things. And helping tell stories. Even if the robots are outplaying me.
After that? Like John Prine said.
… I’m gonna get a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale
Yeah, I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long
I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the Tilt-a-whirl
’Cause this old man is goin’ to town.
