AI slop and musical creativity

Next week, my NYU graduate seminar on technology in music education is supposed to start talking about AI: large language models, prompt-based generators, stem separation and so on. I am not feeling much enthusiasm for this unit, for a couple of reasons. First of all, we are currently talking about YouTube, which is a richly complicated and important music topic for music ed, and for music generally. I decided that we should definitely push AI a week to spend more time on YouTube. But then I was thinking, maybe we could just give AI a miss entirely? Or is it irresponsible of me to deprive the grad students just because I don’t enjoy thinking about it?

As I was working all this through, I wanted to put my distaste into words. I wrote a free-associative BlueSky thread and then figured it deserved expansion into a proper essay. So here we go. First, to set the stage, let’s contemplate this image of Shrimp Jesus, sourced from Wikipedia’s AI Slop article.

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A couple of media hits

I’m quoted in an Associated Press article talking about why pop music in 2025 is so bleak and in MusicRadar talking about Radiohead’s “Let Down”, the template for every Coldplay song and an expression of Jonny Greenwood’s love of Steve Reich. MusicRadar wanted an explainer on “Let Down” because it’s currently red hot on Tiktok. I suspect that these things are related. The vibes are terrible right now!

Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd on MusicRader

Big week for publication for me! I’m back on MusicRadar with articles about two 1970s rock classics, “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath and “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. Both songs are so familiar, and built from such unremarkable musical components, that I didn’t realize how weird they both are until I got in there and started analyzing. 

Yet another podcast update

Apparently some people listen to podcasts on YouTube. So, if you are one of these people, now you can listen to mine there (though some episodes might be unavailable due to copyright strikes; I’m working on that.)

Podcast update, and I guess blog update

I think I found a good solution to the dilemma of wanting my posts to reach the maximum number of people while also wanting to make some money from all this labor. I decided to keep the podcast free and to pair each episode with a subscribers-only newsletter that includes notated transcriptions and other musicological extras. So, that’s the plan for now, it feels like the right idea. In the meantime, I’m going to keep posting things here that need to be public-facing and accessible if/when Substack goes out of business or becomes intolerable.

Aretha Franklin and Art Garfunkel on the pod

The podcast format doesn’t allow me to show notation like my blog post on the subject does, but it does allow me to overlay Aretha and Art Garfunkel with their tempos aligned so you can compare their rhythmic phrasing aurally. So, pros and cons.

Aretha Franklin sings Bridge Over Troubled Water by Ethan Hein

way better than Art Garfunkel does

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An homage to Otis Redding on the pod

This episode includes some reharmonization of “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of The Bay” to show how goofy it would sound if Otis had used the “correct” chords from the key of G major. I want to do more of these kinds of “remixes” in future episodes, I like the idea of making songs worse by changing them and then seeing why the originals are better.

The Dock of the Bay by Ethan Hein

Otis Redding’s strange and lovely chord progression shows the limits of Western European tonal theory

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Rockit on the podcast

This is a subject that is ideally suited to the podcast format. Not only can I gather the music examples together, I can seamlessly weave a vocoder demonstration in there too. I also do a little remixing as a comparison method. This is going to be more of a method going forward and I am excited about it.

Rockit by Ethan Hein

Herbie Hancock’s biggest hit is a central node in a vast musical rhizome

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One week left to register for Songwriters Lab

This summer I am teaching my first songwriting class open to the general public with the good people at Synthase. We are taking registrations for one more week, so if you want to sign up, now is the time! You don’t need any prior musical knowledge or ability, though if you have it, I can promise a challenging and horizon-broadening experience.

Here’s a conversation I had with Hujian Ling about the class and my general philosophy of songwriting.

I hope that this is the first of many such classes!

Circle of Fifths sequences on the pod (also me singing)

This is a seemingly dry music theory topic, but it gave me an excuse to sing “You Never Give Me Your Money” and “Fly Me To The Moon” over the instrumental to “I Will Survive”. Should I sing more on the podcast?

Chord progressions on the circle of fifths part one by Ethan Hein

The harmonic sequence that unites JS Bach and Gloria Gaynor

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