Let’s talk about production and making records, working with artists, all that art stuff, for the next few weeks.

The problem with talking about art is the language around it tends to be vague: “…I feel this. The bass needs to be more round. It doesn’t pop. This speaks to me…”

I don’t understand how any of that is useful as a way of figuring out the big questions, things like: What to do next? What is it missing? How do we fix this? Is it done? What does it need?

I was teaching multidisciplinary arts, and we all needed a way of talking about work in different genres and mediums that didn’t require everyone to learn jargon. We needed a way for dancers to talk to painters to talk to writers to talk to musicians. The Five Things is what I came up with.

The Five Things

1) Mood

2) Metaphor

3) Narrative/Thrust

4) Individuation/Character

5) Technique

The Five Things appear to be universal—I can find them in any creative project regardless of the medium or the intentions. Any work will have them, in varying amounts.

The Five Things are more for critical reflection and discussion of a piece, and less for use as starting points in making a work. Starting is more about inspiration. The Five don’t inspire. Don’t use these at the beginning. Use them when you’re stuck somewhere in the middle. Of course, break this rule if it helps you to get work accomplished.

They are connected to language, and they tend to make themselves known by the words used when discussing a piece.

MOOD

Mood is the easiest to discuss. Is it bright and cheery? Is it dark and mournful? Is it a comedy? Is it a tragedy? Is it slow and thoughtful, or fast and frenetic? Is it energy up or energy down? Is it a period piece, or is it modern? Does it harken back or hint forward? Alive? Dead?

Most EDM: mood. Heavy metal and punk: mood. Most music used in cinema is mood and tells the audience what to feel.

Tapping your foot or not? That’s mood. Most music production is about manipulating mood. And finding a stupid, too-loud snare that has been on everyone else’s record.

Many artists don’t get much beyond mood. For many people, mood is the whole point.

Mood is easy to discuss because it is very easy for someone to say, “I feel…” Feelings don’t require facts to back them up. Feelings are hard to argue. Feelings are perhaps the ultimate opinion.

If you’re discussing or pondering a piece of work, and the thoughts run towards, “I’m not feeling this… this is dull… the energy feels off… I hate this… This isn’t grooving (groove is a mood thing),” you’re dealing with mood issues in the production.

METAPHOR

Metaphor is one idea standing in for something else, describing a thing by describing something else. Metaphor is a means of communicating an idea for which there are not words, an experience that cannot be described. Myth is metaphor. Clichés are often metaphors beaten to death—she broke my heart, etc. Metaphor results in a poetic sense to a song.

“Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is a metaphor for sex in a car. Metaphors for sex abound in music, to the point that it gets boring… cliché.

Modern country music has no metaphor to it, unless you consider that the entire genre is a metaphor.

Mood in music is REALLY tied up with metaphor. We even describe “scenes” in a song using metaphoric language: He’s in his own head at this point. It should sound like a war. It’s festive. It smells like the sweat at a punk show.

Metaphor that’s used a lot becomes cliché—the proverbial she broke my heart and almost all the lyrics on Foreigner or Journey records.

Quick aside: a good writer flips metaphors inside out. Elvis Costello is a master of this, and this wonderful line from “Being Simple” by The Judybats is a wonderful example: “Hearts cannot be broken. They’re small squishy things. They don’t break like glass, but they bruise easily. This one you bruised.” Really, that has everything. Shifting mood, as it goes from humor to something bleak, a sense of narrative as the moods shift and then we find out what happened: this one you bruised. And the metaphors are all over the line.

Perhaps the strongest appeal of metaphor is the safety it affords an artist. It provides plausible deniability. We can talk about a thorny inner mess without revealing that it’s our thorny inner mess. The metaphor can be expressed through role play; the best-known proponent of this is David Bowie, but Cindy Sherman is constantly playing roles in her own photographs, and every novelist is a part of all the characters in the book.

NARRATIVE/THRUST

Narrative, in its simplest form, is: what’s the story, and more importantly, what happens next? Narrative is often in lyrics, and good lyrics make you wonder what happens next. Back to The Judybats and their song “Being Simple,” which I quoted, we can hear from that line that we’re in the middle of a dialog between people, and we sort of wonder what is next. A sense of narrative pulls us along.

Narrative can also be a sense of change across time, of things going somewhere, and I call it Thrust, and this is what music typically has. Shifts of mood are narrative, are thrust. A lot of arranging and production is creating and stringing together shifts of mood, like the way a film is a collection of scenes. See the metaphor there?

If you’re listening to a song, and it is going nowhere, or it seems stuck… if it drones on and on… if you find yourself drifting off during it, and you don’t get pulled in and pulled along by it, that is a narrative issue.

INDIVIDUATION/CHARACTER

Individuation is what makes something recognizable as its own thing. There can be characters in the song, and the people making the song can be characters. Great artists and singers are deeply individuated and you recognize them in a moment. The way a person plays, the sound of an entire album, these are all individuation/character.

Individuation is also called style. It can be in a singer’s voice, the characteristics of the way a person plays or writes. Jeff Beck sounds like Jeff Beck. Bob Dylan is all character. Love him or hate him, he’s an individual. Madonna took character out of the music and put it into the marketing and performance. Jeff Lynne’s production has character (and almost none of it I like, but that is just me). This is also Kate Bush and Prince, and of course Bowie. Even when Bowie isn’t being Bowie, and he’s performing as a character, he manages to be Bowie.

These days, much pop music is written and produced by a committee, and then checked against an algorithm, the ultimate committee. It all sounds the same because the same people make it. It’s just stamped with someone else’s name. People are fearful, therefore they copy. The first time someone dropped a rap in a song, that was individuation. Now that’s expected. People copy.

If it sounds or looks like something else or somebody else, if it’s easy to label, if it doesn’t rouse any sort of emotions from you, if it is familiar and comfortable, if it is boring, if you really don’t care about it, if it doesn’t kind of bother you and make you a bit uncomfortable, it’s an individuation issue.

TECHNIQUE

Technique is a catch-all for how well something is constructed. Think fit and finish. It can be from the precision of the playing to the recording. Technique is everywhere.

Great works of creativity often make us think “WOW.” How did someone pull this off? What sort of effort did this take? How did they ever think of this? This is technique.

For some music, great technique is the driver and the point. Van Halen without technique is a lame version of Aerosmith. Aerosmith without Steven Tyler is a bar band.

But a lack of technique is also a thing. Simplicity can speak loudly. And then there is transcending a lack of technique until it turns into individuation. The Edge from U2 is not burdened by excessive amounts of chops. But in overcoming that limitation, he developed a very recognizable style.

Technique without individuation is a huge problem in music these days. Things sound great, everyone’s in tune, and you can’t tell one song from another and you don’t give a shit in any direction anyway.

In production, technique is everywhere—mic technique, mixing technique, how one gets the most out of an artist, the caliber of the performances.

So, these are Five Things we use to talk about art, scoped to music and production. Here’s an example.

Listen to this:

Here Comes My Girl

At the top, there’s mood: immediately there’s a mood of expectancy and waiting. And of course, with a title like “Here Comes My Girl,” what else could the mood be? She’s not there, she’s on her way, and the guy is waiting for her.

Sounds to me like a guy on a street under a streetlight. It’s definitely nighttime, right? Before there was a single lyric, it somehow sounds like night. That’s metaphor. The soundstage is wide and the instrumentation sparse. He’s in a big space, not some small room. It’s intimate. It’s quiet and low-key and hushed. He’s talking to himself. There’s a ticking watch sense to the guitar parts (technique).

The mood shifts. First he’s talking about how hard life is—talk singing. Individuation and character, right? And also Tom Petty’s distinctive voice. The mood shifts again. He sings, desperately, about how great she is, and it sounds like he’s bursting, yelling, exploding with emotion. Then the chorus kicks in, damn if it doesn’t sound just like a Byrds tune. It’s SO gentle and melodic and sweet. It’s also the first time we hear the I chord, the tonic. The song has been hanging on the V chord, which is why it had a sense of expectation, the whole thing is waiting to resolve. Technique.

Do you see the narrative and thrust of it there? It’s tied into the lyrics and reflected by the music. There’s something about that chorus that has such a release of tension. It’s wonderful, but the song doesn’t stay there, because it’s HERE COMES MY GIRL, not my girl has arrived.

We go through the same rise and fall of action again. The lyrics are cliché and not poetic, but I get the sense this isn’t a poetic character in the song. It’s a guy that works all day. He’s not going to express himself with poetry; he expresses himself simply and lowbrow—cliché. Another example of individuation/character is the way the lyrics are used. It’s also narrative—part of the story of the guy in the song.

Note the little additions and changes during the second verse and chorus. It’s not a lot of stuff, but it is pushing the song along (thrust).

And then that bridge, which has one lyric: Watch her walk. And that’s what we get to do through the bridge: sit in that musical metaphor of this girl approaching. There’s this great little syncopated guitar part in there (technique)—the movement of her hips? The “watch her walk” is quiet and reverbed (technique) and the organ build… and it modulates back to the last verse (all technique) and we’re back to that mood, but there’s something triumphant about it. It’s the little piano touches that are in the highs and in the holes of the vocal, kind of like quiet horn stabs, and then the piano fits itself in as a part, adding to the energy and the density in the third verse (thrust yet again).

Finally, there’s a lovely vamp out. The guy says, “That’s right.” It’s quiet, and piano and organ fill the space. They might be walking away together, or he might be still waiting. If we turn the piano and organ into a call and response (technique), we hint at the two of them talking (narrative). We add a single solo guitar, and now it hints at the guy still waiting. It might even hint at that she doesn’t really exist. And that plays into the next song on the album, “Even the Losers,” which is sort of “there went my girl.” It opens with a machine-like sound. Is that the factory where the guy works?

This is me applying the Five Things in hindsight, which is a bit easier than applying them in the moment. Well, we learn from the past and apply it in the present and hope for a future.

Here’s a song to hear. Pull it apart using the Five Things. Listen for what’s going on with the drums—tons of narrative there.

After you listen to it, does the video fit it?

Different mix… Better mix?

Feel free to ask questions.

Have a great week in the studio!

Warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

Behind the counter multitasking the register the Nuova Simonelli the scone tongs phone orders we need more cups the line of people

Vets in hats perplexed by flavored coffee?

Well (……..his mouth staying open on pauses between words……..) what would you recommend?

Her eyes rest on him:
You look like toffee walnut

He lights up! He’s been seen!

Outside the orange door
Fall squats
Fat-assed and cloudy

She reels off milk choices cup sizes blends brewing methods muffin composition to go to stay paper plate napkins and creamer behind you
A tattoo peaks out at her waist

Through the orange door a guy stutters in
Who talks to himself always
A shy weird in school was a bullytarget kinda guy

Before he speaks, she blurts: Latte oatmilk for my guy!
The most wonderful words he hears today tomorrow and the next tomorrow and the next and the next—

—Perhaps later in the week
Before I leave town
I’ll write on a card: you’re the most you person I’ve ever met
Leave it where someone finds it

Overhead are hawks
Underfoot are sparrows
And nothing lasts.

Where are my children?
Where is my husband?
Where are my summer nights, with the music of a busy bug zapper and heat lightning?

Where are my friends?
Where are their children?
Where are a cluster of us smoking complaining about our men
not because they deserve it
but just to fit in

Where are the all the things on the counter?
The laundry to be folded
The dishes he didn’t put away?

I seem to remember
A quiet morning
A melange of suns and moons glowing in the skylight
And onto the bed
Where we lay
When we were new to each other
And everything from the clock to the dust was loud in a silent way
Everything magnified and crystal clear
From chaffed lips to the tired in his eyes, his uneven earlobes

All this in my tiny pinkbat brain as we wheel and murmurate over the fields
I see him! He’s there!
Small below
His left thumb hooked in his belt near his right hip
I want to shout
“I am here! I am here still!
Your Mary!”

The flock of us shout and twist
Writing invisible words in the sky
All of us screaming at once
We mad flying typists
All your favorite songs and repeating your names endlessly
But it comes out as ultrasonic warbling
The noise pinkbats make: the scientists think it’s for echolocation
Cutting us open doesn’t reveal what’s inside of us

Pete: I get so sad
Someday I’ll fly myself into a windmill blade
And wipe out the whole flock
If I don’t see you in the field, looking up—I pretend at me
Holding my breath on days when it rains
Praying you’re sipping coffee at the window

This series is morphing into something, maybe inspired by Spoon River Anthology?

This poem makes more sense if you read this poem:

I flutter sylph-like taking different forms
Like the page of a wall calendar or the knob on a cabinet door
A shoe lace
A lipstick - oh, that’s the best
When I’m kissed
Once I became a bite guard—dumb fucking idea
Not sexy at all

Fridge magnet is good too
I see that face
Dreaming of what’s in the cheese drawer
But not opening that door
Because diet

I did the sock once
That was ok but I’m not into feet
Couldn’t do the panties
Thought about it
But couldn’t
Too much respect or getting my hopes up
Not sure which so choose respect

Keys on the piano
Or the soft pedal
A plastic spork
A earring for a few days and sharing the commute, the work, dates off that app
The tearing paper of loneliness
And then being the pillow and tissues

My people are infinite or infinitesimal
And we’re everywhere
Every form
Watching you odd humans
Reporting in to CENTRAL—that is how I’ll translate it for you
In our language the word is non-existent or a pi-like numbers of characters

We’re forbidden to get involved with you sweaty smelly things

But…
But but but…

Alas!

I’ve fallen in love!
And my love can’t tell!

What hints can a fridge magnet drop?
What’s a toothbrush in love supposed to do?

So I’m resolved to let my love kill me

I creep across the table as a spider, hoping for a smashing hand…
But my love is love
And captures me softly placing me on a rhododendron leaf

I’ve tried flies
Mosquitoes, gnats, centipedes, moths
Same story

I was swallowed whole as a blueberry
That was a ride—especially the last part
I survived

Fuck it I give up

I’ll be the sponge as you wash dishes
Your door key
The glasses you need more and more as days grow short
But mine are infinite or infinitesimal
Wide awake as your MedAlert pendant once you’ve fallen and you can’t get up
To take your memory
To the stars
And forget somewhere

I’m not sure who I’m talking to
It looks like him, and sounds like him, as I remember
But then there’s an awkward pause and a scan line goes from his feet to his head and for a moment, I can see the couch through him
And he can sing??
He was reticent to do that
It wasn’t a skill he learned on the farm
He was more about his hands
Starting with shovels and hoes and potato forks
Moving to wrenches and pliers
Mechanical pencils and slide rules
He reaches for my pen
His fingers pass through it and into the table
A blank expression drapes his face
The scan line resets him
The flash of the couch through his body
Next
We remember the first James Bond movie I ever saw
He sings the theme, sounding like a trans Nancy Sinatra
You Only Live Twice
The story of the memory more detailed with each retelling
Exacting popcorn
Specific soda
A fight sequence that is from From Russia With Love involved??
There’s a flashing red light on his box
“Oh. I guess I have to go. I love you.”
He smiles and fades
I plug the box in to its charger in the corner
The real him never said I love you
Not that he didn’t
But his last words to me on the phone were
“Well, okay, goodbye now.”

*********************************************

Suddenly I’m on the couch
Who’s that kid?
Oh! He’s mine!
He’s pacing
Explaining his troubles
I’ve got about half an hour
At full size
He’s looking out the window
My hand goes through his neck

Suddenly I’m standing there
I know this kid
He was pacing, now he’s looking out the window
I walk back to the couch accidentally through the coffee table

Suddenly I’m sitting on the couch
Where is my kid?
He went on the porch leaving the door open
I can’t follow-beyond laser range
I sing Ennio Morricone
Doo-ee doo-ee dooo
Wha wha whaaaaa
Come to me come to me
Come back to me
Come back to me
As my light fades to yellow

The fly
Paces the length of the stem
Of the thermometer
The meniscus that reads 102

Will not kill you today, McFly
The future is waiting
It waits, quiet as the heat
Patient as the drought
Above it all
Like the last clouds
“Parting in such sweet sorrow”
Dissolving lovers

Meet me for one last gin and tonic
At Under the Ladder
Our place
Where we threw out our luck
With the salt over the shoulder
Or let’s sit
Together
In cold storage
Men don’t hold hands
But we can hold hands
And read the last hours away
That were naked on the toilet
Desiccated
And visible for a moment
Just as the door opens and
A breeze charges in
And blows my particles
Till you can’t tell what’s me
And what’s floaters in your old eyes

l’m tossed in my rusting body’s skillet
but my inner life is one of a youth
with stupid adventures in which we always wind up face-to-face
Don’t steal the car! First kiss me!

The mornings are wet
The grass, the sidewalks, bare feet
The sun gets hot
The hydrangea twists its leaves in agony
Remembering last night
Now a hazy ground mist

We could visit the ancestral home planet
He vaguely waved to the stars
But it’s really full of chain restaurants these days
Or we could go to Planet Zoinks Murgatroyd
But it’s full of monkeys that don’t take their own medicine these day
they have contests in which they hit themselves in the face

There’s also Planet Alcoholic Shopping Spree
They invented the mini nose hair groomer there
They have everything—even man boob implants, which are very handy if you want to observe the monkeys on Planet Zoinks Murgatroyd

Your mother and I met on Planet Foreigner Lyrics. Now, that’s a stupid place. And it’s as cold as ice.

Or we could go to Planet Colonoscopy
It’s actually more relaxing than it sounds
And there is a free buffet after

Planet Hippy… Planet Busty… Planet Speech Impediment… There’s tons of these
Planet Never My Fault in the Cluster Bee Nebula
I’ve met a number of people from there. They’re robots. Or some strange android human fusion

I don’t know if I’ve been to Planet I’ve Forgotten Many Things. Maybe?

Planet Cool Hallways Where I Used to Work… Not cool as in visually interesting, cool as in warm. But not warm, cool. But warm in your heart but cool on your skin
Like a memory triggered by a walk and a breeze
You remember kite flying, or when some money blew away and you had to chase it
Or a hotdog napkin. And there was laughter.

(I know it is unsatisfying, but now this feels over
such is life)

Oh wait, we can always visit Planet Stooped, and Barely Able to Walk
People recognize you and say, George! You finally slowed down!

George sez you should always slow down to watch the women jog

This is the kind of New Monday that I adore writing, one that takes us through music and recording into lives and culture, and weaves all sorts of people and places and things together. There’s even a link to a lesson. I don’t often pull these off, but I think I did with this one.

Here’s Fly Like an Eagle.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lRxgtVPfsBuzpgFdYdFi0Ej0J2mNwzz2A&si=Y6MhFhO07t7bqHsc

Steve Miller

Steve Miller’s dad, George, was a doctor and an amateur recording engineer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His dad’s best friend was from Waukesha, and he was a recordist, and also a guitarist, named Les Paul. Les was Steve’s godfather.

George and family moved to Dallas, Texas, in the early 1950s. Dad continued recording, and young Steve hung around with cats like Charles Mingus and T-Bone Walker. Obviously, Steve was going to become a musician.

It helped that his family was well-off. Steve went to college, studied comparative literature for a semester abroad in Denmark. He dropped out of school at the last minute and went to Chicago to play blues. Eventually disenchanted, he returned home, was disenchanted with that, then went up to San Francisco and caught the Jefferson Airplane live. San Francisco enchanted him. He stayed and formed the Steve Miller Band in 1966.

The band was signed, made blues-based psychedelic records which were so of the time and place that was San Francisco during the Summer of Love. They had a few minor hits.

Steve was, of course, more than a guy who played guitar in a band. The dude was 6 credits shy of a degree in literature. He was incredibly well-read. Similar to Paul McCartney, who was his friend and played on a few songs with the Steve Miller Band, Steve was into the avant-garde, and experimented with tape loops and electronic music when he wasn’t recording and touring.

In 1973, he released The Joker, and finally had a breakthrough hit with the eponymous single. Similar to Bowie, Miller performed in personas, and name checked them on The Joker—the Space Cowboy, The Gangster of Love, and, of course, Maurice.

His next two albums, Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams, were recorded at the same time but released consecutively in 1976 and 1977. The Steve Miller Band became the biggest thing in the world. Singles like Take the Money and Run, Rock’n Me, Jet Airliner, and Jungle Love were inescapable on FM radio. It was the soundtrack of high school in white-boy America, of which I was an unknowing member. But the real killer was the totally frickin’ cool Fly Like an Eagle.

Fly Like an Eagle

Fly Like an Eagle started with a synth intro/etude, played by Steve M. on an ARP. It was a nod to his avant-garde leanings and hinted at some of his later stuff, albums like Abracadabra in 1982.

The blues of the song evolved out of jam sessions across three years, as the band cut unsuccessful versions of the song multiple times at studios on the West Coast. They finally nailed a version up in San Francisco at probably Pacific High Recording in San Francisco. The basic tracks featured Miller on guitar, bassist Lonnie Turner, and a fantastic drummer, Gary Mallabar. Crucial to the final version of Fly Like an Eagle was Joachim Young, who played the brilliant Hammond organ parts on it.

Joachim Young is another wonderful musician out of Rochester, New York. He was a jazz pianist deeply involved in San Francisco’s avant-garde and free jazz music scene. I have this album on in the background right now. The first minute is Young on thumb piano, and then it stretches into free jazz.

Jon Mattox, who has multiple social media channels under the name Creating Music and Sound, did a great breakdown of Fly Like an Eagle a few weeks ago. In fact, the reason I am writing on this album and song today is that Jon messaged me that Steve Miller used a Shure Level-Loc on the vocal... “Really?” I thought. “It doesn’t sound all crushed and mangled like most Level-Loc usages.”

Here is a link to Jon’s breakdown. He goes into depth on the organ parts. Well worth a listen.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1761438001519380

Back to the recording of Fly Like an Eagle. They had a 16-track recording of it, sans vocals. They added a stripe of time code to it, and synced it to a portable 8-track recorder that Miller traveled with. They mixed the 16 tracks down to two, which left Miller 5 tracks for vocals (remember - another track on the 8-track had to have time code on it so they could synch things for the final mix.)

Now, 3M didn’t make a portable 8-track recorder, so actually, it is likely that Steve travelled around with this monster broken down into road cases. Miller’s home studio was in Novato, California. There he had a little console built by Dick Swettenham (he of Olympic Studios and later Helios). We can see a bit of it in this picture, but no Level-Loc.

The 3m M23 eight track and Steve Miller in his home studio, the Dick Swettenham console is visible.

Miller tracked his vocals using an RE-20 through a Shure Level-Loc.

Kaye-Smith Studios

Fly Like an Eagle was mixed at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle. Oh my.... yet another story...

Kaye-Smith started out as a broadcast company, with actor Danny Kaye as an investor. Unfamiliar with Danny Kaye? Oh POOR YOU!!! Danny Kaye is one of the most brilliant people of all time. An amazing singer and physical comedian. Some of you might have seen this sword fight from The Court Jester. Good lord! This is so good!

The whole movie is great. Show it to your kids.

Fly Like an Eagle was mixed on a customized 40 input API console. The opening synth parts appear to have been played live during the mix by Steve Miller. Weirder things have happened.

Kaye-Smith was a major studio. Miller mixed a number of albums there. Bachman-Turner Overdive cut You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet and their entire Not Fragile album there. Heart recorded their breakthrough Dreamboat Annie (Barracuda, anyone?) and Bebe Le Strange there. Steve Lawson purchased the studio in 1979. In 1991, the Wilson sisters of Heart bought in and renamed the studio Bad Animals. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains all worked out of Bad Animals, making it a major locale during the grunge era. The Wilson sisters left in 1997, the new owners renamed it to Studio X. It moved from the original Kaye-Smith location in 2018.

A Level-Loc Lesson

As for the Steve Miller Level-Loc vocal… I experimented a bit and wrote up a lesson on how to use the Level-Loc as a compressor. Frankly, it really doesn’t work like a compressor, but if you set it right, you can get a very nice vintage FET sound out of it for vocals. Follow the link below.

Level-Loc 02 - Controlling the Compressor

Ok. Enough for a Monday. Have a great week. Make some music, do some recordings, hang out with friends, listen to the entire Fly Like an Eagle album, because it’s great and WATCH THE COURT JESTER.

Much love,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

The sunrise would stare
Thinking
I’ll never be as beautiful as you

I’m up to my elbows in dishwater
The cat makes love to my ankles
But it just wants food

And you…

What do you want?
And to whom is this addressed?

I’m in the grav toilet, sitting
Otherwise, nothing comes out
My waste is munched and bagged

Later, I sprinkle the powder on the plants
In this way, I eat myself

The water in the shower is hundreds of cycles old
I’ve had full body electrolysis, so there’s no hair down the dream other than the occasional eyelash
Then there’s the earvac, the teethvac

Next: coffee in the nav bubble
Me, and ever present stars
And the zoom call

I can’t hear what they’re saying over the leaf blowers
So I nod, and smile
Or look concerned
It depends on their hand gestures
I’ve become quite the observer
Of the stars
The power levels
Radiation meters
People I’ll never see again
Complaining about their tomatoes
The horrible man

Don’t worry, kiddo
What happens in Zumba
Stays in Zumba
And anyway, who do I have to tell your secrets to?

I am writing this wondering what to write about. I have the late July doldrums.

I could write about a song—oh: Two weeks ago I wrote about a charming little tune called Little Love by a singer named Pearl, and the producer/co-writer, Matt Ingram, wrote me and said the bass part was played on a Mini-Moog. I thought it was an electric bass…. There goes my credibility, shot to hell. Sigh.

I want to start a whole new section of New Monday called “That Damn Ringo” and it’s dedicated to how cool Ringo’s drum parts are on Beatles songs. After all this time, there are still people that feel the need to put Ringo down. “Ringo isn’t as good as Mitch Mitchell/John Bonham/Neil Peart/Charlie Watts/Chuck “Leadfoot” Masterangelo,” etc.

That Damn Ringo

Well, there’s She Said She Said. Ringo is so good he doesn’t need to play the hihat. This was actually the song that sold me on The Beatles.

She Said She Said has been remixed by Giles Martin. He goes back to the original takes, separates the individual tracks out, and presents a different view of the song. I’m not always a fan, and I think in the case of this song, something is lost, but George is now on the right, John is on the left... and John’s rhythm part is unexpectedly interesting and cool...

I made up Chuck “Leadfoot” Masterangelo. But feel free to pretend he’s real and make your drummer friends feel inadequate.

A Detour for the Tour Bus

Speaking of inadequate, many years ago, my cousin Patty married a guy named Lee who was, and still is, 6’5”. And a great guy. At their engagement party, Lee’s sister, who was hot, brought her boyfriend, who was a lawyer and… he was a dick. He had a Beau Middleton energy—Beau Middleton being the bad guy/enemy of Nicholas Cage in the movie Valley Girl.

Actor Anthony Edward aka Beau Middleton aka Goose from Top Gun

So, this lawyer boyfriend of Lee’s sister asked me what I did for a living, and at the time I was a guitarist and making records, etc., and I told him that, and he proceeded to launch into this whole THING about this band he was in, and how they had THE BEST DRUMMER and on and on about gigs in North Carolina blah blah blah like I could give a shit shaped like a carrot that your bassist fell into a pool and other adventures involving guitar cords and alcohol.

He paused for a breath and I quickly interjected, “In my 10th grade social studies class we did a mock trial when we were studying the rise of the communists in China and I got to be a lawyer.” And I proceeded to launch into a whole THING about me cross-examining some kid in my class and how we had to swear people in and how Mr Norton, the teacher, was the judge and on and on and finally he interrupted me and said, “Why are you telling me this? I’m a real lawyer.”

I patted his chest and said, “I’m a real musician.” And then I walked away. Score! 10 points for the goofy Italian kid!

Beau Middleton stayed away from me the rest of the night, and later, at Patty and Lee’s wedding, I found out Lee’s sister ditched his lawyer ass. There was much celebration.

This was a great song on the Valley Girl soundtrack:

SO… what was the point of that story?

This was the moment when I discovered that you can tell an awful lot about people by how they react when they find out information about you. Do they ask questions, or do they compete and talk about themselves?

I usually ask questions: “Oh, you’re a lawyer. What kind of law? Have you ever bribed a judge or bought off a jury? Do you sleep with your clients?” Things like that.

I always have a guitar or something behind me in a Zoom meeting. When it is a meeting for a plug-in or music biz thing, usually no one cares and that’s that. But when it is for something else, very often, some guy spots the guitar, and launches into a whole THING about his guitar and his band and the whole dick lawyer scene. And suddenly, I know all about this guy, and he knows very little about me. These guys just never ask questions.

Tell me, in a business situation, would you rather know about them, or have them know about you? Information is power.

Ask questions.

A last rejoinder

Revolver Revolver Revolver. It is all over the internet this week and last week, this month. Well, it was released 50 years ago last week. I’ve already written a bunch on it.

I was 13 in 1976, going through The Beatles section at a record store in Huntington NY. I wanted to get a Beatles album, but my parents were no help, my older sister was no help — she was constantly playing side one of the first Crosby Still and Nash album, and to this day when I hear Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, I want to kill.

I knew the songs I knew from the radio, from seeing Help! a bunch on rainy days at the Thomas School of Horsemanship (can you tell I was raised rich and white?), from hearing Yellow Submarine on the radio, and Got to Get You Into My Life, and Eleanore Rigby. I found those songs listed on the back of Revolver. The most songs I knew were on that album so I bought it.

Taxman as the opener pinned my ears back. By She Said She Said I was a die hard Beatles fan. By Tomorrow Never Knows, I flipped the album over, and saw “Produced by George Martin” printed on the back cover, and even though I had no idea what a producer did, I thought to myself, “That is what I want to do.”

Maybe I need to do that again. Produce records.

Warm regards,

Luke

Shout out to Robert Johnson: musician, photographer, videographer, fighter pilot, coffee drinker, all around good dude

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

We settled here
Against the odds
Amidst the animals
Good morning sun, coming up, eclipsed by the afternoon sun, eclipsed by the two evening moons
The deer in the field, looking at us with its three eyes

I got my truck out of the shed
Hosed the dust off
The dirtiest truck on the planet
Ramble off for the monthly visit to

Ellenburg Depot

The windmills and the radar towers
Friends I have
Their faces hidden behind re-breathers
Sipping beer through a straw

We came here
Not knowing the planet kills women
While we live forever
We buried them all together
Making headstones from whatever
Some of us placing flowers still
But it’s been 1000 years
The radio messages
Meandering across space time
A faint crackle in your ear

I wish I had something sweet again
An orange, or licorice, or
Another body
or music
Rather than
Distant rhythms of a motor
The deer staring at me quizzically

But now our evening murmuration of pinkbats
Is sketching things in the sky
And I have my work to do
And parsecs to go before I die

But…

Man!
What joy there is
On a beautiful morning
No matter how many suns or moons
The road ahead
Flowing you forward
Like a rope tied to the belt ‘round the waist of your soul
Pulled by hands that seem to love you

I have been travelling for weeks at a time, leaving me unsettled and up-in-the-air more than usual. Places reinventing themselves and me reinventing myself and places.

The next few weeks will be this.

I hope you’re all well.

This is a catch-up New Monday, a bunch of quick things, some links, a bit of this and that.

While we catch up, listen to this:

Dakhabrakha is a Ukrainian group that’s billed as a string ensemble but they could also be a huge furry hat ensemble. You can listen to this in the background while we catch up.

A bunch of you have been writing, and I truly appreciate it, but it does take me a bit sometimes to get back, and sometimes I miss... because deep down I am an ADHD MORON. From now on, when I am late answering emails, I will sign them ADHD MORON. Be prepared to see that.

As long as we’re going on about writing... we’ve added a Tip email on Thursday. Should these be shorter? Would that be more useful to you?

Speaking of useful...

Billy Joel Interview

This is one of Rick Beato’s best interviews. It’s really a songwriting lesson. And whether or not you like Billy Joel’s music, he’s a hell of an accomplished musician. He’s so generous in this interview regarding inspiration, his approach, his career. Mr Beato is an expert at getting artists to unfold themselves, and Billy Joel is a blooming flower in this. Well worth your time.

Dear Prudence Mystery

I wrote about Trident Studios a few weeks ago. In 1968, The Beatles spent three days at Trident on the (say it with me all you console mavens) SOUND TECHNIQUES A-RANGE CONSOLE (our channel strip is in beta!) recording Dear Prudence, the second song, first side of The White Album.

Dear Prudence is one of the highlights of The White Album, with its haunting guitar parts, the melody, the production, and, of course, Ringo’s utterly fabulous drum outro.

But since 1988, there’s been a controversy. Mark Lewisohn, in his book, The Beatles Recording Sessions, listed Paul McCartney as the drummer, and the scuttlebutt was that Ringo was out of the country, because he temporarily quit the band. By the way, the Mark Lewisohn books are amazing. I spent months with Recording Sessions and all the CDs, my head between two speakers, muting the left and the right until I could hear everything described in the book.

Onward: My ears tell me that it’s Ringo. MAYBE Paul plays the easy part, but that is Ringo at the end.

Here’s Dear Prudence cued up to the end drum part:

Well, it looks like I’m exonerated. This new video outlines the controversy and the case for it being Ringo on the whole damn record. The video is very interesting because it breaks everything down so you can hear individual parts, including who’s singing which harmony part.

It is wonderful that there are people in the world, like Michael Sokil, Ray Schillinger and Obadiah Jones, who have time on their hands and a weird passion for doing forensic Beatles investigations.

There are also maniacs that do things like this:

Music Biz

Have you heard the term “Audience Capture?” It’s a business strategy that’s been used forever: find your audience, hook them deeply with your product, then lower the quality while raising the price. They won’t leave because they’re “captured.” Sounds like a music biz strategy, an AI company strategy, or a plug-in company philosophy (not ours).

It’s been Netflix’s philosophy for years, but now it’s falling apart. Ted Gioia article on this is here:

The Honest Broker

The Collapse at Netflix Signals the End of Audience Capture

Today’s culture briefing is free for everyone. Enjoy…

Read more

3 months ago · 6288 likes · 417 comments · Ted Gioia

The RIAA, Recording Industry Association of America, has released a labeling program for music to indicate how much AI was used. Here’s their own description of it.

https://www.riaa.com/music-community-introduces-new-labeling-programto-distinguish-generative-ai-in-sound-recordings/

This is important stuff for all of us. Companies like Spotify and Suno both use an audience capture model, and how AI music becomes profitable—how any AI business venture becomes profitable—still isn’t clear.

We don’t have control of this, but we do have control of our reaction to it, and we can keep it in mind as we dream our futures and plan our next step.

Blumlein Pair

Since I’ve been off on a tear about Mid/Side, here’s another micing technique no one uses anymore that is really handy in certain circumstances.

If you take a single figure-8 mic, like a ribbon or a multi-pattern condenser, you can put a person or a sound source in front of it and behind it. On playback, the signal is mono with two sounds in it. A figure-8 is basically a cardioid in two convenient locations.

Get another of the same figure-8 mic and place it such that the two mics’ capsules are perpendicular to each other: put one above the other and offset the faces by 90°. Pan one mic to the left, the other to the right, and you’ve got a Blumlein Pair, invented by EMI engineer Alan Blumlein in 1931.

The Blumlein Pair stereo micing technique.

A Blumlein pair is a stereo mic’ing technique with virtually no phase issues and complete mono compatibility. The problem is that it is basically FOUR cardioid mics in two locations. You have a stereo pair in the front, and a stereo pair in the back, which on playback fold into each other, mixing the back and the front. This sounds great if you have a great-sounding room—because that is what that back pair is picking up, room. But if the room sucks, then Blumlein sounds awful.

But what about sticking a Blumlein pair in the middle of a string ensemble, or a small bluegrass ensemble? The players can all see each other, so timing and chemistry go through the roof. Control the mix by moving people closer or further back. On playback, you get a lovely stereo image.

Other uses: percussion, vocals (this is a great way to record a capella groups when they can actually sing), gang vocals, claps, things like a radio play or spoken word pieces involving multiple voices, etc. And it collapses to mono with no phase issues.

I used to record jazz ensembles on a small stage with a C24 in the middle—the Blumlein pair—and then the group arrayed around that, with spot mics on the kick and snare, the upright bass, the sax, and an omni buried in the piano.

Blumlein is a good thing to have in your toolbox. So is a KA1776, which is still on sale. AND there’s an update soon...!

Have a great week, all.

Warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

I finally managed to record an audio version of New Monday. It follows the written one closely, but there is some additional info in it, and I edited in the musical examples as well. Hear it here.

Here's the tale, an odyssey, if you will, of one of the greatest albums anyone has ever made.

The opening song contains these lyrics:
And we'll get to know each other for a second time
And then you can tell me about your prison stay

Care of Cell 44 was released as the first single of a great album, the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle. It flopped. Well, a love song that features a guy writing to his girlfriend who's in jail is pretty challenging material for 1968.

The singer is Colin Blunstone, and there's no indication in the lyrics of gender: It's safe to assume he's not singing as a woman. England had, after all, only just passed the Sexual Offenses Act, which decriminalized homosexuality. There were things one didn't do even during the summer of love and after it.

Huge drums and bass on this, for the time, and it sounds a bit like The Beatles. That’s because it was recorded at Abbey Road, by Geoff Emerick, with all of the techniques and technology used on Sgt. Peppers only a few months before. Towards the end is a Mellotron, owned by John Lennon, that keyboardist and Zombies leader Rod Argent sprinkled all over the album.

The Zombies were on the verge of breaking up when they recorded Odessey and Oracle. The issue was mainly money. They hadn't had hits since "Tell Her No" and "She's Not There", and the only members of the band making anything were the writers, Rod Argent and bassist Chris White. Guitarist Paul Atkinson—broke and about to be married—was as good as out. After leaving the Zombies he became a record exec and signed ABBA, Elton John, and Bruce Hornsby. Drummer Hugh Grundy, whose wonderful playing is all over the album, also became an A&R man.

The Zombies met in school. All were highly educated, and by the time they started Odessey and Oracle, Argent and White didn't feel like writing strictly pop tunes, and were interested in classical motifs, jazz, and lyrics pulling ideas out of Shakespeare and William Faulkner. Chris White's fascination with World War 1 led to Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914), a depressing ballad featuring a foot-pumped organ and White's vocals rather than Colin Blundstone's. American producer Al Kooper (Lynyrd Skynyrd) persuaded an American record company, Date, to release it as a single. Vietnam and all—the label thought it would resonate with the kids. It flopped. No one in the Zombies was at all surprised.

Due to a minuscule recording budget of just 1000 pounds for the whole album, the Zombies entered the studio very well rehearsed, and basically busted out songs to four-track tape, spending not more than a couple of hours per tune, including the mixes. The five all played together live, would overdub a few vocals and then on to the next tune. When Abbey Road was booked out, they'd jump across town to Olympic. They worked without a producer, which suited Argent and White just fine—they got to try out all sorts of ideas on the record. It also led to problems like the band not bothering to record stereo mixes, because at the time records were mainly in mono. The label demanded stereo mixes and forced the band to pay an additional 200 pounds for them out of their own pockets.

Here's the mono mix of This Will Be Our Year. Note the horn part. It's missing from the stereo mix. That's because the part was added during the mono mix. It never hit the multitrack tape and so it simply wasn't there for the stereo remix sessions.

One of the last songs cut for the album was Time of the Season. Singer Blunstone didn't like it. He and Argent fought over how to sing it. Argent won the argument. The distinctive "clap ah" was a last-minute overdub idea by Rod Argent, who ran into the studio to perform it. He also overdubbed a second organ solo.

By the time the record was complete in early 1968 the Zombies were broken up. There wasn't even enough interest from the label or the band to fix the misspelling of the album's title on the artwork, so rather than redo the cover, they just renamed the album from Odyssey and Oracle to Odessey and Oracle.

CBS Records declined to release the record in the US after "Care of Cell 44" flopped in England, hence why Butcher's Tale was released by Date.

In late 1968, a station in Iowa began playing "Time of the Season". It began to climb the charts and suddenly Date Records had a top ten hit US and Canadian on its hands. "Time of the Season" charted all over the world and is now considered an absolute classic, and is the biggest hit the Zombies had.

And some guys in Michigan decided to cash in on it.

Delta Promotions of Bay City, Michigan was a legitimate company when they hired a bunch of American musicians to tour as The Zombies throughout the US. They told the bands, who were just kids, really, that they had acquired the rights to both the Zombies and the Animals (they also had a fake Animals out on tour). They slapped together bands, took promo pictures, stuck them in vans and sent them out.

Fun times! Zombies fans would show up and wonder where the keyboard player was. The bands would claim that he died, or was in jail. The audience would stay for a few songs and then leave the venue as it became clear that the band onstage wasn't the band on the record.

One of the fave Zombies bands, which consisted of musicians from Texas, would open with "Time of the Season" and then switch to what they actually really knew, which was Texas blues. Because the nucleus of this particular version of the Zombies was Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard, who later went on to form ZZ Top.

Odessey and Oracle has aged well. The playing is spot on, the vocals are pitch perfect, and the songs are inventive with wonderful melodies and arrangements. There are a handful of great psychedelic albums from this time— Sgt Peppers, The Moody Blues Days of Future Passed, Jimi Hendrix' Axis: Bold as Love, and certainly Odessey and Oracle is one of them.

Odessey and Oracle:

Apple Music
Spotify
YouTube

If you listened to the audio version of this particular New Monday episode, please let me know what you think and what I can do to make it better.

Warm Regards,
Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter on music, audio engineering, and culture I write for Korneff Audio. This is NM #68, published on 6/02/25.

This was previously published at https://korneffaudio.com.

Rue Ottawa smells vaguely of pot as I wander home through Cité du Multimédia in Montréal, underwhelmed by the art I just saw at an overwhelmingly art space, Fonderie Darling.

The former turn of the past century foundry is the perfect art space, with huge ceilings and rooms, spiral cast iron staircases, riveted beams covered in decades of paint now chipping, fantastic looking, totally sexy rust everywhere. I love that liminal space between Danish Modern and Industrial Revolution decrepitude. I would love to show at Fonderie, darling. And I have been to shows at Fonderie Darling before that were captivating and interesting.

This show was a lame duck.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures and I didn’t take names because I don’t want to embarrass anybody—because I love arts and artists, but y’all know who you are. And you need to, I don’t know, do something? Some work?

I climbed the spiral staircase to the upper floors, which are studded with private, rented studios, most of which were open tonight. Again, beautiful spaces, high ceilings, hardwood floors, white walls. White walls uncontaminated by art. 4”x5” sketches, or tiny amateurish paintings, or popsicle stick constructions (I kinda liked that one, actually) and spread out like rich neighbors that hate each other.

Oh! There’s a bunch of small rocks glued to a strip of wood on the floor. I have no idea what this is supposed to be and I’m not moved to figure it out. And there is no plaque.

I’m generally against plaques describing art. I like to know the materials used and know the name of the piece or the artist, but if there’s a long explanation that spells the whole thing out so I can understand it, I don’t understand that. Why make the art? Why not just show the plaque?

Is art supposed to be a joke that needs a paragraph explaining the punchline?

Everything so small and poorly done. Lots of monochrome. Lots of pencil. Lots of people who really can’t paint. The main takeaway I get from the open studios is that nobody can afford supplies. I suppose it’s all going to the rent—these rooms can’t be cheap.

The main exhibition space down spiral stairs had mainly emptiness, which was fine. The big thing was what looked like a linoleum floor ripped out of an old theater. Rising over it were candle-like tubules of wax flowers, hanging like a Calder mobile, arching in a neat row, against the high ceiling, transom windows glowing blue with the night sky. It was really quite beautiful. The space, that is. The ceiling.

What to do about this pesky art? Maybe if there were hundreds of candles hanging from the ceiling, enough to recontextualize the space. Shock and awe art is valid. But alas, no one can afford supplies. That or they’re relying on the plaque to do the work that the piece didn’t do, that the artist didn’t do.

It’s really easy to think things up. It’s much harder to execute. This is why AI is so popular. We’re lazy. AI could’ve spun this whole thing up in two minutes. It would look like somebody else’s work, but maybe it would have some density and energy?

One of the more successful things – I don’t know if you would call it a piece – was a cathedral-like structure, but much smaller, made out of sheet steel strips, cut and bent into supports attached to sheet rock, assembled to evoke the entrances and hallways of a church. And they had to flag it by adding a bunch of votive candles—obvious but kinda nice. Beautiful people lounging around the votive candles.

Beautiful people everywhere, really. Montréal is a city of beautiful people. Maybe the best thing about a show like this is that the beautiful people come out, dressed in their look-at-me best, laughing and smoking, drinking and joking, a few souls looking at the art, most looking at each other.

I stayed an hour and had a Tsingtso, and after I popped out, I popped in and said hi to my friend Mackenzie at Franklin’s on Saint Paul.

This weekend, go see a show at a gallery. Like the things you like. Read the plaque or not. Be ok with not getting the artist’s intention, because there won’t be a quiz. Go with a friend or a lover. Wander the street after, moving from street lamp to street lamp together. Breathe in the night and realize how lucky you are.

So there I am, reading something long-form that didn’t immediately stink like a homeless armpit of AI. It was about how human beings need to work to find meaning. That we require struggle. That a life of ease quickly becomes a life not worth living. I agree with all of that. And... it was written with the assistance of AI.

Let that sink in for a moment.

HAHAHAHA! I think there’s nothing I hate more than when people, or their robot blow monkey, stick in shittyshit like “Let that sink in a moment.” And I just did it!

And I am writing short, punchy sentences… another AI writing giveaway.

I’m not going to make one point; I’m going to make two.

(Another one—the old Not This But That construction. I hope you all appreciate these AI writing tells I’m sticking in here. Do they remind you of your own writing?)

The irony of someone writing about how humans need to struggle while circumventing the struggle using at least some AI is not lost on me. After reading it and shaking my head, I read another long-form piece about how we all know when something is written using AI. That piece spawned a cluster of comments about how AI detection is difficult and not accurate and yada yada... and it was pretty clear most of the comments were written by AI.

Using AI to comment about someone saying AI isn’t easily detected.

Stuff that up your ass for a moment.

I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. So I clipped out some representative text and pasted it into an AI writing detector, the first one that popped up on a search. For the piece about necessary human struggle: 78%. Ah Ha! AI writing! I pasted in a dripping with AI globule of a comment. It returned 72%! Ah Ha! AI Writing! Then I pasted in some of my own work. 76%?? Uh... AI writing?

The app said this: “Your text shows several issues, an AI-like tone, repetitive phrasing, uneven rhythm, potential plagiarism, and low readability. These inconsistencies affect its style, flow, and credibility.”

How would AI text have low readability? And how does AI have a comma error? Did you spot where there should be a colon?

Of course the app offered to “fix all issues” and make it sound more human. For a small fee.

AI wants to charge me to correct my writing to be more human by using AI, which would make it... more AI? This is like going back to the plastic surgeon who fucked up your nose job and telling him, “You better fix this or I’ll head-butt you with my face!” Maybe it’s not like that, but it’s equally stupid.

So, I think my first point was made, but I am not sure what it was. I’ve lost the thread and confused myself. Can’t get more human than that! Let’s pop all this I’ve so far written into the AI Detector and see what we get. Back in a moment... (theme from Jeopardy)

73%... well, kill me softly with his song, do I detect a scammy AI detector? A scam involving AI? No one could ever have seen that coming. Not Sam Altman (Does he not have the perfect name for someone involved in AI? Alternative Man. Could it be any more on the nose?). Not Mark Zuckerburg. Not Elon Muskrat.

Speaking of rodents, somewhere in this hamster habitat of a mind of mine, my next point is lurking. Perhaps under the exercise wheel.

Why I don’t want to read AI-written stuff: Because the human brain has neural plasticity. It learns. It rewrites its own programming. It does this without telling us. This is how we develop bad habits. We do the same dumb thing a few times and brain central decides, “Ok, this is what we’re into. More of that!” And then it finds us more of that. This is how it works. There is neuroscience on it—I read a long-form article about it that wasn’t AI-written even though the detector gave it a 73%.

Shitty AI writing it rubs off on us. Because our brain is dumb and easily influenced by what’s out there. This is why I avoid AI writing. And people wearing tank tops.

I like how I write. And I like to write. And I want it to sound like only me. The fact I’m able to spit up AI writing turdlettes like a baby barfing creamed corn is SCARY to me. It means it is in my head already, like some sort of mid statistical tumor.

Your shittiest writing—you know, the stuff that you used to do, what, three years ago? The stuff you wrote that was perfectly fine for emails, text messages, comments on Facebook, letters to explain why their car is damaged, flyers advertising your garage sale, etc.? That writing was and is better than ANYTHING you’ve put up on Substack after prompting Claude or ChatGPT. Because it is yours. Your shit might look worse than AI’s creamed corn but it’s better. It’s come through you as distilled experience. It has your gut biome. You’re in there and we know it.

And we do know when you’re absent when you write with AI. Everyone does. You don’t need to be a chef to know the beef is overcooked.

And all the people I’ve ever questioned about whether or not they’re writing with AI have denied it, even when it is obvious. The guy who wrote about human struggle denied it without me even asking him about it. The lady doth protest too much.

What use be a Shakespeare when thou canst peruse an AI summary. We don’t need that pesky blank verse any more than we need homemade chimichurri sauce on a steak. A bottle of it from somewhere will do. And buy it from Bezos. He could use the money.

Look over there—there’s a little boy with a tablet, pecking out words on it. Imagine! You’ve learned to write a prompt to get some writing done! Oh, the places you will go! Like, sorting backages at an Amazon facility until you’re replaced by a suction cup on the end of a robotic arm.

The illustration for this post is a screengrab of the result when I ran a bit of The Great Gatsby through a scammy AI detector.

Sit with this last sentence, by F. Scott:

”Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”

Here’s a scam Ai detector: https://humalingo.com/ai-detector

Here’s a good one. I think: https://brandwell.ai/ai-content-detector/

Check this out:

This is Love, from their 1967 album Forever Changes. It’s magnificent.

Love and Forever Changes

Love was formed in 1965 in Los Angeles by singer-songwriter Arthur Lee, who was the only consistent member of the group through all its iterations. The classic lineup of Love, the grouping that recorded Forever Changes, had another fabulous songwriter, Bryan MacLean. MacLean wrote the song you just heard, Alone Again Or, which is probably Love’s best known recording. The band didn’t have hits, and while Forever Changes is considered a masterpiece now, it didn’t make much of a commercial impact in 1967.

Bryan MacLean and Arthur Lee clashed—too much talent and ego for one band. MacLean left the group after Forever Changes was released. Love was always a fractious band with a high drug intake. Addiction ravaged the band—they were such a mess that Forever Changes almost didn’t get recorded. Eventually, Lee and others spent time in jail. Of the original lineup, only guitarist Johnny Echols is still alive.

Forever Changes was lushly orchestrated by Lee and arranger David Angel. The gorgeousness of the music contrasts with the somewhat dour lyrics. Happy music with depressing words is a potent combination. There’s a song on it called “Maybe the People Would be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale.”

When I leave now don’t you weep for me
I’ll be back, just save a seat for me
But if you just can’t make the room
Look up and see me on the

Moon’s a common scene around my town
Here where everyone is painted brown
And if we feel that’s not the way
Let’s go paint everybody gray
Yeah, gray, yeahhh

A Latin feel, horns, a flamenco-inspired guitar solo by Johnny Echols, and one of the longest song titles you can stumble into.

Forever Changes was co-produced by Lee and Bruce Botnick, who was the wonderboy of LA engineering in the 60s and 70s. I’ll eventually write a bunch more on Mr Botnick, but let’s drop some names quickly: Pet Sounds and LA Woman.

The record was knocked out at Western Recorders and Sunset Sound in about 60 hours spread across 11 sessions. Multiple songs were cut live in the studio in three hours—this happened when members of the Wrecking Crew were brought in because the boys in Love were such a mess they couldn’t play. They got their act together and played on subsequent sessions. Strings and horns were overdubbed at Sunset Sound in six hours, the entire album mixed in two days on the Sound Techniques console in Sunset Sound’s Studio 2.

Here’s the entire album.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHIX5OHxFh7ElIuW_QrCP7dcNPLlj6of2&si=W0Hch-7ZlFH-KQYW

For all of its musical complexity, Forever Changes is a simple recording. A superb recording. I’ve been a fan of Bruce Botnick since I first heard this album in college. Repeatedly. I had it on one side of a cassette, and Spirit’s Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus on the other. I listened to both sides of that damn cassette almost every day for two years. I know every note on it.

When I started writing New Monday, Forever Changes was one of the records I wanted to dig into, so I started researching it. What was elusive was the mixing of it. Where was it mixed? On what console? I searched and searched and finally turned up the name Sound Techniques.

What the heck was a Sound Techniques? I’d never heard the name.

Sound Techniques in Los Angeles

What I discovered was on the mind-blowing side of things. This console, that was all but forgotten in the industry, had an inordinate number of iconic albums either recorded or mixed on it. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Mott the Hoople, Lou Reed, Genesis and on and on and on. I eventually found a video that explained the history, and I discovered that Sound Techniques was resurrected by an American engineer, Danny White, and was making consoles and equipment again.

This week, here’s a post on Sound Techniques in Los Angeles.

And here is last week’s article on Sound Techniques’ beginnings in London.

Tinnitus

Ah, the bane of my existence... and I know some of you suffer from it as well.

Tchad Blake has had tinnitus since he was a kid shooting guns in the desert near his house. Yet he’s gone on to become, well, TCHAD BLAKE. This video is on mixing with tinnitus, featuring Tchad and some of the staff from Tinnitus Quest. This is a great conversation, full of insights and information, and Tchad is always inspiring and creative, even when he’s talking about bone conduction and whatnot.

That’s it for this Monday. I hope you get to spend some time in the studio this week!

Warm regards,

Luke

New Monday is a weekly newsletter I write for Korneff Audio. It’s different every week. Sometimes technical. Sometimes historical. Sometimes hysterical. Always musical.

Korneff Audio

My friend Natalie is from Michigan. Huntin’ country Michigan. Years ago, she went to a wake. The guest of honor had the top of his head knocked off by a low branch—he was standing up in the back of a pickup truck rumbling through the forest a huntin’. It was open casket—a ballsy decision considering they stapled the top of his head back on and you could see the staples. And he was dressed in pajamas that had deer frolicking on them. Dearly departed. His wife was crying. The kids were crying, and most of the rest of the people at the wake were snickering and going outside to laugh. Natalie said it was one of the funniest things she’s ever seen.

Have you been to the opera and there’s an aria sung with passione, but in Italian and you’ve no idea what the rukus is about, and you’re hot and your ass is asleep from sitting, and at the intermission you’re going to hit the bar. Never mind that her lover died and she’s going to kill herself.

That’s the preamble, and here’s almost the point:

There is talk these days of Ai making art. But only humans can make art, and somehow, humans know human art. We can feel it. Surely all the pain of life finds its way into the work, Ai can’t do that. Ai will never replace humans as artists, because only humans can create art with emotion, and only humans can get that across to other humans. Art is a transmission of the soul of a human. We feel each other through art. Try that, unfeeling machine!

It’s a bunch of horse shit. Humans aren’t capable of transmitting emotions. We laughed at Greg or Billy—he didn’t get his upset and pain across to us. Nor did staple head’s wife and kids, nor did the soprano in the opera. Because emotions don’t transmit.

Emotions are evoked. They’re brought up within us. They’re a response to something, our personal response. They’re influenced by environment and people, and experiences, but what we get is what we find in ourselves, not what is handed to us.

A couple might get teary-eyed when they hear their wedding song, but if I don’t like the song, then it sucks. And there’s a good chance the writer of it wasn’t thinking about love and pouring his life into it. More likely, he was thinking, “I need a bridge here.”

It’s like we either have a receptor site for it or we don’t. Someone could paint their little heart out, but if I think it’s a dumb painting then it’s a dumb painting.

Before you write me off at some sort of unfeeling idiot. I want you to know I am one of the most emotionally expressive men you’ll ever meet. I’m a weepy empath. I get emotional over everything. This is what a widdy woo I am: I cried at the end of Terminator 2, when Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s character said “I won’t be back,” just before he melted, I cried. The girl with me stared in astonishment. All I could say through my tears was, “It’s sad. He won’t be back.” I’m sure she was thinking something like, “You’ll be no help if we’re attacked by muggers outside the theater in Bayside.” I think I’d be very helpful. I’m brave enough to cry in public. What’s thropwing yourself in front of a mugger compared to that. And I have some combat moves. I just saw Terminator 2.

I see blues guitarists making hysterical guitar player faces. I have no idea what they’re feeling. I’m more likely thinking, “How can you be so into that? It;s just a G#. I used to have a receptor site for it, back when I was playing blues and making faces, but not anymore. But I do cry because of music all the time.

So what does this all mean for AI involvement in art?

It means that AI art can have an impact on people because people feel. It’s got little to do with what we make, and all to do with how we’re built. The experiences we’ve had. The things we like. Our values. The nonsense we believe and tell ourselves. Heck, people love and cry about Donald Trump, if they have a Donald Trump receptor site. Compared to that, being moved by an AI image of a beautiful girl with statistically perfect tits is a piece of cake. There’s AI porn! Do you really think human beings stand a chance? We can convince ourselves a robot finds us sexy. Of course we’re moved by shitty Ai images, shitty Ai songs, shitty Ai writing. We’re moved because we feel. Art just gives us an excuse.

I don’t write this as a fan or supporter of AI involvement in human creative activities. I think it all sucks. I’ve generated tons of AI images. I’ve worked with AI music. I use AI for programming. I understand how generative AI works. I wish it would go away. It won’t. We are stuck with it.

Whether you choose to use generative Ai in your creative work is entirely up to you. Your work will speak to the people to whom it speaks, whether you struggle to paint your dead dog or prompt some sort of fantasy image into existence. For many of us in the arts, if we know it’s AI we’re not going to bother with it this point in time. It’s not anything personal. Maybe that is the problem? Anyhow, it all could change.

I don’t offer any solutions. I’m not even sure it’s a problem. I don’t like it. I got into the arts to learn how to do things and improve myself, and to construct a world in which I feel valued and safe, and to help other people build their own creative worlds where they feel valued and safe. Imagining things is the easy part—anyone can imagine things. It is the experience of bringing it into existence that changes you.

I know some of you will disagree. Feel free to comment. I’ll tear through your arguments like Arnold Schwarzenegger through a steroid shipment, but what a delight it is to write my own words to another human, and read their words back.