Tag: music

Two Perspectives on The Absurd

As I mentioned the other day, I’d been on a bit of a creative tear of late. And if I’ve learned one thing from GRR Martin, it’s that you’d better strike while the iron is at least warm, because you have absolutely no idea when life, the universe, and everything is going to pull the plug on your inspirational spark.

So, I wrote and recorded seven new songs, and added three remixes, in a style that can be reasonably termed Neo-Gothwave and characterized as if The Cure had actually read Albert Camus and hired a female singer. There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes, which includes the possibility that an actual band will record everything organically, but for now, suffice it to say that for those who are interested in the musical side, there is a new music video available for viewing at AI Central as well as a philosophical critique of the underlying Absurdist philosophy available for reading at Veriphysics.

I wouldn’t think there would be much in the way of crossover, but at least there is a little something for everyone.

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Sorry, Not Sorry

Posting has been light the last two days, for which I apologize, sort of. Although I would absolutely do it again, so I suppose I’m not actually sorry. Basically, three things are going on:

  1. We had a serious animal emergency yesterday. Fortunately, it survived and is doing much better now. Our neighbors are fantastic and are very much appreciated.
  2. I’ve had very, very little sleep for the last days because I’ve written and produced eight songs of a 10-song album over the last three days. I’ll probably finish the other two before the end of the weekend. It’s neither Psykosonik nor Soulsigma, it’s a neo-gothwave approach that I was contemplating which turned out to work much, much better than I’d ever imagined. You can hear one of the songs here and I’ll post a video of another one called The Myth on UATV and AI Central on Saturday. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that you absolutely have to roll with it when the inspiration hits.
  3. I have to finish The Platinum Tribe by Friday.

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A Little Church Music

I usually try to produce a weekly video for AI Central on Saturday, but for various budgetary reasons I wasn’t planning to do one this week. However, a few things came together at the right time, in the right way, so if you’d like to check out a video for a new mix of Book of Ephesians, you can do so at AI Central, as well as learn about the tools and technical details involved.

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A Reminder

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Because sometimes even Christians need to be reminded that everywhere throughout this fallen world of clowns, demons, spirits, and cannibals, Jesus Christ is still King. And we’re told that the power of music can drive the demons away.

When you’re feeling oppressed, or depressed, or afraid, do three things.

  1. Pray.
  2. Read your Bible.
  3. Crank those two new mixes.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Byron Project and Byronics

So the Byron AI project is proceeding apace. Due to UATV going down, I was unable to make the planned announcement, but thanks to the devs it’s back up again and so I will make it on the Darkstream Monday night. Thanks to the 86/88 backers so far; we’ve tripled our initial objective and there are still five Custom Novel slots left.

And speaking of George Gordon his own bad self, I finished a mix and a music video for a song which my late co-lyricist in Soulsigma wrote as a short poem called THERE BE NONE OF BEAUTY’S DAUGHTERS, and which I dubbed PERFECTION. If you’d like to see the video and learn a little more about the technology behind it, you can do so at AI Central. I think you will be able to see the steady progression from the first attempt at a video to this one; I’ll put them up on UATV soon.

Don’t skip reading the poem at the top of the post; it’s excellent, it’s not very long, and it will add depth to your appreciation for both the song and the video.

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The Push to Ban AI

There was a discussion yesterday on SG about the RIAA’s new campaign to require the labeling of music in which the recordings are provided by AI, but not when the lyrics or composition are provided by AI. This is why I am against the labeling, because I believe that as with the registration of guns, it is a first step toward attempting to ban, or in this case, deplatform it. More about that at AI Central, as well as a new mix of ONCE THERE WAS SORROW in which I discovered that country rock with a double-lick drum works surprisingly well.

And in passing, I think it’s worth addressing the posturing of those who insist they are very special members of the 3 percent who can reliably distinguish between AI music and organic music, which I suspect has a lot more to do with the fact that since they avoid listening to it, they have no idea how much it has changed over the last 18 months, or realize that one cannot judge the technology by a single application of it; as much as Suno’s voices have improved, it has never been the AI system with the best vocals as its popularity stems from its compositional capabilities, not the vocals.

Soundwaves are soundwaves. They’re not magic infused with bits of the human soul. The “too perfect” problem has been solved before, multiple times, by audio engineers. It will be solved again. It is safe to assume that within 36 months, and probably within 18, even audio engineers will no longer be able to distinguish between human and AI vocals.

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The Only Skull CD

A limited number of THE ONLY SKULL CDs are now available exclusively at NDM Express. 100 units total were made, with 25 reserved for the backers. If you were a Soulsigma backer at any level, you do not need to buy one, just contact NDM and send them your current shipping address, or if you are buying a book from them, make sure you let them know you were a backer and ask them to include your CD with the shipment. They are scheduled to arrive at the warehouse the week of July 13.

SOULSIGMA represents the current cutting edge of music and technology, with the combination of man and machine intelligence. All twelve songs are entirely produced with AI music technology, then edited with digital audio tools and mastered by a professional audio engineer to produce a very high-quality alternative rock sound that is original without feeling lifeless or uninspired.

The twelve songs on the album are:

3:35 RIDE AND DIE
4:17 THE ONLY SKULL
5:03 ANGEL IN FLIGHT
4:16 SEASONS
3:58 NEPTUNE GRIEVES
3:28 MY SECRET SIN
3:27 THE SHINING WIRE
3:15 THE WORD DESCENDED
5:29 ONCE THERE WAS SORROW
3:53 THE RIDE NEVER ENDS
4:04 A MERCILESS NIGHT
4:09 GIRLS LOVE GUITARS

All twelve songs were written by Vox Day, with the exception of The Only Skull and Once There Was Sorrow, which were co-written with George Gordon Byron.

Thanks to the manufacturer, you can check out a very cool 3D display of the complete packaging, including the disc art.

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On the Hook

Now that developers and creatives are sufficiently accustomed to using AI, the AI companies are reeling them in with monetization that is considerably more expensive than it was. AI Central has the details:

At one cent per credit, billing accrues on input, output, and cached tokens at the published per-model API rate. On Copilot Pro, the included 1,500 monthly credits carry a face value of $15 against a $10 plan price. On Pro+, 7,000 credits worth $70 accompany a $39 subscription. Code completions and Next Edit Suggestions draw no credits under any paid plan, and the new system eliminates the cheaper-model fallback that users with exhausted PRU credits could previously invoke.

On the first day of the new billing period, one Pro+ developer wrote in GitHub’s community forum that two hours of work had consumed 8% of a monthly 7,000-credit allocation, projecting full depletion in under two days. A separate developer reported that a single request to a large project had cost more than $6, writing in the same forum that such costs made reliable budgeting impossible for individual developers. On Reddit, a user reported that a single Claude 4.8 session had consumed 1,180 credits, 16% of a monthly Pro+ allowance, while returning suggestions described as mediocre and leaving the underlying problem unsolved.

On Copilot’s published model menu, GPT-5.5 output tokens cost 24 times more than GPT-5.4 nano output tokens, turning model selection into a direct billing variable. A modeled task representing heavy agentic iteration, defined as 250,000 input tokens and 20,000 output tokens, runs to 185 credits on GPT-5.5 and 27.75 on MAI-Code-1-Flash, a 6.7-fold cost gap for the same work.

This is a bit ironic, especially for writers, since the last FOUR Claude models have all been observably worse at writing fiction than version 4.5, which is no longer available. Opus 4.6 is still usable, but who knows how much longer access to it will be permitted? Fortunately, the newer models can still handle translations and non-fiction, albeit in a very bland, uniform style in the case of the latter.

Speaking of AI Central, this weekend I put up a post featuring not one, but two music videos, one an updated version of IF YOU HAD A TIME MACHINE, the other a work-in-progress of CHIBA CITY BLUES. Quality-wise, the video technology is about 18 months behind the audio quality, but it’s coming along quickly.

Whether it will remain readily affordable, of course, is an entirely different question.

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