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Two music know-it-alls talk about making music in a world that already has too much music in it. This ex-husband-and-wife pair spout knowledge on all things music, including computational creativity, music production, human creativity, composition, songwriting, music business, music education, music-making culture, and machine learning/AI topics.
16 Episodes
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Greg and Alison return to detonate the incendiary claim that ended Part 1: Can you make art without selling your soul to capitalism? They dissect the music industry’s machinery, Spotify’s frictionless decay, and the eerie rise of AI-generated content while revealing how these forces drain creativity and trap artists. But hope sparks in the Fediverse: Alison shares her dive into Mastodon’s nerd-utopia, where community-run festivals like the Radio Free Fedi Fest and raw hardware synths f...
Greg and Alison dive headfirst into the toxic grip of big tech on creativity and mental autonomy. Sharing raw personal journeys from Alison’s early Facebook rebellion to Greg’s radical "de-Googling" in the mountains of New Hampshire, they dissect how algorithms poison focus, erode privacy, and stifle artistic expression. Your fearless hosts then expose the hidden cost of "engagement": stolen attention spans, fractured communities, and a world where making art feels impossible. With fie...
Feeling overwhelmed by endless gear options and digital distractions? In this episode Alison & Greg dissect how modern life impacts musical creativity. They tackle the seductive "gear honeymoon" – is it real inspiration or just a temporary high? - and explore the critical difference between technologies that free your mind versus those that try to do your thinking for you. How can musicians cultivate a unique artistic voice when consumerism and algorithmic content constantly vie for atten...
Coming at ya with a show about live performance: the gear we use, how we think about it, and what we're planning for the future. Covered topics include Alison's live Bitwig and/or Ableton setup using the Ableton Push 3 and various mixers, Greg's spatial audio work, their 2023 live setup for Blix Byrd, and...Justin Bieber?!? Doctor Body is Alison & Greg's experimental electronic duo. PatternSonix is Alison & Greg's niche consulting firm focusing on the intersection between sound and A...
Greg and Alison are back...to talk about themselves! In this episode, they'll tell you about how they met, why they're not still married, and what things are like today. Don't worry, you'll hear plenty of music talk along the way. Doctor Body is Alison & Greg's experimental electronic duo. PatternSonix is Alison & Greg's niche consulting firm focusing on the intersection between sound and AI. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or check us out at toomuchmusicpodc...
Alison & Greg talk about how we hear, understand, and define the identity of a piece of music. After a bit of a dive into the great music thinkers of the 20th and 21st century and their work on how our minds hear and process music, they jump into the specifics of what musical parameters go into identity, and how we can define and codify those parameters so that they're available to an AI system. Doctor Body is Alison & Greg's experimental electronic duo. PatternSonix is Alison & ...
Today we take a look back at the music technology underpinning a startup co-founded by our hosts in the early 2010s. With the motto "Use Music to Find Music" , Clio Music was perhaps the first commercially available search engine to speak the language of music and has been a part of TiVo since 2012. Listen in as our intrepid hosts share insights from that experience as well as ways they see this technology playing an important role in the future of music AI. Subscribe on your favorite...
Where does music live? Is it the sound in the room? Is it in your brain? Or maybe it lives on paper? In order to repeat it, we need to create systems to write it down, and ultimately represent music as information or data. But what gets lost when we do this? Writing music down seems straightforward enough. But as we’ll see, the process of reducing the rich experience of music to dots on paper isn’t as simple as jotting down a grocery list or even writing down your innermost thoughts about la...
The first sign that the Wilder marriage might be in trouble happened before the wedding: it was a knock-down, drag-out fight about whether there's a fundamental difference between music in the European art music tradition and music in the American blues tradition. (We can all agree that this is a severely nerdy topic to fight about.) Eventually, after years of testy conversation, Alison conceded on this one -- Greg and Alison now agree, they're different. But how? This two (maybe thr...
The first sign that the Wilder marriage might be in trouble happened before the wedding: it was a knock-down, drag-out fight about whether there's a fundamental difference between music in the European art music tradition and music in the American blues tradition. (We can all agree that this is a severely nerdy topic to fight about.) Eventually, after years of testy conversation, Alison conceded on this one -- Greg and Alison now agree, they're different. But how? This two (maybe three?!)-...
Since Alison and Greg are a formerly-married couple, they know each other's strengths and weaknesses. In this two-part series, they're using that knowledge for good, and creating challenges tailor-made to help the other person become a better musician -- and who knows, maybe a better person along the way! This episode covers Greg's challenge to Alison: to craft a drum sound for her upcoming Blix Byrd album by testing out a few different sounds. This is opposed to her usual gut-instinct way o...
Since Alison and Greg are a formerly married couple, they know each other's strengths and weaknesses. In this two-part series, they're using that knowledge for good, and creating challenges tailor-made to help the other person become a better musician -- and who knows, maybe a better person along the way! This episode covers Alison's challenge to Greg: to create a piece of music without using his composer craftiness. He's not allowed to think about what he's going to make, but has to abandon...
It's official: the internet has been a game-changer for music. Alison and Greg dive into how music is and isn't valuable today, both monetarily and culturally. As usual, their conversation is far-reaching. They talk about the usual suspects: Spotify, major labels, Napster, machine learning algorithms, and music for media. Of course, it doesn't stop there. You'll also hear about the desensitization of listeners by reality TV danger music, the Faustian deal we make as musicians, the sheer bril...
Greg and Alison want to tell you why you should (or shouldn't) go to music school. In this episode, they explore what it's like to take a traditional path through music school, including how music school might be beneficial or detrimental depending on your own musical goals. It's a magical mystery tour through a diverse set of of topics, including the differences between composers and songwriters, learning how to music on YouTube, Greg's mentor George Rochberg, the creative process in ...
In this episode, our fearless hosts trace the evolution of digital audio tools from these academic, computationally intensive origins—where concepts like granular synthesis were offline processes—to the real-time, interactive software common today. They delve into the technical and philosophical differences between operating systems, characterizing macOS as a stable but closed "walled garden" and Linux as a powerful, open, but more demanding environment, particularly concerning the challenge ...
This episode primarily explores the hosts' deliberate transition towards hardware-centric music creation methodologies, examining the motivations and practicalities of minimizing reliance on digital audio workstations. Key topics include the distinct studio setups of both hosts, one embracing an entirely out-of-the-box recording paradigm and the other integrating analog mixing with DAW-based capture, both aiming to circumvent the creative impediments often associated with computer-based produ...
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