In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become commonplace. So much so that we see it creeping into our creative worlds. Not just in memes and so-called works of art. It has crept into our viewing, listening, and reading pleasures, and our artistic ventures.
As you all know, I do radio because I cannot sing (very well) or play an instrument (no rhythm whatsoever). I cannot speak directly to the potential impact that AI has on the music industry, especially for our independent and smaller artists that we find in the Pagan community. However, I do run across gigabytes of music that is obviously AI-generated, and quite a bit of it takes a trained ear to catch that it wasn’t done by an actual person. Whether we are talking vocals or instrumentals, lyric creation or the sound itself, I see AI all over the place.
We should clarify that what we see being used by your average person as AI is not true AI. It is artificial intelligence assistance. It is limited and often confined to certain guidelines and rules as to what it can do. That doesn’t mean it isn’t used banefully by some, just that it does have limits. We aren’t talking Data from Star Trek with his independent positronic brain. We’re talking Isaac Asimov’s rules of robotics – confined to actions that do not harm humans, whatever that means today.
Baneful AI Music
Does this mean AI-generated music is bad? Not in and of itself, no. But it can do some harm to the artists who are trying to make a living off their music. Who is going to seek out a Pagan recording artist when they can just log into MediAI or Suno and generate what they think meets their needs or browse through YouTube to find something that sounds good and not even care if it was done by a real person or AI?
I’d like to hope that all of our Pagan community is going out there and supporting our Mama Ginas and Damh the Bards, buying albums from Spiral Rhythm and Tuatha Dea, attending house concerts and bigger venues to hear and see Sharon Knight and Alexander James Adams perform. But I am a realistic guy in the mid-2020s. We are poor folx; so are our musicians and artists. We do what we can to support them and save a dime at the same time.
Honest and full disclosure… Many of these wonderful musicians have been kind enough to send me digital and sometimes physical copies of their music. I thank them every time I listen or share the music on my radio shows. I do buy CDs and downloads on a regular basis, purchase merch at concerts and other opportunities. But the generous hearts of our musical community are the main reason I have been able to do my radio shows for 17 years.
That has led some to go to AI generators to get music they aren’t finding in their communities or online. Not everyone in the Pagan world knows about Pagan Song and the awesome resource that it is. (Insert shameless encouragement for you, the reader, to share the blog on your socials.) Thanks to TikTok, Facebook, Skylight, and other social media platforms, we can scroll through dozens, if not hundreds, of music videos and find something new – sometimes by our friends in the musical world. Far more often than even I would like to admit, I run across AI-generated videos where the music is also generated. Some of it is pretty good, I must say. And some of it is downright awful.
I don’t want to ridicule those who try to create something for their own personal use, whether it sounds good to me or not. I do want to remind people that “good” AI generation does take talent and skill. While it might not be the same kind of talent or skill that it takes to make music and sing on stage or record a studio album, it is still talent and skill. (And many would argue that it is not talent…)
Magical AI
My high priestess and other-mother has begun creating AI music for personal use and to share during the Sabbat ritual soundtracks she helps put together for The Magic Mess. When asked about why, she said that it is because she can’t always find that perfect piece or wants something different for the circle casting/closing or simple feast. When she wants to call on a particular god or goddess that she just can’t find a song for, she has written her own lyrics and manipulated audio available through AI generators like Suno and MediAI.
It’s a fabulous vehicle for the everyday person who has something to share but not the connections or skill to make it come to life in the usual way.
– Lady Rhiannon Dragcruin
My brother uses AI to generate music for his own personal use. Like Rhiannon, he doesn’t profit from it. Like her, he writes his own lyrics or uses lyrics and poetry written by friends. He sets the style, instrument choices, rhythms, and vocal tones and then manipulates the sound until he is satisfied. He uses it in his TikTok.
Lady Rhiannon has made several decent songs that I have used in my ritual soundtracks on the radio. She has created circle castings and closings, god and goddess invocations, feast blessings, and more. I don’t just use them in the soundtracks because she is my priestess. I actually like the music and the lyrics she has created. Again, she writes the lyrics herself. She can sing, but she can’t play instruments well enough to record. She doesn’t have the studio equipment or the instrumental skills like SJ Tucker and Arthur Hinds.
Do I use AI?
That’s a question all of us should ask ourselves. If you use Google or a similar web browser, you are using AI. The algorithms that determine what videos you watch on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, etc are AI. Even that random shuffle of music on your Spotify or the suggested TV shows to watch on Netflix are AI algorithms.
My co-host on Lavender Hill, Jenny Olander, is adamantly opposed to the use of AI. She uses the most basic of web browsers and would prefer to use a flip phone. We’ve come to an agreement for our show. I won’t play an AI-manipulated song without letting her listen to it first. When we were drafting the script for a new show promo, she wrote it herself rather than use one of the versions I sent her that I had written myself and polished using ChatGPT.
One of the visual artists that I have been working with on a logo for Lavender Hill is opposed to using AI, even though she does some of her work on a computer. Another visual artist I call a friend, Ellen Arden Nixon, has been battling computers and AI-generated images for most of her art career – for her, she feels that computers and “bad actors” are literally stealing food off the table.
Personally, I have used AI to polish some of my writing for nonfiction (I did not for this article) and to summarize articles to condense some of what I am going to talk about on a radio show. I’ve even used ChatGPT to make a logo for The Magic Mess.
AI – Wonderful or Wasteful?
Do I think AI assistance is a wonderful thing? No!
AI has loads of issues. Massive wasteful consumption of energy and other resources is increasing costs for the general consumer. We’ve sacrificed individuality and creativity in the workplace with AI.
Don’t get me wrong. AI does have its place in many industries and fields of work. My bill-paying job is a call center for an insurance company (working for the man). We use software and platforms like Salesforce that utilize AI assistance. The bulk of the customer service work is done in real-time with real people on the phones talking with the consumers of our products and services.
As an author, though, I will not use AI to write my books. I feel that those who do are not truly writers and authors. They are using the AI assistant to write the story for them. They feed it a basic idea or plot and let it generate the story for them. Even if they go in and change things, like names or locations, it is not their story. I am well aware that the argument I just gave can be applied to musical composition and visual arts. I would agree there. The lyricist who uses AI assistance to generate the instruments and vocals is more of a valid creator than those who prompt the AI platform with style choices and instruments and a concept of what they want the song to be.
In short, we live in an age where we use AI assistance daily. We use our smartphones and other mobile devices, we use streaming services and social media, we are steeped in AI. Is it good? Not all the time, maybe not even most of the time. Is it bad? Imagine your life today without the use of AI.
AI In Commercial Music
Do I think it should be used to create music for commercial use? Lady Rhiannon said it well in conversation recently: “It is the epitome of the use of wit, word, and will…but it must be used wisely.” I know people who use AI to generate music that they have put up on Spotify to make a profit, most of it is not very good, in my opinion. They have cranked out so many tracks in such a short period of time that they are devoid of soul.
Yet… There are a few out there that at least started using AI for music with good intentions. I think Polk County Pagan Market is one of those. I could tell from the start that they were using an AI assistant like Suno, but that doesn’t mean their intentions weren’t good. They gave a voice to many on social media who might not have been aware of our traditional musicians. I can only hope that it causes listeners to search out more options in Pagan music by going to YouTube or music streaming platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp to find out just how much Pagan music there is out there.
Louis Garou recently posted in a comment thread some of his thoughts on AI music: “We have seen it begin to infect Pagan music. It is soulless garbage produced by people with little talent or ability. They can sell some of it, but are unable to perform. Soulless trash with AI backing tracks is still trash.”
Bandcamp made a recent announcement that seems to have excited many of the Pagan and indie artists that I know.
Like many of the musicians in my world, I am thrilled to see Bandcamp make this bold statement and hope that they continue to stand by it.
A brief Q&A with a queer artist who uses AI
“[Emma] Smith utilizes AI-synthesized vocals as a deliberate artistic choice, viewing technology as a tool to voice the “ghost in the machine” that she felt like before her transition. Delicious Chaos is more than an album; it is a declaration of existence. It is the soundtrack to her evolution—blending Phonk aggression, asylum atmospherics, and high-fashion kink.”
1. Why do you use AI in the creation of your music?
Quite simply: I have the stories and the vision, but I don’t have the physical voice to execute them the way I hear them in my head. I am not a trained vocalist, and AI doesn’t know what it’s like to be a trans woman in Nebraska. But when we combine my lived experience with its technical ability, we create something that couldn’t exist otherwise. It is a symbiotic relationship—I provide the soul and direction, and the AI provides the vehicle to deliver it.
2. Do you feel it is less legitimate to use AI for commercial production of music?
Not at all. “Legitimacy” in art comes from the human intent behind it, not the tool used to make it. A camera is a machine, but we don’t say a photographer is “cheating” because they didn’t paint the portrait by hand. I treat AI as a studio instrument. My album, Delicious Chaos, is a deeply personal project about my transition; the AI is just the instrument I played to tell that story.
3. All things being equal, do you think that AI is a boon or a bane for the modern music industry?
For independent artists like me, it is absolutely a boon. It lowers the barrier to entry. Without these tools, my story would likely remain unheard because I don’t have a million-dollar studio or a team of producers. AI allows creators to bypass the gatekeepers and purely focus on the creation. It lets us naturally create things that used to be impossible.
Host of The Magic Mess and Lavender Hill on KZUM 89.3FM, Lincoln, NE
Photo by Deb Andersen
For more information about Phil, including his collected articles here on Pagan Song, his bio, and links to Phil’s sites on the web, check out Phil’s page here on Pagan Song.
The featured image is an AI-generated image of an android DJ.
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