All music released through me is created by a human being.
The writing, composition, emotional direction, storytelling, production decisions, and artistic intent behind my work come from lived human experience rather than generative AI. AI, whether generative or not, can imitate patterns, but nothing more, and then try to draw a conclusion based on those patterns. But it can’t carry grief, memory, fear, hope, love, exhaustion, sacrifice, or conviction into a piece of music because it can’t understand the emotional weight behind subjects that real people have lived through. These experiences make different things speak to us in different ways, and that influence shapes us and what we create.
Ask yourself if any algorithm in could have invented jazz if what it had to train on was music from decades prior.
For example, my electronic music comes from lived experience. I might seem odd to say, but those were shaped partly by experiences I’ve had, and partly because there’s a dearth of electronic music written for women with higher voices. I grew up on La Bouche and Real McCoy, and I absolutely loved them (still do), but so much was for contraltos. I love contralto voices (Toni Braxton makes me melt), but songs written for their register doesn’t translate well when the singer is an octave higher and sounds brighter. The instrumentation factors in competing tones, and those tones aren’t there when someone like me fills in.
So I combine my actually-lived shenanigans with the kind of electronic songs that work or my voice.
When it comes to “Sisters in the Sky,” parts are emotionally difficult for me to sing because of how close the subject matter is to my heart, including the fact that women who served, worked, and in some cases died in military service were not always afforded dignity or recognition afterward, leaving families and friends to gather money for burials and memorials themselves. Yet when I was a child, and was told to my face by so many people who should’ve been in my corner that something I desperately longed to do was for boys, some of the women that song is about, who are now gone, told me that girls absolutely can fly planes. I struggled to justify the cost, though, until finding out that most people have no idea who the WASP are. To honor the support that I had from them, I immediately started flight lessons and I’m now licensed. The thought of these women going through so much just to get to fly and then being treated how they were…
Can AI connect with subject matter like this? Of course not. It’s not a sentient being with lived experiences.
Because we are living in an era where audiences increasingly want transparency regarding the artistic process, I will share some of my raw project files in The Files to demonstrate aspects of the production and sound-design process. These files will only be openable in Ableton Live, which I use for composition and digital creation, and ProTools, which I use for live recording, like vocals. However, any raw performances, recordings, or material created by collaborators or session musicians will only be shared with their knowledge and consent and full credit to them for their work.
Human creativity is imperfect, vulnerable, and personal, and that’s what makes it special. It’s hard and it takes time, and there are sometimes tears, but that vulnerability is part of what allows art to connect with other human beings in a meaningful way. So you will not find AI here.