New Adventures With Old(er) Tools

Just Passing By, and enjoying the ride

I have a new song brewing, called Just Passing By. Started yesterday morning on a walk, when indeed I did pass some young kids on bikes. We waved and said hello, and it was so nice to see an activity like that, unchanged by the years, enjoyed by young’uns.

Tools, tools, machines, devices. I’m… Still discovering what I can do with digital multi-track recording, editing, mixing and mastering. Each such powerful realms, and with each record project I learn more, face and overcome different challenges, discover. I still eschew certain features, most notably auto-tune. To each their own, but I just don’t like it. As I’ve bleated here before, I do like the sound of my own voice. Crushing the human quirks of it out and smoothing it into a generic paste does not appeal to me. I’m hanging on to the things that make us human, that indicate we are alive, and now, this biblical flood of Ai-generated slop is swamping the internet boats and we will have a harder time knowing what is real or not as the fake stuff gets “better.”

I oppose it, Petunia. I do not like it, Sam I Am. And, well, I was glad to see these kids enjoying a nice analog bike ride, with no one helicoptering over them and video-recording it all. I suppose this recurring theme of nostalgia is staying with me for a while. I guess I think some things (SOME! things) were simply better before.

I first really embraced this nostalgic streak in my song, 1983, where the nostalgia is blatant, celebratory, and loud. “Orwell said there might be trouble,” I observed, as I committed to happily avoid the following year forever.

Meanwhile, in 2026, it’s dawn on a Sunday and the earth doth spin.

Song to follow, cosmic forces willing,

Din I Am