2024-12-20

We Were Here

EP

This EP was originally going to be called "Losing People," and it's pretty heavy. We Were Here is a bit of a journey through grief, from the initial spark of connection to the final, and somewhat hopeful, acceptance of its end. Each song is like a chapter in a book I feel like I'm only now finally closing. I recorded most of it over 2024, but Passing Through is actually quite a bit older than that. It was originally a rock song from my Acropolis Blues days, and sounded a lot more Billy Joel than... Well, JC G.. Drifting is the first song I wrote in 2024, I was trying to find myself both musically and personally so it's pretty different from everything I used to make. I still am trying to find myself, but I'm a bit clearer everyday.

I didn't even start writing these songs with the intention of making an EP, a lot of the lyrics and little musical ideas are stuff I've collected over the years. Inspired by quiet moments, late night walks, old photos, that kind of thing. When I wrote Drifting that's when I realized, hey, maybe there's more to say about this. Maybe I could explore the idea of friendships, relationships, and why they fray and how to deal with that. I wrote this EP to make peace with the past, let go of the connections that somehow stay with me even after the people have long gone. It's grief, yes, but it's also gratitude. The people these songs are about were very important to me, and the memories I made with them are something I'll hold forever, even if they weren't meant to stay.

Single Art

About AI

Just to be 100% clear, I did make use of AI in the production of this EP, specifically for Traces of You, The River Styx, and Photograph since Passing Through/Drifting are fairly old compared to them. I used Suno to fill in some musical ideas and get drafts started, and much of the art is Midjourney over hundreds of revisions and editing. I also want to be clear, though, that the final music has absolutely no AI "work" in it. I may have "stolen" ideas from the AI but, let's be real, that wasn't the AI's to own to begin with and at some point you're just using the AI like a weirdly productive search engine. For the art, though, I definitely don't feel like I added "enough" to that. Art isn't really my forte, and I think I'm gonna go back to taking photography and editing it like I used to.

Now, I don't know how to feel about AI in music, but I don't think I'll use it very much again. Not because I think "AI has no place in art," but more because the manner in which I used it - i.e. use it for drafts, recreate, and then build on that - lost something. "Soul" maybe. Some intangible something that is there when you use an existing song as a first draft, or make your own terrible first draft, but isn't there when the AI makes it for you. Mind you, the songs turned out pretty different structurally and musically from the AI beginnings, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the final versions felt weirdly off. Not wrong, per se, just unearned. I think I put too much creative energy into regenerating and revising the AI draft, that by the time it was my turn, I was already a little exhausted. Not to mention that the process of "curating" the AI drafts locks you into certain decisions that I'm normally free from. You get used to hearing the song in a certain way and hearing it differently doesn't quite work as well. It's funny, I've always wished to alleviate that because the hardest thing is always staring at a blank canvas and saying "hey, art now!" But I think you need to suffer a little at the beginning.