Here are some of my heroes.  Masters of their field.  Their every move isn’t dictated by society.  They don’t compromise the unique, meager, beautiful flame that burns and eventually goes out in all of us.

- Rob Crow

- Jim Woodring

- Norm MacDonald

- Penn Jillette

- Jonathan Blow

- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

- Don Geronimo

- Cesar Milan

- Frank Black

- this fuckin guy

This is a chord progression I’ve played for years that hits every major and minor triad in the 12-tone scale.  I developed it in an attempt to use every chord on the map in a single progression but make it sound somewhat singable or listenable. Most 12-tone music has that hostile, random, avant-garde sound. That seven people in the world like.

I’m sure this has been discovered already at some point.  The progression starts on C minor (which is just arbitrary) goes up a minor third to Eb major, then up a minor third to G minor, up to Bb major, and so on.  It never ends, but doesn’t sound contrived and could possibly be used for some cool melodies.  I’ve also found lots of cool permutations which I will hopefully post soon if I don’t die or something.

(By the way, why the fuck doesn’t WordPress have some kind of easy mp3 uploader/player?  It does, but all that does is make a URL link to the mp3 file ghetto 2001 style.  Really?  In 2013?  So I either have to go to soundcloud, which has limited space unless I pay (which I can’t because I’m fucking broke) and upload, and copy code back here, or I have to upload to the server, use this third party plugin, find the url, paste it into my post with this annoying bit of code, check it, edit it when it doesn’t work right….  it makes blog posts four times the chore.  Anyone have another solution?)

Cruise Elroy, my new rock band, will be playing another show!  THIS MONDAY EVENING, we’re at the Cake Shop over on Ludlow in New York.  The doors open at eight, and we’re playing first.  We’ve been getting excited about our live show lately and I think I’m starting to get into playing shows again.  It’s become fun for us!  We’ll be in battle mode and playing new jambs…..

The coolest part is, we’re playing with some awesome bands all the way from Sweden.  Sweden has an exciting music scene right now and everyone we’ve met from said scene seems incredibly sweet and passionate.  The venue will be packed with music folks, as it’s part of NMS, New Music Seminar, which is New York’s (oldest?) music festival.

Here’s the event website: check it out here.  It’s advertised as Chris Merritt but I think it’s because I’m so damn famous.  Why are you laughing?  (I’m told they will change it).

Come and party with Cruise Elroy and enjoy Cake Shop’s excellent selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages!

*disclaimer: the beautiful blonde babe might turn out to be me.  Cruise Elroy is not responsible for any sexual frustration.

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.

For only when love and need are one And work is play for mortal stakes
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and for future’s sake.

- Robert Frost

My friend Federico Pistono is smart.  Don’t miss his new book, Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That’s OK.  It’s even on his site for free, because you know, he’s from the future and stuff.

Anyway, I just wrote him a longer-than-is-probably-reasonable email and I thought I would share it with you.  It’s about music and artificial intelligence.

“….I’ve been DYING to discuss something with you.  DYING.

Artificial Intelligence and music.  I had a profound realization.

So….. Kurzweil and others, they tend to talk about music as if it’s already being done by automation and AI as if it’s just about to be done by automation.  I think both of these concepts are wrong, and my reasoning sprouted from a lifetime of thinking about music.

I remember reading Spiritual Machines as a 15-year-old kid.  I just lucked out – I loved this album called Spiritual Machines by Our Lady Peace… and I saw a book by the same title in the school library and picked it up.  It changed the course of my intellect forever.  But I recalled Kurzweil saying that computers were making music, that they were already writing pieces indistinguishable from great classical composers, problem solved, moving on.

But he is clearly a little off in my opinion.  Actually, shoot, take for example Our Lady Peace, and their album Spiritual Machines, what better example. This song from Spiritual Machines, for example…..  what makes that a cool song? (listening now, I’m not as impressed as 15-year-old Chris… but, you know, it’s still very cool) One thing that springs to mind (and influenced my songwriting actually) was the QUIET chorus.  This requires the use of irony…. a knowledge of the history of music, general pop song paradigms (the chorus is LOUDER), and a decision to do the exact OPPOSITE for ironic and emotional effect.  The melody is particularly sad and beautiful…. I LOVE the perfectly timed imperfections in the vocals in the second chorus…. but this goes hand-in-hand with the ironic element of the quiet chorus and the lyrical content.  Although, lyrics were never this band’s THING…. they focused on clever melodies and cool arrangements and great rock drumming… but the melody in this chorus…. it’s so rare and gorgeous for so many complex reasons…. it would be hard to describe, but it basically presents one melodic idea (which has elements of a contrasting FLIPPANCY and PASSION, both opposites, embedded in the melody) and then it repeats it within a new harmonic context as the chords change.  It has a typical IV – I – minor vi – V progression, but uses this sweet and emotional progression in a very honest and brave way.  The melody in the first half of the section is is awesome, but then the chord change emphasizes the melody, puts it in a new harmonic context, a minor context, a new emotional light, and drives it deeper into your heart.  The song presents a melody and shows it to you from different angles, and the song brilliantly follows the Our Lady Piece “sound”… a set of laws that describe their entire, mostly cohesive musical universe.

And that’s in 7 seconds of music.  And I could talk about the melody for ten more pages if I had all afternoon.  Was the lead singer thinking these things when he wrote the track?  
Consciously… maybe some of it.  Maybe not. But these are all elements that DO go into great music, elements of irony, humor, grief, mathematical intellect, cleverness, playfulness, sexiness, flippancy, cultural relevance, genre context…. these things all go into every piece I write to varying degrees, and the list could go on for paragraphs, but all of this happens naturally inside a good songwriter when he or she writes.

My point is this.  Until you have full artificial intelligence, you will NOT have a great composer robot. I’m sorry.  It just won’t happen.

Can automation write shit music?  Certainly!  I work in advertising, and we pump out shit music all day long. (Exaggerating a little, bear with me.)Computers could DEFINITELY write ad music.  It follows a formula, it’s collectivism-inspired, socially conscious, with an emphasis on cultural fads and popular sounds (which usually die out), it says nothing.  In fact, I have ideas about creating software for Ad firms that would allow them to generate music themselves for their projects…. it would be easy.

You could sit people in a room and play them a piece written by a computer and a piece written by Beethoven and they will choose the wrong answers.  That’s because people are idiots, to put it bluntly.  Give them a year with that piece.  See which piece is still around in 100 years. Also, just playing patters and chords algorithmically could produce awesome results sometimes…. music is inherently cool, and ear candy.  Randomness makes cool music very often…. but you still need a creative mind to sort through the mostly mediocre, bland, arbitrary stuff.  I have happy accidents all the time.  But to put value and creative context to those random things requires….. something else.  Something automation does not have, and artificial intelligence, when it is here, will.

I know these points have exceptions, but stay with me.

I’m frustrated that it’s not obvious to Kurzweil.  You can automate great music writing, but it would require a complete artificially intelligent being.  Music, despite it’s discreet and mathematical nature, requires every high-functioning element of intelligent thought and energy to do be done greatly.

I often have issues with certain kinds of music.  People focus on the technical, the predictable, the mathematical.  For example.  Miles Davis?  Creative genius.  Created genres.  Explored musical realms so complex and beautiful and intense that sometimes his music brings me to tears and leaves helpless, grieving and euphoric.  But I minored in jazz piano at school.  What about all the jazz nuts who spend hours in the practice room learning Miles’ lines and getting faster and better at them?  They think that’s valid music.  It’s easy to automate now….. programs can import all of Davis’ solos and it can automate “improvised” solos over chord progressions.  And this is how much of modern jazz is played.  Which is why it’s fucking boring.  It’s all about the skill, relearning things, perfecting a technical model that has already been done better.  It might be music…. but it’s not the kind of music I’m interested in.

My friend is writing a book on his pop song algorithm.  He’s figured out how to create the most probable pop hit down to the nanosecond of the intro.

Is this music?  It might be some kind of music…. but not the music I’m interested in.  In fact, it repulses me.

Pop songs.  Songs by committee   Advertising music.  Most jazz solos.  Most classical music.  Most rock music.  It’s all…… arbitrary.

This is different.

This is different.

This is different.

Which leads me to my second point.  What is intelligence?  I know this is a tired question right now, but really.  What the fuck is it?

I think I’m starting to understand.  An intelligent being is a being who is able to make explanations.

It’s CLOSE to Kurzweil’s pattern-based model.  But he doesn’t quite have it.  I think it involves explanations.  Forming a series of explanations is man’s only advantage.  It’s not processing power, as Kurzweil tends to assume.  If this were true, evolution would have easily solved the problem.  It took a looooong time…. brains have been around for quite a while, and it’s not about pure processing power, size, what have you.  There’s something uniquely human.  We make explanations.  We create casual explanations (probably related to pattern finding, but deeper).  Then we manipulate the explanations of the world to see what would happen (in our prefrontal cortex probably) if those explanations were different.  We create laws of physics in our heads and fuck with them.

Explanation finding is key.

Hence, I was thinking about AI.  We have this image that androids will be ubiquitous, cold, calculating machines.  I think true AI will have to grow and learn and create it’s own explanations.  I predict that AI will be emotional…. MORE emotional maybe…. than humans.  It will be creative and be interested in art, in fact, when it becomes advanced, we probably won’t even understand it, like a caveman hearing Stravinsky.  I predict that they will each be unique and varied.  This is because the explanations they create are different, as with humans.  We’re all sooooooo different  have you noticed?  Humans start with a clean slate.  Little is pre programmed.  Nature hit on a gold mine with the concept of creating an organ that can quantify information and create causal, explanatory systems to embody and manipulate the universe.

I think we WILL create AI.  And I think AI WILL create music.  But it ain’t as close as some people tend to assume.  I PROMISE.  Automation is not creative intelligence.  There is one more profound mystery to be solved there, and I think that when it is found, it will change everything forever.

What do you think?”

Well, the Cruise Elroy record is done.  Seriously.  Want to hear some of it?

I have some terrible news.  It won’t be released for at least 5 months.

AHHHH!!! WAIT!!  COME BACK!!!!

I know, I know, I’m very sorry.  You’ve all been so patient.  But check it out!! Here’s the good news…. new music WILL be released, in the next week or two, and lots of it.  We’re talking, check back often for EP releases, singles, b-sides, demos, released leading up to the album release…. and both groups have some INCREDIBLE singles and b-sides.  In fact, Future Caveman has almost 6 at this point, and Cruise has plenty as well.  Jake has also been busy remixing some of the Chris Merritt stuff, and it’s sounding great so far.  I repeat: in the next week or two.  Free music.  Great music.  Happy music.  Sad music.  And my voice sounds even BETTER since I switched from cigs to crack.  Just kidding.

Here’s the deal….  Over the last two years, as we’ve made this Cruise Elroy record, I’ve given lots of thought to self release schemes and ideas.  I think, with the help of some brilliant minds, I have come up with an awesome strategy to maximize the impact of these releases.  I’m very excited about it, and the details are forthcoming.

In case you haven’t noticed, the music industry is…. I don’t even want to finish that sentence, in the same way I don’t want to finish the sentence “The worst part of my horrible acid trip was….” I think it’s time to take back music by force.  I love good music.  I love creativity.  I love weirdness and individuality.  I love freaks.  I love imperfection.  I love loudness.  I’m sick of all these shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhite zombie bastards being fed to my ears over the supermarket loudspeaker.  American Idol is collectivist trash.  I like creativity.  Don’t be scared, little people.  This music won’t hurt you JUST KIDDING YES IT WILL NOW YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE NO SOULS ONLY AN ENDLESS TERRIBLE HOSTILE UNIVERSE just kidding

I am sitting on my two most proud-filling-ness records.  Sheer quantity, quality, pure refined musical insanity.  Notes fuckin galore.  Lyrics, instruments, sound effects to prove we’re deep.  It’s all there, my loyal fans.

I need you now more than ever.  This one last time.  Just to listen.  Just to keep being amazing.  Dust off the ‘ol Twitter account and start spreading the word.

I shall deliver the goods post-haste. <3 <3 <3

I’m sick.

When I get sick, the exact same thing happens to me every time.  First – throat starts getting a little rough and hurty.  Then – I have about a day of almost no symptoms, and even the throat seems happy.  Then on the third day, I’m exhausted, usually feverish, sore…. just this general, intense sick feeling.  I’m usually completely annihilated for 3 to 7 days.  Then I’m better, feeling AMAZING.

How boring is this post so far?  Here’s the point – ain’t it annoying when people say stuff like, “it’s just allergies” or after the first day, “feeling better?” or the worst of all, “headaches?  vomiting?  what are the symptoms?”  Shut up, and thanks for making it worse.  Look, I’m sick, I don’t get allergies, the symptoms are tedious and not very sensationalist like VIOLENT PUKING or something…. i’m tired…. yeah, I know that sounds lame, I don’t mean too-much-lunch-dozy tired, I mean REALLY tired, like 2% conscious, can’t keep eyes open, feel like I’m in a pot of hot mayonnaise.  And it usually takes a human being A FEW DAMNED DAYS to recover from illness.  And I know the severity is always similar.  Leave me alone.

On to less stupid things, this beautiful image frequently resonates in my mind – patterns repeating on different scales.  And today I realized, this is what fractals are.  This concept is beautiful to me and it seems oddly prevalent in the universe.  For example, the curvature of our universe as a whole, compared to the curvature of the earth.  Different dimensions, different scales (by a LONGshot), and yet, this idea of something appearing flat and stable locally, but in reality being curved.  Evolution in biology – the vast majority of species dying out and the result, more complicated, amazing creatures – compare this to the evolution of ideas – the vast majority dying  but the select few proving to be better descriptions of reality and helpful to humans.

Everyone is wrong, most of the time.  But that’s ok.  The universe is difficult and complex.  It’s so much better to say, “I could be wrong about this….” open your mind.  I’ve changed my mind on so many things.  Don’t be so scared of opinions that run contrary to what you think, or these beliefs held by your party or religion.  But also don’t be afraid to be right.  People are worthy.  I’m not talking to you guys, just…. humanity in general, I guess.  So black and white lately, even with free and ubiquitous information.  And it seems to be getting worse somehow.  Reflected in popular culture, anyway.  And don’t say popular culture has always been like that.  I know that sounds cute but I mean it’s particularly gross lately.  And don’t say it always seems like it’s getting worse.  I mean, it actually, really is actually really worse lately.  We love the wrong things about society, technology, music.  Digital serfdom.  Confusing automation with creativity.  Confusing horse shit cut up into perfect squares down to the nanometer and placed on a geometrically perfect grid and then smooshed into a box with music.

But I could be wrong about this…

These Google Earth pics are beautiful.  Something beautiful about the honesty, the order and disorder, the darkness and happiness.  Some of those pictures took my breath away.

I was thinking when I saw them, human beings are messy beings.  But rather, human beings put things together with super low entropy, and our environments are just that entropy constantly taking things back over.  It takes a lot of energy to build things.  It takes a lot of energy to keep an organism alive and in working order for years and years.  It takes a lot of energy to clean your front yard.  It takes a lot of energy to create a bit of information.

Information can never be lost.  It only becomes hidden, according to physics.  But how is hidden different from lost?  Is it different in any practical sense?

Gloworms in New Zealand.

The new social hive mind seems immune to weirdness, to fun music, to challenging or uncomfortable thought.  Not every individual or anything.  Just the rhetoric that makes it into most media…. and also, most people I think.

The new Daft Punk album is like a modern symphony…. heart, sculpted melodies, deep grooves… it transcends genre.  In a brilliant artistic move, the most famous electronic group ever recorded bands and wrote incredible…. rock songs, really.  They said, “fuck you guys, it was the songwriting all along.”  But they also used the best quality raw meat and the recording is just insane.  According to reviews I’ve been reading it still wasn’t enough to break through the wall of hardened socialist hipsterness that is the internet.  Just try to enjoy it.  Trust the artist.

This concept of trusting the artist…. we’ve lost it.  We’ve put the artist naked in a dunk tank.  So much new music I hear…. it says, “look at how awesome I am.  I’m perfect and loud and flawless and hard.”  It’s scared of the mob, and with good reason.  They’ll call you bad things if you make them think.  It also overwhelmingly has this obvious nod to present culture, too, which stinks of fads.  It says, “Hey, here it is, don’t want to waste a second of your time, here’s familiar chords, EMOTION, ear candy, SEX, semi-controversial lyric there ya go, ok songs over.”

Most of the best music I’ve ever heard is flawed, honest and makes you want to stick up for it.  I believe in gathering around a new album and abandoning your bias and seeing what another human brain feels like.  I believe in going to the witch doctor’s hut staying for an hour.

By the way, fuck blogs.  I keep trying to maintain this thing and I have a lot to talk about, but trying to make a “real” post every day is just totally not going to happen, ever.  So I’m just going to post a few things, or a song, or just stream of consciousness like I did just now.

Looking for that perfect rap groove to freestyle to?

Well this ain’t it, but I made it in 2 hours for some reason.

Turn it up!  Rap your heart out!  Let it flow!  Impress your friends with internal rhyme and clever cultural commentary!