Dustin Ballard

I'll start today with some obscure music history.

So if you're a David Bowie fan, you may already know this.

But the chorus of the song Starman was actually borrowed from a 1937 blues song by T-Bone Fletcher, which I'm going to play you a clip of.

There's a star man waiting in the sky Now, I love Bowie's cover, but there's just something about a beat-up guitar and an old man singing straight from the soul that to me really gets to the emotion of the song.

And I think what's most interesting is that I just made up that entire story.

It was actually 100% AI.

I apologize for lying, but there is a reason for it.

I'd like to start with a question.

What is real music?

Now, this is a question that's come up with synthesizers, with sampling and hip-hop music, even with the phonograph when it first came out in the 1800s.

People back then debated whether or not reproduced music was real music.

John Philip Sousa, the Taylor Swift of his day, was not a fan.

He said that phonographs were a substitute for human skill, intelligence and soul.

They reduced the expression of music to a mathematical system.

It almost sounds like he's talking about AI, doesn't it?

So is AI real music?

I believe that when it's in the hands of musicians, it can be.

But first, let me give you some context for why I think that.

So I run a parody music social media channel called There I Ruined It.

This is just a weird evening hobby of mine.