AI Music Revolution

I've Been a Passenger My Whole Life. Six Weeks Ago, I Got in the Driver's Seat.

• Josh • Episode 16

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 38:56

Send us Fan Mail

Doug Arrowood spent his career in law enforcement. He did scenic art for Disney and Universal. He builds furniture, he paints, he writes. For his entire life, his relationship with music was the same as most people's — he pressed play and he listened. Six weeks ago, that changed.

"I've always been one of the passengers in the vehicle. Now I'm in the driver's seat, and I can choose which car I want and which direction I want to go."

In this episode, Doug walks us through what it actually feels like to hear your own music for the first time when you've never been able to make music before — and what it took to get there.

  • Why he generated 800-900 tracks to find 25 he can listen to 20 times in a row and still want more
  • How he developed a faith-based folk-funk sound without any musical training
  • What he thinks AI music means for his granddaughter, who is a working musician building a real career
  • Why he articulated Lane 1 versus Lane 2 before Josh even introduced the concept
  • How the woodworker's mindset — build a dummy first, then build the real thing — translates directly to AI music creation
  • What he sees ahead: two albums, a singer-songwriter project, and a keyboard on his Amazon wishlist

Doug didn't come into this a musician. Six weeks in, with 25 tracks he loves, pages of lyrics written before breakfast, and a keyboard in his Amazon wishlist, I'd argue that's exactly what he is now. That's what Lane 2 looks like.

The seat's been empty your whole life. Get in.

Red Lab Access — the complete system for serious AI music creators: jgbeatslab.com/red-lab-access Everything else: jgbeatslab.com

The Unlock System is JG BeatsLab's methodology for serious musicians working with AI tools. Lane 2 work: human-authored, AI-assisted music creation.

Visit JG BeatsLab: https://www.jgbeatslab.com

The Minimum Starter Kit. Three books, $27. Unlock Suno, Unlock Music Rights and Registration, Unlock Music Promotion. Make it, release it, promote it.

 Get the Minimum Starter Kit: https://www.jgbeatslab.com/store

The JG BeatsLab Newsletter. One email a week, Thursdays. Studio work, Red Lab research, and methodology in real time. Free signup on the homepage at jgbeatslab.com.

Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.jgbeatslab.com/newsletter

Red Lab Conversations is produced by JG BeatsLab LLC, an AI music education company building the methodology, research, and community for serious creators working in Lane 2.

Get more from JG BeatsLab LLC:

Connect:

Contact: josh@jgbeatslab.com

Stop gambling. Start directing.

SPEAKER_01

Hello and welcome to the AI Music Revolution. I'm your host, Josh Gileland, the founder of JGB's lab. My guest today is not a musician. He's actually never played an instrument professionally. He can't read music, and for most of his life, his relationship with music was the same as most people's. He pressed play and he listened. Doug Arrowwood spent his career in law enforcement. Originally from England, which you will be able to tell by his accent, he moved to Louisiana in his early 20s and never left. But underneath the career was a deeply creative person. Someone who spent years doing scenic art for Disney and Universal, who builds things with his hands as a woodworker, who writes, who paints, a maker in every sense except one. And then six weeks ago, he found Suno. What happened next is the kind of story I started this podcast to tell. Doug came in with no musical training, no technical background, and no idea what he was doing. He also came in with something most musicians spend years trying to develop. Genuine intention, a clear emotional target, and the patience to generate 800 tracks to find 25 that made him stop and listen again. In this conversation, Doug talks about what it actually feels like to hear your own music for the first time when you've never been able to make music before. He talks about his granddaughter, who's a real musician building a real career, and why he thinks AI is going to help her more than hurt her. He talks about lane one versus lane two before I even introduce the concept. And he says something near the end about being a passenger your whole life and subtly finding yourself in the driver's seat that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Here's Doug Arrowwood. Doug, welcome to the podcast. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Before we get into all of the questions we have and conversations we have teed up, just tell me a little bit about your experience uh entering into the world of AI music creation.

SPEAKER_00

I get very excited when it comes to AI in general because I think it presents so many opportunities. So I do a lot of writing. So I'm I'm enjoying using AI to help me with writing. Um so when I saw or heard about being able to do your own music with it, I was kind of intrigued. And for basically 10 bucks a month just to get on the pro plan for Suno, I said, What have I got to lose? Let me just go on there and fiddle fart around with that and see what I can do. I really didn't think it would amount to much. I thought it would come out with some what I would generally call uh AI slop. Yeah. And uh I was amazed. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I'm I'm somebody that as a kid, and I'm sure many do, but I used to remember every Tuesday I was waiting for the charts to come out to see where my favorite music or band was that that week. Had they gone up, or how were they doing? I was very passionate about it, and I think a lot of teenagers were. And this was my opportunity suddenly now to create music without being able to play it, uh, but being able to direct it, and it's just been an absolute fantastic journey. It's only been six weeks, but I can see many, many uh journeys ahead and many, many more creations. It's something I've become very much enjoying with, and I'm listening to my own music again and again and again.

SPEAKER_01

So what when you're experimenting with with AI music, is are there certain genres that you gravitate towards, or you know, how how do you approach that in your creative process?

SPEAKER_00

I initially got into uh sort of folk stomp uh folk funk, and I've been sticking with that. Uh I've been staying with it the whole time. And what I have now is I've actually got you know an AI band, and I've got what I would call 25 banger tracks. Now, I've probably made something close to 800, 900 generations, of which, again, most of them are what I would term as AI slop. They're very generic. You hear them once, you really couldn't care less if you never hear them again, you really didn't care that you heard them the first time. Once you figure out how to direct it, once you figure out what you're doing, you can suddenly come out and create some things that are absolutely fantastic. One of my tests is if I can listen to this and love it 20 times in a row, and I still want to listen to it another 20 times in a row, I've got something there. Yeah, I've really got something that's enjoyable. So that's what I have now is I have basically what I call 20 to 25 tracks. I just absolutely love. I can listen to them again and again and again, I can sing along to them, and it's very moving. Uh, I've decided to craft the music in a certain way. It's geared more towards faith and positivity. It's not real preachy, what you would call preachy gospel type music. It's very kind of generic. Uh, I don't talk about God or Jesus, I just talk about he or him.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, and you can take that for what you want. You if you're not that way inclined, you could take he or him as being somebody who's influential in your life. Sure. Um, so you can take it more than one way, because I I think a lot of people when they have gospel music, it does become very preachy and people will just turn off because they just don't want to hear it. Whereas I think if it's a bit more generic, it can be kind of suited to everyone. But I've really got to the point now where I've got, like I said, 20 to 25 great tracks. My idea is I want to get to 35 or more, and then start really whittling it down, finding the best, and start putting literally put out an album, go to Spotify and everything else. So it's really become so enjoyable. So much I find a lot of passion in it, I find a great amount of enjoyment in it. And although I was writing and doing a lot of writing, what I wasn't doing recently, what I am doing now on a regular basis, like I have this morning, I've just done two pages of uh basically as poetry, which is lyrics. You know, that's what I've been doing this morning. I've been doing a lot of that. I've even started to do a little bit of experiment with rap lyrics and trying to figure that one out.

SPEAKER_01

You know, we actually just dropped a book uh the past week or so that is all about getting your music registered correctly across all the pros and MLC and sound exchange and all that, as well as working with your distributor. And so it's in the Red Lab Access Library, waiting on you when you're ready.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm I'm going through uh your work and I'm enjoying it. It's helped me structure things a lot better rather than as is commonly uh said by everyone, rather than playing the slot machine and gambling what's coming out. I'm starting to have a lot more structure to it. I'm starting to design a lot more of what I want and then be able to redesign what does come out and then merge it and blend it. Admittedly, I'm not going through yours at a terrific pace of what I'm doing. I'm going through it very slowly. But I'm also learning Suno on my own and trying to, because I think that's the best way to do it for me at least, is rather than follow instructions in front of me, I've got to experiment, I've got to try it, I've got to feel it. It's kind of like when I'm building something out of wood. If I'm not sure how to build it, the best thing I'll do is I'll I'll build a dummy to see how it works, and then I'll say, right, now I understand it, I'll build a real thing. Same thing with Sunno. I kind of experiment a little bit, figure it out, try this, try that, and all of a sudden you get something fantastic at the other end of it.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I'm very similar. When Suno dropped 5.5, I started with heavy experimentation where I just went into the tool and played around with it and experimented what was possible and you know, try to push things to its limits. What could I break, etc.? And then I also read through all the documentation that's been out there, either officially through Suno or some of the uh other documentation that's been written about it. So really it's this that melding of both of those worlds, my own personal experience as well as what others are experiencing and documenting out there. I think that that just gives you a very well-rounded view uh and approach to the work you're doing. And you know, and as you're talking about this, you know, you're really talking about the creativity you're injecting, the intention that you're going in with. I don't know, Doug, that feels a lot like art to me. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00

I think it absolutely, I think you're it's creating art, it's creating something that wasn't there before. Uh there's a lot of questions out now about copyright, and you can't copyright because it's uh you know created by a computer, not by a human. Um, but it feels very much artistic to me. It feels it's definitely a creation. At the end of this, my intention is to have tracks. My intention then is to have variations on some of those tracks. Maybe literally have a couple of them like on a dance beat, some of them maybe a cappella, um, and do things like that. Then I've got to put them into video and I want to have videos with them. So it's it's a creation. It's not just uh, oh, this looks good, let me press a button and hey, presto, that's it. No, it it's it's so much more than that. Uh, and I think we've got a lot of times in future where at some point in time this has to find some way of being recognized of more than just pushing a computer button again and spitting out a result, which is I feel like it's kind of dismissed by a lot of people, but I think I understand that. I think a lot of people in the music industry are very nervous. I asked somebody this last weekend, I said, so so what do you think about AI music? And he is a musician, he's an accomplished musician, he plays every week. I listen to him, I love listening to him. He's a good friend of mine. And his first words were, it's scary, dude. It's scary.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because, you know, he sees it for you know, potentially he feels like maybe he's gonna be replaced, but he can't be replaced. You know, the I AI music, I can't don't think can ever replace him playing every Sunday in in church for us in the band. And this guy's a very accomplished, very good musician. I love listening to him. It isn't art, it's in its formative days, uh, and it's got a lot of trial and error ahead of it. It's got a lot of experimentation, and we've really got to sort of shape this as it goes. And it's kind of one of the reasons I've I'm not rushing into anything I've created I have not put onto Suno for everybody else to see. I've kept it purely to myself. I haven't published anything at all yet. I'm a little nervous to publish it because you know I know there's a lot of lawsuits out there. Yeah, and I'm sort of kind of waiting to hear what's gonna go on. I know Suno is uh settled with Warner, but now there's still the Sony and other others they're looking at. So I'm I'm wondering how that's all gonna go.

SPEAKER_01

My my position is it will all be worked out in the courts, and the lawyers and the record executives, they will all be well compensated. But the everyday musician probably are not going to see the benefits from any of this little gate litigation, and they'll probably end up feeling sold out by the executives that they're uh just kind of the nature of this of the music business, unfortunately. But there are more and more musicians who are using AI as part of their workflow. This this is not going away. As a matter of fact, in one of the human bands that I'm in, we use AI to kind of map out rough ideas for songs that we you know we're working through. It's a tool, and it's a tool that is here, and the future to me belongs to those who are learning and experimenting with the tool now.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, very much. You know, you mentioned something saying that you don't see how some of the musicians that have already been out there and they've uh they've created already, uh, how they can maybe get it, and maybe the it's the big conglomerates, the big corporations, the warners, the Sonys that will get something out of this. Uh but I I wish it was different than that. Mainly because as brilliant as AI is at being able to make this music just out of thin air, so to speak, I don't understand why it can't say, you know, I think I can understand when a track is made that 90% of that track, for example, is brand new. But 10% maybe owes a little bit of create credence or credibility or a little bit of debt to band ABC or 1, 2, 3 or whatever. And at that point in time you can say, yeah, they were influenced by. So maybe if you do get something and it is commercialized and there's something coming from it, somehow automatically 5%, 10% is directed towards the band somehow or other, somewhere down the road. Not that you're outright copying people, right? But when a when a new band comes out, uh when a new singer comes out, let's go back decades and decades and decades ago. Let's go when when Elvis first came out, he was uh revolutionary in many ways, and people started copying what he was doing. Yet he didn't get a penny from what they were copying other than it just made the s the whole music scene blow up. And I think that's the effect that AI is going to have. I think it's going to blow things up a lot more. I think a lot people more people will become involved with it because they can. You know, here am I, all I can do is buy an album and press play. Now I can create my own albums and I can share that with other people, and it's made me become a lot more involved in the system. AI is having that effect with a lot of people. To give the example, I'm sure you've heard of this, that there was a fear that when AI started reading X-rays, uh the radiologists all of a sudden were going to lose their jobs because AI could do so much better than they could. Well, it had just exactly the opposite effect. They now need more radiologists than they had before, because it just means they can do much more. You've still got to have that human interpretation. You've still got to have that human that works it and works with the other doctors and everything. So it had exactly the opposite effect of what they what they thought was going to have. AI is very scary in some ways that it could lose people some of their jobs, but it's going to create more opportunities than I think it's ever going to uh stop. And I think that's what we need to look at for the future, especially of music. I think it's going to bring more people into it, and I think it's going to widen what's available out there. And I think there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, uh absolutely 100% agree with you on that. I uh the thing that excites me most about the ability to use these tools for creating music is it brings more people into the music creation tent. And to me, that is a net positive for society. When we have more people who are able to put artistic vision and turn that into music and grow that passion of what it means to actually create, I think that is a net positive for society. And I also, that's also a kind of a gateway because you get into it, you realize I'm having a blast with Suno. I'm having having a blast creating these songs. Now I want to learn about how to actually do the mixing and mastering inside of a DAW. And so then you go out and you purchase some type of DAW software and different plugins for that. And now you're experimenting. Okay, now what would it sound like if I pulled in, you know, drum plugins where I was actually plugging and programming in the drums and layering that into AI? Then all of a sudden you're getting very curious about that. Now, what if I get a keyboard and plug it in and I can use a keyboard as a MIDI interface into my DAW with the AI platform? And now all of a sudden I'm learning the keyboard as part of this.

SPEAKER_00

I don't see myself ever learning the keyboard, but I do see myself, and I've actually got plans, I've already got one marked, or several of them marked off in my Amazon uh wish list of keyboards I want to get so that I can start putting in some of my little melodies, some of my things. I can I can then start designing based upon tunes that I want to hear.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Uh so again, I'm not musical, but I'm getting a lot more musical. Uh last year, towards the end of last year, I haven't done it yet. I actually bought an electronic drum set. I haven't played them once yet.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, see, now you just did it. Now I now I want to turn this into a drummer's podcast conversation. So see what you did there?

SPEAKER_00

No, no, that that was it. So I I I tend to agree with you, and I think it's just that, like I said, I think this is opening up avenues to people that those avenues were never anything they could have ever traveled previously, but they can now. And I understand we're musicians. Look, I've I've got a granddaughter who's already got several music uh singles that she's released. She's I mean, she's she's got very, very low listening uh right now because she's just forming. She just started college this year at LSU. And uh, but she's a very gifted singer, songwriter, excuse me. And I think she is a phenomenal talent, but I think if she embraces this, I I'm gonna wait till uh we go on uh a summer vacation for a week with the whole family, and we rent a house, and there's about 25 of us there, or 30 of us, and we're all in one house for one solid week. It's a fantastic time at the beach. And uh, I intend to sit down with her and say, look, I think it would be good for you to start experimenting with Suna because you can put things in there uh that is your creation, your lyrics, your tune, everything you want to, and it can start doing some things for you or with you, which you can then take into the real world and do something. She's joined a little band, they're still trying to figure out how they play together, they haven't got any gigs yet, but they're continually practicing together. So I I can see how this can help her tremendously. And I just think a lot of people are gonna be in that same position. I think it's gonna be a tremendous boon to the industry, not uh the opposite.

SPEAKER_01

The people who who view AI, the tool of AI, as either all good or all bad are missing the the picture. It's not black and white, it's gray. And and I can only imagine somebody your granddaughter's age, who probably, especially being in the music world, is probably hearing how awful AI is for musicians. And so then that creates this fear of experimentation because oh, I don't want to you the people that I look up to, the mentors around me, the people who have been doing this are telling me this is bad, so it must be bad, so I'm not going to experiment. And and to me, that that's that's uh, and I'm not saying that happened to your granddaughter, but I know that that does happen. And to me, that's really sad. Like we should we should encourage the experimentation, especially with young minds who are just getting into the music space. Imagine what they can do with these tools and their music abilities and combining those things. Sky's the limit. Stuff you and I can't even think about, Doug, can be created by these type of creative young people. And so hopefully you have that conversation with her and hopefully it resonates.

SPEAKER_00

I'm looking forward to some more. I'm looking forward to having that. And you know, there are other stories I've heard that are just fascinating to me, where I've heard about where people, for one, uh lyricists that all they do is they've made lyrics, but now with Suno, they can take their lyrics, put it in there, and they've got songs for their lyrics, something they never had before, or just single musicians that like to play a guitar, they can put their guitar music in and they can have a whole band around them all of a sudden, and they can, you know, all of a sudden, just the single person that could never do anything in the past has now got a creative outlet second to none that they've ever had before. So that's it, the opportunities are just phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01

They're phenomenal. And and the when you look at the human human artist, to me, they their future is bright as well, because you and I both know we can't take what we create in Suno and put it up on a stage. Now we can hire musicians to play along with the songs, whatever, like um, so there's a model that you could make work. But the the music we create lives in in you know a world of of streaming or downloads or whatnot. There's still that live music component. And you know, you talked about how uh you enjoy live music at your church every Sunday. I'm sure that your band is is really bringing it. You talked about your friend who's the musician in the band. You talk about the jazz clubs in in New Orleans. Like live music is just it's there's something special and magical about it.

SPEAKER_00

No substitute. You can't substitute with AI what with a DJ? Yeah, you can have a DJ plays music, but it's not the same as having a live band that actually talks to you and interacts with you. Maybe you could have holographic projections on screens that sort of half interact with you, but it's not the same as a live band. People want people. At some point in time, we're all we're very happy when we're driving the car. We can't have a live band with us in the car, but we can play the music, obviously. Out in the backyard, I'm doing some yard work or I'm in my shop building something. Yeah, I can put the music on. That that's not where I need a band. But if I want to go listen to a band and enjoy that, it's got to be a real thing. It's when I go to listen to my granddaughter play, it there is no substitute for listening to her, helping her out and seeing her on her journey. It's a phenomenal experience. You know, living a little bit through her. Um, you know, I've I've helped finance some of her, uh, some of her recordings. I I fully encourage what she's doing. She's living a dream that when I was her age, I dreamt of. I was just never motivated or never moved to actually start going and playing and doing anything music. Other than like I said, press the play button. She, however, is living that dream, so I fully encourage it in any way I can. So very few people are doing that. But now more people can have an aspect of that because when I first got into this, I suddenly realized, hey, I'm in the driver's seat. I've never been in the seat before. I've always been one of the passengers in the vehicle. I'm just lucky if I get in the right vehicle because I like the music in this vehicle. But now I'm in the driver's seat and I can choose which car I want and I can choose which direction I want to go in. This is these avenues have opened up to me that I never saw coming before.

SPEAKER_01

I can hear the creative excitement in your voice.

SPEAKER_00

I'm an artistic person, Josh. I I I did some work in the scenic art business in Orlando. I worked for Disney Universal. I did TV, movies, stages. Uh I'm very artistic when it comes to painting. I'm very artistic when it comes to my woodwork. I'm very much a creator. I like to write. Um, so I've got that creative side to me. And this is just this provides an outlet that I never thought I would ever have. And it's music is something I feel passionate about. And when I listen to it and I listen to my favorite tracks, I get into them. I so get into them. And now I've got my own music which I can really get into. And I feel passionate about it. It literally sometimes brings a tear to my eye, and I'm just overwhelmed by what it's what it can do for me, what I've been able to do with it.

SPEAKER_01

Looking forward, you know, six months from now, where do you see yourself on this journey with AI music?

SPEAKER_00

My plan is, like I said, I want to get a couple of literally a couple of albums, and I want to release them. You know, uh, however I decide to do that, I've got to go through some of your uh documentation to to teach me the best way to do that. Uh then when I've got that out, I really want to start getting to the point where I go to creating a different type of band. Uh, my next one I want to produce is more of the sing a songwriter type that sings something it's again, it's upbeat positive, more of like a summer touch of reggae to it. Um, just sing a songwriter, touch of reggae, uh beach type of inclination. Something that's just gonna be happy music, so to speak. So that's one of the next things I want to do. But there's also a side to me that wants to get into real weird stuff too, it that produces uh music that's just uses unconventional approaches, unconventional wording, unconventional everything. My my tastes are very varied. I I remember when I was a kid and we would buy music. A lot of my friends they would they would zero in on one type of music or to several types of bands. I liked it all. I liked everything. I liked a bit of this, I liked a bit of that. That was my problem, is that I couldn't stop buying records. And I just I I got this great collection. I've still got some of them with me here today. Um but I just I absolutely love music, it's such a driving force and it's so positive. And now it's at my fingertips.

SPEAKER_01

It's great. I I uh I'm laughing because I also very, very diverse in my in my music uh tastes. And I have a uh side project that is not an AI project that is kind of experimental and industrial atmospheric music. And so a lot of the stuff I do there, I try to take normal everyday sounds and turn those into instruments. So, for example, I have one song that's got this rattle in it. And I was talking to somebody, I was actually doing a um, I was being interviewed on another podcast about about that album, and they asked me about the instrument, what that was. Said, you know what that was? That was actually a ten of altoids that that I was shaking into a microphone, and then I did a bit of a manipulation inside of my doll, and they were like, okay, now you know, didn't expect the ten of altoids as a musical instrument, right? And so yeah, I think it just all these tools, what it does is it gives you options at your fingertips, and then you just let the experimentation go. And so I'm excited to see what uh what kind of a journey you you take you take on that.

SPEAKER_00

So the opportunities are fantastic out there, and AI is you can do so much good with it, and there the up what people are really scared of is you know losing their jobs, uh being replaced by AI. But like I said, I think there's gonna be way more things that create and change out there. You're just gonna have to, in this world as we go forward, you're gonna have to learn how to pivot and go in a different direction and learn how to use it for your benefit. If you're if you're not willing to go out there and steer it and be a part of it, you're gonna get left behind very rapidly. AI is gonna do some wonderful things. The only thing I worry about is with AI, it's not AI itself, it it's the people that use it and that will use it for bad things.

SPEAKER_01

That's right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh one of the th one of the problems in the music industry I know, and uh as I think it was at Spotify, they recently removed some ridiculous amount of literally millions of tracks that people have dumped on there because they would just go on to Suno, they create 500 tracks, dump them all on Spotify, and hope something would stick and they get paid for it. Well, what you're doing then when you do that is you give AI Music a bad name because most of the stuff you're putting out there is complete slop, it's junk, nobody wants to listen to it. You're just willing to get one out of a hundred that's worth it and get paid. In the meantime, everybody's got to wade through all your crap, and you're just giving everybody a bad time. That's the uh that's the side of it where somebody is using it for negative, and that's what hurts everybody. So I'm glad that that type of stuff gets uh taken out. I'm glad Spotify did that. And I think there's a lot of adjustment to go in the future, uh, but I think we're heading in the right direction. It's gonna be a little bit painful to get there though.

SPEAKER_01

I I so I don't know if you've heard me talk about lane one versus lane two and AI music creation, but lane one is is that lane that you just talked about. That is the quick generations, flood the platforms with slop. Uh that's lane one, push a button and you know, and flood. Lane two is what we're doing, right? Where it's like, no, we're actually crafting vision and creativity utilizing these tools to create uh and so to me that that lane two, I'm very passionate about and I'm very defensive about because too many people paint paint it with a broad brush. Say everything is the same because it's AI. No, AI is simply the tool. There's bad actors with, you know, a hammer is a tool. A hammer can be used for good or bad.

SPEAKER_00

And so a vehicle to get me from point A to point B is a very good thing. But if I'm a lousy driver, or if I'm driving drunk or half asleep, it can do a lot of harm. So it's not the vehicle, it's me. It's what I do with it. And it's the same thing with AI. We don't need to start producing slop and junk. We need to produce quality. And that's why I say at the end of this, I think somewhere in the future there's got to be some sort of recognition for the copyright ability. Because it's gonna take me, I think, uh, this band I've got going now, this AI band, it's gonna take me months to get it to where I want before I get to the point where if I'm releasing it, and I really feel it would be an injustice to me after everything I craft and put into it, with the lyrics I write, uh, with taking the time to craft a song, and you know, a hundred generations later, when I eventually get to the right one and say, that's the song I want, you know, and and it's taken me all this time, and it takes me these months, and it takes me the money to get to the point where maybe I do release something, I feel that I do deserve some sort of credit for that. Maybe there's a different level of copyright, uh, and maybe no, I I grant I'm I'm not a musician. I don't pretend to be a musician. I'm good with a keyboard and I can click a mouse, and I've got the the ear and I've got the passion and I've got the determination to get from A to Z and everything in between. And at the end of it, I want you to listen to it and say, Oh my golly, that's good. Very good. And that and that's that's what it has to be. But I think there needs to be some sort of credit for that. And I think that'll change in future, but we're still in the formation of we're in the early years.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. No, I agree, and we're all on this journey together. And at the end of the day, when it comes to the legal side of it, uh, it changes on a day-to-day. And so um, you know, I'm going in with with the faith that it will sort itself and the people who need to get paid will get paid. I'm not saying that the people who should get paid will get paid, but the people who need to get paid will get paid, and we'll have some sort of model on the other side of this that works. Uh and so those of us who are in the tools now, not waiting for that permission, are the ones that will own that future when all of those things finally settle. And so um, again, very bullish about this, but um, you know, so so first of all, thank you for taking the this has been an extremely enjoyable conversation. We didn't even get into the drum conversation, um, but uh, but you know, I want to thank you for taking the time uh to have this this conversation. Um, I'm gonna leave it kind of open for any any last closing closing thoughts you have um uh that you want to kind of share with the world about your journey or the AI or music or your dogs or wherever you want to take it. So the the the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_00

So well, I'd say anybody that can gets into this, uh I'd say the floor is mine, but I think it's also theirs too. It's wide open for everyone, and that's the beauty of it. You can create something that's gonna be passionate and moving to you, even if you don't release it, you can use it for your own purposes, and it is just absolutely fantastic. I think the world is your oyster right now. I would like to thank you very much for everything you put together. I'm going through it very slowly. Uh, it's helped me tremendously with getting uh getting in gear and knowing what I'm doing, as opposed to just randomly hitting the slot machine and crossing my fingers that something get good gets spat out in the end. Now I know how to craft it a bit more and um looking forward to reading more of your work. Uh I do need to listen to some of the podcasts, but I've also got to do all my woodwork, do the yard work. I've got my business to attend to, my writing to do. So I often joke that uh I'm very good at making a very long list. And every time I cross one thing off a list, I add two. And that's that's either a gift or a curse. I'm not sure which, but I think uh longevity and uh enjoying that journey, because life is a journey, it's not a destination. Uh enjoying that journey is all about staying busy, it's all about staying creative, it's all about making things. Uh, and this is an aspect I never saw coming, but it has opened up a whole new world to me. And uh I'm just I'm I'm on cloud nine as it is right now. Thank you, Josh. Thank you very much. It's been a great time talking to you, and I look forward to reading your stuff and hearing else, hearing what else you come out with.

SPEAKER_01

I I appreciate that. And and it's you know, it's people like you that keep me motivated, uh because you are absolutely the type of person that I am doing all this for. And so the the what I hope that you achieve through the the work that I'm doing here is you don't have to think about what's going on in the AI music space. You can focus on your woodworking and your business and your granddaughter's music, and then when you're ready to dip into the AI world, you can come into our materials and you know that the the things that you really need are sitting there waiting for you in a polished way that um that all connects together. So that's my ultimate goal with what it is I'm doing. So you don't have to go into the wild, wild west to um to find this. So uh I appreciate appreciate this conversation. Um I appreciate you being being a member and um thank you so much for sharing your time with me this morning.

SPEAKER_00

Uh thanks, Josh. Take care.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks. That was Doug Arrowwood. And I want to sit with that passionator to driver moment for just a second. Six weeks. That's all it took. Six weeks to go from someone who spent his entire life pressing play on other people's music to someone who has 25 tracks he can listen to 20 times in a row and still want more. Someone who is writing pages of lyrics in the morning before the rest of the world even wakes up. Someone who has a keyboard in his Amazon wish list because now he wants to put his own melodies in. That is not a story about AI. That is a story about what happens when a tool finally matches the creative potential that was already there. Doug didn't come into this a musician. He will tell you that himself. But six weeks in, with 25 tracks he loved, pages of lyrics written before breakfast, and a keyboard in his Amazon wishlist, I'd argue that it's exactly what he is now. He came into this space with intention, with patience, with a clear emotional target for what he wanted his music to feel like. And he let the tool serve that vision instead of the other way around. That is exactly what lane two looks like. And there are a lot more Doug's out there than most people in this debate want to admit. If today's episode resonated with you, if you heard yourself in any part of Doug's story, Red Lab Access is where the system lives. The books, the research, the blueprints, the community of people doing this work with intention. One price, lifetime access, everything included now, and everything we add going forward. jgbeatsLab.com slash red-labhen access. Link is in the show notes. Red Lab Conversations drop when we have a story worth telling. AI Music Revolution drops every Friday. Subscribe so you don't miss either one. The seat's been empty your whole life. Get in. Stop generating. Start directing.