Harmonies of Tomorrow Dave Cody Interview Part 1

Joining me on the podcast today is a very special guest. This has been a great interview and I had an opportunity to sit down with this man. He is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the music industry, and we're going to have a very frank discussion about artificial intelligence and its effects in the music and entertainment industry. It's all coming up on this episode of Weiss's Thoughts. It's time for a virtual campfire sit down with Terry Weiss. Will come to Weiss's Thoughts. We're about to have a great conversation with a man who has been passionate about music and the music industry since he was about ten years old. It all started when he got his first bass guitar. From there he grew into bass, electric guitar. He plays the drums. He has an arsenal over two hundred and fifty plus instruments, and at one time he even started his own custom build music company, building custom based guitars and guitars for the general public. He's rubbed elbows with some of the biggest names in the music industry, such as Carol Kay, people from in Living Color, jazz musicians just across the board, but right now, he hangs his hat as a sales engineer at Sweetwater. Many of you may know, Sweetwater is an online retailer, one of the largest in the United States, if not the world, catering to both professionals, amateurs and those just getting into music. It's my pleasure today to have a great discussion, and I think you're really going to enjoy it too. We're going to talk about artificial intelligence. We're going to talk about how we consume our music and how artists feel about the AI revolution as well. Welcome to the program. Won't you play with me? Dave Cody? So, how you been man? You've got an interest job, and you know, for for those of people that don't know it, why don't you just tell them a little bit about who you are, how you got where you're at, and so the audience knows, you know what we're Yeah, I'm talking about while you're here, you know, to start, I always say that, you know, I'm I'm a fifty three year old man child. There's a lot of all musicians are, but no, you know somebody who uh you know knows and loves their creator uh and tries to reflect that. And as best I can and I don't always do a great job, you know, and as many aspects of my life as I can, you know, the idea is to approach anything you can with a servant's heart. But several years ago I went from manufacturing, where I worked in the steel industry to al industry welding out of Chicago Landmarket, and I moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I did so to pursue a job with sweet Water Sound, the largest soundline retailer to the music industry in the United States. And uh, you know, it's it's one of these things of it's it's been a tremendous uh learning experience, not only in technical knowledge. Uh, you know, everybody at Sweetwater essentially goes through the equivalent of a masterress through being audio engineering in thirteen weeks and for free. Probably right, you don't have to pay for Actually the opposite. We're paid. We're paid to do it. Oh well, there you go. Uh that, yeah, that's part of their training. But uh, you know, I'll sit there and laugh and go, I didn't make it through. I've owned this. I've you know, we'll talk about a lot of the you know, a lot of what we're going to talk about I won't spoil with transition, right, but you know, uh, businesses, I've I've I've done a lot of living in fifty three years, and and uh certainly professionally and and uh intellectually. The training is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I didn't make it through the first time, and the company kept me. But it's it's it's a mean company. We sell music here, uh, and you know for creators for podcasts. Uh, you know that's how we met, of course, for musicians. And you know, you know, last weekend, as I was driving down to Tennessee, I was hanging out with the band Living Color and and some of my friends in that band. And you know, on the flip side, you know, the coolest thing I do is uh, you know, sell mom and dad that first drum set or that first guitar. Uh, you know which is uh, you know, I know you play. I don't know if that's cast, but I'll out your well, I'd like to call it playing. Some other people call it noise. Some people call it pain. You know, I guess it's it's all in the it's all in the ear of the listener, I guess. But you know, it's it's one of those things. You know, it's a life opinion for every musician, and it's the way we interact with the world, right uh and and express ourselves in the world. And you know, the coolest thing you can ever do is you know, there's mom and dad and yeah you're talking. You know, this is the reason that you shouldn't buy you know, Junior's first guitar at Walmart. Uh And and you go through and and you you have that interaction and you get to connect with somebody and do something special and let them know that they're special, and you know, and hopefully create a lifelong musician, hopefully uh uh create somebody with some of the same loves and joys and hang ups we got well yeah, and and like I said, it's inspiring people. You know, music is an art form obviously, and there's all kinds of music. In fact, we've had many a long discussion. You know, I call you up to buy some strings and next thing I know, it's forty five minutes of the past and we're talking about all kinds of stuff with regards to music and creativity. And it's about eliciting getting that emotion a lot of musicians you can watch when they're playing. The one I can think of that just pops right into my head. Stevie ray Vaughan when he played guitar, obviously a master at his craft, but you watch the faces he would make, even in the slower blues, you know, songs that he would do, he would make the you know, the guitar face. But you know, he was in a zone and he talked about that, he thought he was channeling his inner black man, you know, his inner black musician, and he hung around with black blues musicians and he just you know, being from Texas and that and being around that environment where you know, the blues down in that Dell, the area in Texas and where everything comes from that, you know, and like you said, Hue Lonnie Mack, Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of them. You know, Albert King, you know BB King. In fact, I'm not sure I thought I saw in an interview one time, or heard in a podcast interview that someone said about Stevie Rayvaughan when he met I think it was Albert King, because Albert King really didn't care for other musicians, not in a bad way, It's just he wanted to kind of do his own thing. But yet when he met Stevie Rayvaughan, I believe it was him. He said something to the effect that I'm paraphrasing, of course, that he found, like his long lost brother, this guy was born to play this music. He couldn't believe it, you know, he thought, here comes a white guy trying to muscle in on the black man's music. But once they played, and then he played with him, you know, and everything, and they had a great interaction. Because it's about that emotional connection. So what I want to ask a Dave, you know, speaking about emotional connection here AI AI is in the forefront of everybody's mind. It's on everybody's lips about everything from you know, authors writing books in the medical industry, but also big time in the entertainment industry. We're just getting over here, a long holdout with the Writer's Actors Guild and SAG the Screen Actors Guild about AI in the arts and their fears and hesitation to just go into this new, seemingly new technology. But it's actually been kind of around since the fifties and sixties, but very very, you know, minimal, But now it's at the forefront because I believe society, technology and time has caught up. And what are your thoughts? Because I can scour the internet and find something that can make music, I can find something that can take a voice and do that for me. I think we need legislation in place that doesn't take away creativity. I just can't connect with, you know, some an AI voice singing a song, even as close as they try to get it to have an emotional connection. I can still probably maybe two or three maybe a verse or so in I can tell this is not a real person. That can't be or it's really heavily pitch corrected or auto tuned. Sure, no, it's it's because you know, that same argument has been made about UH synthesizers. That same argument was made about right you know and and and all these things, and and so you sit there and go out end the argument itself is is is dated because you know, UH rock music wasn't real music. You know, jazz music wasn't real music. But in the same breath, have you heard the UH now and then the Beatles tune that came out thanks to AI. And there's a lot of misunderstandings about that song, what worked and what AI did was it cleaned up the tracks, that removed the noise right that was there. It didn't perform anything, it didn't, you know, it just made it so that it was listenable. And I think that's where the distinction is is that, you know, and I'm all for that, you know, anything that you can take the especially those old seventy eights of Great Jazz or like you know, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson recordings that were recorded back in a time, you know, cleaning that up with AI and making that clear so we can really enjoy the artist's performance and their message. I take umbrage with the fact that, you know, humans need to create since the beginning of time. I mean, it was God ordained into us or whatever you believe. But you know, our inherent soul and spirits we love to create. We weren't meant to get up, go sit in a cubicle all damn day long and or punch you know, you know, break rocks in a quarry or driver truck. We have to Every human being, I don't care who you are, has some type of creative outlet, whether it's writing, it could be you know, shooting a basketball or playing baseball, running whatever, poetry, anything, humming, whatever, And I think inherently AI to me, and again this is my opinion. AI to me is a veritable Pandora's box that we've opened. It's opened, it's out there. There's no shutting it back in at this point. But a lot of things that the human race does and has done throughout time, not always, but a good portion of the time, we just go forward and say, yeah, this is great, this is wonderful. But we very rarely on some occasions look at short and or long term ramification, especially when something as powerful as this h I E. Terminator sky neet you know, and you know if a computer ever decides that, and it's controlling heavy weapons or nuclear weapons, and it decides, well, you know, these people, this organic life form is the problem. I mean, this is what's causing all the problem in the world, not computers and machines. And I can I think something like that can happen. And I'm not trying to be sensationalistic here, if there is such a word. I think that if a computer is smart enough to do all the things I'm saying it doing, it would be smart enough to say, yeah, this is kind of like a parasite the human race. Maybe we should do something to get rid of that. Sure, it's so the interesting thing to me with AI or any of of of those arguments, right when you talk about you know, synthesizers or what have you, and you look at uh, yeah, and the in the hands of someone who is class sickly trained and the hands of someone who's talented h h, the the finished product ends up being art. Uh. You know when you think about a graphic artist and somebody working in the digital field. UH. You see folks with photo correction as an example, when when the person behind the AI knows how to do it organically knows how to do, you know, has gone through and done uh. And the example of photography, photo correction and in those things, AI is just a tool and it's it's a very useful tool. What what you're talking about, And it's it's very interesting. And I think you're right. We are on the cusp of transition of UH, because you know, there's software out there that I can with a recording dow uh digital audio workstation and the software that exists out there, I can sit there and take something that is absolutely trash and sit there and put it in and go with a a sequencer and and set that sequencer up to auto generate, auto step, and and create a rhythm that's catchy, right that you know. You know, I can go and take you know, audio of someone yelling at their kid and harmonize it, put it through auto tune, put it through a pitch crash and through put it through melodine, and and loop it back and and lo and behold it sounds like music. It sounds and people have already been doing that, you know, taking goofy things, you know, phrases or something like that, you know, and made and made so songs, right, you know, And and and I guess it has it's funny says that goes. Yeah, the folks that the folks that know how to do it, you know, they you know when you see folks that are running uh software and there it's it's computer generated music for all practical purposes through software. Uh. The folks that don't know how to play a guitar, don't know how to play a drum set, don't know, Uh, they can do that. And it's it's kind of neat that it gives them the outlet for expression, right, But but what they end up doing is very you know, low low rent. It's it's not the top shelf. But yet you put those same tools in the hands of Herbie Hancock, sure yeah, and and all the other man that it's fantastic, and you know, you bring up an interesting point. I just want to I want to touch on something that you just said here before, because I don't want to lose my thought that I have when you said you said, putting the tools in the hands of like amateurs who actually may not know how to play a musical instrument, or may not want to take the time to learn or invest, but are just kind of, for lack of a better term, circumventing the system to make you know, electronic digital music and what have you. And you say it's low rent. I agree with you in that. And the question I'm going to ask you the public's hunger or what maybe let me rephrase it differently, the public's expectation, the listening public. I think when a lot of stuff like that comes out, I think it lowers the bar than all because I like a good mixed track. I like to hear, you know, and it doesn't have to be fifty five instruments. It doesn't have to be a five piece band. It doesn't have to be a ten piece band or orchestra or anything. For example, the James Gang back from this, you know, the sixties and early set, late sixties, early seventies, three guys bass, guitar and drums, Joe walshon and and his other two guys in the trio there, or the John Mayer trio when he went out with Pino Palladino and I'm trying to think of the drum the drummer, what was the other guy's name in there with him? But you know, the John mayor John Mayer trio. Great music, you know, things like that. But those are musicians, those are artists, you know. I don't think they were looping anything or sampling or anything. And again I'm not trying to put those that enjoy that, but I'm wondering if it doesn't, you know, you know, lower the quality expectation of the general public. Because I say that because like Neil Young is a big proponent of he wants high end music. He doesn't like the trash and he he has been railing against this for twenty plus years ever since the days of those are us that might remember Napster when it came out. You know, you can download scam music off the internet and the big lawsuits that started the whole thing, you know, with the IRIAA. But his contention is is you know you have better fidelity on a CD as opposed to an MP three file. But now though you have upgrades in that audio format, you know, you have lossless Codex and things like that Apple iTunes are using in Spotify and Title and other streaming services. But that when you said that statement though, that really struck me of you know, you get someone who can kind of circumvent the system and they can take, you know, bang on a pan or something and make it song and warp and manipulate it. While it does open up more creative opportunities for those of folks out there that may not want to or can't comprehend or learn or something, I'm wondering, if it doesn't take away maybe a little bit, what are your thoughts? So then you're hitting on it of you know, there's not a solid answer, right because if it's somebody's gateway in, if it's how uh uhh, yeah, how they come through the door, fantastic, You know, we want everybody to be able to express themselves and be able ton't you And you know, but uh, you know, uh and I'm not gonna pick on who I want to, Okay, uh. But when you have somebody sit there and uh, I am going to pick on who I want to uh uh. You know, somebody comes up with Gucci Gang, Gucci Gucci Gang, and and you know, because of TikTok, because of social media, you know, the million dollar deal, and they're you know, yeah, you know that I agree with you. That does lower the bar, Yeah, that does. You know, it's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that being made. In fact, the fact that was made was fantastic. But that becomes the standard when you sit there and you go, hey, you two can throw something together in minutes and make a million dollars yeah, uh yeah, And where other people out here are busting their balls, you know, spending five to you know, getting a guitar at seven years old and learning and spending that time, you know, the next seven years of their life, day and night, sleeping, learning their craft, honing their craft, you know, really making that that emotional dedication to it and bonding with with the music and the instrument. I just think in some cases it's like it's flipping. It's like going to the store and buying a cheeseburger instead of you know, buying the ground beef yourself, and you know, and and tenderizing the meat and seasoning it. You're just you're looking for the drive through solution, you know. Like I was scrolling through videos last night. I went down that wormhole on YouTube and I was scrolling through some people going through reaction videos. I like going to certain channels that have reaction videos, especially when it comes to music. Now. I was watching this one channel for probably about forty forty five minutes, just watching the first few minutes of each songs that they were doing. And they were reviewing a lot of older songs, stuff from the sixties, Beach Boys, Beatles, you know, Love and Spoonful, Mama's and the Papas Yardbirds. Then they got into the seventies stuff, you know, like the Doobie Brothers, fog hat Ac, you know, Ladies, early ACDC. I would say, this Day and Leonard skinnerd and a bunch it led Zeppelin, okay, Joe Walsh, Eagles stuff and what these and these were younger people, Okay that we're reviewing it. They probably I would have to say in the twenty to thirty maybe twenty five, thirty five year old ranger twenty to thirty range, if I could tell, And they were saying, Wow, this sounds just so much more emotional and it's more and the one young lady because it was her and her husband said, you know, I'm connecting with this. It's not like when I turn on the radio and I hear the same yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, the same chord sequence over and over in seventy five songs going throughout my playlist throughout the day. This is different and it's telling a real story. I can understand the lyrics. It has a great hook, and it makes me want to listen and it's it's pulling me into something, and I think that's what it's all about with music and the other you've hit on something really interesting. I want to hit on eventually. But yeah, go ahead. Well I was gonna say, then the other on the flip side of that, after I scrolled about forty forty five minutes so through their channel because they had like three hundreds of them, like, oh my god, I came across you know, do you know who Oliver Anthony is. I don't know why I know that name, but he was really big about six seven months ago. He's from, I believe, somewhere in the South around connection Virginuay or Kentucky way. He was the redheaded gentleman with the beard and everything, just him and his his resonator guitar. Okay, just his voice and his resonator guitar. He made that that anthem about the common man getting screwed over by you know, Richmond, north of rich Or, you know, and then he like that, and then he had another one, you know, another one I was listening to through his videos, I want to go home, and then there was another song about getting sober. I need to get sober, and just listening to those songs, and I even went and watched a couple of reaction channels that were reacting to it, and I had the same reaction before before I went to the other reaction channels as these people did. It's just his voice and a resonator guitar, lyrics that just reach into your guts and your heart and soul and say, man, I get where you're coming from, brother, I understand what you're saying. I've felt that way. I'm pissed off or I'm sad, or I'm trying to kick this, or i feel, you know, like I don't count. And to me, that's what music is about, you know. And when we get into this whole AI thing, like you said, yeah, it has its purpose in its place absolutely saving old recordings. I mean, how many recordings are on tape somewhere from the thirties, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, even eighties that are on you know, some type of magnetic tape or even you know, compact discs that they're not gonna last forever. But maybe this way digitally we can enhance and save and preserve you know, the original intent. And it brings up several interesting points. And the first I will sit there and say, yeah, when I about you know, the idea that okay, uh, doing something together quick to make money. There's nothing wrong with the artists producing something for the goal of of making money, right. In fact, some of the best optunes ever made were written of making money, right yeah uh. And and so you know that's that's the first hurdle that people go, well, yeah, so what you're saying is it needs to be for artistic and now there's there, you know, there's some great music out there. That was the intent of I want to write a hit so that I can make lots of money family, pay off my house, and not have to worry about working for the man, you know. Yeah, right, yeah, So you sit there and that becomes an interesting argument when you talk about the music of the sixties and the seventies in particular through the eighties. Uh, yeah, you think about it and we you know that that friend that had that pioneer rack system or a component system and some big speakers. I know, I had some Magna planers. They were ribbon speakers. They are the size of doors. They were thin. Uh, they were horribly impractical, took a lot of power to run them. But oh my god, they saunded glorious, you know. And uh it's interesting, you know you talk about, you know, how well engineered that stuff was, how good it sounds, and the reason it sounded so good that would be listening to it on something where we could hear how good it sounded. Right, you can hear exactly, and now you know the point of yeah, overtly compressed m P. Three going through a bluetooth, going through you know, some Beats headphones. Yeah, and and it's like, okay, yeah, uh, every step of the way, we just took this down a notch. We we we degraded it. And and so that, you know, you look at Steely, Dans, Asia Man, Nobody the Mason through a really good set of headphones, but chances are they listened through you know, uh, a full you know stereo or maybe even a quadraphonic stereo. You know, for most people now, their best listening experience is in their car. And and you sit there and you think about this and go okay, yeah, and we've done it here at Sweetwater as you know, critical listening and learning how to mix, learning how to engineer these things, and learning new tools on how to do it because you know, you kind of come in with a skill set. But when you do that, there are some big songs and I'm talking song of the year, big songs, and you listen to them on your iPhone or through your laptop and it sounds great, and you listen to it through a really good set of headphones or a really good set of you know, monitor speakers, and it sounds horrible. Yeah, and you sit there and go, oh, why does it sound horrible? Well, not because they didn't know how to record it, not because they were rushing towards a dollar sign, but the exact opposite that they mixed it that way because they know that mono is the new stereo, right, how it's going to be consumed? Right, Mono is you know, we listened to a from a bluetooth speaker, they were lucky, Yeah, a single source Bluetooth speaker mono. Or we listened to our worst our phone, hey listen to this, yeah, or our laptop you know when we're scrolling videos. Yeah, and you know, and all of these things, don't you know, sound bad compared to yeah, yeah, your older brothers stereo in nineteen seventy seven. Well, we remember the things they used to be carrying around all around the big cities, and you know, and then it made it way to the summer boomboxes. Remember those things were they're carrying a suitcase on your shoulder. You see people go down, or you put that in the backyard with the party and crank it up, and it was like that was and then we went shrunk, shrunk, shrunk, shrunk walk man walk man, walk man down to the phone. Now we're down to earbuds, you know, and little micro you know, micro things are wearables that you can record music gone, which you know, I understand, you know, earbuds in them everything. I mean, yeah, it's great the digital age and all. But you know, I think there I agree with you. There is joining me a del part one of our interview with Dave Cody. Look for part two coming on our next episode. And as always, if you've gotten some value out of this podcast, would you please leave us a positive rating and review. Don't forget to visit the website weissthoughts dot com, wys Weis's thoughts dot com, and stop by my voiceover business website Weiss's Productions or Terryweiss dot com. I can be reached at either one of those. Let me bring your words to life for you. Thank you once again for being part of the podcast of Wife's Thoughts and joining us for our virtual campfire sit down. Be good to yourself, be good to others, and we'll see you on the next episode of Wife's Thoughts.