It has been too long since I've written you, for very good reason, though.
A lot going on for a one-man gardener with part-time help.
We just upgraded our website that holds The Casual English Bible.® And I've been frantically filling in the search data needed for you to find your maps among the 1,000 or so that we have.
Think of those thousands of place names on the maps. I have to put each one in little digital boxes so when you type "Galilee," for example, you get to see all the maps we have that show Galilee.
We've already switched the website over; it's live but not running on all 8 cylinders. (Retro, I know.) So I feel like I'm swimming underwater here because there are so many tedious, brain-draining, chores I still need to do before I can get back to the fun stuff of refining the paraphrase and improving the maps.
Enough about that.
Music coming
Late last summer I learned that it's possible to use AI to perform music if I give it the lyrics and a melody. I jumped on that for The Casual English Bible® because boy do I have lyrics.
There are 150 psalms in the Bible, many with several songs in each psalm. And I've already paraphrased all 150 of them. The lyrics are right there.
So, I've been using them to help create songs that I can put in the margin of related psalms and Bible book chapters. First, I added footnotes to the paraphrase. Then came the maps. Now the music. You click the icon of a globe and you'll see maps related to a chapter or a psalm. With music, you'll use the icon of a musical note. You click that and it opens up the music which you can listen to for a minute. If you like it, you can stream it from Apple, Spotify, or somewhere else. Or you can buy it from Amazon. If you buy it from us, the money goes back into the work.
New song: "Throw Me a Heavenly Rope (Psalm 62)"
This is a new a song that just came out today. It's a bouncy, fun gospel song about someone in trouble, and he can't seem to find help from anyone but God. At least he's hoping God will help him. As I wrote it, I thought it would develop into a sad, slow worship song. But it didn't feel right to go that way. I decided to add some smiles instead. That's because the ancient poet who wrote Psalm 62 trusted God would help.
Noted: Controversial AI music
What I'm doing here is controversial.
Some in my own family don't fully approve of what I'm doing. But I don't think people gifted enough to perform a song know what's going on. How would they know what it's like to have music inside that you can't express? Ever. You can't shape the cadence, deliver the notes, and live within the joy of that moment.
It's like not being able to have a baby, to a much lesser degree. For it can feel unfair, and mean, and diminishing.
But now, non-singers without the pipes can toot the horn anyhow. They can express and direct what has been inside them all along - music.
The first song I sang to AI this way was after putting down our dog Buddy, a black lab my wife saw get hit by two cars. She stopped. The city held the dog for a time. No one claimed him, But Linda did and named him. I didn't want a dog.
Ten years passed. By then I didn't want to lose our Buddy. But lymphoma happened. I had to give the vet the word that delivered the lethal medication.
I was so angry with God that I wrote a song called “I Know You're Angry.” The lyrics were what I imagined God might say to me, knowing how angry I was. I was using music to try to work through my anger. I was trying to make God talk to me.
He sure knew what I had to say to him.
Some performing musicians say I'm wrong to use AI... that it's cheating, even though I identify AI's involvement on the music data forms and on every checkbox the system offers (almost none so far, because this is all so new).
I'm also seeing a lot of music curators refusing to play AI music. Especially in religious settings where people want sincerity and honesty (even though most of them seemed to vote for DT). Spotify, too, is starting to set up some guardrails that look intended to diminish AI music, or to at least throw breakers in front of the tsunami of AI music spam.
It won't work.
Sorry folks, we've kept silent long enough. That was life back then. But now is now, and the gig's up.
- The cat's out of the bag
- The genie's out of the bottle
- Uncle Henry's coming and bringing his harmonica
It's too late.
Synthesizers first started showing up in late the 1960s and early 1970s - right around the time Bible translators started to think about back-shelving the beautifully antiquated King James Version of the Bible in favor of the New International Version. Didn't go well at first, for either - "spawn-of-hell" Bible or snythesizer.
Many traditional musicians and especially the classically trained ones, treated synthesizers as artificial and threatening. The very idea of producing sound electronically - without strings, reeds, or breath - seemed almost godless. It steals music that God plants in the human spirit and plugs it into a taser.
"Buzz snap zap" in 4/4 time and voila, "The Sound of Noise."
Some orchestral players worried with good reason that machines might replace them. True, strings in studios became rare. Brass and woodwinds, too. Big bang percussionists, as well.
But attitudes started to lighten when artists proved synths could be musical, not just gimmicky.
When Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach (1968) showed that classical music could sound glorious with the help of a synthesizer - that did it. Instant demand.
Beatles used a Moog on Abbey Road. That sent a message: biggest bands were taking it seriously.
Stevie Wonder used synths in the 1970's to produce soulful, expressive music.
I'm Stevie Miller, and it's a wonder that I'm finally able to write and produce my own music.
First time I heard my music performed in the way I instructed AI to perform it, I cried. It was the AI voice, but it was my heart.
My wife stood beside me. I don't think she cried, though. I couldn't tell.
Music is powerful.
Once unleashed, it's too powerful to stop. Too important to diminish. And too foolish to belittle.
Wherever it comes from, it's still music as long as I have my ears.
- Final word. Our president is not Jesus, the pope, and probably not the Antichrist. But he is anti-Christ and the black negative impression of Scripture's portrait of Jesus. There are thousands of good people who suggest otherwise. And there seem to be millions of others who agree. They are wrong. People are dead and dying because of this wrong. Christianity in name only rots everything it touches. But there's help. Two thousand years from Jesus, the best help available is just about any version of the Bible - and time spent listening to the Spirit of God within us. I don't mean to offend anyone, but this is a pivotal moment in my life. Either I stand with my fellow Christians who justify murder, pedophilia, and kidnapping on a genocidal scale, or I stand against them. I've chosen. It's time for more of us to do the same. We need to speak our mind and not parrot what others tell us to think. My dad lost good buddies in Germany, fighting armies of men very much in the maniacal spirit of our own elected leader.
