Just a few days ago, Beatles’ label Apple released some updates on recording done in the last century. Based on John Lennon demos he recorded on a piano in his Dakota apartment in New York City, his widow gifted them to the surviving Beatles to see if they could come up with a few tracks to launch a series of videos and compilation recordings known as the Anthology. Three songs were chosen to work with, led by Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne: Free As A Bird, Real Love, and Now And Then. Two were produced, while the third was abandoned because George Harrison rejected the quality of Lennon’s vocal and piano cassette.
Several years ago, film recordings of the Beatles at work on a documentary-style project were reworked with the use of digital technology to allow separating of the original redordings into elements that could be sweetened into studio-quality dialogue, vocals, and various instruments for remix. The Now And Then demo was updated using material from the 90’s session and recent vocals and parts by the living Beatles McCartney and Starkey. Jeff Lynne remixed and used the more recent machine learning tools to improve on the Lennon material. The revised Free As A Bird is available for streaming, with the others to follow on release of the revised Anthology on a fourth disk. A beautiful record.
I’ve been teaching myself how to play a piano with an AI-enhanced digital setup. The documentation is hard to fathom, but the underlying strategy is to impart some level of muscle memory into my fingers along with video-based narration by a series of players/tutors. After exploring the lessons, I am now playing my way through a variety of singles from blues, pop, Beatles, and Motown. My favorite technique is to choose the right hand and hack my way through the melody, switch to the left hand and learn the simpler bass line, and then combine the two. The right hand is chaotic, the notes found by ear. The left is a way to route around my discontinuity between power (left-handed) and writing mode (right-handed) that I cheated my way through up to high school. Once I lock in to the bass, I go back to the repetition of the song structure to improvise the right hand.
Some version of this has filtered its way into monitoring the news in both politics and business. YouTube TV’s multiview 4-screen grid lets me scan the repetitious partisan views of the day’s headlines, switching the captions to fill in the text behind the horrible lower thirds that poison our lives. It’s some version of bass line/melody and the harmony that comes from ignoring the attitude and letting the rhythm permeate the random insight that develops. The synergy between the enterprise marketing and the tariff tapdance suggests the market will hover at the top range of the middle. That feels like it will convert into rising inflation and layoffs but still enough consumer clout to keep stocks healthyish through the midterms.
Meanwhile, Trump’s attack on Jimmy Kimmel has reset late night. Kimmel’s return to his ABC show was a beautiful thing: emotional, biting, and the first late night show I’ve wtched since Letterman’s retirement. I’ll keep monitoring both Kimmel and the four-screen multiview, and participate with members of the Gillmor Gang and others in a series of one-on-one live sessions as needed. If you are new to the Gang, please sign up for a free subscription and I will upgrade you to full membership at no cost to you. For now, I will leave the paywall open but will sometimes post material only available with an updated account.
