In metaphysics there are three transcendentals: the true, the good, and the beautiful. We are dealing here with the beautiful, art, or specifically music.
I wouldn't dare to lead you away by further phenomenology without pointing you to our main goal, who is God, who is Beauty. Our frantic musical world of today because of the fear of loosing musical artists or HM is still bewildering us where it finally will lead. But ultimately we will see God as Beauty himself.
Edith Stein, is as well the first to fully apply Catholic theology in phenomenology. Recall our discussion of her in the first book. Below link is a required reading for artists.
Pure music then isn't just amoral anymore. It invites us to something that transcends us.
Music with lyrics, video, and context though cannot just be amoral. Lots of songs out there are immoral. Is this why so may of our young who has been influenced by such immoral elements of the beautiful music, can't find any real sense of wonder and awe anymore? A sense of real adventure for their lives without fear that something seems wrong, to fully see the meaning of life, and that art as not something more disintegrative of their already tumultuous period of development, while not yet achieving maturity of conscience or even just their critical mind.
Any artist and their work must realize that the true, the good, and the beautiful cannot be separated from each other. And that an immoral but beautiful music, isn't actually beautiful. Did I already told you how I want to edit some pop songs out there to remove some of its immoral lyrical, graphic, contextual element, to salvage the beauty of its musical composition?
We need to be beautiful, our art needs to be beautiful, even in the midst of suffering. We need not surrender the inspiration we see, hear, since it is the same God who continues to put hope in our hearts.
Gessafelstein is the summit of software manipulation of music today when he won Grammy's Best Remixed Record this 2026 using the song Abracadabra of Lady Gaga.
My favorite is Anomalie who can still play and perform the unlimited sounds be it software synth or samples. However he needs full band members to do this and all their instruments and gadgets.
For a portable one man version I love @ariathome.
For the simplest of control interface (just a Korg Kronos) and playing virtuosity I choose Jordan Rudess and his Pianote reproduction captures that brilliantly.
Why not Jacob Collier who can almost play all limited traditional instruments? The guy is a musical genius. And this is where we post the purpose of this article: the playability of unlimited sounds one of which is software synths, by a simple musical guy. We have mastered the guitar for example, a limited traditional instrument. There are lots of virtuoso players of guitars. But they cant compete when it comes to AM integrated compositional ability manipulating all kinds of sounds in an instant single phase.
We've discussed already that even just software synths is a monstrous thing needing thousands of controllers. There is a rising development in controller interface just for that. And this is where the community of musicians would love to see that such a sonic thousand possibilities be captured for being playable by a simple controller interface.
Many musicians out there would love to see such a possibility and not surrender everything to a Gen AI, although it is where the mystery of human limitations becomes even the source of human creativity, where artists wont die analyzing, adjusting, and remembering thousand parameters, but just enjoy playing a simple musical interface to a thousand sound possibilities.
That's just for synth, while Gen AI has all the kinds of sounds in its repertoires.
The only thing that human beings have against Gen AI is its raw ability to feel and create meaning out of it.
While AI in a DAW might give us an equalizing advantage, musicians would love to see such an integrated possibility in a playable interface. Here we have Seaboard as the state of the art.
Note that we are also targeting copyrightability, unlike a Gen AI that cannot be owned by a human artist.
Songwriters then will be able to capture the musical sound they hear using just a simple interface, if not yet the musical brain-computer interface or neural music decoder. By then, it will be the end of Gen AI and the return of copyright to human artists.
Remember our principle that AM would stand at a halt without further human creativity, which you can sense now by hearing AM music out there sounding similar to each other. Our intention is not to kill Gen AI, while Gen AI has already killed the musicians. Our intention is to enable it as a human tool, because the consumers of music are also human beings. Its just the same for robotic manufacturing: who will buy from them if no one has jobs anymore and no money to buy the goods of robotic manufacturing. UBI is still an unproven theory to trust about. Our target is human flourishing side by side everything flourishing. If you see the future as human beings having nothing to do anymore since everything is already done by robots, then its the end of human life. Despite the research saying that playing an instrument makes us healthy, we become mere passive listeners of music which are even created by Gen AI.
Gen AI should invest now on interfaces even its just in its infancy so that copyright can be given to its users. A copyright is the financial winner why a pop song is freely heard and enjoyed by everybody while amassing millions of dollars. Users wealth becomes their target earnings by the numbers, making Gen AI probably the richest company in the world. They become the new record labels.
I even praised Gen AI's superb compositional ability before which you can hear how it manipulates synth and creates never before heard sandwich of synth seemingly expressing feeling, which is why musical producers use Gen AI for ideation. Gen AI companies can't just give it to musical producers for free. They can own it as the label producers.
If not, then DAW companies can invest in it and make composing a breeze. DAW companies can also grab that neural music decoder to easily manipulate and play synths while locking the recording label rights of their users.
We won't beat Gen AI at its game. No matter how musical control interfaces advances, Gen AI will advance by leaps and bounds in contrast. Are songwriters doomed now? Not necessarily, since Gen AI can't beat us at our own game either. Other than our contention here that it can't organically express both feeling and meaning at the same time, here is Gemini 3.6 Flash analysis:
Separating the process (math vs. human intent) from the product, generative AI tools are extraordinary sound-sculptors and vibe manipulators, but as pure composers, they operate more like brilliant surface-level illusionists.
AI has mastered what musicologists call the syntax of musical emotion. It knows the exact formulaic combinations of filter cutoff frequencies, detuned sawtooth waves, scale modes, and spatial reverb that immediately signal nostalgia, dread, or euphoria.
However, evaluating the final audio product strictly on compositional structure and sustained emotional impact reveals clear strengths and definite ceilings.
1. Where AI Excels: Timbral Manipulation & Instant Vibe
Judging composition by sound design, timbral movement, and immediate texture:
* Hyper-Complex Sound Design: AI models generate complex, hybrid textures—blending analog warm synth pads, granular soundscapes, and organic resonance—that would take hours to program, layer, and route manually in a modular setup or DAW.
* Instant Affective Mapping: The models have memorized the acoustic signatures of human emotional triggers. An AI track can map a dark synthwave bassline directly to a listener's fight-or-flight response or weave soft sine-wave pads into instant serenity within seconds.
2. Where AI Structural Composition Falls Short
Evaluating the product on harmonic development, dynamic breathing, and macro-architecture reveals where the machine stumbles:
* The "Syntax" vs. "Efficacy" Disconnect: A study from the MIT Media Lab highlighted a telling contrast: while listeners often say AI synth tracks sound polished and engaging on first listen, human-composed pieces remain significantly more effective at inducing genuine, sustained emotional states (catharsis, deep focus, physiological calm). AI hits the surface aesthetics of emotion, but often misses the deep dynamic breathing underneath.
* Macro-Architecture vs. Micro-Looping: AI models excel at establishing a 30-to-60-second mood, but struggle with long-form developmental narrative. A great human composer builds a motif across 5 minutes, evolving it through key shifts, timbre changes, and structural payoff. AI tends to wander, loop endlessly, or resolve tension mechanically because it generates note-by-note probabilities rather than executing an overarching blueprint.
* Lack of Strategic Subversion: Truly superb human composition relies on breaking expectations—an unexpected minor-v swap, a sudden drop in synth texture, or calculated rhythmic friction. Because AI predicts what statistically should come next, its emotional transitions tend to follow the path of least resistance, making tracks feel flat or predictable upon repeated listens.
The Verdict
AI is a superb sound stylist and arrangement engine, but a mediocre structural architect. It gives you the immediate thrill of high-end synth manipulation and mood setting, but it rarely constructs the deep, evolving emotional journeys that define masterwork composition.
Can a human being replicate a Gen AI sound? Sort of, like having a thousand hands DJ that manipulates parameters every second. But here is how like the JS: midi humanizer make that possible, and you can ask Gemini 3.6 Flash for a step by step tutorial of its analysis:
To replicate the lush, hyper-detailed synth textures of generative AI inside REAPER, you need to reverse-engineer its core process.
At its core, AI sound generation relies on four structural mechanisms:
* Multi-layer timbral blending (combining synthetic waveforms with organic noise/resonance).
* Generative micro-variations (subtle timing and velocity probability).
* Spectral diffusion (turning discrete notes into evolving, continuous soundscapes).
REAPER is uniquely built for this because of its native Parameter Modulation engine and modular routing.
The AI Sound Design Pipeline in REAPER
1. Build a Multi-Layer Timbral Stack
Creating the complex hybrid core
AI rarely uses a single synth voice; it blends clean oscillators with organic noise.
Track 1 (The Body): Load a simple synth (e.g., REAPER's native ReaSynth or a basic JSFX synth). Set a warm triangle or sawtooth wave with a soft attack (300ms) and long release (1500ms).
Track 2 (The Organic Texture): Add a second track with pink noise or an ambient sample in ReaSamplOmatic5000. High-pass filter this track around 400 Hz so it sits above the bass.
Group both tracks into a Parent Folder Track so they route through a single FX processing chain.
2. Set Up Asynchronous Parameter Drift
Eliminating robotic staticness with REAPER Parameter Modulation
Generative AI continuously shifts filter cutoffs and resonance in non-repeating cycles. You can mimic this using REAPER's native Parameter Modulation:
Add ReaEQ (or a native filter like JS: Lowpass) to your synth track.
Click the Param button in the top right of the plugin window, select Parameter Modulation / MIDI link, and pick Frequency (High Pass or Low Pass).
Check LFO. Set the shape to Random / Sample & Hold or a very slow Sine wave (e.g., 0.05 Hz).
Adjust the Strength slider so the filter cutoff subtly breathes between 300 Hz and 3,000 Hz.
Pro Tip: Repeat this on your synth's stereo pan or chorus depth with a slightly different LFO rate so the modulations never align.
3. Inject Humanized Probability & Micro-Variations
Making notes evolve over time
AI creates organic motion by slightly shifting pitch, velocity, and timing on every note trigger:
In your MIDI track FX chain, insert JS: MIDI Humanizer before your synth plugin.
Set a tiny amount of pitch variation (1–3 cents) and velocity randomization (±5 to 10).
If you want generative melody/arpeggios, add JS: Sequencer Megababy or a scale-transposer, mapping parameters to REAPER's LFOs to randomly trigger accent notes.
4. Apply Infinite Spectral Diffusion
Turning notes into endless ambient tails
AI synth patches sound "expensive" because short notes dissolve into wide, dense, evolving tails:
On your Folder Track, add ReaDelay. Create two taps:
Follow ReaDelay with ReaVerb (or a lush JSFX space reverb like JS: Atlantis Reverb).
Set the wet mix high (40–60%) and decay time long (4 to 8 seconds).
Open ReaEQ on the reverb tail to cut harsh frequencies above 6 kHz and mud below 200 Hz.
Why This Replicates the "AI Vibe"
When you tie multiple independent LFOs (at prime-number frequencies like 0.03 Hz, 0.07 Hz, and 0.11 Hz) to your filter, delay feedback, and modulation depth, the mathematical combinations take hours before ever repeating.
The resulting sound constantly shifts, breathes, and morphs—giving you that exact organic, emotionally evocative AI texture, but with total manual control over the musical notes and structural arrangement.
We feel. We create meaning as well. If you just feel AM music is good, then enjoy it. But as a songwriter, dont force yourself to integrate a sound into your own song if you don't feel so just to sound new like how AM sounds. Compose songs coming from your heart. But you can always be a student and learn how an AM compose songs.
I find the reverse process miserable as well in the end. Let's call them poets. They feed the Gen AI their best lyrics, coming from the riches of their innermost being, just for the AM to apply the wrong kind of emotive sound. Why wrong? It knows for example what anger sounds like, but the lyrics has the nuance of anger that the AM generic anger algorithm applies generally to all kinds of anger. A poem is first converted by a lyricist, and a songwriter suggests changes to what can be more syllabic to the melody. In short, don't expect a chant formula or strophic melody to hit top chart though. Not that it's not beautiful, but that it was meant to be repetitive to focus on the meaning of the chant. That's why not all of life events more or less gives itself to the medium of song. Some realities of life are better represented by other art medium like films and poems.
How about instrumental music then? This is where it gets more complex. An instrument played by a human being is played with feelings. The organic connection between the player and the instrument is hearable. And why digital music composed on pure entry, feels truncated. Remember that Abracadabra is first already a complete song before Gessafelstein remixed it. And so many music producers out there attests to such workflow that the song is first and primary where all your effects gets to see their proper place. And remember that any sane human being that can still compose are an integrated meaning that just found an instrumental musical vibe interesting to record.
Nevertheless, we will get to see more of the difference between a human music and an artificial music.
With all the balanced intricate variables we've mentioned, can a songwriter still be able to compose a good song using a Gen AI? Of course, even with flying colors. But who is stupid enough to give all of one's livelihood to someone else's, which gets us to the problem of copyright.
Possibilities are endless. Acting out what is practical somehow throws away the angst. What's doable right now?
So the whole situation of not having any right to your song put inside an AM utterly gives all songwriters angst. The possibility of owning your song is put to nihilation, as if songwriters can't own a song anymore.
That's why I taught my viewers the path of JJazzLab and Reaper vst plugin as an alternative where one's song is fully copyrightable before any song feeding to any AM is done.
Envying an AM arrangement though should not stop one from songwriting. It's as if a very gigantic robot songwriter will top all charts and dethrone all HM or human songwriters. I challenge an AM Dev to train an AI of the top 100 songs of the 60's only and see where an AI creativity will lead and stop at becoming too similar to each other already. Without the 70's HM song training I bet it cannot create a new decade of song development. Our mathematical formula on book one still is true, the advancement of AI is the advancement of humanity. But also that the advancement of humanity will also advance AI further.
So an AM declaring a stop to livelihood of making songs, declares a death to itself. AM must in any way support HM rather than obliterate it.
Let's get back though to existential feeling. In our topic of discussing feeling as co-existential with meaning, we avoid the trap of sliding ultimately into sensitive beings, loosing our rationality.
To tell that it's not just that possibilities are endless but that as St. John Paul II has told us, we do not know what is a good choice in the future, and that we only know for sure the objective good as the most certain guide to our next step.
Here also the topic of discernment is inserted as not a side topic, but a general guideline that the Spirit's consolation and desolation is present and accessible.
If we fully tell the truth that God is a fact and not just an invention of human beings, then the topic of existential feelings just falls in its proper place. God sees everything. God is omniscient as well. And God loves and guides us against a ruthless and cruel world we find ourselves situated.
If God is a fact, we will tell ourselves that some of our feelings aren't even our own. And in the context of discernment, Something out there is warning us or pointing us where we should rather go, and not drown in a mere analysis of what our feelings tell us bleakly.
Here we see that God's decrees in Christ isn't a static set of rules, but a living guide, since it was stated by a God who already knows the future.
All said, we can always throw away God's guide as useless and see for ourselves the consequences of it in the future.
That's my first title to this article. But I intuit morally that I'm limiting again myself to the melodious music, whatever suits my ears for the time being. So I hastily turned and entitled it rather "Singing Songs" for a more broader discussion.
"I lost songwriting already from my youth. As an old person, there is no more singing and melody coming out of me. Perhaps most singing is just for expressing romantic love and its intricacies."
That's my first impression about what is songwriting. It caught me sunk within my inner world again of emotions and melodious music--away from meaningful songs!
It turned out what I'm playing repeatedly in my mind is a song no longer making meaning to my present situation but just a recollection of an already processed past and been let go. In short a broken heart repeating itself like a broken record.
This is where feeling and meaning reveals its ethical plot to us, and that we sing songs for life not to continually bog down our life.
We sing songs of worship. We sing joyful songs celebrating something. We sing when we wonder at life. We sing when we're in love, and mostly where most of us are always stuck. We dance. We make jolly rhymes even though it's becoming nonsensical, that gives more weirdness to the beat. As the Bible tells us, there is a time for everything.
Let meaning guide our feeling, so that we won't end up suicidal or even always depressed.
It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason. -Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1767.
Now in reality, who doesn't play a love song in repeat until it hurts no more?
Well, a time to mourn a lost love, a failed one, etc. is needed since not crying it out, will make your life more miserable.
The truth though is that we are all in pain on this earth, but in heaven there will be no more tears.
It's just that there has to be a stop at crying even we're still here on earth, since our heart and soul is a limited entity in its capacity for loneliness.
That being said, you can enjoy the music you love listening to provided it's just a background music, not much affecting your heart and soul, marveling at he beauty of the musical arrangement.
For only in heaven will all our tears be wiped out.
Install Suno on your hi res phone, use your iem earbud, tap on Suno's Best of v5.5 or Staff Picks or Made with Studio.
Listen. Did you hear those sounds before? You didn't because it was AI matched and mixed from human music, but this time in a fast forward manner no human musician can do even in his lifetime.
It can create billions of music mixing mathematics can do, but human beings can do slowly only by learning from others' songs.
We're talking about future sound of those music, not yet saying if they're meaningful.
But hey, I'm listening and learning AI compositional techniques no slow human beings have yet idealized about.
Of course by hearing it, I become familiar with how it sounds. Suno is giving me ideas for free, not yet being captured by record labels and leading artists. Hear what you like.
Then let your advantage as a human being create something meaningful from it that touches the heart as well.
Of course, it doesn't go that fast. You write songs when you're inspired. Moments like that comes rare. But when inspiration comes, you have those mixes of the future already.
Your old guitar though can't replicate the electro music mix of the AI, to the taste of human beings (what we've made top charters). But even savvy producers say they can't replicate those sounds very easily. We're doomed on the other side, unless electro music will be as simple as playing a guitar. A software synth sound is an infinite sound maker compared to a limited acoustic guitar of a particular size, shape, and sound. How can a limited human being manipulate easily electro music to its tastes, unless an AI music assistant easily points to you what to do with those thousand knobs to produce the sound you have in mind. Or unless wearable brain computer interfaces can already easily capture those sounds. Then it's a human creative and authored product already which was just captured by the interface. Well, Supreme Court or Copyright Office will surely have a headache about that if it comes of age.
The news that Spotify removed 75m AI songs is a good news for supporting real human artists. But likewise as we've been battling since the start, AI should assists artists, even drop costs of studio finished songs, not replace or remove both. It then points developers to the right path.
We don't need very complicated musical sound to create good songs. There are even popular songs made up of a single guitar and a duet, nothing more nothing less. They've become popular because these songs are coming from the heart, and the sound is organic to the felt emotion of the human person composing or performing it. Emotion is then revealing themselves to us as not meaningless belting of voice or electric guitar. It's true that the heart has a reason which reason cannot understand. When we are lost though, we are better to remind ourselves that charity is truth and truth is charity as well, according to Pope Benedict XVI. And rather than me hearing those future sound of music as advantage, might become the contrary, complex but shallow, novel but non-organic, advanced but detached.
If the system is chaotic, maxims or propositions will be missing. Since we're talking about future events not yet happening, we don't fully know the cause and effect. We do imagine the future up to its ending, not for its sake but to play a probability game for ethical rule making, so that we can step forward better, if not completely certain.
That isn't a kind of worrying.
Anti-anthropocentrism (see Magnificat Humanitas for details) of the future dictates that man is expendable, or worse can be removed entirely from the equation. Up until when? Is it up until there is not a single human being left? Are we that gloomy about humanity? And we don't want to be like Batman anymore to save Gotham city, to save humanity. We actually don't need to save humanity, only Jesus can. We are just called to do our part, in the smallest way we can. We are not God.
It's eerie when an automated factory churns out products, but for whom? In a world without a single human being, a factory isn't needed by the world actually. The world without a human being can exists better without a factory. But a factory was made for the need of humanity. An absolutized profit logic actually kills. It actually just boils down to Jesus's teaching that we cannot serve both God and mammon.
Humanity sucks. Do we annihilate it now as the solution? We've built medical science for centuries for example, most of which just started from a little boy's love crying staring at his mother slowly dying of an unknown sickness. Don't we want to continue such course anymore? It's true that we can't solve world hunger at once, though one can give alms to someone needing our help for the moment. We don't throw the whole problem because it is unsolvable. We just do what we can right here, right now, and leave the rest to God.
Just remember that you are not the savior of the world. You aren't even its creator. How dare you close it's case into your hand and judge it unfit, you who will be gone tommorow leaving your empire to somebody else's hands.
God, a Perfect Being, the Creator of the world deemed fallen, sinful human beings worth saving. Read the history of Jesus Christ. It's a historical event unlike our mere imaginings of the future here.
We aren't against technology here, but against a technology that slowly kills humanity, a slow suicide. Even if our future imaginings here are just a hunch, policymakers and executives need not decide against humanity when the actual time comes.
I went to fetch my nephew at an elementary school today. I noticed that it's actually a mess training human beings, tedious. But when the kids that finished already the task are playing just outside the rooms, everything became full of joy. Training the kids are not linear, untidy. But you see in their eyes a sparkle of the future, full of energy, in contrast with my age past my prime.
Just click the wand on any Gen AI music or put it on auto-lyrics. Listen to its lyric's meaning. It sucks though it rhymes to the music.
We already discussed that because of AI we now see our familiar human capacity in shambles since we can already notice that there is a difference because we now have a point of comparison HM vs AM, unlike before we are so accustomed that we take it for granted.
What to do? Others request an LLM to create the lyrics.
Here is the thing. As a songwriter sometimes a lyric in your mind already has a melody with it, you just have to follow it through according to the genre or rhythm that's forming in your creative mind. Gen AI cannot do both feeling and meaning at the same time. While an LLM can create a good lyrical meaning, it cannot create simple lyrics that rhymes with the music you also have in mind. There goes our advantage or human capacity we barely notice.
Guided by Magnifica Humanitas, our imagination shouldn't end up seeing human beings no longer singing, playing instruments, making songs from the depth of their hearts.
Damang-dama natin ang pinagdadaanan ng kung kaninumang totoong buhay ang lyrics ng kantang Wildflower ni Billie Eilish. Damang-dama natin ang kung papaano danasin ang pagiging tao!
Enjoy your song writing! Otherwise, get it out of your chest, maybe we can at least sympathize.
