Sean Paul Murphy, Writer

Sean Paul Murphy, Writer
Sean Paul Murphy, Storyteller

Friday, July 26, 2024

BREAKUP CITY released


My second album Breakup City was just released. It is streaming everywhere.

My first album, The Elusive Farm Girl, was a concept album. I wouldn't call Breakup City one. However, I would describe it as a lyrical documentary. I began playing the guitar and writing songs in the summer of 1983 when my first love broke up with me after a four year relationship. The songs that poured out of me expressed all of the angst and anger and longing and regret that a suicidal twenty-something year-old could muster. Songwriting proved to be a much needed form of therapy for me.

According to the researcher Elisabeth Kübler-Ross people go through five stages as they approach death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The same thing is true of breakups. On this album you will hear me experience all of those five stages in great detail. Some of the songs might be exaggerated, but they all come from a place of emotional sincerity.

Another difference between Breakup City and The Elusive Farm Girl is that the songs on my previous album were intended only for an audience of one. That isn't so in this case. When I started playing the guitar, I formed a band called The Atomic Enema with my friends Jim Jackson, Mike Mazziott and Nick Mazziott. I wrote these songs with the intention of performing them publicly. That said, The Atomic Enema was a rather blunt instrument more suited to fast, punk-style rockers than ballads. Although I presented most of these songs to the band, only the harder ones made it into the playlist.

Here's The Atomic Enema playing their version one of the songs on this album:

 

Another difference between the albums is that I am still friends with my elusive farm girl but I am sadly no longer in touch with the subject of these songs. But that's just as well. I suspect she'd kill me if she heard this album. The songs paint an unfairly negative picture of her. In reality, she was a kind and sweet woman who made me very happy for a number of years. Think about it. If I hadn't been so happy with her, I wouldn't have been as devastated by our breakup. My only complaint about her was that we didn't stay together. These songs are less a portrait of her than of my own sorrow and grief. 

One final note. Although you can find recordings of me playing all of these songs myself on my YouTube channel, I used the artificial intelligence engine Udio to realize these final versions. Trust me, I did you a favor. You would not want to hear me singing these songs for an hour or so!

Here are the tracks.

1). LYING AWAKE. This melancholy tune was the first song I wrote. Although my drummer Nick liked this song, I felt it was a little to maudlin to stay in the playlist. I like the Udio version much better than my own! (That isn't always true. Sometimes I like my versions better, but I only used the Udio versions on this album for the sake of consistency.)

 

2). MAYBE I WAS CRAZY. This was the second song I wrote. I am amused by the tonal change between this one and the first one. My first song was filled with longing for my ex. This song is simply angry.  Who needs her? (I did.)

 

3). SHE LIED SHE LIED TO ME. This was the third song I wrote and perhaps the most unfair one. Although we didn't live up to the optimistic expectations we voiced to each other at the beginning of our relationship, my ex was pretty straightforward about her current feelings throughout our relationship right up until the end. I have to admire her for that. Honesty is sometimes difficult. However, I liked the song so here it is. I think it could have been a big pre-British Invasion hit.

 

4). WHEN YOU'RE DEAD. This is the signature song of my band. Once heard, most people never forgot it. It is not meant to be taken seriously. I never wished death on any of my girlfriends or anyone else. I wanted to write the ultimate breakup song, I am believe I succeeded.

 

5). TELL ME. Immediately after writing my least sensitive song, I wrote my most sensitive one to date. I co-wrote this song with my drummer Nick Mazziott. He showed me a cool chord progression he had just learned. I used that progression to write this ballad that evening. The band actually made a real attempt to record this song, but sadly that version doesn't exist in a digital format.

 

6). A LONELY ROAD. In my post-breakup days, I would often drive west from my home in Maryland for days with no set destination. I covered a lot of lonely miles and saw a lot of the country. 

 

7). WILL YOU BRING YOUR LOVE AROUND? I wasn't the only guy in the band dealing with a breakup. My bass player Jim Jackson also broke up with his long time girlfriend. This is mainly his song. He started it, but I helped him finish it. It was a mainstay of our band. (See our version above.)

 

8). THE SOUND OF A LONELY HEART. This song was another mainstay of our band. It was reflective of my feelings at the time and fun to play.

 

9). MAYBE ONE DAY. I had this melody for years, but the lyrics kept changing. I didn't finalize the song until I created this version. I love the Latin feel. 

 

10). THE VOID. This is just me being suicidally depressed again. At least now I was mature enough to take some responsibility for the breakup.

 

11). IF NOT ME. I wondered who was going to love my ex if not me? Well, I didn't need to worry too much. She's been quite happy without me. 

 

 12). TODAY IS THE DAY. I can't remember when I wrote this song, but I think it was years after the breakup. I was ready to move on emotionally. Or was I? If I was really ready to move on, why was I still writing songs about her?

 

13). KATHERINE OH KATHERINE. This was actually the fifth song I wrote, but the final verse didn't come until much later. That's why I put it near the end of the album.

 

14). TOGETHER (HAND IN HAND). Depending on your perspective, this is either a very old song or a very new one. When I was recording these songs myself, I searched through an old notebook for material and found an unfinished fragment. I really liked it and decided to finish it up for this album. When I say we learned to love together, I don't necessarily mean sexually. Our parents both had troubled marriages so we didn't have successful role models in the ways of love. We had to figure out love ourselves, with the help of songs by Carole King and Bread.

 

 I hope you enjoy listening to the album more than I enjoyed writing it!

You can listen to Breakup City on these and other streaming services:


My Albums:


Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.



Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:


Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.

You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.


Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

  

Listen to me read some chapters here:


Read about the true haunting that inspired the novel here:
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 1, An Introduction
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 2, The House
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 3, This Is Us
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 4, Arrival
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 5, Methodology
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 6, Clara's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 7, Clara's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 8, My Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 9, My Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 10, My Tale, Pt. 3
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 11, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 13, John's Tale, Pt. 1 
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 14, John's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 15, Come Inside!
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 16, Marion's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 17, Marion's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 18, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 19, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 20, Lisa's Tale
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 21, Recap, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 22, Recap, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 23, Recap, Pt. 3

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
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Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Writer Tip #43: Expect Disappointment!

"Neither of us is ever going to get rich, Sean," a producer friend of mine recently said. "We're too ethical."

I took that as a compliment. Not that I'd never be rich, but rather that she considered me ethical.

She's right on both counts.

I am working on a re-write of one of my old scripts with a friend of mine. The script was a near miss in the Hollywood A-List world many years ago. Richard Zanuck even praised the dialogue. The only problem is making the time to finish the re-write. My wife advised my friend to make it her priority. My friend, who certainly knows this business, demurred. "Knowing what they pay for scripts like this now," she replied. "It won't be life changing money."

Sad but true.

If the screenplay sold as a studio-financed theatrical picture, it might result in the biggest check dropped on either of us at one time. But it wouldn't be freedom money at this stage in our lives. We'd both still have to work.

Finally, a producer who read one of my scripts back in the mid-1990s recently called me to see if it was still available. She said she hasn't been able to get it out of her mind. That script was one of my calling cards back in the day. I even turned down representation from CAA for it. (Long and foolish story.)  The script had been optioned since she last saw it. However, the rights have reverted back to me. I took it off the market because I wanted to turn it into a novel before attempting to sell it again. However I said, yes, it was still available. How can you say no to someone who remembers one of your scripts after nearly thirty years?

She was delighted. Then she asked, "Would you mind if it became a BET movie?"

My answer: No!

I always envisioned the film as the first part of a theatrical trilogy. Now, however, a made for cable movie would be fine. The business has changed. So have I.

I have been blessed. I have written fourteen produced motion pictures and a number of other award-winning projects. However, I have been more blessed to have a lucrative day job as a video editor. During the day when I edit, I am still a storyteller. However, at night when I type away on Final Draft, I get to create the universe my stories take place in. Both jobs are wonderful, but writing is more creatively fulfilling.

I was disheartened when the WGA began releasing financial statistics prior to the last strike. From what I could see, I earned more as an editor for Discovery than a writer would make working on a ten episode season of a cable or streaming series. That didn't seem fair, and it made me glad I never put all of my eggs in the writing basket. I think there were only two years when I made more money as a writer than I did as an editor. Granted, I wrote on low budget features. However, by the time I walked away I began making a livable wage at screenwriting -- as long as I didn't live in LA.

I don't know how aspiring writers can survive in an expensive city like LA. I know there are script doctors who still make a million dollars a week, and showrunners who make tens of millions of dollars a year. Still, I believe the prospects of the working writer have only worsened. The WGA made a compelling case prior to the strike that television and screenwriters face an existential crisis. They won the strike, but I'm still not optimistic about the future. Something is profoundly unbalanced in the industry if a staff writer on a "hit" streaming series has to return to waiting tables during the offseason.

I remember co-writing the pilot for a one camera sitcom for a basic cable network. The project was non-union and the writers would not receive any residuals. One of my fellow writers said, "Sean, if this show is a hit, we're going to be very bitter." I just laughed and said, "I'm already bitter." 

I'm writing of this blog to warn you that a veneer of disappointment hovers over every level of the screenwriting trade. A friend of a friend of mine is a multi-Oscar winner who got to make the movie he wanted to make. Still, he was embittered by the studio's marketing campaign. You will never be happy regardless of your level of success.

Screenwriters always have something to complain about. I think that's why you don't get too many commentary tracks by the writers on DVDs and Blu-rays. All they would do is point out how everyone else ruined the film. You'd learn in excruciating detail how much better the film would be if they just followed the script.... (I only recorded two commentary tracks. Only one was used on a disc.)

While there is bitterness at every level, the biggest disappointment is usually the very first one. 

After years of struggling and honing your craft, you finally sell a script that gets produced. You go to the premiere. Everyone loves it. It's exhilarating to see your name on the big screen in a theater for the first time. That high usually lasts a couple weeks during the initial push. Then you realize: You're the same person. Making a movie didn't change your life. And, unless your film was a big studio project, you feel like you're starting at the bottom of the ladder again with your next script. (You're not.)

I've seen that emotional scenario play out time and time again with various screenwriting friends and acquaintances. I've felt it too, although more so with my first book than with any movie. When my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God was released, I used to google it everyday looking for new reviews. Then I realized something. No smalltime website review was going to change the fate of my book. Unless it got a glowing review from The New York Times or Publisher's Weekly, nothing was going to change. That was quite sobering.

But that's life. And let's be honest: I didn't write the book because I wanted to get a good review from The New York Times, or even to sell a million copies. I wrote the book because it was a story I had inside me that I had to tell. Now I am simply grateful that a traditional publisher saw enough value in the manuscript to release it.

My book was a triumph. A miracle.

Every one of my movies was a miracle too.  Even the ones I don't even like.

Considering how easy it is for someone in the process to say no instead of yes, I believe that every film that gets produced is a miracle. Even the worst ones.

But it is hard to accept that fact when the experience doesn't live up to your expectations, at least initially.

If you are a writer, particularly a screenwriter, you are always going to be disappointed by something. Thank God you are. If you aren't disappointed to some degree by your work, you have stopped growing as an artist and you should probably walk away.

Don't let disappointment discourage you. Use it to fuel your fire to do better the next time. Remember: You shouldn't be writing for "success." You should be writing because you love to write. Nobody should be able to take that away from you. If they do, shame on you.

Wow. I've become a motivation speaker. I guess my years in Amway paid off after all!

Photograph by Nocola Barts

Other Writing Tips:


Check out my novel Chapel Street on Amazon now:


Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer here:

  

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
Follow me on Facebook: Sean Paul Murphy
Follow me on Instagram: Sean Paul Murphy
Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy
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Monday, July 15, 2024

THE ELUSIVE FARM GIRL released!


My album The Elusive Farm Girl has just been released.  It is available on streaming services everywhere.

The Elusive Farm Girl is a concept album.  The fourteen songs taken in order tell the story of a failed romantic relationship from its heady, optimistic beginning to the breakup and eventual transition to a platonic friendship. It's an album I wanted to make for nearly forty years.

I began playing the guitar and writing songs in the wake of my breakup with my first girlfriend back in 1983. I immediately wanted to write an album that would track a romantic relationship from the hopeful beginning to a crushing breakup. Unfortunately, being the throes of a breakup myself, I found it easy to write the sad songs but I couldn't write the happy ones.

It wasn't until the 1990s that I finally developed the material to make my musical dream come true. I met a delightful farm girl on AOL and we began a relationship late in 1993. As we dated, I wrote forty-something songs and/or poems to commemorate the various peaks and valleys of our complicated relationship. By the time our romantic relationship came to an end in early 1996, I had the material necessary to create my album. Unfortunately, I did not possess the musical resources.

I had been in a band during the 1980s called The Atomic Enema. We did make a serious effort at recording the song Tell Me, but we were not satisfied with the results. To create an album with the musicians necessary to capture all of the colors I wanted to express would have cost me thousands of dollars, not to mention studio time and a producer. It seemed like I would never be able to create my concept album.

Then came Udio. I saw some YouTube videos about the new AI Music Generator. I tried it out and I was impressed. I knew I finally had the tools at my disposal to tell my story the way I wanted to tell it. Do I feel guilty or immoral for using AI to generate my tracks? Absolutely not. No more than I would if I had used a drum machine or a synthesizer. It's just another tool. I feel Udio had done my audience a favor. I had previously recorded all of these songs solo on acoustic guitar and posted them on my YouTube channel. Trust me, you will find the Udio versions more interesting and entertaining.

Here are the tracks:

1).  A LONELY SENTRY. This is the only track listed out of chronological order. I thought it was a good opener since it revealed my perception of our respective states of mind prior to our relationship.

    

 2). THE CANVAS. I wrote this song the night before I met the farm girl in person after a long Internet and phone flirtation.

   

3). YOUR FIRST KISS. I wrote this song the night I met the firm girl in person. Obviously, I enjoyed the evening.

   

 4). WILDFLOWER. Being a farm girl, my love songs always equated her with nature. I think this was her favorite amongst the songs I wrote about her.

   

 5). THAT DREAM. Uh-oh. This song reveals some doubts on my part as to whether we had the same goals in the relationship.

   

 6). SO RIGHT FOR ME (BUT SO WRONG FOR YOU). I was ready for a full, committed relationship, but my farm girl wasn't. She said she wasn't ready after a myriad of disappointing ones. I spent a lot of time during our relationship trying to get her trust again after some previous romantic disappointments. This song exemplifies those attempts.

   

7). MY SWEET LOVE. I can't remember the exact context of this song, but I was obviously happy about the way things were going. More natural imagery. She was, after all, my farm girl.

   

8). SOMEONE MUCH LIKE YOU. By this time, the farm girl and I had gotten to know each other warts and all. I knew our relationship wouldn't be all unicorns and rainbows. In this adult love song, I tried to convey that our respective emotional scars made us more suited as partners. 

 

 9). A DARKENED CORNER.  In wrote this song to try to convince the farm girl to come out of hiding emotionally and trust again. 

   

 10). WONDROUS YOU. Another upbeat love song with a natural theme. I must been very happy with the farm girl the day I wrote it. We certainly had our good times. Late in our relationship, we even enjoyed a very brief engagement.

   

11). FOREVER HAUNTED. Our relationship had its ups and downs, but it was definitely in its death spiral when I wrote this song. I don't have a date associated with this song, but from the lyrics it must have been after our brief engagement.

   

 12). NO ONE ELSE FOR ME. Romantically, our relationship was doomed, but I still couldn't let go.

   

 13).  OH, CURS'D DAY (AND THE NIGHT THAT FOLLOWS). Just a gloomy song about life without the farm girl. I wrote a number of them, but this one is my favorite. I think Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn would have had a hit with this one back in the day. Listen and you'll find out why.

   

14). ALWAYS AND FOREVER. The first verses of this song are contemporaneous to the events. The chorus, however, came from something the farm girl said years later. She told me that although our story didn't turn out the way we intended, we did truly love each other and that love would bind us together forever. Her words reminded me of the end of Casablanca when Bogart said to Bergman: "We'll always have Paris." I felt it was a good way to sum up our relationship. And we're still friends to this day.

   

 I realize I will never make any money with this release. However, it allows me to cross a major item off my creative bucket list.  As I said in other blogs, I have "succeeded" at all other forms of writing I attempted except songwriting. With this release, and the subsequent ones that will follow, I can now claim some degree of success. 

But this is about more than success. To me, the key to effective writing is the ability to convey emotion or achieve a desired emotion in your audience. I think songwriting is the most emotive form of writing. A three minute song can easily have a greater emotional impact than a feature film. I don't know what emotional affect my songs will have on the listeners, but they are the purest expression of what was going on in my heart when I wrote them. 

And I want to share that.

You can listen to The Elusive Farm Girl on these and other streaming services:
 

My Albums:


Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.



Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:


Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.

You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.


Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

  

Listen to me read some chapters here:


Read about the true haunting that inspired the novel here:
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 1, An Introduction
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 2, The House
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 3, This Is Us
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 4, Arrival
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 5, Methodology
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 6, Clara's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 7, Clara's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 8, My Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 9, My Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 10, My Tale, Pt. 3
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 11, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 12, Natalia's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 13, John's Tale, Pt. 1 
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 14, John's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 15, Come Inside!
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 16, Marion's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 17, Marion's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 18, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 19, Jeanne's Tale, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 20, Lisa's Tale
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 21, Recap, Pt. 1
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 22, Recap, Pt. 2
The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 23, Recap, Pt. 3

Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
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Thursday, July 11, 2024

UDIO: AI just got real!

I've written a few blogs about AI.  I chronicled my various adventures with ChatGPT and found it emotionally inadequate for fiction writing and highly suspect at non-fiction.  In one test, I gave it one of my assignments from my college-level screenwriting class and the algorithm scored a B! However, I must say that the grading scale on my assigned syllabus makes it very difficult for anyone, or anything, to fail the class. Still, I found nothing human about any of the writing. None of it had any heart.

I watched a few YouTube videos about Udio, the AI music generator and decided to give it a try. I was blown away by the results, not only with the quality of the music, but the human-like choices the algorithm was making. One of my first experiments involved my song "Your First Kiss." I fed my lyrics into the program and prompted the algorithm to turn it into a rockabilly song. I loved what it did -- especially the ending. The computer singer held the final note for a very long time, then ended the song with a laugh. Although I know the computer only made that choice because it had heard an existing rockabilly singer end a song with a laugh, I felt it was a very appropriate and very human choice.

I was equally impressed by another computer choice on my hard rock song "Will You Bring Your Love Around?" that I had written decades ago with my old friend and bassist Jim Jackson. Udio now works in thirty-two second segments. If you add an introduction, it has to be thirty-two seconds long. I don't like to wait that long before hearing the singer so I often fill the introductions with count-ins or other comments. In this case, I had the singer say: "Let's turn those amps up to eleven, boys." That was an obvious Spinal Tap reference. Any hard rock fan would recognize it. Udio did too. How do I know? The algorithm had the singer laugh after making the comment. I found that to be a very human touch as well.

I don't know why Udio songs are much better than ChatGPT's writing. Perhaps it is because there are tens of thousands of words but only twelve musical notes. The choices become even more limited once you pick a key. That said, Udio used some complex chords during the songs it created for me. Others have complained that Udio doesn't make key changes. I haven't heard a key change yet in one of my songs, but I'm not bothered by that fact. I've written 80+ songs over the years and only made a key change in one of them myself.

What about heart? Well, I add the heart. I have been putting my lyrics through Udio and they provide the humanity. The algorithm isn't just placing the lyrics over the melody. It understands the meaning of the words themselves. The computer generated singers usually give them the proper emphasis and weight. It's shocking.

Here's the big question: Is Udio moral? Udio creates by recycling what it learned by listening to tens of thousands of songs. Guess what? That's how I learned to play the guitar too. I learned to play the guitar by learning songs I admired. Then I took what I learned and wrote my own songs. Consciously or unconsciously all of my songs reflect what I've learned from songwriters who came before me. That's true of all musicians. Sure, some musicians innovate and create something new, but it is always built on an existing foundation created by others. Udio is no different than the musicians who are complaining about it.

I found this kind of borrowing particularly necessary when I became the bass player in a praise and worship band. I owned a bass, but I had never really played it before. I quickly learned a lot of well-known basslines and incorporated variants of them into the songs I was playing. None of that "stealing" violated copyrights, but I knew where I got those parts....

Where Udio crosses the line is stealing voices, whether it be intentional or inadvertent. I have seen examples of famous, recognizable voices ending up in Udio creations. I can understand how the real people would object to that!  I'm sure the owners will rectify that problem.

Udio was inevitable since the birth of synthesizers and drum machines. Human musicians have been becoming less and less essential to music for decades now. I've been listening to quite a few recent pop songs lately and I am convinced most of the instrumental tracks are almost entirely computer generated. To me, Udio is simply another tool for songwriters to use to realize their musical vision.

There are copyright issues regarding songs generated entirely by computers. However, the songs I am writing can be copyrighted because I, a human being, wrote the lyrics.

What a strange new world we live in!

My entirely human-written novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.


Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

  

Listen to me read some chapters here:


Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
Follow me on Facebook: Sean Paul Murphy
Follow me on Instagram: Sean Paul Murphy
Subscribe on YouTube: Sean Paul Murphy
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