Making Music Without AI
Two examples of my production skills and a reflection on my journey so far
Shameless self-promotion: This post is about two songs that I made recently and I wanted to share because of how drastically different each one is.
Background: I make music entirely for fun and as a way to sharpen my audio production skills. I don’t charge money and rarely ever promote it on social media, because this is entirely for me, not for you or anyone else. It’s not about likes or popularity, because at the end of the day, the only audience that I care to impress is myself. These are songs that I want to hear, which is why I went through the painstaking process of writing, recording, mixing and mastering each one to the best of my abilities. And I leave up the bad examples because I want there to be a documented timeline of my progression in audio production.
So far, with the 4 albums I made in 2025, I’ve generated over 27,000 listens across SoundCloud, Spotify, Tik Tok and Instagram. Again, this is without all the annoying self-promotion that so many artists are forced into nowadays, as I refuse to subject myself to that level of humiliation. I will never “film content” and I cringe whenever I see my idols and peers trying to appease the algorithm.
Onto the music:
The first track is called "Botulism Was A Red Herring", and it’s LOUD. This is for my metal project which is just my last name, Curtins. It’s instrumental, syncopated, heavily layered, a bit atmospheric, and extremely heavy. I wanted to combine the off-time chugs of Meshuggah with the textural layering of Cloudkicker and the thumping of Animals As Leaders, three of my biggest musical influences. All guitar parts were recorded using a headless 8 string guitar tuned to drop E (EBEAEABE) and the drums were programmed manually using GetGoodDrums. The album cover was also designed by me using Krita and a free photo of a evil- looking seagull.
The second track is for my other musical project, Babe Vigoda, which is more synth-oriented and designed to be more relaxing. The song is called “Old Moons” and it’s again entirely instrumental. All guitar, bass and keyboards parts were recorded live, and the drums were again programmed manually. The album cover was also designed by myself using an old photography of my grandfather (man on the right). The song is directly inspired by the Zero 7 song "Destiny", which is one of my favorite and one of the greatest music videos of all time, and the title comes from one of the lyrics (“Old moons fade into the new”.)
No AI was used in the writing, recording, mixing and mastering of both songs. I used Izotope Ozone for the mastering and only used their AI features to AB it vs. my mix. For those that don’t know what that means: I had the AI generate it’s own mix for my tracks, then compared it back and forth to the mixes that I had made without AI. I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve accomplished and will hopefully turn each song into separate full length records by the end of the year.