In the inaugural episode of the In Formation podcast, poet Marc Zegans sits down with CIPHA Studio founder Dan Am to introduce the rise of the role of the "Preducer" - empowering a new creative stage Dan has developed, that sits between raw songwriting fragments and full studio production.
Drawing on his background at Interscope Records, working as an independent musician and seasoned international songwriter, whilst building on his family's iconic roots in the music business, Dan explains how if framed differently, AI can now serve and be positioned as an agile ideation for rapid artist development tool - uniquely now enhancing instead of acting as the much feared replacement for artistry.
A new creative stage that reveals what Marc and Dan call the "Resonant Form" - the felt, usable, affectively potent outcome that fundamentally distinguishes disciplined creative work from generic AI Slop. Where particularly in an age of increasing synthetic noise, the Resonant Form becomes a new multi-layered signal that might cut through that static.
They explore the psychological and historical barriers artists face in letting go of attachment to their first draft and frame Formationist thinking as a deliberate act of holding space for great new work to emerge - whilst first rapidly exploring, iterating and collapsing creative paths and possibilities - rather than clinging to a single fixed vision.
They explore how so much of the debate and moral panic in this space revolves around the intrinsic worth of 'prompting music' and how, when seen from the Preducer’s perspective, generating large quantities of music with generic prompts is aesthetically impoverished and culturally hollow. That is very different from the rich iterative Preduction process, guided by human desire to communicate authentically, by human aesthetic judgment, and by live work with musicians in the studio, using AI as a resource and supplement, not as a substitute for genuine human expression.
The episode closes with Dan's hope that "Preduction" becomes a stage in the creative process across art forms - not just music - offering his practical advice to aspiring producers: find a collaborator, surface a forgotten fragment, use AI to quickly explore unforeseen paths and creative directions, then bring it back to real musicians to reveal the Resonant Form often hiding just underneath!
- Explore Formationist thinking via the In Formation Substack
- Visit www.cipha.co.uk to visit the studio
- Connect with Dan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cipha/
- Listen to Spat Logic as an example of Preduction in action
- Connect with Marc at http://www.marczegans.com/
