Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-08-18. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post
“Think globally, act locally.” // Patrick Geddes
Local AI experiments over the weekend in local music generation failed. In the carnage of what was left over I saw a glimpse of success. Beyond that fog of war I saw something else: a future where all of this collapses, all modalities, into one synthesis. Every pixel will be generated, and so will ever sound, movie and more.
While it isn’t working yet, these failed music experiments remind me of the vibe-coded experimental games of 2025. In a few months, I’ll have (and so will you) music available on demand, in any form factor. But for now, it’s just a crazed mess. Perhaps I’ll find ways to accelerate to the end-state faster: longer coherent tracks, perhaps even a catchy tune.
Let’s listen in on some examples.
The Green Gate
The Green Gate is the first of the example tracks that I’m sharing that highlight the failure modes of generative AI music. Each of these tracks are derived from the Ashwicke Gallery. It felt somehow right to have the oddly sounding music from Music3 generating music for the equally bizarre Ashwicke.
This isn’t one song-it’s not a fully furnished production. You can see the spikey hints of brilliance in the music. Then we go out for a while for a walk, a fully realized breakdown in all the things. And failures at this scale are not uncommon. I wondered if this, all of these Ashwicke tracks, would make for great horror soundscapes. With a little attention and surgical edits they might even be useful.
The following track is explanatory for the kind of sound playing.
The Rooms No Longer Agree
There are times in this track where this is the ambient sound of being in the room. It’s eerie. I would not recommend listening to this late at night. It’s both long and a little freaky. It shows these models can stir something if you let them.
The Paintings Know
This track is very promising-it opens up with a kind of keen brilliance. I had to stop myself, “This music was born on hardware living in my basement. How is this possible?” It’s a bit Disney-esque. Still, it happened while I was watching a pre-season bears game (34 bears -10 browns) at the local bar. And then right when the music feels like it might be fully getting somewhere-silence. Silence followed by strange sounds of a horrorscape that reinforce my belief that this strange music system implementation is in perfect alignment with the Ashwicke. It’s just so bizarre.
The Surveyor’s Transit
Not all openings of these tracks are great. In fact, many times they fall apart. The sounds are stretched, like an atmosphere or bed, and it’s not comfortable for the ears. Here’s an example of one such track, The Surveyor’s Transit. Somehow despite being so weird, it also lives up to it’s name.
The Foyer Opens
What the gallery holds, the walls remember.
The one success that has me believe there’s a path. It’s important to first find the way from one side of the cornfield to the otherside. It becomes a lot easier after that step. Proving something is possible is eye opening, a light in the dark that shows just maybe there’s a lever you can pull repeatedly to get back a keen result.
The song isn’t perfect, but my goodness… it ran on my hardware. It’s not yet replacing a Suno, but it’s directionally closer than I’ve ever been before.
Why the future collapses software
I went on long walks after listening to this “music”. The audio was broken, and it at times worked. The glimpses of musical candor revealed something I never considered. There is a moment that washes over you when you can do video, audio, code, images on freedom hardware (a name I’m thinking of giving to local AI) strung together with wires and low-cost cooling devices I won’t name. It’s a glimpse into a future. You won’t need software-it’ll just show up on the screen, or in the sound card. What happens in a world where any digital desire is a few words away?
Growing up in the 1900s was a gift. In those years ago if you wanted sound, well you’d buy a sound card. The sound card allowed you to play sound. Then there was a video card. The video card allowed your games to be graphically interesting. Then a modem, which allowed you to communicate with others. Each of these devices required software to, well, in the darkness bind them. Now all this hardware is facilitated in some way and quickly consolidating down to prompt→binary. A binary controls hardware, and also art.
You can prompt for music.
A prompt for audio, or video, images, and so on.
You don’t need a stack of mastering software. Perhaps you do, but in two years probably not. Hearing broken audio generated at home was the final door opening of realization. “Oh, everything-everythig will be generated.” I thought I understood, but I did not. Listening to broken music clips was like splashing cold water over the face on a hot day: that brief moment of clarity. Everything will be generated, and the AI will be doing that work.
It’s an idea that began to ferment. I have some agents working on coding puzzles while others worked on this music system. Once I set all the loops up, then that was effectively it. The agents were doing all the work. Then suddenly I had an entire, rainy day ahead of me. “Well, now what?”
Eventually the agents will be faster. When they are, it’s going to be painful for some-it’ll be clear the era of writing code by hand is decidedly over. Except it isn’t a story just about code. It’s about anything on the computer.
Here’s a crude generated video of a band playing a song. Nothing is right about this, of course. If you had the compute, then you could spin up an eternity of this band playing any song you can imagine.
We’re moving very fast into a future none of us can really understand-I wouldn’t really trust any prognosticator on the future. There’s only one thing for sure. Don’t forget your towel.
Greetings from the Future
It’s postcard week. Today’s postcard is a cheeky greeting postcard from the future. There’s something cheeky about mailing a postcard from the “local ai lab” over the US Postal Office. Pick it up today: Standard Postcard - Greetings from Local AI Lab
Connected work
- Local AI: Low-Cost Video Experimentation: See why local video turns expensive failures into experiments worth running.
- Local AI: Minimax H3 on a Nvidia 3080: Follow the earlier local hardware experiment with video, audio, physics, and thermal limits.
- Model Training: Browse the models, hardware tests, and local inference experiments.