What ChatGPT Teaches Us About Pre-Composition

Sure, you could ask ChatGPT, “What do composers do during pre-composition?” It will give you a decent answer.

But today I want to show how ChatGPT is itself like the pre-composition phase of writing music, which I calling “Consulting” and “Connecting” workstations.

Here’s why: ChatGPT is essentially the world’s most efficient, best-read intern. It's shockingly good at fulfilling any prompt — but you still have to babysit it.

ChatGPT can help you write faster, but it cannot do your thinking for you. On its own, it cannot generate insights and intuitive leaps. If you don’t feed it a good prompt, then refine its output with further queries — and manual rewrites —, the result will inevitably be some version of mediocre.

What does this have to do with composing?

• The prompts you give ChatGPT are pre-composition.

• The work ChatGPT does is composition.

• The follow-up prompts you submit are revision.

The promise of ChatGPT (and its future, musical equivalent) is that it removes much of the grunt work of executing your ideas. However, YOU are still responsible for the vision.

In writing music, if you don’t identify a particular sound world and specific artistic goals, you will create something as trite as ChatGPT.

Likewise, throughout the composing process, you continually have to return to the “Connecting” workstation. As with submitting follow-up prompts to ChatGPT, you do this not only to ensure your music captures your vision, but also to refine that vision.

The great thing? As a human being, you are far more capable of identifying and honing that vision than an AI ever can be.