Students write songs from scratch at Catfish Alley Studio summer camp
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – This week, Catfish Alley Studio is hosting its inaugural summer camp for kids.
Owner Josh Gillis has a passion for music, and he’s using his passion to pour into the next generation.
“It just gives students another thing to try something new,” Gillis said. “They’re all going to try four different instruments while they’re here. They’re going to do voice, guitar, drums, and piano. But it’s always fun to see their creativity. Imagination is where they go with things.”
The students have to write their songs and record them in the studio.
In a world full of artificial intelligence, having a computer write songs is at the tip of your fingers. But this sometimes poses a problem.
“We’re running into big problem in the music world where these companies are essentially stealing artists work, putting it in a big AI pot of songs, getting the most popular things out of all of them, and using all those algorithms and songs and stuff to pop out music that’s not even theirs. It’s on the backs of all these other artists who originally created it. So that’s becoming a big issue. Class action lawsuits are being filed right now that I’m aware of.”
But Gillis believes AI can be a helpful tool for inspiration, but he also thinks it’s important to let the students use their imagination and have their ideas and thoughts.
“AI will take a lot of the low-level stuff, eventually high-level stuff as far as workforce stuff goes. But the ideas, the spark and creativity, all those things are always what’s going to rise to the top,” Gillis said. “AI will help push it there, I think. You’re always told as a kid not to have a calculator in your pocket. And what do we have today? We have calculators in our pockets. So on the other hand, you need to understand AI and utilize AI to help you kind of go to the next level in a lot of ways, too. So we don’t overlook that or totally disregard that. But we also have to be very careful not to let it steal your imagination and your best ideas.”
Student Paisley Tolleson said writing songs is a passion of hers, and learning the process is important to her, pushing her mentally, and allowing her to be vulnerable.
“It helps you to be able to do stuff on your own without just like putting it in and letting everything do it for you,” Tolleson said. “You still get to experience it in a way they used to.”
Gillis plans to do more camps like this in the coming years.
12 students participated, and they will each play their original songs live at Munson and Brothers on Friday, July 11, at 1 p.m.
After the camp, there will be a Spotify playlist with the students’ songs on it.
