Making a Scene Presents

Making a Scene Present an Interview with Chris Murphy of Seven Crows!

Seven Crows is the visionary project of Los Angeles–based violinist, composer, and producer Chris Murphy. Built around shimmering sustain lines, fluid legato phrasing, and live looping, Seven Crows creates music that feels both cinematic and deeply personal—like a wide landscape that still speaks in a whisper. His 2025 album Powers of Observation (Teahouse Records) captures that signature approach in full, inviting listeners into a post-rock–tinted journey that’s expansive, intimate, and constantly evolving.

http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - Phase Issues Explained: Why Your Mix Sounds Thin

The Invisible Problem Hiding Inside Your Mix

There is a special kind of frustration that happens in a home studio. You record the part. You play it back. The performance is good. The tone sounds fine by itself. The mic was not cheap. The interface is working. The meters are healthy. Nothing is clipping. Nothing looks broken. Then you push the tracks together and the whole thing suddenly sounds smaller than it should.

The drums lose punch. The guitar sounds hollow. The vocal gets cloudy. The bass feels weak even though the waveform looks huge. You add EQ. You add compression. You turn things up. You widen the stereo image. You blame the room, the monitors, the plugin, the preamp, the guitar, the singer, and maybe the moon.

But sometimes the real problem is phase.

http://www.makingascene.org

The Music Industry Does Not Hate AI. It Hates AI It Cannot Control.

Why indie artists should stop fearing the tools the major players are already using

The music industry has always been very good at one thing: warning artists about the future while quietly buying stock in it.

That is the part nobody says loud enough.

Every time a new technology shows up, the official story is usually fear. The industry tells artists that the new tool is dangerous, cheap, disrespectful, fake, or bad for music. Then, once the panic has done its job, the same industry finds a way to license it, own it, control it, monetize it, and place itself right back in the middle of the money flow.

We saw it with downloads. We saw it with streaming. We saw it with social media. We saw it with playlist culture. Now we are watching the same movie again with artificial intelligence.

The public message is simple: AI is bad for music.

The private strategy is more interesting: AI is a new revenue model, and the major players want to make sure they control the tollbooths before independent artists figure out how powerful these tools really are.

http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - From Data to Story: Using AI to Turn Analytics Into Compelling Fan Narratives

Transform boring numbers into emotional storytelling that connects with fans

There is a funny thing about music data. It looks cold when it is sitting inside a dashboard. A city name. A stream count. A spike on a graph. A merch order. An email click. A replay on a video. None of that feels very human at first. It looks like math wearing a cheap suit. But behind every number is a person. Behind every stream is somebody who hit play while driving to work, cleaning the kitchen, walking through a breakup, closing down a bar, or trying to feel less alone at 2:00 in the morning. Behind every “top city” is a room full of potential fans. Behind every merch sale is somebody who wanted to carry a piece of the artist’s world into their own life.

That is where AI becomes useful. Not as a replacement for the artist. Not as some magic robot that “does marketing” while the artist becomes a content puppet. That is the nightmare version, and frankly, we have enough plastic nonsense floating around the internet already. The useful version of AI is much simpler and much more powerful. AI can help an artist look at boring analytics and ask, “What is the human story hiding inside this?” Then it can help turn that story into a post, an email, a video idea, a tour update, a merch campaign, a fan thank-you, or a bigger strategy that brings people closer to the artist.

http://www.makingascene.org

Making a Scene Presents - AI as a Bandmate: Where It Helps and Where It Hurts

There is a strange new player walking into the rehearsal room. It does not carry a guitar. It does not complain about the van. It does not forget the bridge, show up late, drink the last beer, or insist the snare is too loud when the snare is clearly not the problem. It sits on a laptop, in a plugin window, inside a website, behind a prompt box, or buried in the “assistant” button of a mastering tool. It is artificial intelligence, and whether artists like it or not, it is already part of the modern music business.

http://www.makingascene.org