Small human circles, built by AI music

This weekend I was part of several stories that brought people together through music, and I want to share them - as examples of how music made with AI can bring people together in the oh-so-real world.

On Saturday night, I took 12 of my friends to the beach after sunset.

We had beach mats and mosquito repellent, and everyone had headphones playing the same music — we had ourselves a silent disco under the moon.

I told people in advance: there’s no right way to experience this. You can lie down, you can sit, you can walk, you can dance in the water. Whatever the music calls you to do.

And that’s exactly what people did. We started out lying on the mats. Then some went to dance in the water, some walked up and down the beach, and one friend just lay on the sand for a whole hour, resting.

At one point there were five or six people standing in the water, looking out at the moon, each in their own headphones — which must have looked so strange from the outside. A group of people sticking out from the water, like zombies. On the inside, every one of us was on our own little journey, and we were doing it together.

I’ve lived in Miami for four years, and I had never thought to go to the beach at night and listen to music in the moonlight. What an experience.

When the music ended, we stayed a couple more hours, just talking. Not everybody knew each other — two of the people were new to the group, and I got to meet them for the first time. Conversations went anywhere from work to art to whatever. The music and the setting set up the container for everything else that came through it.

Afterward, a friend told me: “Your music was perfect; it was like therapy.” I told him I love that, because it feels like therapy for me to make it.

Before the music started, this was part of the welcome to the set:

For the next 54 minutes, you are entering a small circle without any walls. Some of you are by the ocean. Some are standing under trees, on a balcony, or alone in a quiet room. You may not see one another, but you are not alone.

That part came true. By now, friends have done this same hour on beaches in Mexico, Miami, the Netherlands, and Israel. Friends have done this from home, and more are planning outings to do this in various places under the moon this week.

My friend in Mexico wrote a comment after a brutal day — a popped tire halfway back from the middle of nowhere, no water left — that dancing on the beach afterward felt like a relief. “Shimmers on the water… a thin film of light.”

This was happening in different countries, across different nights. But it’s the same white circle of the moon. We’re all looking at the same moon, touching the same water, breathing the same air. People sent me photos from the beach, and they all look the same, too: a silhouette of a person standing on the beach, looking out at the moon and the water.

After the beach, a few of us went to a dance club. It was a benefit party to raise funds for Venezuela after the earthquake, and had some well-known DJs. The music was pretty good — I liked the House grooves and the speed. Nobody could contest the music was legitimately good and ‘real.’

But the vibe was posey. Every group for themselves, people looking around. I love clubs. I love raves and circuit parties — those rooms can have real presence, the music floating through the whole crowd. This one had a different feeling: it didn’t feel friendly to reach out to somebody or say hello. There were expectations — say hello to the people you know, manage the eye contact. I felt more anxiety there than the open, spacious feeling I’d had two hours earlier, getting weird dancing in the dark water with some people I had only just met.

The best way I can put it: in the club, a lot of the feeling was ego. It’s a scene. You go to be seen. On the beach, the feeling was the dissolution of ego — you’re on your own experience, but you’re tuned into nature and your infinite surroundings. It’s dark, nobody’s checking you out because they’re on their own journey, and the moon and the sand and the wind are the most immediate aspects of the experience. None of it is about just you.

Both rooms were full of people and music. So what did the beach have?

• An invitation with no pressure in it. Do whatever you want. There’s no right way to do this.

• A solitary, but shared experience — you’re not there alone, even when you’re deep in your own headphones. Even the friends doing it remotely felt like they were in the same circle with us.

• A shared context. I think this one matters a lot when people come together. I asked everyone to wear white or black, and the people who did made it feel special. The event had a name that everyone knew. Similarly, at dance parties, there's usually a theme, and people dress up. When we host holiday dinners at home, we tell the story of the holiday before the meal, and suddenly the whole table has something to relate to and react to. If you bring a random group of people together, you have to give them something that unifies them. Then conversation can flow.

I see this in our music communities too. Some listening parties feel like that club — people bring a song because they want to be heard, and everyone’s just waiting for their turn at attention. That’s not a vibe.

But if there’s shared context and a reason to be there with others, if you’re there to listen to others, to share attention, to experience something together — that is a vibe. Why we are here matters more than the music.

The same weekend, five of my friends sat down together at a restaurant in Amsterdam. Two from the Netherlands, one from Serbia, one American who recently moved to Brazil, one from the UK. First time any of them had been in the same room.

They know each other through the music. Song contests, recurring livestreams, communities — years of showing up in the same small circles and hearing what each other’s songs are about. You learn a lot about someone that way. The depth people get to in this music is just so honest.

One of them told me: “It felt so natural — like you’re meeting people that you’ve known for years.”

I couldn’t be there. But I felt like I was, because I knew exactly who was at that table. We’ve all met through the online circles where we share music with each other. You meet the same people again and again, you like their music, you hear their life stories - and lifelong friendships happen.

I’ve been thinking about this concept of the dinner table. Most anybody can cook something, so it’s easy for anybody to say — I’m making pasta next Thursday, come join me. Bring a salad, bring wine. Sit around the table.

That’s what AI is now doing for music. Anybody can prepare a little musical dish now. So I see so much potential for people to start hosting these ‘dinner-table’ scale music nights. A listening night with a theme. A chill and small song contest. An hour of moonlight for thirteen friends. The music I played on Saturday will not top any chart, and it doesn’t need to — it brought people together to share a magical moonlight beach experience, and that was magic enough. And our music brought five friends from around the world to gather at a dinner table in Amsterdam for a night of shared stories. And that is magic too.

I think this is the point of it all. Music can help bring people together. And AI lets anybody make music. So we have the opportunity to use it in a way that lets anyone start a small circle and bring friends together.

I think that’s what the next music platform can look like - small circles, all over the world. AI will help build it, but the connections are oh-so-human.

Dark Meditation is open through August 2, the week around the full moon: grab an hour after dark, someplace outdoors near your home, with a bit of music in your ears: Enter the portal

If you want to get a taste of the kind of music you’ll hear… this is one of the tracks in the set. It’s not published, and has a very descriptive draft name:

chill - *DM1 - melody ftw and holy oly oly oly oly oly

And if that’s not your thing — pick music you love, a theme, invite four people, and tell them there’s no right way to do this. See what the small circle brings you.

💗🎶

Itai

PS — If you’re on a beach in Miami one night and see a group of people standing silently in the water like zombies, come say hi. It’s probably us.

I+AI is the inside story of the AI music movement — how songs actually get made, who’s making them, and how creation, suddenly open to everyone, is becoming a new way people connect.

I’m Itai: ex-Google/Meta, AI music creator under the name I+AI, and co-founder of Vibya, where we’re building a home to connect people through music.

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Now you: Have you ever been part of a small music circle that meant something? Or, what kind of circle seems magical to you to participate in?