In this episode, Ezra Sandzer-Bell shares his journey from classical and math rock musician to software developer, educator, and founder of AudioCipher — a tool that turns words into melodies and chord progressions. Ezra discusses how cryptographic techniques and secret codes have historically appeared in music, from Bach to 90s post-rock, and how these ideas inspired his books.

We explore the philosophical and technical ideas behind AudioCipher, how it reclaims agency in an AI-dominated landscape, and how it fits into the broader question of creativity, automation, and authorship in music today.

Ezra also talks about his role as a writer and marketer in the AI music space, the dangers of generative audio flooding public spaces, and why honesty and critical product reviews are essential right now.

Violetta Zironi talks about inscribing her song No Ordinary Kind directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain, why she did it, what it means to truly own music digitally, and how this intersects with her songwriting. She explains the technical process behind compressing a song to fit a Bitcoin block, and why she sees NFTs as a way to reclaim control over distribution, audience connection, and creative direction.

Violetta Zironi is an Italian singer-songwriter and actress, living in Nashville, who first gained recognition in 2013 as a finalist on X Factor Italy. After several years as a major label artist, touring internationally and releasing studio projects, she transitioned into the Web3 space, where she's become a leading voice in music NFTs. Since 2022, she’s sold over 10,000 NFTs and generated millions in revenue directly from her fans. She also made history by inscribing a one-of-a-kind song onto the Bitcoin blockchain as an Ordinal.

In this episode we listen to and talk about music by Sebastian Pfeifer who is a pianist, producer and composer blending jazz, dubstep and experimental electronic music. He tells the story of how getting kicked out of classical piano lessons as a child led him to dubstep production, and eventually into jazz.

We talk about how he uses AI tools like Neutone to transform his own voice into something strange and expressive, how he tricks Ableton's audio-to-MIDI engine to generate dense string arrangements from distorted piano recordings, and why glitchy, broken-sounding algorithms are more interesting to him than polished prompt-to-music tools like Suno.

He also shares the process behind the track Endling from his trio Endern — a one-take improvisation transcribed and re-orchestrated for saxophone and synth, ending in a chaotic crescendo of distorted drums, screaming sax and fake soprano sax generated by AI.

This episode digs into hybrid workflows, AI as a performance instrument, and the blurred lines between improvisation, composition and machine learning.