Ted Kocher — Up Tohttps://tedkocher.com/upto/A weekly log of what Ted Kocher is building with AI in the loop: ScoreCanvas, Catalog Exploder, three radio stations, and how they connect.en-us Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Week 40: Seven music engines, one brief, and a hold line that takes requests.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w40https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w40Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000SEP 28 – OCT 4, 2026

  • Ran seven music engines through one brief: five cue types, 90 seconds each, 80 BPM, D minor. YuE2 on my own machine against three Suno V6 variants, ElevenLabs Music and two Lyria models. 85 takes and a blind ballot.
  • First result: YuE2 sounds like it belongs in the room and does not take direction yet. Its plans hit the requested tempo in 1 of 10 takes.
  • Built interactive hold music. The caller starts on an exploration cue, and the keypad adds percussion, a melody, a bass pedal, a remix, their own lyric or a tune they whistle. Every change lands on the beat.
  • Cut a 2:32 product film for ScoreCanvas and four lesson shorts, captured from the live product and edited on bar lines.
  • Started this page.
]]> Week 39: A single and an essay.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w39https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w39Fri, 25 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000SEP 21 – 27, 2026

  • Released “Perfect Honest Lie,” the third Pourover single in a month.
  • Published “Sixteen Thousand Clips and One Honest Sentence,” an essay about how an instrumental musician ended up writing lyrics.
]]> Week 37: Counts.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w37https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w37Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000SEP 7 – 13, 2026

  • Released the Pourover single “Counts.”
]]> Week 36: Stay.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w36https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w36Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000AUG 31 – SEP 6, 2026

  • Released the Pourover single “Stay.”
]]> Week 35: A meeting became a manual.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w35https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w35Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000AUG 24 – 30, 2026

  • Turned a 68-minute onboarding recording into an interactive field manual the same day: 7 missions, 43 checkable objectives, and 26 screenshots pulled from the video with their timestamps. It is for an unreleased game, so the manual stays private.
  • Launched tensemusic.com, a licensing catalog presented as a closed caption.
]]> Week 34: The same books at three depths.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w34https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w34Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000AUG 17 – 23, 2026

  • The ScoreCanvas companion books now read at three depths: Student, Pro and Expert. Student is free.
  • Sketched six MIDI controllers that look like they were built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. 32 waterfall keys and almost no knobs.
]]> Week 33: Flight two.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w33https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w33Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000AUG 10 – 16, 2026

  • 20 Fathoms Radio, flight two: 112 new spots, including a 16-part serial.
]]> Week 32: Catalog Exploder, from idea to live checkout in a day.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w32https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w32Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000AUG 3 – 9, 2026

  • Built Catalog Exploder and took it live the same day, checkout included. You upload one finished stereo cue and get back stems, a seamless loop and five intensity suites.
  • First longform render: 59.7 minutes of continuous music from one cue, chained across 26 seams.
  • Six dormant domains got straight-faced storefronts in one sitting.
  • The Carton opened for reservations: a cardboard box on Old Mission Peninsula, from $6,400 a night.
  • Rebuilt Pourover Radio around two alternating channels and a calm spoken break every three songs.
]]> Week 31: Two radio stations in one week.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w31https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w31Sat, 01 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000JUL 27 – AUG 2, 2026

  • Launched 20 Fathoms Radio, a gift from KBD Trio to the Traverse City startup incubator, with 188 spots in the first flight.
  • Built ScoreCanvas Radio: 50 cues on rotation and 116 spots for sponsors that do not exist, including an eight-part serial about missing stems.
  • The ScoreCanvas companion books went live, with a narrated listen-along edition.
]]> Week 29: A game built from its own design document.https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w29https://tedkocher.com/upto/#w29Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:00:00 +0000JUL 13 – 19, 2026

  • Built AMADEUS RE:BORN, a game where Mozart is reborn as a junior game audio designer and the adaptive score is the gameplay. The game was built from its design document, which ships inside it.
  • Published R&D 001, a research note on one-button cover pipelines, with audio.
  • Pitched ScoreCanvas at TCNewTech.
  • Rebuilt tedkocher.com on a new monochrome design system.
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