I have been composing music since I was in high school (unless you count, "How Would You Like To Go To Kandor?" which I wrote in 3rd grade) ("Kandor" was a city on the planet Krypton). The music courses I took in junior college under George Champion didn't deter me from a love of music. (I'm just kidding George—and please email me!!!)

In 1996-1997, I realized a life-long dream and recorded a full CD, The Man Who Isn't There. Half the songs were originals; half were covers, and I did all the voices and played all the instruments (via computer) except for tenor sax on one number (which one of my nephews performed at a remote recording studio!).

For the 2002 theatre season, I arranged and recorded the accompaniment for a professional revue performed by two local singers.

With the dawn of Artificial Intelligence, a new tool has become available to the savvy composer/musician. Sure, it allows people who don't know a thing about music to nevertheless create something they, themselves will enjoy, even if no one else does. The same can be said of the kazoo, the bagpipes, and, dare I say it, the accordian? If a purist wants to create music without tools—another word for "instrument"—they are limited to singing, whistling, beatboxing, or armpit farts. The rest of us choose to use instruments, whether it's a rock, a banjo, a synthesizer, or an A.I. music generator.

And if one does know what one is doing, especially in the realm of lyrics (it can be hard to convince an A.I. that "rain" doesn't rhyme with "again"), this is a tool that can save all the messy, manual labor so we can get right to the music!

Still, when I was the only vocalist, I had no problem crediting myself, by name, as the artist. But as a singer-songwriter making use of AI tools along with more conventional ones to make music, and especially with the (admittedly a little creepy) use of "vocalist" as just another musical instrument, as easily exchanged as a trumpet for a cornet, I feel more like a constructor of music than a performer.Hence, from now on, I'll be releasing new music under the artist name "The Paul S Cilwa Project".

Music Only Dogs Can Hear

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/1/2026		Page Views: 155
Hashtags: #Music
Decades-old lyrics from the bottom of a memorabilia box, given brand-new AI-assisted recordings.

In this album I decided to include all the songs I wrote from before my first marriage to the end of my second marriage, a span of about 40 years. Some songs are serious; some are my silly observations of pop culture as manifested by the various eras through which I've lived. I tried to alternate the serious and the silly. I'm the songwriter, lyricist, and composer—same as always—but this time around I made use of modern AI tools to produce the recordings, the same way I once leaned on MIDI, Cakewalk, and a computer to record my 1997 first album.

1944

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 10/1/2026		Page Views: 162
Hashtags: #Music
The companion to 1944, one year earlier—back when nobody yet knew how it ended.

This is the second dispatch from the alternate Earth I built for "1944"—the one where I was born forty years early and spent the war leading a big band around USO stages instead of turning up decades later as a Boomer with a laptop. Same bandleader, same company of singers, one year further back. I went backwards on purpose.

1943

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/26/2026		Page Views: 44
Hashtags: #Music #1940s #USO #BigBand
Songs from an alternate Earth where I was alive in the 1940s, leading a big band on a USO tour.

Given today's dystopian political environment, I can hardly be blamed for looking back to a simpler time when America actually was, not only pretty great, but beloved across the world. (Well, except for Germany and Japan.) In terms of technique and content, this album's a bit of a departure. Instead of digging up old lyrics of my mom's and arranging them as pop tunes (well, okay, I did do one of those here), I invented an alternate Earth—one where I had been born in 1873, and was still alive in 1943, leading a big band on a USO tour instead of showing up decades later as a Boomer with a laptop.

Cilwa's Xylophone Concertos

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 9/11/2026		Page Views: 76
Hashtags: #Music #Classical #Xylophone #Concerto
Four works for xylophone and orchestra, presented with rather more ceremony than the instrument is accustomed to.

I have loved classical music for about as long as I have been able to love anything. My father gave me a record player when I was small—a wind-up portable first, then an electric one—and took to hiding records under my bed for me to find. That is how Tchaikovsky reached me, and that is how Shostakovich reached me, both of them on 78s.

Variations on 'Whippoorwill'

By: Paul S Cilwa	Posted: 8/23/2026		Page Views: 401
Hashtags: #Music #Whippoorwill
One tune, sixteen eras. A whippoorwill's call is handed from a baroque court to a pop diva, each generation learning it from the last.

One tune, sixteen times. This album takes Whippoorwill—the song from Music Only Dogs Can Hear—and walks it forward through three hundred years of popular music, from a baroque court in the 1700s to a pop diva in the 2020s.

1997: The Man Who Isn't There

	Occurred: 2/12/1997		Page Views: 6,107
Hashtags: #Songs #Music #MP3s
All the songs of my first album. Play them for free!

In 1994, I met a guy named Steve and fell in love with him. 5½ months later, on the day he was to move in with me, instead he dumped me. I was devastated, but found solace in composing and singing songs that helped me process my own, unfamiliar feelings. The end result was this, my first album, about half original pieces and half covers.