An International Music Community
M-Base Ways is a community for musicians, music students, and music lovers who want to go deeper — into spontaneous composition, creative development, and the living traditions that connect the past to what we're building today.
Welcome
Steve Coleman introduces M-Base Ways — what it is, what you'll find here, and why this community exists.
A Journey of Self-Discovery
For over 40 years I have used technology as a creative tool — long before anyone called it AI. Now, with the current generation of AI, I am doing something I have never seen done before in music: going on a real journey of self-discovery into spontaneous composition, in public, as it happens, with the members of this community witnessing it alongside me. Not a finished course. Not a polished lecture series. An unfolding investigation — my own process, my own questions, my own wrong turns and breakthroughs — shared openly in real time. The tools to do this did not exist until very recently. That is why it has never been done before. And that is exactly why we are going to do it now.
"I have been doing something similar to this for most of my career — at least 41 years. Most of my colleagues are unaware that I have been taking advantage of these tools."
— Steve Coleman
The current generation of large language models became widely available around late 2022 to early 2023, though they were preceded by decades of AI research. I began working with them seriously in June 2023, accelerated through 2024, and by early 2025 had integrated them deeply into my compositional process. My album PolyTropos / Of Many Turns, recorded in March 2024 in France, was directly shaped by this work — as, in a broader sense, have been all of my recordings and concerts going back to 1985.
What I want to share here is not theory about AI, but a practical demonstration of how I have actually used these tools to develop musical ideas. The same approach is available to you, no matter where you are in your development as a musician or as a listener.
What You'll Find Here
There is a lot of content on this site, and it covers a lot of ground. A lot of the information we are drawing from comes from the masters of the past — information that has been passed down through generations of musicians. Our focus is on how we can take that information and use it to build our own music today. That is the real goal: to be creative and to build on these traditions right now.
The information here is unique. It is not the kind of material you will find in the usual sources. We go behind the scenes. You can see how people actually develop and work on the music — not just the finished product, but the process.
More from Steve
This site has been active since 2008 and has grown into a community of over 5,000 members worldwide. The goal has always been the same: to share information that is genuinely useful, at a cost that is genuinely accessible.
Membership
Our goal is to keep costs as low as possible. We do have server costs, programming costs, and maintenance costs — but this is a community service, and we want the information to be as accessible as it can be. Start with Free and see if the site is right for you, with no obligation to go further.