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I disagree. Firstly the sound of all of those drummers was shaped by the people they worked with. This is most true of Collins and Bonham but the others were a

I disagree. Firstly the sound of all of those drummers was shaped by the people they worked with. This is most true of Collins and Bonham but the others were also very much shaped by the bands and producers they worked in. There is no definitive "Phil Collins" style you can bottle. Phil Collins with Brand X sounds nothing like Phil Collins with early Genesis, or like Phil Collins with late Genesis, or Phil Collins on his solo albums. It's easy to emulate the Phil Collins™ 80s gated snare, and of course in the 80s many people did. But even that was a collaborative effort and only happened when Collins did session work for Peter Gabriel who didn't want cymbals, so engineer High Padgham had to fill the gap. That sound is only a copy in a very superficial and trivial sense. Secondly, Collins as a drummer is inseparable from Collins as a person. During the early Genesis years Collins was as much of a political influence as a creative one. He was relaxed, easy-going, and professional, in among a group of highly strung insecure public school boys who used to argue a lot. In all the interviews the other band members say that suddenly he made playing the music feel a lot lighter and easier, which very welcome but also hugely influential. This is absolutely not something you can analyse easily by running his timing or drum choices through ML. Because the key part to both isn't the drum parts or the sounds, it's the creative ability to generate cultural influence. So the idea that ML will give you 20% this and 50% that is a non-starter. Even if you could define what this and that are - very questionable - there's no guarantee you'll get something that has equivalent cultural reach, as opposed to just another drum part by a poor Collins (etc) imitator. This turns out to be true of all the arts. Culturally what people want from art isn't just technique and superficial style, it's a distillation and validation of relatable experience channelled through an extraordinary personality. It's actually a relationship - albeit a very remote and idealised one. You can only copy that if your AI actually has an extraordinary personality and is capable of personal experience which it can share. I don't think ML is going to be able to do that any time soon.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Hmm. I think you're missing something important. Yes, you're absolutely right that the sound of a particular musician is shaped by their musical and social collaborations and history. Nobody could seriously question this. However, when someone wants to hire Gavin right now, it's almost always because they want "the Gavin sound" (whatever they conceive that to be). Although a musician's sound is to some extent always evolving, after 10-20 years of playing, it's fairly well formed, and evolving much more slowly and more subtly. Their musical and social history is "baked in", so to speak. So, you train up your overcooked cross-correlation analysis system on the drum performances of Gavin Harrison, and just like GPT-3 "responding" to text prompts, I think there's a pretty good chance it will "respond" to your musical prompts in a style very similar to Mr. Harrison. However, it will sound nothing like Mr. Collins (except to whatever extent Mr. Harrison already did, which is ... not so much). > So the idea that ML will give you 20% this and 50% that is a non-starter. That was specifically what I said. Even so, I think there's some possible artistic intrigue that might come from some sort of "cross-breeding" between two systems trained on two different drum performance sets. Good to come across someone else who at least knows that Phil Collins was an amazing drummer and not just the only other person besides McCartney & Jackson to sell a million records inside and outside a band. Still, Chester Thompson, seriously :)

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Hmm. I think you're missing something important. Yes, you're absolutely right that the sound of a particular musician is shaped by their musical and social collaborations and history. Nobody could seriously question this. However, when someone wants to hire Gavin right now, it's almost always because they want "the Gavin sound" (whatever they conceive that to be). Although a musician's sound is to some extent always evolving, after 10-20 years of playing, it's fairly well formed, and evolving much more slowly and more subtly. Their musical and social history is "baked in", so to speak. So, you train up your overcooked cross-correlation analysis system on the drum performances of Gavin Harrison, and just like GPT-3 "responding" to text prompts, I think there's a pretty good chance it will "respond" to your musical prompts in a style very similar to Mr. Harrison. However, it will sound nothing like Mr. Collins (except to whatever extent Mr. Harrison already did, which is ... not so much). > So the idea that ML will give you 20% this and 50% that is a non-starter. That was specifically what I said. Even so, I think there's some possible artistic intrigue that might come from some sort of "cross-breeding" between two systems trained on two different drum performance sets. Good to come across someone else who at least knows that Phil Collins was an amazing drummer and not just the only other person besides McCartney & Jackson to sell a million records inside and outside a band. Still, Chester Thompson, seriously :)