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The creation of music by AI brings to mind a quote from David Bowie: “Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So take advantage of
by antononcube 1y ago
The creation of music by AI brings to mind a quote from David Bowie:
“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So take advantage of these last few years, because this will never happen again. Get ready for a lot of touring, because that's the only unique experience left.”
While Bowie had different reasoning for making that statement, it's interesting to think that with AI-generated music, his idea of "music like water or electricity" might finally come true.
- rafaelmn 1y agoThat sounds like a comment about streaming and artists getting basically nothing from it ? I think music AI in live music would actually be interesting - theoretically it can react to crowds better than any human could. A group music editing session with the AI weaving it to music - sounds like a fun art project.
- closewith 1y agoIt foresaw streaming, but it was a direct response to Napster and file sharing.
- widdershins 1y ago> theoretically it can react to crowds better than any human could That's one area I'd expect AI to do poorly. Performance is a two-way dialog between performers and the crowd, with facial expressions and body movements from both the stage and the audience in communication. I'd expect any AI that's not attached to a humanoid robot to be less exciting to a crowd. However, I am very excited about AI in some of the other contexts you mentioned, like as a music-writing or editing partner.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoImagine a club where the people dancing are wearing, for example, heart rate monitors amongst other things. In that scenario they already weren't looking at the DJ and the AI would have a steady stream of information to work with.
- raverbashing 1y agoAnd here's the thing: the invention of recorded media also had a big impact on musicians Talks of "nobody will need musicians anymore" were overblown, while having a modicum of truth
- closewith 1y agoWell, the number of working musicians absolutely cratered, so it wasn’t really overblown, even though a few artists became extremely wealthy.
- whywhywhywhy 1y agoMusicians are actually a lot poorer than they should be, the label system is a complete scam and syphons off almost all the value created before the artist sees any for close to no benefit.
- stavros 1y agoIf labels offer so little benefit, why have they not become obsolete? Nowadays artists can self-publish with minimal cost, so why haven't we been seeing independent artists that are massively popular?
- wolvesechoes 1y agoYou still need to solve the problem of having your self-published album be actually heard by more people than your mom and partner.
- stavros 1y agoEither labels are a scam and useless, or they're useful and worth their money, it can't be both.
- whywhywhywhy 1y ago>If labels offer so little benefit, why have they not become obsolete? Because artists are preyed upon early in their career into signing contracts that encompass the most profitable years of their lives and often the output of those years forever for small loans and promises of success. The way these label deals are structured, if VCs in the tech world did the same it would be like having the investor of your very first failed company idea still taking money from you for startup attempt four that actually was successful and owning a chunk of that by default. Of course I don't think musicians are blameless, they signed the deals and often regret it or go to huge expense of time and money (e.g Taylor Swift) to pull their work back into their own ownership. > why have they not become obsolete? Nowadays artists can self-publish with minimal cost You cannot self publish to Spotify without giving money to the major labels via arms of the majors like DistroKid. Spotify has no "Upload" button. > so why haven't we been seeing independent artists that are massively popular? There are: Frank Ocean, Tyler The Creator, Macklemore, Chance the Rapper, etc. But if you're independent you're swimming against the tide because major labels own and scoop cream at all levels, from LiveNation to DistroKid to being signed on the label itself.
- woolion 1y agoHe effectively predicted all the paradigm shifts that the internet entailed. I've thought about his interviews many times as it was a very optimistic view compared to the alternatives -- one being the internet as a generalized tiktok (or what is called brainrot) and the other being the internet being totally subsumed by existing media corporations. While these exist to a large extent, they have not been able to stop the change in relationship between artist and audience, the meaning of "critique", the status symbol of culture, etc. It has also been argued that he anticipated cryptocurrencies and NFTs with his Bowie bonds. Similarly, even if you strongly dislike the current state of this tech, they complete the puzzle of this positive worldview.
- mFixman 1y agoThis sounds like the kind of things painters said after good photography because widespread. Instead we got aesthetically original avant-garde art to replace the thousands of low-quality slop portraits that were common in the mid-19th century.
- flanked-evergl 1y agoaesthetically original, avant-garde, and bad.
- geden 1y agoBad how?
- flanked-evergl 1y agoBad in the sense that it is at it's core a denial that there exists something such as good, and even something such as bad — in almost every sense of the word, whether it be aesthetically or morally. The human race, according to religion, fell once, and in falling gained knowledge of good and of bad. Now we have fallen a second time, and not even that remains to us. One of the core contentions of the Christian faith, is that there is something more abhorrent than doing something bad, and that is the denial that it is possible to do something bad. Yet, this is about the only article of faith for our modern insanity.
- stavros 1y agoHow is it that?
- genewitch 1y agoHow much of this has to do with art facilitating money laundering, I ask, rhetorically.
- thoroughburro 1y agoWhat an extraordinary take!
- flanked-evergl 1y agoThe musicians of the 19th century were free to produce anything they liked. They were free to write a "Missa Solemnis" where the very silence is breathtaking, where one does not merely hear that God has died, but where one feels His rebirth. And what have they done? Have they produced in their liberty anything grander or more beautiful than the scrawling of the deaf composer? Have they summoned sounds more jubilant than those conjured by the consumptive Romantic, the limping Dresden Kapellmeister? We know that they have produced only a few forgetful tunes. Whether cultural libertinism be better than cultural rigidity may be discussed, but that the cultural libertinism of the 20st century amounted to less than the cultural rigidity of earlier century will be difficult to deny. People will remember Bowie for his words longer than they will remember him for his music because his music is as hollow and unmeaning, by design. He believed the world is an unmeaning wilderness, or at least that he was the most meaningful thing in it, at least in the sense that the only meaning of it derived from himself. But an egoist in a mere unmeaning wilderness is not impressive. In Bowie's theology, life is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects of it. The parts seem greater than the whole. If his cosmos is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk. Bowie could not make any music that was joyful because he could not understand joy. The modern philosopher has told Bowie again and again that he was in the right place, and he had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But those that came before him had heard that they were in the WRONG place, and their souls sang for joy, like a bird in spring.
- Fraterkes 1y agoThose who can't do, poorly write jejune art critiscism.
- shmeeed 1y agoThat's a lot of words on a very overarching tangent. If one may ask, what music, exactly, do you consider joyful and worthy?
- flanked-evergl 1y agoSome examples: - Carl Maria von Weber - Missa Sancta No.2 in G-major, Op.76, J.251 "Jubelmesse" (1819) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mlNqpl-YJI&t=239s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mlNqpl-YJI&t=239s - Mass No. 2 (Schubert) - https://youtu.be/AUMp0OJ66s8?si=40k7LZ9pqCzMbHJy&t=256 https://youtu.be/AUMp0OJ66s8?si=40k7LZ9pqCzMbHJy&t=256 - Mendelssohn: Elijah, Op. 70, MWV A2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w99KSSFj-aU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w99KSSFj-aU - Beethoven: Missa solemnis in D major, op. 123 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umXYWd25hgQ&t=2382s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umXYWd25hgQ&t=2382s
- closewith 1y agoI think recorded music is already a utility, billed monthly and available on demand.
- cousin_it 1y ago> Get ready for a lot of touring, because that's the only unique experience left Until someone makes an AI guitar pedal that corrects sloppy playing.
- codetrotter 1y agoIs there any big difference between using that and instead doing playback lip syncing and fake playing the guitar, like already happens sometimes at concerts?
- conradfr 1y agoYou can convert your guitar signal to midi and quantize it. Not sure that would have helped Jimmy "sloppy" Page getting famous though.
- Applejinx 1y agoWe've had that for years in the DAW and autotune and snapping to grid. The result's pretty boring and interchangeable, and that's largely what AI music is trained on. Accuracy is not novel here. Ever since the 80s it's been increasingly possible to augment musical skill or lack of, with technology. I don't think we're very close to correcting for sloppy intentionality. Only to correcting 'mistakes', or alternately adding them in the belief that doing stuff wrong is where the magic is.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoI know I've seen a video where somebody takes part of a Led Zeppelin song and snaps all the notes to a grid. What started off wonderful became sterile and boring.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoYou can snap while still maintaining arbitrary levels and styles of swing. I suspect the video was intentionally framing the correction software as soulless (of course it is, but the limit of its expression is the human technician using it).
- Rochus 1y ago> his idea of "music like water or electricity" might finally come true That was already the case with Spotify & Co. where music has become an anonymous commodity. People order by mood or playlist and rarely care about who composed, produced or played the music, even if the meta data are available. From the user's perspective, AI makes mostly the selection process more precise. I don't think people will care much whether the music itself was a human-made recording or just AI generated. But making music is still fun (I speak from experience, see e.g. http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1317 http://rochus-keller.ch/?p=1317); people just won't care, unless you have a big name; all this was already the case before AI generated music became good enough. So by the end of the day, AI is just another act in a rationalization and anonymization process which started a long time ago.
- sarmasamosarma 1y ago[dead]
- antononcube 1y agoI think nightcore versions of your pieces would be of interest...
- Rochus 1y agoJust try to do so. The music is CC licensed, which explicitly allows you to remix, tweak, and build upon the original work, which includes creating derivative works like nightcore versions. Send me a link of the result ;-)
- qwertox 1y agoThere are things which are just "musician things". An AI just can't replace it. Like the performance of "Hania Rani live at Invalides in Paris, France for Cercle" [0] This is what makes a musician. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5oZ80Daduc&t=2145s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5oZ80Daduc&t=2145s
- croes 1y agoThat what most people don’t care about
- antononcube 1y agoIn my opinion the referenced music fragment of that video is fairly "unmemorable", it is "just" a sequence of harmonized textures. And that is precisely what AIs (LLMs) are good at. (I listened for ≈7 min from the reference point.) (I am talking about the music, not the live performance itself.)
- littlestymaar 1y agoIt has been the case for at least 15 years with the rise of Spotify/Deezer and we could even argue that it started with the first mp3 players with pirated music libraries.
- margorczynski 1y agoActually from what I've heard from musicians is that digital made living just from music really hard. First it was piracy and now it is streaming, the days where an average whole band could live off playing and creating music are gone. AI will be the nail to the coffin where it'll almost completely becomes a hobby.
- metalman 1y agoThe anouncement of the "death of the band" is premature.I dont believ this for a second, nothing can replace live music played by humans, as the experience and the very real positive benifits of an audience comming together can not be digitised, in spite of the many attempts to package high tech simulated environments. There are hundreds of thousands of full time touring musical groups world wide, and millions of music festivals every year. Just because the bar is high, very high, to become a working musician, and has been forever, does not give credence to the notion that some nameless randoms get to make the call because there tube vid got 3 views.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago> nothing can replace live music played by humans, as the experience and the very real positive benifits of an audience comming together can not be digitised I wish it were true but I'm also very aware of how many people I see in audiences today are scrolling instagram while the band plays. > There are hundreds of thousands of full time touring musical groups world wide, and millions of music festivals every year. Those figures seem very high, do you have a source for these? Or even how you worked it out as a guesstimate?
- metalman 1y ago8 billion people, maybe 9 billion...200000 bands that gives one band for every 42500 people..... 23 bands in a city of a million was a pure guess, but low right
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
- pipes 1y agoI think the same is happening with video games. Especially with Xbox game pass or whatever it's called. I've done it to myself with roms. Everything available so none of it valuable to me.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoI'm a musician and honestly I often feel that the music boat already left in many ways before the generation Bowie grew up in. The best musical experiences I've ever had have been in quiet houses playing music with people I care deeply about, playing for dancers or impromptu public meetings with other musicians. I think that ever since the first wax cylinder was pressed those experiences have become harder and harder to find as most people forgo learning instruments in favour of the record player. Sitting at a party with a David Bowie record on already didn't feel like a musical experience for me in many ways, this is just another step in that evolutionary chain.