9 ms·

Tools like Suno are fundamentally enabling. I'm about 40 years old and never "had the music" - not for lack of trying (music lessons at a young age)... but cou

Tools like Suno are fundamentally enabling. I'm about 40 years old and never "had the music" - not for lack of trying (music lessons at a young age)... but could never carry a tune or keep rhythm. I suppose its what being dyslexic feels like. If I were educated in a culture where music was fundamentally as important as reading or math, I suppose would have spent enough hours on it to eventually be passable... but I got frustrated, the music lessons stopped. But that doesn't mean I stopped appreciating or wanting to make music! And then comes Suno (and OpenAI's jukebox before that), and it felt like my brain exploded... like the classic scene in a superhero movie when the power was given to me. Is my music good? No - but I spent years writing and fashioning poetry and all of a sudden can put that to music... hard to explain how awesome that feels. and i love using the tools and it's getting better and it's been fundamentally empowering. I know it's easy to say generative art is generative swill... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar". https://open.spotify.com/album/45CY60A8GCHxBQb7DCJsIl https://open.spotify.com/album/45CY60A8GCHxBQb7DCJsIl https://songxytr.substack.com/p/what-is-a-songxytr https://songxytr.substack.com/p/what-is-a-songxytr

jonesetc 1y ago
Guitar, make it sound more like someone else's hard work.
- ares623 1y ago
  The year is 2027. A 16 year old at a house party pulls out his laptop and asks his friends to gather round. He starts typing “a song about a wonderful wall” and completely original music starts playing. A girl in the corner, hearing the heartfelt melody, starts to fall for the boy.
  - keithba 1y ago
    I made an image, then a video of this…it felt cute https://limewire.com/d/ShyFU#hGrEzdZegs https://limewire.com/d/ShyFU#hGrEzdZegs
    - ab5tract 1y ago
      TIL that the lime still wires
- vunderba 1y ago
  "Robot experience this tragic irony for me!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKZNOnLUBmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKZNOnLUBmQ
npinsker 1y ago
I see it as like having the answer key to every homework assignment for a course. It's easy to convince yourself that it doesn't hurt learning -- but there's probably a reason the answers aren't given to you. The struggle, the experience of "being stuck", the ability to understand why things don't work -- may be necessary precursors to true understanding. We're seeing pretty discouraging results from people who are learning to "vibe code" without an understanding of how they would write the code themselves. You may wish that learning Suno is no different than learning guitar, but I think the effects of AI may be a bit pernicious, and lead to a stagnation that takes a while to truly be felt. Nobody can say one way or the other yet. That said, I'm happy you can make music that you enjoy, and that Suno enables you to do it. Such tools are at their best when they're helping people like you.
- j4coh 1y ago
  I guess it’s similar to learning by watching masters on YouTube - I’m convinced that passively watching them causes the illusion in the viewer that they are also capable of the same, but if they were to actually try they miss all the little details and experience that makes their performance possible. Watching a chess GM play, for example, can make you feel like you understand what’s happening but if you don’t actually learn and get experience you’re still going to get beat all the time by people, even beginners, who did. But as long as you never test this, you get to live with the self-satisfaction of having “mastered” something yourself. Of course, nothing wrong with watching and appreciating a master at work. It’s just when this is sold as the illusion of education passively absorbed through a screen that I think it can be harmful. Or at least a waste of time.
  - lloeki 1y ago
    It gets very real very quickly with skateboarding. You can watch all the YouTube and Instagram you want about how to do an Ollie or a kickflip in 30s; now go out and try. The learning is in the failing; the satisfaction of landing it is in the journey that put you there.
shooly 1y ago
> "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar" What an insanely disrespectful take.
- bobxmax 1y ago
  It's only disrespectful if you're a gatekeeper.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    defending the idea of complex, nuanced effort for the sake of coherent creation being a demonstration of skill is gatekeeping? I'd love to see programmers reactions to having the measure of their work reduced in such a way as more people vibe code past all the technical nonsense.
    - bobxmax 1y ago
      Last I checked programming isn't judged as an art. Your supposed judgment on skill has nothing to do with something's value as an artform
vunderba 1y ago
If you enjoy it, I'd leave it at that - that's all that matters. It's a pretty absurd claim to say that learning Suno is no different than learning a musical instrument. My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. Generative tools (visual, auditory, etc.) can serve as powerful tools of augmentation for existing creators. For example, you've put together a song (melody/harmony) and you'd like to have AI fill out a simple percussive section to enrich everything. However with a translation as vast as "text" -> to -> "music" in terms of medium - you can't really insert much of yourself into a brand new piece outside of the lyrics though I'd wager 99% of Suno users are too lazy to even do that themselves. I suppose you can act as a curator reviewing hundreds of generated pieces but that's a very different thing. I always get a little confused when I hear non-musicians say that something like Suno is empowering when all they did was type in, "A Contrapuntal hurdy-gurdy fugue with a backing drum track performed by a man who swallowed too many turquoise beads doing the truffle shuffle while a choir gives each other inappropriate friendly tickles".
- visarga 1y ago
  > My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. You imply "it is Prompt -> Song" but in reality it is "Prompt -> Song -> Reflection -> New Prompt -> New Song.." It is a dialogue. And in a dialogue you can get some places where neither of you could go alone. As software developers we know that multiple people contribute to a project, inside a git repo, and if you take one's work out it does nothing useful by itself. Only when they come together they make sense. What one dev writes builds on what other devs write. It's recursive dependency. The interaction between human and AI can take a similar path. It's not a push-button vending machine for content. It is like a story writing itself, discovering where it will end up along the way. The credit goes to the process, not any one in isolation.
  - j4coh 1y ago
    It’s really not. It’s like having interdimensional Spotify where you can describe any song and they will pull it up from whatever dimension made it and play it for you. It may empower you as a consumer but it does not make you a creator.
jjulius 1y ago
>... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar". No it absolutely is not.
- suyash 1y ago
  The difference shows up when you perform - perform with Suno on stage and then with Guitar, you will know then.
  - 3036e4 1y ago
    Live programming music using tools like SuperCollider is/was a (very niche) thing. Someone is on stage with a laptop and, starting from a blank screen that is typically projected for everyone to see, types in code that makes sounds (and sometimes visual effects). A lot of it involves procedurally generated sounds using simple random generators. Live prompting as part of such shows would not seem entirely out of place and someone might figure out how to make that work as a performance?
    - whilenot-dev 1y ago
      SuperCollider enthusiast here, I think you missed the "is no different than" part. Working with SuperCollider is very different from playing any instrument live, and I doubt that'll change. Where playing an instrument means balancing the handling of tempo, rhythm and notes while mastering your human limitations, a tool like SuperCollider lets you just define these bits as reactive variables. The focus in SuperCollider is on audio synthesis and algorithmic composition, that's closer to dynamically stringing a guitar in unique rule-based ways - mastering that means bridging music- and signal-processing theories while balancing your processing resources. Random generators in audio synthesis are mostly used to bring in some human depth to it.
handbanana_ 1y ago
Personally for me I wouldn't be able to reconcile the fact that these generated stems are basically the same as generated AI images--built from the digital bits of existing tracks/music/recording that someone else spent the time and hard work making and then sharing only to have it unexpectedly hoovered up by these corporations as part of their giant data training set.
poulpy123 1y ago
Well that's nice for you but you did absolutely nothing musically. It's like applying a filter "paint" on a picture and calling yourself painter
otabdeveloper4 1y ago
> but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar" Ehh... No.
schwartzworld 1y ago
> learning suno is no different than learning guitar It most definitely is different and you’ve proven it with your own post. Guitar takes a long time to get to a place where you can produce the sounds you hear in your head. Suno gives you instant gratification. Look, if it gives you pleasure to make Suno music then you should do it, but if you think having an ai steal a melody and add it to your songs counts is the same as creating something, you’re kiddo by yourself. At best you are a lyricist relying on a robocomposer to do the hard part. You could have achieved the same thing years ago by collaborating with a musician like Bernie Taupin did with Elton John.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  I agree with this. There are drawbacks to being a skilled (trained/practiced) musician. You specialize in one instrument, and tend to have your creativity guided by its strengths/weaknesses. I think that soon, some very accomplished musicians will learn to leverage tools like Suno, but they aren't in the majority yet. We're still in the "vibe-coding" phase of AI music generation. We saw this happen with CG. When it started, engineers did most of the creating, and we got less-than-stellar results[0]. Then, CG became its own community and vocation, and true artists started to dominate. Some of the CG art that I see nowadays, is every bit as impressive as the Great Masters. We'll see that, when AI music generation comes into its own. It's not there, yet. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    > will learn to leverage tools like Suno Suno isn't a tool. Tools are characterized by precision and a steep learning curve, and "AI" is nothing like.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    >Some of the CG art that I see nowadays, is every bit as impressive as the Great Masters. Really? Except the minor part in which a great master spent months to years creating one of his works, instead of a literally mindless digital system putting it together (in digital, no pigments here) instantly. The technology is impressive, sure, but I see nothing artistically impressive about it, or emotionally satisfying about the utter lack of world and life of creation it lacks.
jkulubya 1y ago
I’ll agree that you+ai is creating a pleasant sequence of sounds ie music. And I don’t think anyone has the right to say (within reason) what is music or isn’t. But we might need new vocabulary to differentiate that from the act of learning & using different layers of musical theory + physical ability on an instrument (including tools like supercollider) + your lived experience as a human to produce music. Maybe some day soon all the songs on the radio and Spotify will be ai generated and hyper personalized and we’ll happily dance to it, but I’ll bet my last dollar that as long as humans exist, they’ll continue grinding away (manually?) at whatever musical instrument of the time.
cowboylowrez 1y ago
guys I think we're being too hard on this guy, why are we so upset that songeater is now Jimi Hendrix because of Suno? I know I'm jealous, I've been beating on my guitar for decades and I'm still pretty meh, but its because I lack the true creative genius required to type suno.com into my browser, not everyone is cut out to be a literal GUITAR GOD like songeater here. Lets give him the props he deserves for the massive investment of backbreaking labor over the past decades^w years^w weeks^w days^w hours^w halfhourmaybe it took for him to learn pseudo-guitar.
- cowboylowrez 1y ago
  I apologise for this comment of mine that I am replying to, it seems like its sort of an unpopular opinion, but in the spirit of AI, please let me allow for some personal back propogation with my own low poly blob of neural networkedness and use this useful training to adjust my personal weights (known to low IQ normies as "values") to better fit in with the community here. So, this songeater guy, what a poser eh?
songeater 1y ago
Love the passionate replies! I think I especially agree with this comment: >> think that soon, some very accomplished musicians will learn to leverage tools like Suno, but they aren't in the majority yet. We're still in the "vibe-coding" phase of AI music generation. We saw this happen with CG. When it started, engineers did most of the creating, and we got less-than-stellar results[0]. Then, CG became its own community and vocation, and true artists started to dominate. Hey its likely not going to be me, but let's be real - any user of this technology who has gone beyond the "type in a prompt and look i got a silly song about poop" stage will probably agree - someone's going to produce some bangers using this tech. It's inevitable and if you don't think so it's likely you haven't done anything more than "low-effort" work on these platforms. "Low effort" work - which a majority of AI swill us - is going to suck, whether its AI or not. And while I have the forum, I do want to make another point. I pay more for a month for Suno than Spotify ($25 vs $9). Suno/Udio etc: do what you need to to make sure the artists and catalogues are getting compensated... as an user I would pay even more knowing that was settled.
codedokode 1y ago
I think "learning guitar" is different from "learning Suno" because with guitar you have control over what you play. I also love music, and making music, and have no natural musical talent, but I see no interest in generating a song without me deciding every aspect and choosing every note. It's like taking the most interesting and creative part from me.
ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 1y ago
I’m gonna barf
JodieBenitez 1y ago
> but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar". You downplay the training it takes to actually use your body to output the notes. With the guitar your fingers have to "learn" as much as your brain on a scale that no prompt input will ever match. And I say that as a musician that use mostly sequencers to compose.
rldjbpin 1y ago
> I know it's easy to say generative art is generative swill... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar". all the discourse with this remark is quite fascinating as an observer. similar remarks used to be said about electronic music or just use of conventional daw when they were new. to those who have dedicated years into their craft: one must not mix self-expression from the mechanics of getting there. it is very respectable to dedicate one's life to the analogue way. but if something lets you get there in a different way, allow it.

jonesetc 1y ago

Guitar, make it sound more like someone else's hard work.

ares623 1y ago
The year is 2027. A 16 year old at a house party pulls out his laptop and asks his friends to gather round. He starts typing “a song about a wonderful wall” and completely original music starts playing. A girl in the corner, hearing the heartfelt melody, starts to fall for the boy.
- keithba 1y ago
  I made an image, then a video of this…it felt cute https://limewire.com/d/ShyFU#hGrEzdZegs https://limewire.com/d/ShyFU#hGrEzdZegs
  - ab5tract 1y ago
    TIL that the lime still wires
vunderba 1y ago
"Robot experience this tragic irony for me!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKZNOnLUBmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKZNOnLUBmQ

npinsker 1y ago

I see it as like having the answer key to every homework assignment for a course. It's easy to convince yourself that it doesn't hurt learning -- but there's probably a reason the answers aren't given to you. The struggle, the experience of "being stuck", the ability to understand why things don't work -- may be necessary precursors to true understanding. We're seeing pretty discouraging results from people who are learning to "vibe code" without an understanding of how they would write the code themselves. You may wish that learning Suno is no different than learning guitar, but I think the effects of AI may be a bit pernicious, and lead to a stagnation that takes a while to truly be felt. Nobody can say one way or the other yet. That said, I'm happy you can make music that you enjoy, and that Suno enables you to do it. Such tools are at their best when they're helping people like you.

j4coh 1y ago
I guess it’s similar to learning by watching masters on YouTube - I’m convinced that passively watching them causes the illusion in the viewer that they are also capable of the same, but if they were to actually try they miss all the little details and experience that makes their performance possible. Watching a chess GM play, for example, can make you feel like you understand what’s happening but if you don’t actually learn and get experience you’re still going to get beat all the time by people, even beginners, who did. But as long as you never test this, you get to live with the self-satisfaction of having “mastered” something yourself. Of course, nothing wrong with watching and appreciating a master at work. It’s just when this is sold as the illusion of education passively absorbed through a screen that I think it can be harmful. Or at least a waste of time.
- lloeki 1y ago
  It gets very real very quickly with skateboarding. You can watch all the YouTube and Instagram you want about how to do an Ollie or a kickflip in 30s; now go out and try. The learning is in the failing; the satisfaction of landing it is in the journey that put you there.

shooly 1y ago

> "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar" What an insanely disrespectful take.

bobxmax 1y ago
It's only disrespectful if you're a gatekeeper.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  defending the idea of complex, nuanced effort for the sake of coherent creation being a demonstration of skill is gatekeeping? I'd love to see programmers reactions to having the measure of their work reduced in such a way as more people vibe code past all the technical nonsense.
  - bobxmax 1y ago
    Last I checked programming isn't judged as an art. Your supposed judgment on skill has nothing to do with something's value as an artform

vunderba 1y ago

If you enjoy it, I'd leave it at that - that's all that matters. It's a pretty absurd claim to say that learning Suno is no different than learning a musical instrument. My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. Generative tools (visual, auditory, etc.) can serve as powerful tools of augmentation for existing creators. For example, you've put together a song (melody/harmony) and you'd like to have AI fill out a simple percussive section to enrich everything. However with a translation as vast as "text" -> to -> "music" in terms of medium - you can't really insert much of yourself into a brand new piece outside of the lyrics though I'd wager 99% of Suno users are too lazy to even do that themselves. I suppose you can act as a curator reviewing hundreds of generated pieces but that's a very different thing. I always get a little confused when I hear non-musicians say that something like Suno is empowering when all they did was type in, "A Contrapuntal hurdy-gurdy fugue with a backing drum track performed by a man who swallowed too many turquoise beads doing the truffle shuffle while a choir gives each other inappropriate friendly tickles".

visarga 1y ago
> My 8 year old nephew was cranking out "songs" in Suno within an hour of being introduced to it. Reminds me of when parents were super impressed that their 3-year old could use an iPad. You imply "it is Prompt -> Song" but in reality it is "Prompt -> Song -> Reflection -> New Prompt -> New Song.." It is a dialogue. And in a dialogue you can get some places where neither of you could go alone. As software developers we know that multiple people contribute to a project, inside a git repo, and if you take one's work out it does nothing useful by itself. Only when they come together they make sense. What one dev writes builds on what other devs write. It's recursive dependency. The interaction between human and AI can take a similar path. It's not a push-button vending machine for content. It is like a story writing itself, discovering where it will end up along the way. The credit goes to the process, not any one in isolation.
- j4coh 1y ago
  It’s really not. It’s like having interdimensional Spotify where you can describe any song and they will pull it up from whatever dimension made it and play it for you. It may empower you as a consumer but it does not make you a creator.

jjulius 1y ago

>... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar". No it absolutely is not.

suyash 1y ago
The difference shows up when you perform - perform with Suno on stage and then with Guitar, you will know then.
- 3036e4 1y ago
  Live programming music using tools like SuperCollider is/was a (very niche) thing. Someone is on stage with a laptop and, starting from a blank screen that is typically projected for everyone to see, types in code that makes sounds (and sometimes visual effects). A lot of it involves procedurally generated sounds using simple random generators. Live prompting as part of such shows would not seem entirely out of place and someone might figure out how to make that work as a performance?
  - whilenot-dev 1y ago
    SuperCollider enthusiast here, I think you missed the "is no different than" part. Working with SuperCollider is very different from playing any instrument live, and I doubt that'll change. Where playing an instrument means balancing the handling of tempo, rhythm and notes while mastering your human limitations, a tool like SuperCollider lets you just define these bits as reactive variables. The focus in SuperCollider is on audio synthesis and algorithmic composition, that's closer to dynamically stringing a guitar in unique rule-based ways - mastering that means bridging music- and signal-processing theories while balancing your processing resources. Random generators in audio synthesis are mostly used to bring in some human depth to it.

handbanana_ 1y ago

Personally for me I wouldn't be able to reconcile the fact that these generated stems are basically the same as generated AI images--built from the digital bits of existing tracks/music/recording that someone else spent the time and hard work making and then sharing only to have it unexpectedly hoovered up by these corporations as part of their giant data training set.

poulpy123 1y ago

Well that's nice for you but you did absolutely nothing musically. It's like applying a filter "paint" on a picture and calling yourself painter

otabdeveloper4 1y ago

> but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar" Ehh... No.

schwartzworld 1y ago

> learning suno is no different than learning guitar It most definitely is different and you’ve proven it with your own post. Guitar takes a long time to get to a place where you can produce the sounds you hear in your head. Suno gives you instant gratification. Look, if it gives you pleasure to make Suno music then you should do it, but if you think having an ai steal a melody and add it to your songs counts is the same as creating something, you’re kiddo by yourself. At best you are a lyricist relying on a robocomposer to do the hard part. You could have achieved the same thing years ago by collaborating with a musician like Bernie Taupin did with Elton John.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I agree with this. There are drawbacks to being a skilled (trained/practiced) musician. You specialize in one instrument, and tend to have your creativity guided by its strengths/weaknesses. I think that soon, some very accomplished musicians will learn to leverage tools like Suno, but they aren't in the majority yet. We're still in the "vibe-coding" phase of AI music generation. We saw this happen with CG. When it started, engineers did most of the creating, and we got less-than-stellar results[0]. Then, CG became its own community and vocation, and true artists started to dominate. Some of the CG art that I see nowadays, is every bit as impressive as the Great Masters. We'll see that, when AI music generation comes into its own. It's not there, yet. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0
- otabdeveloper4 1y ago
  > will learn to leverage tools like Suno Suno isn't a tool. Tools are characterized by precision and a steep learning curve, and "AI" is nothing like.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  >Some of the CG art that I see nowadays, is every bit as impressive as the Great Masters. Really? Except the minor part in which a great master spent months to years creating one of his works, instead of a literally mindless digital system putting it together (in digital, no pigments here) instantly. The technology is impressive, sure, but I see nothing artistically impressive about it, or emotionally satisfying about the utter lack of world and life of creation it lacks.

jkulubya 1y ago

I’ll agree that you+ai is creating a pleasant sequence of sounds ie music. And I don’t think anyone has the right to say (within reason) what is music or isn’t. But we might need new vocabulary to differentiate that from the act of learning & using different layers of musical theory + physical ability on an instrument (including tools like supercollider) + your lived experience as a human to produce music. Maybe some day soon all the songs on the radio and Spotify will be ai generated and hyper personalized and we’ll happily dance to it, but I’ll bet my last dollar that as long as humans exist, they’ll continue grinding away (manually?) at whatever musical instrument of the time.

cowboylowrez 1y ago

guys I think we're being too hard on this guy, why are we so upset that songeater is now Jimi Hendrix because of Suno? I know I'm jealous, I've been beating on my guitar for decades and I'm still pretty meh, but its because I lack the true creative genius required to type suno.com into my browser, not everyone is cut out to be a literal GUITAR GOD like songeater here. Lets give him the props he deserves for the massive investment of backbreaking labor over the past decades^w years^w weeks^w days^w hours^w halfhourmaybe it took for him to learn pseudo-guitar.

cowboylowrez 1y ago
I apologise for this comment of mine that I am replying to, it seems like its sort of an unpopular opinion, but in the spirit of AI, please let me allow for some personal back propogation with my own low poly blob of neural networkedness and use this useful training to adjust my personal weights (known to low IQ normies as "values") to better fit in with the community here. So, this songeater guy, what a poser eh?

songeater 1y ago

Love the passionate replies! I think I especially agree with this comment: >> think that soon, some very accomplished musicians will learn to leverage tools like Suno, but they aren't in the majority yet. We're still in the "vibe-coding" phase of AI music generation. We saw this happen with CG. When it started, engineers did most of the creating, and we got less-than-stellar results[0]. Then, CG became its own community and vocation, and true artists started to dominate. Hey its likely not going to be me, but let's be real - any user of this technology who has gone beyond the "type in a prompt and look i got a silly song about poop" stage will probably agree - someone's going to produce some bangers using this tech. It's inevitable and if you don't think so it's likely you haven't done anything more than "low-effort" work on these platforms. "Low effort" work - which a majority of AI swill us - is going to suck, whether its AI or not. And while I have the forum, I do want to make another point. I pay more for a month for Suno than Spotify ($25 vs $9). Suno/Udio etc: do what you need to to make sure the artists and catalogues are getting compensated... as an user I would pay even more knowing that was settled.

codedokode 1y ago

I think "learning guitar" is different from "learning Suno" because with guitar you have control over what you play. I also love music, and making music, and have no natural musical talent, but I see no interest in generating a song without me deciding every aspect and choosing every note. It's like taking the most interesting and creative part from me.

ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 1y ago

I’m gonna barf

JodieBenitez 1y ago

> but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar". You downplay the training it takes to actually use your body to output the notes. With the guitar your fingers have to "learn" as much as your brain on a scale that no prompt input will ever match. And I say that as a musician that use mostly sequencers to compose.

rldjbpin 1y ago

> I know it's easy to say generative art is generative swill... but "learning Suno" is no different than "learning guitar". all the discourse with this remark is quite fascinating as an observer. similar remarks used to be said about electronic music or just use of conventional daw when they were new. to those who have dedicated years into their craft: one must not mix self-expression from the mechanics of getting there. it is very respectable to dedicate one's life to the analogue way. but if something lets you get there in a different way, allow it.