Most of today's popular music is heavily computer based.
Previous musicians said the same things, electric guitars are not musical instruments, synthesizers have no soul, music made on computer DAWs is artificial and of no value, ....
The kids will embrace 100% AI generated music, the parents will be "they don't make music like they used to", forgetting that their parents said the same things about their music.
I think Max Tegmark said there's 3 main camps of people talking about AI:
1. The people who think AI won't really work (at least in some fundamental way - it might make some stochastic melody but it won't have any creative spark to it).
2. The people who think AI will be able to do everything better than humans (in every possible way, at least as far as a mere human can tell) and that this will be great.
3. The people who think AI will be able to do everything better than humans (in every possible way, at least as far as a mere human can tell) and that this will be terrible.
4. The people who think that AI will be able to do everything worse than humans, but at an acceptable enough level for executives, and it's far cheaper than even outsourcing work to other countries.
The trajectory of the last 10 years has been that the quality of the human experience will go down so the people at the top can make more money, and AI fits perfectly into this narrative.
People used to say that this will never be accepted, especially in high stakes areas like driving a car, but then we saw how it works in the real world.
4. The people who think AI will be able to do some things better than humans and that this will be great.
I think the point is there is no technical "better" in arts. Otherwise painting wouldn't have moved past photorealism and in music we wouldn't have got punk, grunge, lo-fi, screamed vocals... Like I can literally go in tear listening to a singer going slightly out of tune due to the emotions of connecting with another human being. The point is transmitting emotions. AI will be better when you need something generic, consensual, in the current zeitgeist, and mass produced and consumed. It will never replace a human performing by definition.
Nirvana, pink floyd, metallica were also listened mainly by kids. Same with Beatles, and Elvis before that. It's always the kids who listen to what later will be called "great music".
Maybe. I don’t think technology in music is a bad thing. I enjoy pushing limits and non-transitional elements. I love music that upends expectations and may even be grating to listen to for most people. I enjoy music made with synths, plugins, and effects (analog and digital).
But more and more, I’m finding I don’t enjoy newer music, not because it scares me or I find it to be racket, like earlier generations said of mine.
Instead, I find newer music to be boring and devoid of life. Zero dynamics. Hearing the same few guitar and drum plugins. Rigidly mechanical tempos and tone correction. It’s just dull and boring.
A lot of this is poor execution. Maybe some of it is changes in how we listen to music. A lot, not all, of new music feels like content instead of art, mashed through a template for ease of production. Yes - that’s something that’s been done through the history of recorded music. But the uniformity gives everything a generic feel that used to be reserved for the most bubblegum of pop music.
Watching the music scene over my 50+ years has taught me that music is often as much a reaction to current music scenes as much as it is anything else.
I think it's just as likely the kids will go zydeco or jug band — start finding the equivalent of washtubs and washboards to make music.
> Most of today's popular music is heavily computer based.
Hence my worry that I am gatekeeping.
For example in 2007, making good sounding music required at least a studio. If you wanted to record 4 microphones at the same time, you needed expensive hardware.
Doing any kind of music editing required a huge machine and expensive software with expensive plugins.
Now I can mix and apply effects in real time to 24 tracks and have a video reference. With this I can add a track by humming out a line.
I'm less worried about "music like they used too" modern music has always, and will always be shit, according to old people.
> For example in 2007, making good sounding music required at least a studio. If you wanted to record 4 microphones at the same time, you needed expensive hardware.
Doing any kind of music editing required a huge machine and expensive software with expensive plugins.
A lot of people point to Garageband (released 2004) as having a big democratizing effect on digital audio production. I think v2 in 2005 supported recording 8 tracks simultaneously. Not an especially sophisticated tool (and arguably responsible for the built-in loops being heard in way too many popular songs), but a big change at a time when the alternative might have been a computer with ProTools and dedicated PCI cards.
What you said was true about 2001. I'm not so sure about 2007 though. For $1000 you could have bought 4 decent condenser microphones and an audio interface for them. And for another $1000 a medium-high computer.
Arguably not that expensive, considering that you probably already had a computer and you could split the audio hardware costs between the 4 band members (otherwise why 4 microphones)
Software and plugins were indeed expensive, but there were plenty of free alternatives of decent quality. Reaper, FruityLoops were pretty cheap and quite good for the basics.
tbh, in 2007 you had blog house and other borderline lo-fi electronic genres. before that you had 8-track 909-loop house music. It doesn't _necessarily_ require a studio, though I can't argue it helps.
If you squint hard enough anything might look any other thing, that doesn't mean that AI generated music can be compared to conventional tools that help you to create music.
Previous musicians said the same things, electric guitars are not musical instruments, synthesizers have no soul, music made on computer DAWs is artificial and of no value, ....
The kids will embrace 100% AI generated music, the parents will be "they don't make music like they used to", forgetting that their parents said the same things about their music.