chuckebaby
I was spear headed in this forum about 5 or 6 years ago for giving my opinion on samples and loop content.
At the time I believed people who used loops (4 and 8 bar loops you can buy in sample packs) were frauds.
Thinking they cant play an instrument and are faking it.
In the present I have come to realize these might be inspiring musicians trying to find a way in to making beats.
Times change, when I was younger if you used a drum machine on an album you were a loser.
Rather than be that guy who says " When I was kid we didnt".. or .. "Kids today have no idea".
I would rather embrace them and help them in any way possible and also be open to any new ideas.
There is still that shrill factor in me that despises computer based music with no "Real" instruments (such as guitars, bass, drums, exc)
But now a day these are the "real" instruments.
So im all for Artificial intelligences. Not so much to write the songs for us But to assist in the process.
Im also 100% in on having a duplicate AI husband to do my wife's chore list as well
Whilst I agree with your statement, because in fact what you're talking about is the last one hundred years of western art music. The loop was theoretically conceived of in 1913 by The Futurist painter Luigi Russolo or The Art of Noises, he also built his own instrument The Intonarumori. Coincidently built from bits of gramaphone records. John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer then built and experimented with Russolo's theory to create what we understand as sampling. Both are the godfathers of what we now call a DJ. This is because both used gramaphone record players in the same way as a DJ to create the contemporary techniques of a DJ. There was a Swedish or German guy who used a duel gramaphone record in the early 20s too - so no...Jimmy SaVILE didn't invent the contemporary concept of the DJ as he so claimed :). Of course the history also shows why the idea of cultural appropriation is nonsense...because hip-hop and rap appropriated what the historical avant-garde or white dudes created. It was The Beatles who then facilitated the popularization of the loop and other important sonic and visual techniques used across cultural production today. My point being - it is important to embrace new ideas and techniques...absolutely, and AI generated music could become one of these modern techniques added to the 5 major ones created by all three movements of the avant-garde. The issue is, as we can see in contemporary cultural production - if we become lazy and allow the new technique do all the heavy lifting...it can cause problems later for creators of cultural production. ;)
The loop is a prime example of this theory. The avant-gardes free us from having to read and write music, but there was still a strong pull and desire to learn an instrument. It could be said that radio and in particular the BBC trained the next generation of great musicians and composers - we can hear this training throughout the rock-avant-garde era...roughly 1964 through to 1980. Queen in particular are a prime example of radio ear training...in doubt listen Bohemian Rhapsody...probably one of the best 20th century compositions, and the best or pinnacle of analogue recorded art. But when the radio is supplanted by TV and MTV - the quality of music content starts to decline. This is just my opinion, but I think the current state of music culture sort of backs that opinion up. And sure there will be great music out there...but finding it and funding is a problem.
What the last one hundred years of sonic experimentation also achieved was an unparalleled advance of music technology. Think about it this way - Beethoven wants a better piano, it gets built. He doubles the size of the orchestra, leading to bigger and better concert halls. Better horns too...but this was what 100 years of music technology expansion looked like then. In our contemporary era - we've seen 2 new recording mediums and distribution technologies introduced. We've seen countless new instruments added, and we've seen the convergence of sound and vision...where it became necessary for a visual accompaniment of the sonic element. Pure music lost its appeal. This can perhaps be disputed...but I think it's pretty obvious what I'm saying is the truth.
So music innovation, particularly music technology innovation needs each element of the music production process to be firing for innovation to continue. We can already see the conundrum of the avant-gardes in the contemporary era of music innovation contraction. Because the avant-gardes free us from needing a symphony and how to write for a symphony - but at the cost of music literacy, which had underpinned 400 years of western art music and innovation, and the last 100 years of innovation on speed.
Here is some evidence of the contraction. In 2002, Sonar was a software only product...off the top of my head - Sonar 2 cost 400 dollars for just the basic version. No bells and whistles...it came with a tome of a manual and on CD...no DVDs then either. As a software only company - it did alright. All DAWs were software only companies then. But the market shifted in 2007/8 the next prosumer revolution began. This meant cultural production tech, that was out of the reach of all but a few became available to almost all. And by prosumer - we're taking Abbey Road and Hollywood on a laptop. The technology though has only matured in the last year or two. What this prosumer revolution also did was change the DAW game, software only was never going to be a profitable business. Of course it wasn't only the prosumer revolution - a by-product of prosumer revolution The Capple iPhone also made software only unprofitable by introducing the ubiquitous 3 dollar app. Today we can the end result in the change of software after the prosumer revolution and Crapple by looking at the DAWs that survived this change - Cubase is owned by Yamaha, Logic by Crapple. Pro Tools - once the dominant player across the industry is now handed around (purchesed) because the once behemoth product is too expensive and unwieldy to continue its dominance. New players or relatively new players in the market like Presonus and Motu started as predominately hardware makers and now create DAWs for those pieces of hardware. Sonar of course has been swallowed up and spat out twice now and is now free. I'm still puzzled as to what Bandlab is and is trying to do in this regard. But these days I'm more interested in mastering the technological eco-system - both sound and vision than the next whatever...because I also know that the DAW is now a mature product. I don't expect my technological eco-system to be perfect, because I'm not and so long as I have a reasonable good machine to run the eco-system...i have relatively few problems.
My point to all this...if havent been able to decipher my long and verbose missive :) is...embrace all ideas in regards to sound and vision production...but never call yourself a musician unless you play an instrument or indeed read and write music. If you're an errant button pusher...you are nothing more than a child in kindergarten playing with coloured blocks! One of your tracks - someone like me could replicate in a day and day in and day out. We need to encourage people who want to make music to embrace music literacy to get the best of of the amazing tech available to each and everyone of in the contemporary era. We need to embrace the new digital theory paradigm, which some still resist because of a misunderstanding of the medium and because it was 'how we did in analog' and worse 'their ideas are based on digital audio theory' that are now 20 and even worse 40 years old. PCM was invented in the 1930s and the first digital recording was made in the late 70s. If we don't - then the continued decline in music but not just music will continue to decline in quality, learning to less innovation. Of course I accept some may still enjoy the children's music of today. But to me...music is still a high order language - capable of communicating the full range of human emotion and to be able to express these emotions even if you can't speak the native tounge of the listener.
Peace and Love