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    The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
by   Ray Kurzweil

We are moving towards an era of software-based musical instruments, intelligent accompanists, and music as information, says Ray Kurzweil in highlights from his keynote speech at the 2003 Audio Engineering Society convention.


Highlights of the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture to the 115th Annual Convention of the Audio Engineering Society on Oct. 11, 2003. Published on KurzweilAI.net Oct. 13, 2003.

Music technology is about to be radically transformed. Communication bandwidths, the shrinking size of technology, our knowledge of the human brain, and human knowledge in general are all accelerating.  Three-dimensional molecular computing will provide the hardware for human-level "strong" AI well before 2030.  The more important software insights will be gained in part from the reverse-engineering of the human brain, a process well under way.  Once nonbiological intelligence matches the range and subtlety of human intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. 

The impact of these developments will deeply affect all human endeavors, including music. Music will remain the communication of human emotion and insight through sound from musicians to their audience, but the concepts and process of music will be transformed once again.

The Coming Revolution in Intellectual Property

The issue of protecting intellectual property goes far beyond music and audio technologies, but the crisis has started in the music industry.  Already, music recording industry revenues are down sharply, despite an overall increase in the distribution of music.  The financial crisis has caused music labels to become cautious and conservative, investing in proven artists, with less support available for new and experimental musicians. 

The breakdown of copyright protection is starting to impact musical instruments themselves.  Synthesizers, samplers, mixers, and audio processors can all be emulated in software.  It has been estimated that at least 90 percent of the copies of "Reason," one of the emulation software leaders, are pirated. 

Music controllers still require hardware, but when full- immersion visual-auditory virtual reality environments become ubiquitous, which I expect by the end of this decade, we'll be using virtual controllers that are essentially comprised of "just" software.  When we have the full realization of nanotechnology-based assembly in the 2020s, we will be creating actual hardware at almost no cost from software.

We are not far from that reality today, and for the recording industry it is already clear that the principal product – music – is pure information.  In all industries, the portion of products and services represented by their information content is rapidly increasing.  By the time we get to the nanotechnology era, most products will be essentially information. 

With file sharing, we've seen a breakdown of copyright protection.  With streaming and remote access technologies, the problem will become even worse because existing copyright law doesn't even cover these situations.  If I call up a friend on the phone and play a new CD that I purchased, that's not a violation of copyright law, nor should it be.  But what is a phone call?  It's a streaming connection.  File sharing networks will evolve into file streaming networks. 

So if you want to listen to a song, the network finds a machine with that file and it is played on that machine.  You listen in on a streaming connection.  No files or information are ever copied.  Copyright law is based entirely on the concept of copying, so if we bypass copying, there is no violation.  We can extend this concept to all forms of software, including interactive software.  In this case, the user effectively uses someone else's machine using remote access software (such as pcAnywhere or Microsoft's Remote Desktop).  With continued acceleration in hardware power, running software on someone else's machine is likely to occupy only a small fraction of the power of the computers involved. 

Clearly, intellectual property licenses, and copyright law itself, can be amended to try to deal with this situation, but there are still problems.  How do you define what is to be proscribed?  Playing songs or demonstrating software to friends should still be allowed.  Obviously, vast sharing networks go beyond friendship.  So the law will need to define what constitutes a friend.  Obviously there are some very slippery slopes here. 

The educational challenge will be even greater.  If consumers today understand copyright at all, they understand it in terms of making copies of information.  How is the public to understand the concept if no actual copying takes place?

There are workable schemes for protecting software by building in locks that prevent software from working on machines other than authorized ones.  These rely on means to identify what computer is being used, and these systems work reasonably well today.  But the streaming approach bypasses this form of protection.

Having cited some of the difficulties, we need to recognize that protection of intellectual property is critical, otherwise we destroy the business model that provides for the capital formation required to create the intellectual property in the first place.

We could discuss at length various technical means for protecting information such as music files, but the bottom line is that all of these systems are easily breakable if that is what the public wants to do. 

It may seem obvious that this is indeed what the public wants to do, but that does not need to be the case.  Educating consumers on the value to them of protecting intellectual property is feasible, and without such a social compact, technical approaches will inevitably fail. 

Is such a social expectation feasible?  We do have a successful example: the cell-phone industry.  Unlike the recording industry, this communications industry did not stick with the business model of the 1950s and 1960s, which included very high charges for a long distance call.  The cost of a long distance call has fallen from tens of dollars to pennies.  Had that not been the case, you can be sure that people would be routinely breaking cell phone network access just as readily as they now share music files.  Although there are people who do break cell phone access codes, this is not considered a cool thing to do. 

In the recording industry, the fault lies primarily with the industry for not having budged from a business model of charging tens of dollars for an album, a pricing model that existed when my father was a child. 

The current lawsuits may have an educational effect, but the industry is being disingenuous in the extreme by launching these suits before they have provided a viable legitimate system of file downloading. However, this is all about to change. Downloading services have been launched by Musicmatch and Roxio (Napster 2.0). And Apple Computer is expected to announce on October 16 that it will expand its online music service to Windows-based computers. Yahoo and Amazon.com are also expected to jump into this market.

As we've seen in the case of cell phones, people won't go to the trouble of breaking technical protection schemes if an industry provides a system of access and competitive pricing that the public views as tolerable and fair. 

With the entire economy headed towards the complete dominance of information, this remains a critical challenge.

New Ways to Create Music

Musical expression also offers new challenges. It has always used the most advanced technologies available, from ancient drums, the cabinet-making crafts of the eighteenth century, the mechanical linkages of the nineteenth century, the analog electronics of the mid-20th century, the digital technology of the 1980s and 1990s to the artificial intelligence coming in the 21st century.  

With digital samplers and synthesizers, we were able for the first time in human history to create sounds that had the complexity of acoustic sounds, but that did not originate from purely acoustic instruments.  For example, we could start with piano samples and modify them with a variety of digital synthesis techniques to create sounds that had the richness of the piano, but were impossible with acoustic means alone.

A particular challenge that we dealt with in creating the Kurzweil 250 was how to recreate the enharmonic overtones of a piano.  Most instruments have harmonic overtones, that is the overtones are perfect multiples of the fundamental frequency.  In a piano, the overtones are slightly different from being perfect multiples, and this is one of the features that gives a piano its unique timbre.  Conventional samplers at the time looped the last waveform and applied a decay envelope. But their piano samples sounded like organ samples (at the point of looping) because the overtones were simple multiples of the fundamental frequency, lacking the subtlety of the complex waveforms generated by the piano and other natural instruments.

In recent years, we've seen the emergence of software-based samplers, synthesizers, mixers, and sound processors.  Although there still are significant performance benefits in using hardware DSP-based devices, software-based systems such as Reason are adequate to create professional recordings, such as movie soundtracks.  

The next wave of instruments will be based on physical modeling, actually simulating the interaction of sound with the strings, curved wood, and other components of physical instruments.  It is then possible, of course, to create simulated instruments that would be impossible to render physically.  The concept of physical modeling has been around for over a decade, but available systems are limited to building instruments from limited sets of building blocks. 

Future physical modeling systems will allow detailed emulation of highly complex shapes and materials, including, for example, the special resins used to create fine violins.  The state of the art in physical modeling requires high-end DSP chips today, but software-based physical modeling synthesizers will be ubiquitous within five years. However, PCs will increasingly include DSPs, particularly since they are targeted at applications with audio and image processing that can benefit from DSPs. Intel experimented with this with a special version of the Pentium (Pentium MMX).  This is likely to continue to happen. Microprocessors used in synthesizers and consumer products will also increasingly include DSP functionality.

We are also moving towards an era of intelligent accompanists.  We've had for many years "autoplay" features on home pianos for beginning students, but these are largely unsatisfactory because they require the human player to keep up with the automated players.  What is needed in an intelligent accompanist is a system that follows the user, not the other way around.  With such a system, a student could be playing a simple one-line melody, and the system would fill in with appropriate walking bass lines, rhythmic patterns, and harmonic progressions. 

Tod Machover has developed a series of interactive instruments that he calls hyperinstruments. They effectively provide the serious musician with intelligent accompanists.  Although the human player stays in control, a single player can match the richness and intricacy of an entire ensemble. 

Music is a means of communicating human feelings and ideas from composers and performers to an audience.  It is a language, or we might say a set of languages, that allows us to communicate emotions ranging from humor to sorrow.  Machines can amplify our ability to communicate musically by providing richer palettes of sounds and means of manipulating and controlling them. 

Machines can also provide narrow forms of intelligence that work in close concert with human intelligence.    The closeness of this connection will grow over time, reflecting the overall growing intimacy between humans and their machines.

   
 

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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:

Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 10/16/2003 5:14 AM by lgrohn

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k:
"It is a language, or we might say a set of languages, that allows us to communicate emotions ranging from humor to sorrow. "

Many people doubt that music is a LANGUAGE.
Music has no semantics and music can't be
translated to another language.

Lauri Gröhn
metacomposer
http://www.synestesia.com

Re: Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 10/16/2003 12:23 PM by /:setAI

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Many people doubt that music is a LANGUAGE.
Music has no semantics and music can't be
translated to another language.


it is not a logical language- but it could be called an emotional language- as tones and melodies carry very definite and profound/subtle emotional infomation that humans can understand well- the emotional currency of music is very well defined and deeply felt by humans- yet few can express/theorize in words how even simple melodies can convey a universal complex feeling-

Re: Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 10/16/2003 12:49 PM by lgrohn

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but it could be called an emotional language- as tones and melodies carry very definite and profound/subtle emotional infomation that humans can understand well- the emotional currency of music is very well defined and deeply felt by humans- yet few can express/theorize in words how even simple melodies can convey a universal complex feeling


I guess music is not an universal "emotional language" but is heavily culture oriented.
That is, music coded on the culture.

Also giving the certain (absolute music) piece different titles may arouse different feeling corresponding to the different titles. The context of the piece changes the feelings.

I have one example of that:
I am a metacomposer generating music from pictures. The picture here
http://www.synestesia.com/cd03/irak.html
on the upper left had first the name "reed song" but then I put it on Irak context and gave it a new name: "Tigris". Now some listeners made a different narrative of it hearing some sounds of sand on the desert etc

LG

Re: Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 11/26/2003 12:07 PM by grantcc

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To see that music is an emotional language (if it's not already appearant)put a DVD on your player and turn down the sound. Now put a number of different pieces of music on your hifi and watch the movie. You will no doubt notice that the meaning of the movie scenes changes with the various kinds of background music that accompany it.

A.I. music as a "weapon"
posted on 08/04/2006 3:12 PM by Patrick

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If Ray is correct that music is "emotional information," then the more powerful the emotion, the more powerful the music.

I look forward to the day when conflicts are settled by "Battles of the Bands" rather than violence.

Re: Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 11/26/2003 9:45 AM by SkinnyDevil

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Lauri, I have finally had a chance to stop by your web-site (www.synestesia.com) and look around. As I write, I'm listening to the piece written in dedication to the late (and very great) Iannis Xenakis. Interesting piece.

I look forward to hearing your piece (listed below) very shortly, as well as further exploring the site and your compositional methods.

As an aside, have you heard of composer David Cope and his "EMI" compositions?

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab

Re: Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 11/26/2003 1:10 PM by lgrohn

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Hi,

Thanks for your interest.

I have two books written by David Cope (with CDs)
but I dont't have much knowledge of his original
works.

My presentation of Synestesia SW in University of
Helsinki is available here:

http://www.kolumbus.fi/lauri.grohn/synestesia.pdf

and I will add to it some missing parts for my
presentation in University of Jyväskylä on
December 11th. After that I will translate the
presentation in English.

Yours,

Lauri Gröhn
metacomposer
lauri.grohn@synestesia.com
www.synestesia.com
lauri.grohn

Re: Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 12/01/2003 10:45 AM by SkinnyDevil

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I look forward to the English translation, and will also be trekking to your site again this morning to listen to more of your music and see how these compositions are done. I also noted after I posted last that you have already heard of David Cope (we had a thread concerning his EMI on this forum some time ago) - shoulda looked before I leaped!

I hope everyone here takes a visit to your site to listen to what you've done so far. I'd also like to plug Xenakis, of course, not to mention my new collection of children's songs (the link is posted elsewhere in this thread) which make use of some odd musical concepts that interest me.

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab

Re: Music is not a language, or is it?
posted on 08/02/2006 1:56 AM by lgrohn

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and I will add to it some missing parts for my
presentation in University of Jyväskylä on
December 11th. After that I will translate the
presentation in English.



A little bit latte but you will find the translation of the old text here:

http://www.synestesia.fi/method/synestesia_2003.ht ml

and also a new article here:

http://www.synestesia.fi/method/sat06.html

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/16/2003 11:08 AM by SkinnyDevil

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Interesting piece. I responded to a condensed version of this speech this morning via the WTA arts list and will reproduce that response here. It's worth noting first, however, that the speech covers a wider area than just legal issues and on many of those points Mr. Kurzweil and I agree. I will respond to the entire piece later.
=====

The issue of protecting intellectual property goes far beyond music and audio technologies, but the crisis has started in the music industry. Already, music recording industry revenues are down sharply, despite an overall increase in the distribution of music.


I would hope he's prepared to back that claim with more than a few isolated statistics. What the RIAA doesn't want you to know, and what Ray (with all due respect) apparently doesn't know either, is that they've DECREASED the number of new releases. In addition, they experienced a "false boom" due to format exchange - any time the industry switches media (from LP to cassette, for example, or cassette to CD) there is a short term spike in sales as people replace their music collection with the new format.

The biggest issue, though, is the RIAA's attempt to create a false scarcity by decreasing the number of releases to the market (the first point above) and their refusal to decrease consumer cost as the production cost of CDs continues to drop. Add to that the fact that their vision of Fair Use is in sharp contrast to what it used to be (open for all non-commercial applications) and a willingness to sue their own customers, and you have a real problem.

The financial crisis has caused music labels to become cautious and conservative, investing in proven artists, with less support available for new and experimental musicians.


Patently false. That is, there is no financial crisis in the industry. It is arguable whether or not they are really becoming more conservative.

As we've seen in the case of cell phones, people won't go to the trouble of breaking technical protection schemes if an industry provides a system of access and competitive pricing that the public views as tolerable and fair.


The RIAA member labels have thus far refused to react appropriately to market forces and instead attempt (and often succeed) to criminalize technologies (via the DMCA), criminalize formerly legal behaviors (the way you used your VCR and dual cassette deck), and buy legislation (the Sonny Bono Extension Act).

I, for one, am attempting to counter this predatory behavior demonstrated by the RIAA and others by working for copyright reform. One way the readers of this forum can help is to sign a petition I recently authored. It is available on my site here:

http://www.skinnydevil.com/platform.html
MRA Platform at Skinny Devil Music Lab

Or you can go straight to the petition here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/mrap/petition.html
M.R.A. Platform Petition

I urge everyone who shares my concerns to sign the petition and spread the word...and I hope in light of all the facts, Mr. Kurzweil will reconsider his position. While he rightly looks at the industry leaders as slow to react with viable alternatives before waging war on their customers, he seems to accept the statistics the RIAA offer without the rigorous skepticism that is so typical - and refreshing - in his examination of other issues.

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab
http://www.skinnydevil.com

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/16/2003 12:40 PM by /:setAI

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in my view- the RIAA and the recording industry have gone far beyond the point were petitions and legal battles will do any good-

we want nothing short of total war- total revolution of information-

technology has been such that media could be packaged and controlled for profit- now that is no longer the case- information has been liberated into it's true form- infinitely replicatable and infinitely maleable-

it is a shame that so many have in the past chosen to create industries and economies from the TEMPORARY condition of media being controllable and physical-

now it is clear that it is not possible to use information as a product any longer- just as it is not possible to buy and sell Light or the air-

anyone that continues to stubbornly make a living from information is fighting a losing battle against fate and inevitability- if they continue to fight and hang on like hungy ghosts and try to perpetuate the impossibility and illogic of "copyrights" and "products" then they must be made to see the truth- the international hacker community will see to it that they learn the price of their failure to adapt to reality- and fade into the shadows

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/16/2003 3:26 PM by SkinnyDevil

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in my view- the RIAA and the recording industry have gone far beyond the point were petitions and legal battles will do any good-
we want nothing short of total war- total revolution of information-


Well, the RIAA essentially IS the rcording industry, in as far as this discussion is concerned (as all non-RIAA labels are "indies"). Saying you want revolution is fine, but how do you intend to get there? I suspect if you read the platform/petition, you might find it reasonable, as it's aim is to find an equitable balance of rights & needs between artists, business, and consumers. Such rants for revolution typically mean the balance of power shifts totally to the consumer, which is no better than the power being solely in the hands of biz (as it arguably is now, for the most art). Both of those scenarios leave out the creator entirely.

technology has been such that media could be packaged and controlled for profit- now that is no longer the case- information has been liberated into it's true form- infinitely replicatable and infinitely maleable-
it is a shame that so many have in the past chosen to create industries and economies from the TEMPORARY condition of media being controllable and physical-
now it is clear that it is not possible to use information as a product any longer- just as it is not possible to buy and sell Light or the air-


I disagree. While you make a good point that new technologies created the revenue stream and now they (newer technologies) threaten to eliminate the stream they created, it does not follow that a new stream cannot exist. The easiest and most cost-effective way for the RIAA to secure profits is simply to price as the market will bear rather than artificially maintaining higher prices. Such practices will be met with ruthless abandon, and their stream will die.

That said, there are other models in existence that allow artists, labels, and consumers to exist and profit. From OpenCulture's library model to the voluntary Tip-Jar model to many others, experiments are underway to find a viable alternative to the over-priced hard-copy model we are dealing with now, as well as to it's counter-model (the so-called "illegal" downloads).

anyone that continues to stubbornly make a living from information is fighting a losing battle against fate and inevitability- if they continue to fight and hang on like hungy ghosts and try to perpetuate the impossibility and illogic of "copyrights" and "products" then they must be made to see the truth- the international hacker community will see to it that they learn the price of their failure to adapt to reality- and fade into the shadows


You are demonstrably wrong, bro. I make a living from selling information, as do thousands of other musicians. I compose, record, teach, perform, write, and the like...and there are plenty of folks making bank selling information outside of music. From booksellers to university professors to hundreds of other professions, information is bought and sold (and given freely and stolen) everyday.

The issue, then, is not whether I can continue to pay the rent or whether Bill Gates can get any richer or whether Disney can increase their profit margin by a few more points. The issue is this: Can we find a balance that allows artists to create freely while the monied interests (like record labels and movie studios and software sellers) still turn a profit while consumers get maximum bang for their buck?

The answer to that, in my opinion, is "yes".

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/16/2003 6:28 PM by /:setAI

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obviously if all musicians and artists from other media shared the views we hold at the /:set\AI Transmedia Laboratory there wouldn't be anyone making money!

the free distribution of art is a center point of our mission- we believe that Art/Information should only be a not-for-profit venture- I could never personally take compensation for my art [unless it was a trade of art] and the idea makes me sick inside- I perfectly understand the concept of a musician or painter selling their art- but for me it would simply not make any sense at all-

we believe that ALL artists/scientist/thinkers should be compensated through government stipends/grants and public donations- as with any religious/cultural organization or charity which aims to explore/expand the spirit of Mankind

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 11/13/2003 2:38 PM by SkinnyDevil

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Enough (for now) of my disagreements with Mr. Kurzweil's position as stated in his AES keynote address. I'd like to touch on a few areas where we agree.

Rather than deliniating and expounding on a point-by-point basis, however, I'd just like to say that machine intelligence as it is today (and was 10 years ago) may well be a far cry from the visions Ray has espoused, but their ability to assist humans in our current endeavors cannot be under-stated...especially when we attempt to break new ground.

I've talked a lot about the use of new concepts and melding old ideas with new on this forum. Rather than TALK more about it, I'd like to give a few specific examples for your listening pleasure. I've just released my first collection of children's songs (free of charge, I might add). While some of them are just fun trax on a superficial level, others use some bizarre concepts and compositional techniques. You'll hear, in several of these trax, the use of polymeters, bitonality, and symmetrical harmonies (techniques almost never used) coupled with classic forms (like canon & fugue).

I hope you enjoy them...and as always, I welcome comments (public or private; pro or con).

http://www.skinnydevil.com/childsongs.html
Skinny Devil - Children's Songs

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/16/2003 12:17 PM by /:setAI

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I'm glad to finally see at least a little bit of talk about the Kurzweil k250! I have been using primarily sampling/loop based audio manipulation since I first started making music in the late 80s and so any vintage sampler stuff gives me wood (^_^)

I wish he wouldn't talk about all that silly "auto acompanyment" speculation that you see so many AI/computer scientists preach about sometimes- it's silly and unrealistic- music is so PRIMITIVE and bestial- not even Kraftwerk used automatic process to actually make the music itself- sequencers and the other compositional tools are just that - tools to be manipulated by the artist- AI comes into play as a tool for soundesign and as a stochastic component of composition as decided by the artist- hell I personally don't even use midi automation or multitrack sequencing- my work is all improvisational and I use tools like sequencers as interactive performance controlers- the use of AI and AL algorithms in music is one of my primary modes [read my profile] but not for composing music but as complex sound modulators [like cellular automata] and as a source of data to be converted into abstract audio-

AI will come to play in composition when it is sophisticated enough to express it's OWN emotions musically as an artist!

Artists being paid for their works
posted on 10/17/2003 4:41 AM by Mark EVI

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/:setAI, you know what you are doing and you definitely know how to use the level of AI we now have in the way of modulation etc. I always enjoy reading your posts and you have a great mind. You are an individual with a great mind. I think you indeed deserve to be paid well for your innovation in music and your creative product if people chose to pay you; just as I think it’s good to pay the man who put your plumbing into your home for his expertise, insight, time spent in labor and education in what he gives you. I think you are a talented individual who likely makes a valuable musical product. And I do respect your right to chose not to take any pay for your music. I do think that choice is to made by the artist though, not the state.

If you believe in socialism for music, science and information don’t you kind of have to also apply to every possible trade/product? I go the capitalism direction for all of them, but I do have friends in music that definitely sincerely agree with your take here.

The devices to allow exchange of money for intellectual products defiantly need restructuring, but in the end I believe we as individuals have the right to freely strike a bargain by choice with another individual and pay them instead of some other guy for what value they offer, for their individual expertise and as my choice to show they are good at what they do. Any two people have a right to chose exchange of value for money. It’s their freedom. I think it is inalienable. I don’t think I own the product of another artist by my own insistence or deserve access to it freely without his consent.

Post singularity the individual vs. state/group thing will defiantly hit a new paradigm, but until then I go fully with capitalism and am happy to respect a man’s creation at my choice… it may even work that way after Singularity but we’ll see how that all goes later.

As technology advances, more and more the only products humans will do better than machines will be artistic/intellectual/spiritual. So this argument does fully come down to capitalism vs. socialism and whether property should be allowed to any individual. The mechanisms around it are beside the point. Whether it’s easy to hack or steal are also beside the point; The Vikings were great village hackers and it’s a little worrisome to see your quote about the international hackers being called upon to show the world the way. Stealing, conquering, confiscating is always easier to do than creating value/wealth yourself and the hacking/conquering thing is something for which I have no respect.



I’m definitely with you on the value of the vintage synth gear. I love the analog stuff myself and love recording/performing with it. The emulators still definitely don’t give us the same sound.

But I do also love the new technology as well and it definitely gives us sounds the old couldn’t. The right, creative combination of old and new is a good thing.

/:setAI, keep producing your music and innovating with your mind, you are a valuable individual.

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/17/2003 10:50 AM by SkinnyDevil

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Well, I tried to figure out how to link another MIND-X thread to this one, but can't do it with my browser settings. Given that, I'll simply up-date one or two of the other threads regarding the future of music that will nicely compliment both this thread and Ray's key-note address.

Look for "Music Evolution" and several others shortly...or simply use the serach funcion and type in "music evolution" or "sound".

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/17/2003 8:34 AM by Gregg Jackson

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I recently tried to learn a little more about music from the traditional side, but found it heavy going as I had no formal musical qualification.

I have respect for the lecturers, professors and instructors in traditional music, and I have learnt a lot attending, but I really feel the traditional study of music is flawed in two ways.

Firstly, it seems like a reflection of how people understood and perceived music through the ages, and thier lack of complete understanding has been propogated through the centuries. I speak of the composers and classical musicians mainly from Europe (I assume). Among the very first musicians were monks who all sang the same notes, ie harmony would have seemed 'off' or just not apparent to them. Maybe they just 'digged' the purity, but I beleive the styles and complexities of music through the ages does reflect the limitations at the time in musical knowledge and musical expression, in the composers.

The second 'flaw' I propose is that traditional music, and score is based on the piano...

In my view there isn't really any such thing as a sharp or flat, because there isn't really any such thing as black keys on instuments other than keyboards. Its daft. It all transposes perfectly otherwise. You only need to learn something in one key and then you know it in all keys. The intervals will all be the same.

Another problem I have is descending and ascending melodic minor, and the fact that if a song is 'in a minor key' you don;t know when it will switch between major scale and melodic minor for instance.

Melodic Minor is a separate scale, as is harmonic minor. The ascending melodic is really a major scale with the tonic moved (ie Dorian mode).

This is what I view as celebrating the past, rather than looking forward. The only musical tuition I've had that 'showed the light' was the American National Guitar Workshop. Some jazz books too.

Classical music is great, but there were only so many instruments available, and once you understand them, their tones, sound etc, that is what you had to play with.
Nowadays, you have almost infinite sounds available to you. This doesn't make it naff. You can't use traditional music score to represent the different phase/flange speeds, analog wave-form settings, etc. And these sounds/musics are as great, if you have an open mind, most people have.

I might have had a point, Ive just forgotten what it is.. :(

Lets celebrate the past, but see the flaws and concentrate on the future.

There :)

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/19/2003 7:49 PM by SkinnyDevil

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I'll try to keep this post brief, as there are other venues in which to speak in depth about music's past, but I wanted to touch on a few of these points.

Firstly, it seems like a reflection of how people understood and perceived music through the ages, and thier lack of complete understanding has been propogated through the centuries. I speak of the composers and classical musicians mainly from Europe (I assume). Among the very first musicians were monks who all sang the same notes, ie harmony would have seemed 'off' or just not apparent to them. Maybe they just 'digged' the purity, but I beleive the styles and complexities of music through the ages does reflect the limitations at the time in musical knowledge and musical expression, in the composers.


Your first sentence assumes there can ever be a complete understanding of music... but yes, concepts such as "consonance", for example, are directly related to the culture and the times. Such notions effect both creators and audiences. European composers over time developed extremely sophisticated edifices in harmony and experimented quite a bit with timbre, while it took other cultures (African, for example) to create the same level of sophistication with rhythmic ideas.

The second 'flaw' I propose is that traditional music, and score is based on the piano...In my view there isn't really any such thing as a sharp or flat, because there isn't really any such thing as black keys on instuments other than keyboards. Its daft. It all transposes perfectly otherwise. You only need to learn something in one key and then you know it in all keys. The intervals will all be the same.


Spoken like a guitar player. More to the point, spoken like an electric guitar player. Within that context, you have a very good point (those notes *could* have been named anything). But remember, the piano was invented AFTER not only notation, but the development of the larger part of modern music theory. Black & white keys didn't influence the names of notes, it was the other way around. European music utilized 7 notes, but the intervals dictated 12 tones per octave.

Another problem I have is descending and ascending melodic minor, and the fact that if a song is 'in a minor key' you don;t know when it will switch between major scale and melodic minor for instance.


There are quite a few arbitrary distractions in music theory (like the melodic minor having different ascending and descending versions), but remember that theory isn't really "rules" for music. It's just a collection of observations about what other (mostly European) composers have done in the past. There is no logical theory of music in existence (though several composers tried their hands at it).

Notation really isn't a logical system, either, but it is open enough to allow for new symbols to be used to represent things like flange speed. Take a look at all the new symbols created for electric guitar technique in the past 20 years and the new symbols being tried for percussive techniques on acoustic guitar.

I agree that we can, and should, both celebrate the past and look fearlessly into the future.

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/21/2003 9:49 AM by BlackRain

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It's not true when you incinuate that music is culturally coded. Performers like, Michael Jackson, Eminem, and the Wu-tang Clan sell out no matter what country they're in. Im talking, Japan, Germany,Brazil, even the youth in the remote tribal area's of Africa are taking a strong affinity to Tupac Shakur.

Hip Hop Music has a mysterious influence even on the most traditional cultures. In India, the biggest musical star is a guy by the Name of Bali, who is said to be a mixture of Michael Jackson and Ice-T (lol) But my point is Music is a universal language, powerful enough to strongly influence the most traditional cultures.

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 10/22/2003 1:12 PM by lgrohn

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Commercially activated market based adaptation is not in contrast with cultural coding.

LG

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 11/18/2003 11:30 AM by SkinnyDevil

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Well said.

--
David M. McLean
Skinny Devil Music Lab

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 06/20/2008 5:04 PM by Jim Plamondon

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Given your (rather old) posting on this topic, you might be interested in the music technology innovations described here: www.thummer.com, and especially in the ThumMusic System. As you suggest, they display and control musical information the same way in every key; learn the pattern once, and you've learned it in every key.

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 03/10/2004 4:21 PM by Mojo_JJ

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Re: The coming revolution in intellectual property

Mr. Kurzweil is right, there is a revolution coming in terms of music intellectual property and music file sharing. The cost of purchasing music has been ridiculous over the last decade as the music industry still clings to it's overpriced business model. Consumers like us are finally starting to get tired of this and we are taking matters into our own hands. The advent of file sharing networks like Napster and Kazaa are just the beginning of this revolution – we can expect many more networks like this to spring up as the music industry keeps trying to shut them down. To survive, the industry should not keep fighting music sharing, but it should find a way to adapt to it and turn it into a form of legitimate trade. If they don't... well, then their end is inevitable.

A good step in the right direction is the advent of services like I-Tunes down in the states. Here is a legal alternative to buy music and it offers music at a very fair and competitive price – 99 cents per song. I-Tunes and I-Pod is definitely making a big splash in the US, but it is non-existent in Canada. Why? The most obvious answer is greed. Try to use the I-Tunes service in Canada and you get rejected, the I-Tunes site only accepts US credit cards. The internet is supposed to be a borderless entity, yet the CRTC (the Canadian Radio and Telecommunication Council) and the Canadian Recording Industry does not allow the I-Tune service to be available to Canadians.

Also, don’t believe the RIAA when they say that music artists lose money due to file sharing. The majority of artists due not make money through sales of their records, they make their money through touring and live concerts. In that same sense, downloading does not take away from the visceral experience we get from attending a live concert. I could even say that file sharing is beneficial to new and emerging artists. Take John Mayer for example, he credits Napster to his success (http://www.starpolish.com/news/interviews/mayer/) . Mayer used to pretend he was a fourteen year old girl in chat rooms, convincing people to download his music and listen to it. It was through Napster that a loyal fan base developed, so in a sense, without Napster Mayer would not be as big as he is (perhaps as rich as he is) today. I believe that many of today’s artists owe their fame and fortune to file sharing services such as Napster.

Re: New ways to create music.

Speaking of the visceral experience of going to a live concert, we go to see a concert to watch our favourite musicians perform. I can’t imagine going to a live concert to see my favourite computer flash lights and play music over it’s speakers. I know it probably won’t be as drastic as that, but that’s the impression that I get. I don’t doubt that potential that music can be created by computers, it is after all just a collection of frequencies that can be determined by algorithms. There’s something very unsettling about that though. I believe music to be a very emotional thing, if in the future computers were to be able to imitate emotions, it shouldn’t mean they should be creating music. In this sense, I don’t believe this will take flight – computers making music that is. In the sense that society will always want athletes, they will always want musicians.

Re: The Future of Music in the Age of Spiritual Machines
posted on 11/05/2006 3:57 PM by oceanic

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ray, don't you think that all our senses are sources of language and that music includes all sounds, silences, and rhythyms?
therefore, yes, music is language that includes all sounds relative to having a body and living on earth, oh, yeah, also relative to human relations or the lack thereof.
from corn growing to sunday morning silences on a city street.
all sounds anyone has heard and can refer to in communicating any emotion or thought are integral to music and language.
now that's symphonic.

marty weiss
mexico, mo