Anti Federalist
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I'm Sorry...This New Artist Completely Sucks
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ClaytonB
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"The idea that AI is going to replace musicians is ludicrous"
Precisely. On another forum, I've quipped the following: "Music is where generative AI-hype goes to die." A push-button song will always sound... push-button. Of course, corporate marketing departments are going to gobble this stuff up and spew it out on the rest of us. Songs that are over-produced and way too excited about the new notification feature on their phone... no real human actually cares about what you're crooning about, as though you have fallen in love literally for the first time in your life. Music is the uncanny valley, it's extremely difficult, even for seasoned musicians, to avoid creating unwanted musical effects and it is often the absence of elements that is more significant than their presence. "Music is sound painted on a canvas of silence" (Leopold Stokowski, I think).
Listen to this through then click the spoiler below:
Creativity isn't about the sophistication of the elements. A truly talented artist can turn almost any medium into an actual work of art. Notice the onlookers, they instinctively know they're hearing actual art:
The so-called "Tristan chord" was used by Richard Wagner in his Tristan und Isolde (from which it gets its name, which you can hear at 0:10 here:
The Tristan chord is not complicated. It's just a half-diminished chord. You can form such a chord using just the white keys by pressing BDFA. But what makes the Tristan chord so interesting that it is still hotly debated by music theorists to this day, is the way that Wagner used tonal ambiguity to make the actual function that this chord is playing in the music impossible to nail down. It's the musical equivalent of a magic mirror.... everyone hears what they want to hear in it, and the craziest part of all is that Wagner clearly intended the chord to have this effect. He introduces the chord right at the outset of the composition, and then goes on to use it as a recurring motif throughout, using it as something like a musical-question-mark, injecting feelings of pondering, hesitancy, uncertainty, and so on.
The point of the Tristan chord is not to say that "music theory is so complex that AI could never learn it". No, what Wagner did with the Tristan chord, is that he broke music theory altogether. This was the first time in history when the music theorists had nothing definite to say about why that chord was even there, what its role in the musical structure was, or what exactly it communicated. And that was Wagner's point. He was self-consciously not only breaking the rules of music theory (quite common since at least the days of Beethoven), he was breaking music theory itself.
There is no amount of "pattern recognition" which will ever allow you to create a Tristan chord moment in music. It's probably a once-in-history event, anyway. But the point is that this kind of creativity doesn't come from any sort of mechanical procedure. Traditionally, we just called it inspiration. Look at the word: "In-Spirit-Ation". To be moved by the spirit. That is the ultimate source of all human creativity. NO MACHINE WILL EVER BE INSPIRED. The mere thought is an abomination!
I have been playing amateur classical piano for over 30 years now. I'm no professional musician but I know my way around a piano. In the last few years, I've been studying composition. When it comes to "creating feeling" this is something that, when you learn which knobs to turn, becomes practically turn-crank. This is how the Pop-Music industry operates. But this isn't about bashing on pop-music, which does have its place (in elevators or checkout lanes, for example)... it's about pointing out that, just because a machine can "make you have Da Feelz", this doesn't mean it's inspired or creative or has any idea what it's even doing at all! Da Feelz come from certain musical movements whose effect on you are almost involuntary. Kind of like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard, but not unpleasant. There is a line in Johnny Cash's song, When the Man Comes Around, where he says, "The hair on your arms will stand up". What blew me away the very first time I heard that song was that just before he sang that line, the hairs on my arm were standing up. I was knocked flat... HOW IN THE WORLD did he know that?! Well, my much more experienced self today has some idea of how he knew. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's mechanical, but I will say that Cash knew what psychological buttons to push in the music in order to give you Da Feelz. So, it's no wonder that pattern-matching machines (like generative AI) can also do this. The point is this: don't confuse Da Feelz for genuine creativity. You wouldn't confuse a Taylor Swift anthem with genuine creativity, so don't confuse AI slop for genuine creativity, either. Whoever wrote the music for Katy Perry's Wide Awake knew those same musical techniques for inducing Da Feelz... you might not like her or her songs, but it's got Da Feelz whether you like it or not! (@2:13 and following, for example) If you feel like a song like Wide Awake is un-creative, corporate, turn-crank, pop-music slop, just keep in mind it has a million times more musical creativity in it than any AI slop spewed out by an Orwellian, 1984 Porno-Department music generator will ever have!
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PS:
Music is not a competition. Corporate AI music-generators miss the whole point. Music is beauty in motion. It's whatever makes you move and -- most important of all -- it is the human connection formed in the act of making and listening to it!! It's serious, weird, contemplative and everything in between...
And yes, music can even be dangerous (listen to the end...)
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