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Post by johneppstein on Mar 13, 2018 13:25:08 GMT -6
We're smack dab in the middle of a recording renaissance. DAWs and software/hardware that allow for the mass emergence so-called bedroom studios are to music what the printing press was for the book. These are exciting times. No longer are the secrets of sound the sole domain of the engineering priesthood, and to the degree that their craft can be successfully emulated, so be it. It is simply foolish to think that the options presented by the emergence of these "AI engineers" won't give savvy musicians more and more choices and in the process make it easier and easier for them to get exactly to where they want to go. It's already happening. The bridge between humanity and AI is where art will flourish. The best artists will always find the best ways to achieve their goals.. and the best part? Everyone will always have choices. You can use whatever technology you want.. including a quill and manuscript paper. This reveals an alarming degree of brainwashing. "No longer are the secrets of sound the sole domain of the engineering priesthood, and to the degree that their craft can be successfully emulated, so be it." What total, insulting BS. "Secrets of sound" "Domain of the priesthood" You mean that people actually had to LEARN the art and craft of what they're doing? Let me clue you in to something - there are these things called BOOKS. The contain this stuff called "KNOWLEDGE". You acquire this knowledge by a process called LEARNING, which requires a certain about of EFFORT. Anmything that short-circuits this process makes you dumber and narrows your horizons. Are you defending your "right" to be ignorant? Because that's sure what it sounds like to me. "It is simply foolish to think that the options presented by the emergence of these "AI engineers" won't give savvy musicians more and more choices and in the process make it easier and easier for them to get exactly to where they want to go." This is total nonsense. The only thing it makes easier is to follow where the machines and their "high priesthood" (back atcha) of programmers say it's permissible for you to go. It's damn lucky that such "tools" were not de rigeur when George Martin and The Beatles set about dismantling the "rules" back at EMI studios or we'd still be in the dark ages. "It's alrerady happening" - yes, that's the problem - and you can hear it every day as music becdomes more and more homogenized andf force fit into convenient little cubbyholes the disingenuously call "genres". I hate it. Every day there is less new music that I find listenable, at least on the commercial market that gets promoted, and if you don't think that's EXACTLY where "tools" like this are herding you I've go a selection of bridges to sell you. I want to hear the music YOU, the person creates, not some piece of soulless software. "The bridge between humanity and AI is where art will flourish." Wrong. There is no "bridge", because AI does not have a soul. AI enforces, it does not listen. There's a old Arabic saying - "Do not allow the camel to get his nose into your tent because if you do before you know it the camel will be in the tent and you will be outside." AI is the biggest and most subtly aggressive camel this world has ever known. (It took me a couple of decades to realize this - I used to be an eager adopter of cybernetics.) AI is the death of art. God (or whatever you want to call it) abhors perfection. The master rugmakers of Persia always carefully incorporated at least one small flaw in each of their creations out of reverence. You want to know how to tell a priceless Persian rug from a worthless machine made copy? Look for the flaw.
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 13, 2018 13:31:59 GMT -6
Totally spurious argument. You guitar tuning does not dictate how you play it. Really, man, that's pretty disappointing. OK - cut the guitar statement - So what about the compressor? Come on man, we're all beholden to the technology. If you're talented, you can make art from poo - but give an artist better tools, and they make better art. I'm not backing down from my argument. A compressor is like a shovel - a simple tool that essentially does one thing, and by itself does nothing. The shovel doesn't determine the parameters of the hole it digs. We have reached the point where (some of) the "tools" usurp the agency of the artist. At that point we surrender the humanity of our art. !984. Farenheit 451. Animal Farm. Welcome to the present.
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 13, 2018 13:43:26 GMT -6
That's either brilliant satire or a very depressing view of the future, perhaps both... Actually, I just discovered fanaticalfuturist.com after typing this. There's way more stuff going on than I can even keep up with. Everything I've talked about exists, it's just a matter of time. Kinda like how the Internet existed with bulletin boards that took 20 min to dial into and then all of a sudden the www was accessible for everyone. For us, rapid advancements may mean we should invest less and just subscribe to a couple companies while using existing stuff until it becomes obsolete. Yeah. I'm pretty appalled by the changes the internet has wrought, in particular the unstoppable spread of bad information to the point of suppressing real knowledge. You see, machines can't discriminate, they can only follow rules. (And FWIW, I was co-sysopping BBS systems by the very early '80s with my Atari 800 and blazing fast 1200 baud US Robotics modem.) How can it differentiate? It's a machine - it has no taste, only algorithms. And those algorithjms, by nature, can't help but funnel the results in a particular direction. I find that utterly nauserating. The promotion of mediocity of the worst possible kind over excellence.(Or if not excellence, at least a good honest human effort.) The ascendance of dreck over art. A world in which the "paintings" of a baby in his own sh!t is given equal weight with the work of a Picasso. How is that person ever going to learn to sing if "smule" can give them a "pretty polished result" out of their unlistenable mewlings? And that person is going to go tell all their friends "look what I did" when in fact THEY did nothing at all! It's the total devaluation of art. It's something we should resist with every fiber of our being, not embrace! By accepting crap like this we are destroying ourselves. We should have faith in ourselves, not faith in the all-seeing robot!
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Post by M57 on Mar 13, 2018 14:08:51 GMT -6
This reveals an alarming degree of brainwashing. ? ? ?"No longer are the secrets of sound the sole domain of the engineering priesthood, and to the degree that their craft can be successfully emulated, so be it." What total, insulting BS. "Secrets of sound" "Domain of the priesthood" I wasn't meaning to insult engineers. I was merely pointing out that in the world of recording one's own music, there have been 'haves' and 'have nots'You mean that people actually had to LEARN the art and craft of what they're doing? Let me clue you in to something - there are these things called BOOKS. The contain this stuff called "KNOWLEDGE". You acquire this knowledge by a process called LEARNING, which requires a certain about of EFFORT. Name one engineer who learned their craft from reading books. Anyway, unfortunately it appears you don't understand my point. I'm talking about access to technology and ability to use it efficiently and effectively to make art. That includes the choice NOT to use it - and includes the everpresent option of letting humans make certain decisions.Are you defending your "right" to be ignorant? Because that's sure what it sounds like to me. Really? You're baiting me with a thinly veiled ad hominem attack?"It is simply foolish to think that the options presented by the emergence of these "AI engineers" won't give savvy musicians more and more choices and in the process make it easier and easier for them to get exactly to where they want to go." I'm happy to agree to disagree here.
This is total nonsense. The only thing it makes easier is to follow where the machines and their "high priesthood" (back atcha) of programmers say it's permissible for you to go. It's damn lucky that such "tools" were not de rigeur when George Martin and The Beatles set about dismantling the "rules" back at EMI studios or we'd still be in the dark ages. They didn't dismantle rules - they created new paradigms - That's what artists do."It's alrerady happening" - yes, that's the problem - and you can hear it every day as music becdomes more and more homogenized andf force fit into convenient little cubbyholes the disingenuously call "genres". Huh? What do you listen to? Let me give you some advice. Don't turn on the radio - it's almost as bad as it was in the late 70's.I hate it. Every day there is less new music that I find listenable, at least on the commercial market that gets promoted, and if you don't think that's EXACTLY where "tools" like this are herding you I've go a selection of bridges to sell you. ..and there it is.. You said the C word.I want to hear the music YOU, the person creates, not some piece of soulless software. Let's agree to agree here.This is still happening - all you have to do is go out and listen to live music. "The bridge between humanity and AI is where art will flourish." Wrong. There is no "bridge", because AI does not have a soul. AI enforces, it does not listen. What, you don't like my style of prose? OK, so I may have gotten carried away and a bit hyperbolic.There's a old Arabic saying - "Do not allow the camel to get his nose into your tent because if you do before you know it the camel will be in the tent and you will be outside." ..especially if the camel has smelly farts.AI is the biggest and most subtly aggressive camel this world has ever known. (It took me a couple of decades to realize this - I used to be an eager adopter of cybernetics.) AI is the death of art. Why am I reminded of the quote, "Everything has been invented."God (or whatever you want to call it) abhors perfection. The master rugmakers of Persia always carefully incorporated at least one small flaw in each of their creations out of reverence. You want to know how to tell a priceless Persian rug from a worthless machine made copy? Look for the flaw. Quaint, but misguided. "God" could care less.
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 13, 2018 14:46:20 GMT -6
This reveals an alarming degree of brainwashing. "No longer are the secrets of sound the sole domain of the engineering priesthood, and to the degree that their craft can be successfully emulated, so be it." What total, insulting BS. "Secrets of sound" "Domain of the priesthood" You mean that people actually had to LEARN the art and craft of what they're doing? Let me clue you in to something - there are these things called BOOKS. The contain this stuff called "KNOWLEDGE". You acquire this knowledge by a process called LEARNING, which requires a certain about of EFFORT. Name one engineer who learned their craft from reading books. Anyway, unfortunately it appears you don't understand my point. I'm talking about access to technology and ability to use it to make art. That includes the choice NOT to use it - and includes the everpresent option of letting humans make certain decisions.You learn your craft by doing and learning from more experienced people. You gain the basic knowledge that underlies what you are doing from books. Every old school engineer got the basics of acoustics from books. You want a few references?
You sure as hell don't learn a damn things by letting machines do your "thinking" for you.
Are you defending your "right" to be ignorant? Because that's sure what it sounds like to me. Really? You're baiting me with a thinly veiled ad hominem attack?
Thinly veiled "ad hominem" attack? I certainly don't think of it that way. I look on it more as a crusade against the growing legions of people who militantly insist on their right to be ignorant. I'm trying to get you to THINK, not blindly accept whatever somebody's trying to sell you.
"It is simply foolish to think that the options presented by the emergence of these "AI engineers" won't give savvy musicians more and more choices and in the process make it easier and easier for them to get exactly to where they want to go." I'm happy to agree to disagree here. How do yuou have "more choices" if the machines are nboit only telling what to do, they're actually doing it for you? It seems to me that's not a choice at all. A choice is fingers on knobs, connected to ears.This is total nonsense. The only thing it makes easier is to follow where the machines and their "high priesthood" (back atcha) of programmers say it's permissible for you to go. It's damn lucky that such "tools" were not de rigeur when George Martin and The Beatles set about dismantling the "rules" back at EMI studios or we'd still be in the dark ages. They didn't dismantle rules - they created new paradigms - That's what artists do.
<guffaw> It seems you haven't read any of the available literature about the prevailing situation at EMI in the early '60s.
"It's alrerady happening" - yes, that's the problem - and you can hear it every day as music becomes more and more homogenized andf force fit into convenient little cubbyholes the disingenuously call "genres". Huh? What do you listen to? Let me give you some advice. Don't turn on the radio - it's almost as bad as it was in the late 70's.
Radio hasn't been worth listening to for decades, ever since monopolization killed the local and regional stations. I have somer (undoubtedly hopelewssly naive) hope that the bankruptcy of Clear Channel/I Heart Radio may be signalling and eventual end to this model, but we'll need significant changes in Washington for it to happen.
I hate it. Every day there is less new music that I find listenable, at least on the commercial market that gets promoted, and if you don't think that's EXACTLY where "tools" like this are herding you I've go a selection of bridges to sell you. ..and there it is.. You said the C word.
Well, yes, of course - we do want to make enough money to survive, don't we? I'd kinda like to.
And what other kind of radio is there? Non-commercial radio is dead, has been for at least 10 years when the last of the college stations had their licenses sold off.
I want to hear the music YOU, the person creates, not some piece of soulless software. Let's agree to agree here.
Yes, let's do!
This is still happening - all you have to do is go out and listen to live music. You must live in Nashville, where there still is a live music scene!"The bridge between humanity and AI is where art will flourish." Wrong. There is no "bridge", because AI does not have a soul. AI enforces, it does not listen. What, you don't like my style of prose? OK, so I may have gotten carried away and a bit hyperbolic.
It's not your prose that bothers me - it's actually not bad. It's the thought behind I that I disagree with. AI has no place in the creation of art.
There's a old Arabic saying - "Do not allow the camel to get his nose into your tent because if you do before you know it the camel will be in the tent and you will be outside." ..especially if the camel has smelly farts.
ALL camels have smelly farts. And they spit. And bite. And are generally disagreeable critters. Can't really blame 'em, but they're still not getting into my tent.
AI is the biggest and most subtly aggressive camel this world has ever known. (It took me a couple of decades to realize this - I used to be an eager adopter of cybernetics.) AI is the death of art. Why am I reminded of the quote, "Everything has been invented."
I wouldn't know. The point is that there are some things that probably shouldn't be inventyed, and if they are should not be released. The Atomic Bomb. Bioenginered Diseases, Autotune. Musical AI.
God (or whatever you want to call it) abhors perfection. The master rugmakers of Persia always carefully incorporated at least one small flaw in each of their creations out of reverence. You want to know how to tell a priceless Persian rug from a worthless machine made copy? Look for the flaw. Quaint, but misguided. "God" could care less.
Ah, but collectors of fine rugs do! And it depends on which "God" you're talking about.
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Post by viciousbliss on Mar 13, 2018 15:07:52 GMT -6
Wouldn't any significant change to a mix beyond tech fixes be considered an artistic choice? Ultimately we're all at the whims of what the public wants. And what they want is somewhat controlled by whatever media they consume. People generally don't want to dig to find cool stuff and are satisfied with whatever drek gets paraded out in the mainstream. I've heard some pretty atrocious stuff on Smule. I think if someone is just ok it can polish them up quite well. Music going digital kinda opened up Pandora's box. It's a reflection of society. Things move much faster now. Perhaps a lot of things will be better beyond what we can comprehend. Right now it's this weird in between phase where we have all this tech but the real revolutionary stuff hasn't become widespread.
Getting back to audio software, it's too bad we don't have much insight into what specific things are being worked on. But we see that the end goal is to keep removing barriers to entry. Probably it's more important to watch for things like Smule. There may come a day when bands just record each part into their phone and have some program mix it all.
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Post by matt@IAA on Mar 13, 2018 15:31:23 GMT -6
This dovetails on a subject that's very near and dear to my heart. It's what is art, and is there an art vs craft distinction? I used to think there was, but I'm not so sure any more. I think the creative process, whether for utilitarian or "higher" purposes is the same thing. And when we create something (a sandwich, code, a song, this post) a but of us goes into it. No one else could do it quite the same way.
When we talk about art, to me, it's ultimately about communion with the person on the other end. Waxing a bit religious or philosophical, I think this is us emulating our creator (whatever flavor you prefer there I think it's still relevant). We create because we exist. And on the other side of that exchange is a real, live, breathing, thinking person. The better we are at our art, the better that person has a real, meaningful connection with US, not with what we created but THROUGH what we created.
The sentence above - no one else - I think that's the line that John is saying has been crossed. If the app is doing its thing regardless of user, it's not your art any more...it's the programmer's. There's no piece of you in there. But, the counterpoint is selecting that tool is a personal decision, and judicious use of single-purpose black box tools doesn't eliminate the human element.
I can see both sides. I think as long as we firmly fix the objective in our mind when we go to work - again, music, turning a wrench, designing a PCB, making a piece of furniture, writing an email - we're going to be safe. It's about giving a bit of yourself to the guy on the other end. You do that, we'll all be better for it.
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Post by mrholmes on Mar 13, 2018 17:25:18 GMT -6
I read the boilerplate and it scares me. If they're being at all straight this could do incredible damage. I don't buy the idea of a computer making artistic decisions for me and I distrust the ability of a bunch of developers with primarily scientific backgrounds to make automatic decisions concerning my music. I'm also constitutionally opposed to the idea of having machines "clean up" mistakes in recording technique. That's handing over creative aspects that are the purvey of the humnan to a machine because the human is too lazy to deal with those things himself. And that is another giant step toward the homogenization of music. They're also extremely vague to opaque in telling us what it actually is doing. I don't like that at all. And I'm extremely opposed to the concept of "automatic EQ", or any other cybertnetic usurpation of artistic choice. And that BS about "100s of EQ changes per second" - WTF? Face it we the audio professional are no longer the target customer, much more money in a plug-in you can’t fuck up with, it’s now the bedroom producer! So sad! I know two milionarry bed room laptopp producers one won a German Echo similar to the Grammys... I think there is nothing wrong with bedroom producing...they now make tools for fools and that is something different to me...
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 13, 2018 18:49:29 GMT -6
Wouldn't any significant change to a mix beyond tech fixes be considered an artistic choice? Ultimately we're all at the whims of what the public wants. And what they want is somewhat controlled by whatever media they consume. People generally don't want to dig to find cool stuff and are satisfied with whatever drek gets paraded out in the mainstream. I've heard some pretty atrocious stuff on Smule. I think if someone is just ok it can polish them up quite well. Music going digital kinda opened up Pandora's box. It's a reflection of society. Things move much faster now. Perhaps a lot of things will be better beyond what we can comprehend. Right now it's this weird in between phase where we have all this tech but the real revolutionary stuff hasn't become widespread. Getting back to audio software, it's too bad we don't have much insight into what specific things are being worked on. But we see that the end goal is to keep removing barriers to entry. Probably it's more important to watch for things like Smule. There may come a day when bands just record each part into their phone and have some program mix it all. I don't believe in "removing barriers to entry" No how, no way. I believe in ERECTING barriers to entry. I didn't spend an entire lifetime working on my art until I believe I have something to offer just to have a gang of snot nosed kids who can't even be arsed to learn to sing and play an instrument without cybernetic help - or who can't do a half decent mix without an AI - claiming that what they do is in any conceivable way as valid as what I've worked for. I'm not saying I'm that great. I'm saying that they suck dog balls and to call them musicians or recording engineers is an insult to all of us who have worked to achieve whatever we might have. I agree that it's a reflection of society. And the reflection in that mirror is really ugly, like the portrait of Dorian Gray. Saying things will be "better" is simply naive. I used to believe in that, but over the last 30 or so years things have done nothing but get worse and it's almost entirely due to the internet and digital technology. Yes, it has a potential to do great things. But it has an even greater potential to dehumanize society and exploit the majority of humankind. And those who control it have no interest in the former other than as a propaganda tool.
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 13, 2018 19:04:30 GMT -6
Face it we the audio professional are no longer the target customer, much more money in a plug-in you can’t fuck up with, it’s now the bedroom producer! So sad! I know two milionarry bed room laptopp producers one won a German Echo similar to the Grammys... I think there is nothing wrong with bedroom producing...they now make tools for fools and that is something different to me... It doesn't matter what room you work in. It matters what you do with it.
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Post by johneppstein on Mar 13, 2018 19:14:29 GMT -6
This dovetails on a subject that's very near and dear to my heart. It's what is art, and is there an art vs craft distinction? I used to think there was, but I'm not so sure any more. I think the creative process, whether for utilitarian or "higher" purposes is the same thing. And when we create something (a sandwich, code, a song, this post) a but of us goes into it. No one else could do it quite the same way. When we talk about art, to me, it's ultimately about communion with the person on the other end. Waxing a bit religious or philosophical, I think this is us emulating our creator (whatever flavor you prefer there I think it's still relevant). We create because we exist. And on the other side of that exchange is a real, live, breathing, thinking person. The better we are at our art, the better that person has a real, meaningful connection with US, not with what we created but THROUGH what we created. The sentence above - no one else - I think that's the line that John is saying has been crossed. If the app is doing its thing regardless of user, it's not your art any more...it's the programmer's. There's no piece of you in there. But, the counterpoint is selecting that tool is a personal decision, and judicious use of single-purpose black box tools doesn't eliminate the human element. I can see both sides. I think as long as we firmly fix the objective in our mind when we go to work - again, music, turning a wrench, designing a PCB, making a piece of furniture, writing an email - we're going to be safe. It's about giving a bit of yourself to the guy on the other end. You do that, we'll all be better for it. Pretty good post! The thing is, there's a really slippery slope around that line that makes it extremely easy to cross it unawares, and once it's crossed it's very, very hard to get back. Sometimes we can't see when the machine has excised an important part of that bit of ourselves and substituted - what? Glitz? Conformity? The false illusion of "perfection"? Too much "perfection" becomes blandness, and blandness is not perfection. You can't have perfection (or character) without flaw, just as there is no hot without cold, no true joy without sadness. There is no true art without soul and that is something that machines lack.
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Post by EmRR on Mar 14, 2018 8:04:15 GMT -6
The robots are not your friends.
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Post by mitchkricun on Mar 14, 2018 12:52:52 GMT -6
I own Gullfoss and think it’s pretty awesome actually. It requires the user to make many decisions and then decide if they like the result. It’s no more cheating then products like Soothe or De Edger, and less cheating than finding a preset that “just works”, IMO. It’s just another tool that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. I’m not really that precious about it. If it makes the track better to my ears, I use it.
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Post by tasteliketape on May 10, 2018 12:55:33 GMT -6
Of course it would totally be fucking crazy and amateurish to use one tool that does what you were going to do with several tools and give you the same results in less time Sure as fuck wouldn’t want that or even try it . Oh, right - they've finally managed to hack my brain connection so they know exactly what I want to achieve on a given mix of a given song before even I know what I want to do with it. How the fuck do they know what my intentions and tastes are? Have they managed to get the NSA to give up their secret techniques of machine telepathy? What is this, 1984? What's the point of even working in music production if all you need is something like this? (Answer - no point at all, may as well move to Florida and watch it gradually sink into to sea!) These yobbos don't know me, don't know my tastes, and certainly don't know what my production goals are. Furthermore, other people who might be tempted to use such an abomination are never going to develop artistically and develop their own voice if they use crutches like this. You have to put in the work. There are no shortcuts. [ They Don’t but I do know what I want ,if it doesn’t get me there i simply don’t use it . No it doesn’t work on everything but like Sooth plugin if works I use it . In the end use it I use my EARS for the final results , it sounds good I use it . It has to pass my Ears in final results
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Post by johneppstein on May 10, 2018 13:07:40 GMT -6
Oh, right - they've finally managed to hack my brain connection so they know exactly what I want to achieve on a given mix of a given song before even I know what I want to do with it. How the fuck do they know what my intentions and tastes are? Have they managed to get the NSA to give up their secret techniques of machine telepathy? What is this, 1984? What's the point of even working in music production if all you need is something like this? (Answer - no point at all, may as well move to Florida and watch it gradually sink into to sea!) These yobbos don't know me, don't know my tastes, and certainly don't know what my production goals are. Furthermore, other people who might be tempted to use such an abomination are never going to develop artistically and develop their own voice if they use crutches like this. You have to put in the work. There are no shortcuts. [ They Don’t but I do know what I want ,if it doesn’t get me there i simply don’t use it . No it doesn’t work on everything but like Sooth plugin if works I use it . In the end use it I use my EARS for the final results , it sounds good I use it . It has to pass my Ears in final results I guess that's one way to look at it especially if you put a high value on expedience. I question the advisability of allowing such robotic tools to subtly shape one's art - maybe the plugin gives a result that one finds "satisfactory" but how are you to know that you might not have come up with something much better (relatively speaking - the devil is often in the small details) on your own if you didn't have an east shortcut seductively winking at you and showing a little leg? Should "good enough" be regarded as good enough?
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Post by johneppstein on May 10, 2018 13:14:56 GMT -6
Wouldn't any significant change to a mix beyond tech fixes be considered an artistic choice? Ultimately we're all at the whims of what the public wants.Not all of us. Nor should we be. That's the road to infinite cookie cutter art. It's the ones who don't give a hoot what the public "wants" that make a difference and set trends. Or go broke, of course. Sometimes both....
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Post by jeremygillespie on May 11, 2018 8:10:07 GMT -6
This "problem" isn't simply on the engineering side of the fence. The ability to fix things that you are given from a poorly performed piece by a musician has been around since before digital editing came on board. Cutting up tape has been done since a razor and tape machine were in the same room.
I think it all falls where you draw the line in the sand.
-Multitrack -cutting multiple performances together -varispeed on a tape machine -digital samplers (AMS anybody? Wendel???) -using compressors on a vocal take -Using an EQ instead of a different mic or changing the mics position or room you're recording in
Jumping ahead...
-amp modelers -keyboard software -Having as many instances of a plugin your computer can handle at once etc etc etc
I've had people say its cheating because back in the day you were lucky to have anything other than the tape machine and the console in the room. A pair of 1176's or Pultec EQ's was a luxury. Well, that's cool, but you cant tell me if somebody showed up with a truck load of gear to one of those studios the engineer's faces wouldn't light up with joy.
Limitations can lead to great art, or it can pigeonhole you. Hand somebody a cheap acoustic with shit intonation above the 5 fret and have them play a song where they need to capo at the 3rd fret. Yeah... that's gonna be awful. Give them the opportunity to use a nice Martin with a great setup and its a different story.
Where do we draw the line of "cheating"?
There is also great music being made with dudes sitting in the same room with limited processing going on.
John, the new Ry Cooder record was released today. Go listen and enjoy some old school with badass players LISTENING to each other and playing off one another.
If you want to go back even further, the newest Joe Henry record was cut straight to 2 track tape by Ryan Freeland. Its pretty damn enjoyable.
End ramble...
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2018 18:36:14 GMT -6
When the first synthesizers and sequenzers hit the charts, people also claimed the decline of western civilization. Didn't happen. People still learn traditional instruments, culture became more diversified, art does not die until you rip peoples right half of the brain out. All we got here are tools. Nobody is forced to use them. Everyone can build up his own artistic manifest. Most people have no clue, how far AI actually is. It is by far much less capable of mimicing human behaviour. let alone arts. These are just tools like the electronics in modern cars, where noone actually knows, what is in the black boxes. AI nowadays is still pretty stupid and even the most advanced AI algorithms made only little steps forward from the theoretical approaches of the 80s and 90s. The word "intelligence" in AI is "faking human behaviour and decisions", not less but especially not more. I can not see, how tools, that make decisions on audio engineering tasks, could be the end of art, if the artist is in charge of approving these decisions. Even if such algorithms are used without the artists approval, say, in broadcast or streaming services, it still does only degrade an existing quality in the worst case, which streaming services do all the time, as all lossy compression does. It does not need AI to "accomplish" this. There will always be a market for hand-made engineering, as there is a market for hand-made music. Years ago i tested "Ludwig", a composition software that writes songs automatically based on AI models of styles. It does a pretty good job doing this, if you just need "lala" in the background of your supermarket without paying roalties. If something like this is art, is a decision, that the people, who use these tools, and the consumer has to decide in the end. I always have a very bad feeling, when people deny that something can be art, just because of the tools the artist uses. I still remember all those guys that talked about how "computer music" is no art. I guess, people said exactly the same about the Beatles because of their new music, when the first distorted guitar sounds appeared, when electrical amplification revolutioned music etc.etc.. But as soon as AI comes up, even otherwise reasonable people start to see the end of the world. AI is still in the beginnings, since decades, it is just more computing power and data available to make use of it. That's all.
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Post by iamasound on May 13, 2018 23:38:54 GMT -6
It is when choices no longer are there, when new technologies supersede the older and are used as a quasi propaganda technique informing your decisions by actually dictating and replacing what you might have actually chosen given the choice. It all sounds a bit conspiratorial, but the living, breathing example might be the newer crop coming up that has absolutely no concept of what the beauty of listening to their music on anything but mostly cheap ear buds or the little cylindrical boom boxes some carry around and produced by people who crush any sense of dynamics with compressors and limiters. Hopefully not, but as time marches onwards and this older generation of creators and engineers return to dust, might not future become a place where choices are replaced with dictates?
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Post by johneppstein on May 14, 2018 12:42:05 GMT -6
But it doesn't "take you where you want to go". It can't, because it has no way of knowing that. What it does is lead youi by the nose to where IT WANTS you to go. And you never get a chance to find out where you might have gone under your own power. Know what a Judas Goat is? If you don't, look it up. Hmm.. So anyone who learned how to play the guitar with what most of us call a standard tuning was being led down a path by his nose? A compressor with 4 buttons and two knobs sounds the way it sounds, period. Same applies to an EQ with a handful of sliders permanently allocated to a handful of specific frequencies with fixed Qs. It doesn't matter if you walked into a recording studio 2 days, 10 years or 50 years ago, you still found yourself at the mercy of whatever gear, mics, room was in front of you, and THAT was vehicle that took you to your destination. Certainly, you are right about one thing. No piece of gear has any way of knowing where we want to go. But it's slippery logic to suggest that a piece of gear leads us to slaughter just because it's really good at doing what it does. I think what's being confused here is the intention of the gear (it has none) and the intention of the developer/programmer of the gear. If it's a one trick pony with no buttons, knobs, or sliders, so be it. That's why we audition it, and if we like it, we leverage its capabilities, use it judiciously, and most importantly.. musically. That's pretty silly. Learning to play in standard tuning does not make the decisions for you in what you do with that tuning. And you're always free to learn open tunings as well. It's not the same thing as having the machine dictate your choices for you.
Now, if you "played" a mickey mouse guitar that generates a tune when you turn a crank in the side, that would be a more apt analogy.
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Post by johneppstein on May 14, 2018 12:44:40 GMT -6
This "problem" isn't simply on the engineering side of the fence. The ability to fix things that you are given from a poorly performed piece by a musician has been around since before digital editing came on board. Cutting up tape has been done since a razor and tape machine were in the same room. I think it all falls where you draw the line in the sand. -Multitrack -cutting multiple performances together -varispeed on a tape machine -digital samplers (AMS anybody? Wendel???) -using compressors on a vocal take -Using an EQ instead of a different mic or changing the mics position or room you're recording in Jumping ahead... -amp modelers -keyboard software -Having as many instances of a plugin your computer can handle at once etc etc etc I've had people say its cheating because back in the day you were lucky to have anything other than the tape machine and the console in the room. A pair of 1176's or Pultec EQ's was a luxury. Well, that's cool, but you cant tell me if somebody showed up with a truck load of gear to one of those studios the engineer's faces wouldn't light up with joy. Limitations can lead to great art, or it can pigeonhole you. Hand somebody a cheap acoustic with shit intonation above the 5 fret and have them play a song where they need to capo at the 3rd fret. Yeah... that's gonna be awful. Give them the opportunity to use a nice Martin with a great setup and its a different story. Where do we draw the line of "cheating"? There is also great music being made with dudes sitting in the same room with limited processing going on. John, the new Ry Cooder record was released today. Go listen and enjoy some old school with badass players LISTENING to each other and playing off one another. If you want to go back even further, the newest Joe Henry record was cut straight to 2 track tape by Ryan Freeland. Its pretty damn enjoyable. End ramble... The difference is this - WHO'S DOING THE "THINKING"? Who makes the choices? Is it YOU or is it the MACHINE? It's not a question of "cheatingf" at this point. It's a question of the creeping dehumanization of music.
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Post by johneppstein on May 14, 2018 12:58:41 GMT -6
When the first synthesizers and sequenzers hit the charts, people also claimed the decline of western civilization. Didn't happen. People still learn traditional instruments, culture became more diversified, art does not die until you rip peoples right half of the brain out. All we got here are tools. Nobody is forced to use them. Everyone can build up his own artistic manifest. Most people have no clue, how far AI actually is. It is by far much less capable of mimicing human behaviour. let alone arts. These are just tools like the electronics in modern cars, where noone actually knows, what is in the black boxes. AI nowadays is still pretty stupid and even the most advanced AI algorithms made only little steps forward from the theoretical approaches of the 80s and 90s. The word "intelligence" in AI is "faking human behaviour and decisions", not less but especially not more. I can not see, how tools, that make decisions on audio engineering tasks, could be the end of art, if the artist is in charge of approving these decisions. It the artist using the tools or are the tools using the "artist"? When it's the latter, is the "artist" even an artist anymore? It's a quantifiably different question from the matter of using technologically new instruments. When you play a synthesizer YOU are playing the synthesizer, just like playing a guitar, an organ, or a nose flute. When an AI "plays" the synthesizer, you're not playing anymore. You're irrelevant. At best you're relegated to the role of editor, while the machine creates. This is NOT art, it is a move by industry to REPLACE art with an erzatz simulation, to eventuially displace humans. We should be very concerned about this sort of AI, because it eventually means the end of our jobs and relegation of human artistic activity to a hobby for wealthy dilettantes. if that. End of the world, no. The end of human worth, probably. I recommend the works of George Orwell and Phillip K. Dick. So you think this automated degredation is a good thing? You don't think it has cheapened and diminmished music? "Always"? "Market"? You're far more optimistic than I, my friend. We've already seen the market for our work shrink to a pale shadow of its former self. How far can it shrink before it effectively vanishes? Some might make a case that it has nearly done so already.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2018 13:20:11 GMT -6
When sound movies hit the market, 80% of the musicians of that time lost their jobs. They argumented exactly the same way. Still there are musicians today ... I read all of Orwell and P.K. Dick, btw., and 1984 is nothing compared to what Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook ... and the NSA, that has access to all these data, can find out about people. Heck, Google knows me better than i do... I must not like that at all, but it is reality already. Dictators of the past could not have dreamed of these kind of possibilities. Let's face it, 1984 is harmless compared to reality today ...
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