Can You Survive In A World Of Music Without Musicians?
Technological change has done away with many jobs but it has yet to eliminate artists. Though I'm convinced human-crafted music will continue as a powerful social and cultural force, what does it mean for one's job prospects when software can generate music based on the data from our everyday lives? The following examples include the involvement of musicians at various stages yet suggest the possibility of music without musicians.
The Listening Machine: Music from Tweets
"an automated system that generates a continuous piece of music based on the activity of 500 Twitter users around the United Kingdom. Their conversations, thoughts and feelings are translated into musical patterns in real time, which you can tune in to at any point through any web-connected device."
The Listening Machine is a project developed by:
"sonic artist and programmer Daniel Jones and composer Peter Gregson [who] have joined forces with Britten Sinfonia orchestra."
The "six-month musical installation" can be accessed via the homepage.
Heart Rate and Brain Wave Music
I don't know how the project turned out but Mark Mallman recently planned a week-long web concert of music generated, in part, from heart rate and brain wave data:
"Every night during his road trip, Mallman will hook himself up to a Polar heart-rate monitor and a Mattel Mindflex headset, both of which will be connected to a laptop running Ableton Live sequencing software."
"One MIDI channel will set the song’s tempo using data from the heart-rate monitor…Mallman’s brain output will be turned into an additional 10 MIDI signals to produce what he calls 'ambient, chordal soundscapes' with the Ableton software."
"By day, Mallman will be hooked up to a different brain wave reader, the Emotiv Epoc neuroheadset, to process signals using a program called Mind Synth, which will create tunes in Ableton."
Mailman will also be playing music on various gadgets and instruments (while awake).
Music From Your Genome
GeneGroove is an iPhone app created by Portable Genomics that takes your genetic data, provided by 23andMe, and uses it to create a "GeNumber" which is then used as the basis for music generation:
"After uploading your 23andMe raw data onto your iPhone via iTunes, GeneGroove will analyze your genome informations and generate a unique identifier key. This key, called the GeNumber, will embed the uniqueness of your genome data while keeping your privacy safe, and will be used by GeneGroove to generate your music melody."
Basic samples and musical material for music melodies were created:
"by DJ Omar Paraiso, Soulful Living Sessions, San Diego, CA. Omar has produced 11 set of Deep Music sounds for you to play 11 different tracks from your genome."
Portable Genomics CEO Patrick Merel recently contacted Music Think Tank to let "artists and the music industry" know that they are interested in how "this concept could be used to connect better artists and fans through their genome music."
If you have suggestions, contact Portable Genomics.
What Happens Next?
These examples all involve musicians and aesthetic choices. But given that many such projects depend on a bounded universe of sounds and musical elements, what happens when a Spotify or Pandora are allowed to open the archives to algorithmic creation. How many more musicians would we need given those who have already recorded?
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Do people watch their Mac’s ”Flurry’ screen-saver instead of viewing paintings or sculptures?
We already have “too many musicians,” i.e. the perennial old guys jam up the conventional system and new blood gets squeezed between the cracks. I can’t see picking up a demo cd at a bar from Spotify anytime soon, which is one of my favorite ways to acquire new work…
IMHO if there’s not a heart , sweat , pain in the body , a real instrument ( and mainly a real person ) there are just sounds and not music . Just some plastic device generating them all . Good luck for those folks , they’ll find their niche . Music without musicians ? Hello !
In all honesty I don’t think there will EVER be a brink of time where the world won’t need musicians. There will always be that fellow who will pick up his guitar and teach himself how to play it, those kids who are curious as to what they are hearing so they go to the piano and try to copy it, those teenagers and young adults who will ALWAYS see a show. There can never be a brink of time where there won’t be a need for musicians. An actual human performance creates influence, more than something produced on the internet. IF you ask me, I completely disagree with the article. Yes, there are “too many musicians” but there can never really be too many.
An argument can only be made that there are too many musicians if your primary concern is economic. Why would we expect all musicians to be professional, money-making musicians? That’s a very brief, modern concept. Music and the music business are not synonymous, or even parallel.
What does algorithmic mean for musicians’ “job prospects?” Probably nothing, unless this type of aesthetic moves beyond experimentalism and into the mainstream.
However, if it ever DOES morph into a legitimate trend, I hereby label it ‘algorhythmic.’
right on!
music is made by musicians, not the other way around 🙂 I’d read about this type of project years ago in some academic study book. There was also a project in which an automated system would play music in a club just as a dj would. Funnily enough, the idea get much traction with the public, as no one got any excitement from seeing an empty dj booth. I mean, you take the musician/dj of the stage and what exactly are we supposed to look and connect with? blank space?
I’ve written a blog post in response to this – you’re welcome to comment on that: http://tobiasreber.tumblr.com/post/33949441646/a-world-of-music-without-musicians
It’s weird to see a whole blog post responding to something I wrote that never mentions my name. Just saying.
LMFAO @ “unhealthy and uninformed” — that was just adorable, man
I’m just not convinced that he hasn’t chosen “sincerity” as an ironic stance of some sort.
Hi there,
Thanx for you interest and mention of GeneGroove. Very kind of yours.
Just to mention, GeneGroove needs artists, it doesn’t want to live without artists.
GeneGroove is more a process of re-creation of music based on genome data rather than a sound generator.
GeneGroove needs artist’s music samples to re-create melodies from.
I invite artists to contact us to try the process. We have genomes you have music, let’s have a remix party. Music will sounds yours but will be totally new.
The GeneGroove Team
the whole point of making music is to express something from within yourself, personally. as a guitar teacher, i know that despite all the technological advances, kids still want to plug an electric guitar into an amp and wail. it feels good, it expresses something, it is the satisfying culmination of the practice of skills.
a computer will never write, ‘Blowin’ in the Wind”, or “Strawberry Fields Forever”. it can only create muzak.
Hi Clyde, I’ve added your name to my post, thanks for pointing it out. Tobias
People have long been fascinated with the concept of the musical automaton, from the age of levers, pulleys and gears through that of software. So far, most such creations have been capable of playback only, but these newer, more sophisticated music generators still require extensive programming. As technology advances, we may be able to teach the machines how to play, even to the extent of adding enough humanistic expression to evoke a very real human response, but even that won’t replace a musician who knows what to play, when to play it, and why it should be played. Would a ‘bot have chosen to play “Nearer My God To Thee”, while the Titanic was sinking?
I don’t buy this, there’s no content here. I mean isn’t this article just kind of ridiculous?
Like it’s meant to enforce the mentality some musicians have and send them into a spiraling dread, thinking “Oh no, technology really IS against me!”
The title itself implies that because of technology, there suddenly IS no need for real music. That’ll never be the case. You’ll always need humans to be aware of what is good and real and funky and relevant and what came before.
“DJ Omar has produced 11 set of Deep Music sounds for you to play 11 different tracks from your genome.”
No computer can make the creative decisions a human can. And even if it could, what should we do? Is the article telling us all to quit in order to prepare for the computer music future?
The only second of truth in this article is where someone gets the idea that artists and fans should connect. That’s what technology is here for, to help us connect.
And it doesn’t require a ‘concept,’ just a real living creating human being.
SkyeLeoH
How did you get your photo to pop up here? I am not apart of typepad, but thought at least my Gravatar would show up… Is it by signing in through twitter?