I see a future where we all make our own music and share it freely with family and friends. This means less listening to manufactured pop songs written by suits with the sole aim of making a profit. This will still happen of course but at least we'll have another option.
What gets lost in this short-circuited process is the physical involvement with an instrument, a sort of embodied cognition. I suppose profound and/or interesting musical ideas could spring from someone without such experience, I’m skeptical.
The part about privilege: a lot to unpack. I’m a professional musician in classical music. There are a lot of paths to learning one’s craft. In my own experience, privilege - at least as defined by access to resources of finance and influence wasn’t part of my training. Still there’s much to be done to broaden access in my field.
I'm not being funny but this is a poor take when the excellent guitarist Mdou Moctar learned on a guitar he built himself using the brake cables from a bike for strings. The guitar at least is not an inaccessible instrument.
(Maybe it also has to do something with the lack of demand now, guitar music was still very popular in the 90ies.)
I think the big changes that caused prices to drop was online shopping and the move to East Asian manufacturing outside of Japan. There are "store-brands" like Harley Benton that target below $150 for some instruments, the Internet is awash with positive reviews.
I'm not sure if demand has changed. Guitar music is less popular but it's much easier to learn right now.
https://reverb-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1457648516/C...
There are a million things you _wanted_ to do that you'll never get to do. And that's unfair.
Shouldn't we aim for a future that is the exact opposite of this?
What work?
If we assume the above to be correct then the "cheap" guitar is an additional cost whereas the AI music model isn't. In addition, guitar lessons cost money and spending time practicing is harder for some people than others due to their circumstances.
You can learn to play the guitar, and buy a guitar, but it's very hard and expensive to also learn the 3-4 other instruments you need to make a full song. (my brother learned both the guitar and percussions; this took a lot of time and was quite expensive, if he had a tool like this he would probably focus on the guitar and just rely on this to generate a background track)
Learning something difficult is rewarding on several levels. To boil it down to just the intended outcome is a rather narrow view of the matter.
let us side step the binary "privileged" argument which is disruptive here.
The issue for us now is given that level of talent, would Hendrix, Johnson or anyone else be able to make a career in 2028? Or will it be the preserve of people with free time and money?
What will it mean to "make music" when the amount of necessary skill, experience and insight approaches zero?
> This means less listening to manufactured pop songs written by suits with the sole aim of making a profit
Unfortunately, unless we replace capitalism, this is exactly what you can expect. The veil of false corporate authenticity grows every day, you can see it in the opening sentence of this press release:
"From jazz to heavy metal, techno to opera, music is a much loved form of creative expression."
The statement, while true on the surface, takes on a different tone when you remember who the speaker is, who the audience is, and what their ultimate goal is.
I am excited as a musician to explore this coming age, and I am also deeply saddened and fearful of how things will shake out.
I've already done both. Generators are only good to produce specific ideas to integrate sometimes, at most.
It's exactly the same difference between writing your own novel, and getting it written by a text generator. You don't relate to the story, and to the characters, the same way. You may not even _explain_ them the same way.
On a walk -> Idea -> hum melody into website -> listen if that is something that floats your goat. And then you can follow the traditional way of midi keyboard + daw or however you produce.
const song = generateSong() const royalties = Spotify.Publish(song) Bank.getRoyalties(royalties)
You have to think of this like a typewriter or a word document. It is mostly used for profit. And profit always wins over anything else
hum a melody -> match in daw -> work on it creative
but hum -> AI generation -> work on it in daw is not?
It first resides in your own, personal, self appreciation: do you feel yourself legitimate to sing, to play, to say something, for yourself, or to present to others?
That's the only valid question.
The rest, all the rest, comes from that. And it does not require to be complicated or complex or clever music at this point.
Sure, you may start with the practice, with the education, the experimentation, if you have not answered for yourself that first question, you won't create/play music or songs, you'll just apply a rulebook.
Then, another totally different question may be, can you find a way to get a sufficient revenue from that activity. But that's another question still.