On 06/04/2016 07:43 PM, jonetsu@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sat, 4 Jun 2016 21:01:16 +0100
Will Godfrey <willgodfrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Furthermore, there is not exactly a life-threatening shortage of
music, so what 'need' does machine generated music fill?
Presumably, the same 'need' that all other music fills. I recently read
a great book called "This Is Your Brain On Music" by Daniel J. Levitin
of the McGill University Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition
and Expertise. I heartily recommend reading it. Before going to college
and gaining his degrees, Dr Levitin was a session musician, sound
engineer and record producer for 10 years; worked with Stevie Wonder and
Blue Oyster Cult and a bunch of others.
The last chapter discusses the question: Why does music (and the unique
and powerful parts of the brain dedicated to music) exist? Until the
last 400-500 years, music was something everyone did, individually (to
demonstrate fitness as a mate) and as a group (to establish social and
group unity, enabling them to function together better when hunting or
facing danger), and also as a communication tool (think about the
Chinese language which uses pitch to differentiate words, or the many
varieties of whistles people have used to communicate across distances).
Music was also participatory: everyone sang, beat time, danced as part
of making music. (Dancing also demonstrated fitness as a mate as well as
your ability to work together as a group.) The modern classical concert
where everyone sits there engaged in their intellectual appreciation of
the violin soloist is completely alien to human music tradition.
Dr Levitin also points out that most people's emotional preference in
music is determined during adolescence, when the sex hormones start
firing madly and the body is screaming to its surroundings, "Reproduce
with me!" People fix on the music they think will get them laid.
Perhaps another need: The need of people to expand existing knowledge in
new ways. In Christian music, some have the concept of being "priests of
creation": People who enable nature to praise God in ways nature would
be otherwise unable to do on its own. Computers and software are part of
nature. So Magenta's developers are giving voice to otherwise voiceless
things like integrated circuits, silicon chips, etc.
Personally, I think that developers of audio creation and manipulation
software are also priests of creation. So bear your new title proudly!
Record companies not having to pay artists ? :)
Muzak?
Or record companies and artists both desperately trying to avoid having
some jury decide that a .2 second bit of sound on one musician's album
was really lifted from someone else's album? Or the chord progression in
your song was "stolen" from someone else? Such could be the idiocies of
our legal system, though.
--
David W. Jones
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
