AI and Commercial Music
Todd Hayen
Del Bigtree recently devoted a segment on his popular program, The Highwire, on the advent of AI in commercial music. Del created a theme song for The Highwire on one of many AI creation websites, the one he chose is Suno.com. See this segment here.
So, what do you think? Pretty impressive, huh? I have been quite impressed with the recent slate of AI genius—ChatGPT, and now Suno.com. I am a composer myself, so this sort of thing would be very distressing if I were still in the music creation biz. Now it is not really threatening to me, just sad. It is sad how human development of a skill, often taking a lifetime, is reduced to a few seconds of computer calculation. Of course, without the years of human output ahead of the computer algorithm, there would be nothing there to be impressed with. Monkey see, monkey do.
But still. It is a bummer. But what is the appeal to art, and in this case pop music, anyway? I don’t think there has ever been a hit song without a popular performing artist behind it. I remember when I was in the music biz and heard day in and day out, “If you want to have a hit record or a lucrative career, you have to tour.” In other words, you have to have a presence as a human being to sell records. No one buys a record just for the music. Can any of you name the actual creators of pop music hitting the charts? The songwriters of your favourite tunes over the years? Not likely, unless the artist singing the song wrote it themselves, which of course is common, but if they didn’t, it is not typical for people to know the actual composer/songwriter—it could just as well be Suno.com as any human being, who cares.
Still, does this mean popular performers will go to Suno.com now to get their latest hit to sing and promote? I doubt it. But who knows what is in store for us? As long as humans are humans, I still think people will need to put a face to their favourite songs, a human face, not a computer one.
However, the operative phrase here is “as long as humans are humans.” Whether humans stay humans is debatable. Maybe it will be cyborgs in the future choosing their songs to listen to, preferably created by their high-tech cousin Suno sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Who knows . . .
I think as far as a threat to popular music goes, AI pop tune creation probably will fizzle out much like a fad does. The record industry is already suffering quite the “transhuman” dilemma with other music-making technologies that dehumanize the process. Regarding commercial music, this all may be just another nail in the coffin, so I may share Del’s concern. And, of course, once people lose interest in other humans doing creative things, the day the music dies may be just around the corner. Music’s death (and the death of human art in general) will occur for a lot of reasons, not the least being the demise of humans to even give a crap who or what creates.
Actually, that is the real problem. Along with this AI craze comes a bunch of human beings who have been desensitized to what art even is. The music Del gave as a sample was totally devoid of any soul or obvious human integration. I don’t doubt that most people would not even notice this deficit. Del didn’t (well, maybe just a little bit). This has often been the case with commercial music even when humans made it, and well accepted as well (lack of soul). Commercial music, created for commercial purposes, does not really need a human face. It has a utilitarian function, and as long as it accomplishes that function, then who cares? Unless, of course, if it is completely synthetic, with no human behind it at all, maybe it will subliminally be dysfunctional. That is always something to hope for—that humans subliminally notice the lack of soul.
What we generally consider “real art” today probably will not be as affected by all this AI insanity. At least not to the degree Del is concerned. He is right about lost jobs regarding commercial artists. Not only in music, but everywhere a product is created up until now requiring human hands. He even mentions lawyers, any sort of writer, and other professionals who may first succumb to this “artificial intelligence” replacement. It is the intellectual revolution compared to the industrial revolution.
I once led a seminar with the topic: “Is film music commercial art and not true art?” This was back in the mid-’80s. My argument was that film music was really a collaborative effort, not only driven by the visual medium which the composer had nothing to do with creating, but also creatively influenced by other artists in the medium such as the film’s director. It is even influenced greatly (very much so in my day as a film composer) by non-artists such as producers, accountants, and their families. How then could it be true art? (BTW, I do believe it is true art.)
When we get into even more commercial endeavours, such as theme songs and Fried Chicken commercials, the “artist” becomes even more removed from the end product’s efficacy. Of course, people enjoy working with people more than they enjoy working with machines, but that quickly will fade away, just like every other similar situation where in the past humans and humans worked together to create something. Gone with the wind.
Regarding “real art.” Well, these men and women are not fully protected either. Not so much because people would be just as happy going to the MOMA in NYC to look at computer-generated art (certainly as a novelty that has already happened) but because “real art” simply will not be appealing to non-human zombies—which is where humanity is headed. Until then, however, Suno AI may not affect Taylor Swift or Beyonce for a bit more time (although it is debatable if either of these artists, or their music, is human.)
In listening carefully to Del’s AI-generated theme song, it is rather easy to tell it is a bit off—the lyrics in particular. The style of music he chose (I think just a basic classic rock style) also is rather easy to re-create. Considering that nearly two decades of the pop music of the 50’s and 60’s stuck to only a few easy chord progressions. Most songs are rather formulaic in their constructions of verses, choruses, and bridges. Drumbeats are similar, instrumentation licks and fills are also very formulaic.
Commercial music is not difficult to emulate (fake) by rote (great commercial art is determined by how well it sells, or fits the product it was designed to fit—which in my opinion also takes great talent and human ability). It just used to take a lot of time for a composer to put all these elements together. And in the old days the creator of such music was also reliant on a lot of other performing artists to produce the music—such as drummers, guitarists, and bassists, not to mention singers. Don’t get me wrong, pop music can be art (so can commercial music, it just doesn’t need to be, to be successful—at least not consciously so). And pop/rock composers, and artists, can be artists. It is just that the music construction blocks can be assembled without a lot of artistry involved.
This is true for any art, actually. What the common person has now defined as “art” can be easy to emulate. True art cannot. Even pop music is considered by many to simply be commercial. I am reminded of a famous quote by the eminent composer and conductor, Pierre Boulez. He was quoted once (by his biographer, Joan Peyser) comparing a “smash hit” heard on the radio as “mass shit.”
I am, again, more concerned that the agenda will create, through transhumanism, a subspecies of being devoid of any soul quality at all, thus making “non-human” music perfectly fine to use in commercial applications. Of course, it stands to reason that the ultimate de-humanization project will create humans incapable of connecting to any sort of art, regardless of its maker. But that is an end-stage development. Maybe we have a few years before that final goal is attained—a few years where us zombies will still have a tiny scrap of humanness left, just enough to enjoy a beat and a decent melody. When we stop dancing, we can then say we finally made it to oblivion.
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
The one thing that AI will never beat humans at doing is – being zombie like and robotic…😉
Transhumanism is the main danger we face with regard to AI. AI music and art is just another competitor we mustn’t fear. As long as humans are still human they will make choices stemming from their heart … or market choices, just as they do now.
The other major AI threat comes when AI replaces the armed forces and the judiciary, as bad as these may be in their human form. Then who do you appeal to if you know you’ve been wronged and AI got that wrong?
Re your question I have heard or read two things:
One, China is claimed to have saved 1 billion Judge and lawyer hours by presenting AI’s judgement of various cases to prevailing snoring Judges and asked them to do it humanly better. If they couldnt, they got a kick in their arse home to mommy
.
Second, I have read that Obama killed 9 civilians out of 10 AI selected terrorists in a weekly by him assigned kill list of terrorists.
It appear that the US State to some extent pay/paid compensation to these 9/10 civilian casualties.
The usual story, “if we just get more data” this figure 9 bad shots out of 10 will improve.
My conclusion out of these maybe failed stories is: You will have to suffer from any incidents and accident and injustice after the Afghan concept, and will only be able to appeal for money compensation.
Anyone on this planet will be used and exploited as guinea pigs in favour of AI and IoT.
And the money will just be printed out and handed over.
…or will be transferred with a few prints on the computer to your social plastic chip scorecard.
That’s exactly what I was talking about. In China, for one, with their facial recognition software and AI police-and-judges all rolled into one, the people are so scared to be driving over the speed limit that everyone slows down to absurd speeds; people are afraid to jaywalk, lest AI automatically raid their bank accounts for the fee.
And in Israel, AI has already made decision to hit homes that AI has decided houses a Hamas member, children and all.
These aspects of AI are truly evil.
Real music written out of an unstoppable urge and inspiration to create will always be with us. But AI rings a death knell for film and video game composers. When music is not at the center, but as a support, you may as well use AI. The economics are clear: humans are not needed here.
I was thinking, its more than 10 years since I kicked all MSM apparatus out and refused to buy fake newspapers.
I can easily imagine a day is coming without a computer and Skynet. What a relief.
Go to a modern art exhibition and view the junk they call art.
How can artificial intelligence hope to compete
Can artificial intelligence produce anything less meaningful and ugly.
At the moment you need humans to approve the modern junk are they going to get
artificial intelligence to approve there own junk art.
You also need we are told people to buy the junk art. In some sort of weird money laundering scheme. Investment houses , pension funds they all but the junk called modern art. I guess makes no difference if it is artificial intelligence produced junk art. If they give it a pretend value , no doubt artificial intelligence auctions can sell the junk just as well as real ones. artificial intelligence hedge funds can buy and sell junk bonds as well.
What could possibly go wrong a trillion derivatives a day .
Actually, an AI bot, might be utterly unable to replicate a Jackson Pollack painting – or better example, something by Paul Klee – with his seemingly endless array of media (pastel on linen primed with chalk and on and on and on) – – what AI seems to excel at are more often CGI “velvet” paintings of cute cats … … I am an outlier on this stuff, there has been computer software for 40 years that outputs music that sounds like Mozart – it’s a rules based activity, after all. But anyone with even a moderate level of acquaintance with Mozart would know it wasn’t Mozart. I say ignore it; listen to some Mozart – try to find humans performing Mozart if you can afford it.
AI just need more data, as many data as possible. All human musicians performing Mozart should be obliged to give their date to AI.
If humans refuse to give their Mozart data to AI they should be fined and punished. Because we live in a Global Village connected via graphene shots and AI antennas.
THEN Mozart will be a better AI Mozart than human Mozart if we are selling more data to it! (sarc)
Junk art is the inevitable product of junk culture. Those who look for budding artists and seek out artistic creations, in a junk culture, are unable to respond to anything but junk. Because they are unable to conjure up a thought pattern capable of comprehending anything requiring thought.
They got that way from the habit of evaluating everything from a commercial perspective. Will it sell? Without proper brain work how would they know? They would know by comparing it against something which has already sold – which has become their sole criterion. Which is why so much is a re-make of something from the past.
My favorite painter – Cezanne – once said if he could not account for the purpose of even one tiny stroke, he would leave it blank. Those in charge of art today would undoubtedly fill in that blank, thus completely ruining the painting.
The purpose of non-popular modern arts was cultural subversion and money laundering. From early 20th. century, the special people patronised them through the trojan horse of inclusivity aka. diversity. Recall the Weimar Republic of Germany.
People often say that if you put eough chimpanzees in front of enough typewriters they will wtite the entire works of Shakespeare.
This is obviously bollocks.
They MIGHT, after a zillion years, or they MIGHT do it tomorrow.
My money’s on them not doing it.
Unless there’s a ghost in the machine there ain’t no art.
I’ve got a better idea.
How about we put all the $uiturds at the top of their SHITPILE on a few rockets and blast them to KINGDOM FUCKING COME.
Good leaf in Oz !
Yo man.
Yo yo.🤪🤪
They can hide behind their technical argument but they know it will never happen. Disorder cannot create order.
“I am, again, more concerned that the agenda will create, through transhumanism, a subspecies of being devoid of any soul quality at all, thus making “non-human” music perfectly fine to use in commercial applications” This is the misanthropes’ plan, to reduce what’s left of humanity (massive global depopulation is also a goal of the psychopaths who run this realm) to Zombies, automatons, soulless and mindless beings programmed and restricted in every way, including creativity. Their goal is to alter our DNA and make us more machine like than real humans. AI and transhumanism are rapidly expanding their influence into more areas of our every day lives. Don’t laugh, the science fiction theme of misguided or mad scientists whose creations end up running amok, enslaving, destroying or replacing humans is a very real possibility.
“In the future, we will eliminate the soul with medicine. Under the pretext of a ‘healthy point of view’, there will be a vaccine by which the human body will be treated as soon as possible directly at birth, so that the human being cannot develop the thought of the existence of soul and Spirit.
To materialistic doctors, will be entrusted with the task of removing the soul of humanity. As today, people are vaccinated against this disease or disease, so in the future, children will be vaccinated with a substance that can be produced precisely in such a way that people, thanks to this vaccination, will be immune to being subjected to the “madness” of spiritual life. He would be extremely smart, but he would not develop a conscience, and that is the true goal of some materialistic circles.
With such a vaccine, you can easily make the etheric body loose in the physical body. Once the etheric body is detached, the relationship between the universe and the etheric body would become extremely unstable, and man would become an automaton, for the physical body of man must be polished on this Earth by spiritual will. So, the vaccine becomes a kind of arymanique force; man can no longer get rid of a given materialistic feeling. He becomes materialistic of constitution and can no longer rise to the spiritual.”
Rudolf Steiner
It is here. Sad sad sad.
But, it is not enough to point out the depressive future. Solutions, solutions!
So we are now 2/3 of the entire global population who cannot relate to anything spiritual anymore.
So what about the 1/3 rest, the spiritual un-vaccinated ultra radical rebels??
Should we the 1/3 kill them or what?? THIS is the question.
For what it’s worth, I do not believe the soul and spirit of mankind are so deprived of natural resources that they cannot find a way to resist this evil scenario.
I have invariably found Steiner to know what he was talking about, so I can only assume that here he meant that great efforts would be made to inflict such a terrible thing upon us, but not that those efforts would ultimately succeed on a global basis.
Having in mind that the essence of most spiritual paths is as follows, I remain essentially optimistic:
a) God creates everything.
b) Satan, Lucifer, Ahriman, Beelzebub and Tony Blair are allowed to function as distractions, temptations and resistances against “The Good” – as trials, if you like – in the interests of the long-term evolution of man’s consciousness; particularly his self-consciousness.
c) Man gradually learns – with the help of some very rare, but supreme examples of perfected humanity – to rise above (b).
d) Not everybody will make it first time round, but reincarnation, ideally with ever-increasing enlightenment, is something that Steiner takes convincingly for granted.
e) An interesting thought occurred to me this week: We tend, thoughtlessly, to assume that “evolution” is supposed to mean the gradual development over many epochs of our physical capacities, yet we ignore the fact that many animals far out-perform us in precisely such physical ways. Our bodies, in other words, are arguably declining over the aeons, but I think most of us are capable of realizing that our mental, moral and spiritual development are by no means automatically condemned to the same fate. We need only remember our wonderful creative geniuses, some of whom were a long way from being physical supermen and women.
f) We should all strive, consciously, to be creative in any way that we can.
Whilst The River Mersey was always full of shit and probably still is, when we moved down south, and swam in the local rivers and streams,,,the water was cystal clear – 42 years ago..and when we had kids and went to Reading Festival and WOMAD Frestival on the banks of The River Thames….The water was crystal clear and we swam in The Thames with our kids…
Then the company “Thames Water” got privatised taken over by the most ruthless hedge fund international “investors”, who didn’t invest but Asset Stripped – and dumped all their and more importantly our shit, in our rivers and streams, whilst taking all our money – and telling us its our fault. We were doing O.K. until you shitty cnts turned up.
Would you swim in it now?
AI (machine learning) applications like Suno, have to be trained on vast amounts of music and lyrics which already exist.
And therein lies a problem. Is music used for training the AI not then subject to a copyright infringement? If you want to use Suno to create a song sounding like the band Gong, for instance, Suno must know who Gong is and what musical styles and lyrics were used. Gong’s music must therefore been used in training the application, presumably without permission or payment.
“There may be trouble ahead..” as the song goes.
AI will feature big time in music production. Say a band lays a basic track down. Instead of a producer spending days/weeks cleaning up the tracks, mixing, and mastering, etc etc, the AI can do all that for him to produce the mass produced popular sound of the day.
But will live music played by real musicians suffer? It’s bad enough as it is for top artists. Scotland has just been subject to Swiftmania over the last days. A performance using tapes, mime and autotune. But that’s a show. Not really a listening experience. The big question is, will Taylor Swift or AI ever write a song that’s anywhere close to the genius of Dylan or the Beatles or Miles Davis………I suspect not.
AI music is interesting, but you’re not going to go to a night of live music featuring an Apple Macbook centre stage!
People will always want to play instruments, with other people, for other people.
As for Tod’s question of whether film music is true art?
Of course it is!
“Anything you can do, AI can do better…
…yes AI can, yes AI can, yes AI can !”
I knew you were on the vaxx side les online. You can hide anything from papa. (sarc).
Most of the Great Stand-up Comedians from The North of England, got banned about 30 years ago, but you could still see them in Benidorm.. I know cos I have. – yeh they picked on me too. Comedy is like that.
Meanwhile in the USA – the very best (he dropped dead about 20 years ago) appears to have been banned – from a typical Google Search – Not politically correct.
“George Carlin – Why I Don’t Vote”
Dave Allen – First day at school. https://youtu.be/7Qrt6sJoKYQ
Particularly because my wife and I hace never had any political affilation…we felt really proud of ourselves, when about 25 yeas ago, we had two people from different political parties, asking us to sign their nomination papers, so that they could put themselves up for election..
We said come in, sit down and we will sign your nomination papers.
We had utmost respect for them, but didn’t vote for either of them.
In fact we didn’t vote.
But its nice to be asked
We didn’t want to offend them.
I don’t deny that she does a great performance – doing Stadiums all over the world, as if she is the new Beatles with a similar 12 year old screaming fan base…
But I prefer this Girl cos she can sing and make mw laugh
Edwina Hayes singing “Waiting for the Guy to Die”
I once led a seminar with the topic: “Is film music commercial art and not true art?” This was back in the mid-’80s. My argument was that film music was really a collaborative effort, not only driven by the visual medium which the composer had nothing to do with creating, but also creatively influenced by other artists in the medium such as the film’s director. […] (BTW, I do believe it is true art.)
______________________________________
Me too. BTW, it occurs to me that anyone who insists that film music isn’t, or “can’t be”, true art would presumably reach (in every sense) the same conclusion about an earlier form of commercial multi-media entertainment: opera. 🎼
“When we stop dancing, we can then say we finally made it to oblivion.”
Just as we can look but not see, we can listen and not hear. It’s not just our ears but our whole bodies that resonate to music, tapping the root of being where material and spiritual dimensions meet and we become again the ecstatic creatures we’ve always been, awake and aware.
Music, the universal language, primal language prior to and older than words to make sense of our connection with the vibrancy of life if not music of the spheres. Congruent with its own relational nature, music is meant to be shared in communal contexts, among those who create and recreate it in synergistic union beyond division between performers and spectators.
Commercial culture, out to commodify everything, distances and alienates us from indigenous and folk cultures where music is most at home as our own autonomous creation, manufacturing audiences as consumers of spectacle and celebrities as idols of capital. Its logic leads us to that endpoint where machinery of production replace nature and we forget who we are.
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” (Emma Goldman)
Thank you niko. So beautifully written.
Define for me composer ….
something like this for me is composing.
I remember hearing stuff like this back in the day and thinking THIS! THIS is how music is going to sound in the future!….. What happened?????
Techno-pop.
I find this Art of Noise-Paranoima also made on computer to be more funny and creative.
https://vk.com/video58938482_456239253 ………..if we absolutely must.
Todd hi and thank you for the article.
Surely Han zimmer and James Newton Howard his film scores are amazing.???
My friends went to see Han zimmer live and was magnificent.
thoses film scores made the film the film.
Blood diamond music was by James Newton Howard and that made the film the film.
Blood Diamond – Solomon Vandy (James Newton Howard)
on a lesser topic, I thought the Pulp Fiction songs made the film the film and not the other way around.
Have you heard the soundtrack from “Lab-Grown Diamond” …?
Teenagers and youngsters of today admire our music of the 1960-70’es, live music with soul. “Wish I had lived in these times”, is their comment.
But they dont live in the past and they go back to their Smart Phone. The industry count on these generation shifts. The sooner the old die, the sooner we can make money on soulless music.
Take this one from J Geils Band, you cant make that spirit and soul on ChatGTP no matter how much you try: https://youtu.be/9aibzdd7ZGk Whammer Jammer.
Smart phones are massively over- rated, you can’t beat a hand written love letter
Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home
My baby just wrote me a letter…
Absolutely right. You know that fact when you have this paper letter in your hand trembling all over by the poesy written with blue or red ink directly to you. 😍
I suggest you visit ‘Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon’ – by Dave McGowan.
Ok, lets say dark spirit and dark soul. At least its still spirit and soul.
You know the devil is still a high intelligent spiritual feature even if we dislike and reject all of his opposition to God.
Our new Rudolph Steiner reality where no soul and spirit is left is maybe worse?
I recognize your objection, I could have made a better example of spirit and soul.
A new try: Shape of my heart https://youtu.be/d3McpCC1V-I Carmen Cuesta
Thanks, Todd…
My view is that we evolve, and so do our tools and materials. It’s not “a competition” musicians and artists (people) have “lost.”
Want to remain a “victim”? BLAME AI.
Everything we’ve ever done becomes cliché. Most of us live in a factory, are products of it. Let machines generate b.s. A.I. is a tool, nothing else.
It’s how YOU put it to use that matters.
YOU are the living alternative.
I think we should stop blaming our own creations, the products of our intelligence, imagination and our own minds and hands, and feeding our fears.
It’s like blaming the gun for killing.
The best tools are designed to reduce effort and labour. Use them for that, if nothing else, even just for amusement, enjoy having fun with new tools and techniques, play in the digital mud puddle.
We have to stop thinking like “it’s replacing us and taking our jobs.”
Instead, come up with new jobs a.i. can’t yet do and may never be able to perform.
In my opinion, above all, articulate, literate, muti-talented, creative psychotherapists have nothing to lose and nothing to fear from a.i.
Am I way off? I didn’t finish reading before blathering on…
why is all the comments in bold ..?
Because we wanted you to ask. Its an old children’s game……….. 😄 .
Hate, hate hate the Highwire theme. Sounds fake, shimmering and glossy and bloodless. Yuck. The comet can’t come soon enough.
I’ll take this dirty,sloppy amateurish stuff a million times over that fake plastic AI crap, because at its heart, it’s imbued with real, genuine human feeling, something the AI shit will never have.
I warrant my “Two Minutes of Hate” against the Highwire ’cause Del’s ultimately a vaxxxine shill- IMO…
(And his theme music cannot help but reflect that essential condition)
auto tune = AI tune.
Its interesting you use the term ”AI and Commercial Music”
with del bell end tree. he is the AI commercial that appeared during bs19 to spill AI and Commercial cheesy conspiratorially generic shit.
Anything people can do, AI can do better? Even in the arts and all creativity? What about politics? Should people now vote for AI candidates? Would AI voters be better voters and vote only for AI best candidates stipulated by AI? What about crime? Would AI commit the perfect murder? Be the best investigators? The best justice system?
Who are the inhuman and inhumane arseholes are behind this?
So tiresome, this absolute need for power and control, this fear of all that is natural, wild and real.
[Chorus]
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
Oh Dambala, come Dambala
[Verse 1]
Sing of the wings, of a three toed frog
Eat weeds from the deepest part of the sea
Bring the trumpets from heaven
And the fire from hell
Then nobody can break the spell
[Chorus]
[Verse 2]
On the seventh day, God will appear
On the seventh night, Satan will be there
On the seventh day, God will appear
On the seventh night, Satan will be there
[Chorus]
[Verse 3]
You slavers will know
What it’s like to be a slave
A slave to your hearts
A slave to your heads
A slave to your souls
A slave to your graves
You won’t go to heaven
You won’t go to hell
You’ll remain in your graves
With the stench and the smell
[Chorus]
[Verse 4]
I’ll melt down your walls
I’ll melt your steel guns
I’ll make you dumb
I’ll make you blind
Dambala send demons
Dambala send angels
Dambala send fire
Dambala send water
[Chorus]
live music- Exuma-1972
Very soon, I expect, AI will be creating new compositions/’recordings’, in real time, songs that, unless one wants to go back, having liked a particular tune, to the streaming service’s log, if even available, will never be heard again. The computer will just keep making up news songs as it goes, of a type consistent with the streaming category selected, and increasingly good.
The only expense will be the costs of the computing and bandwidth, etc. All expenses associated with human created music will be unwelcome and irrelevant to the service provider at that point, so there will be no more choosing humans to do the creating for most situations. Movies will probably be scored by AI, most streaming services will be AI generated, etc.
We’re at the brink of a schism, with the category of human created music to come officially into being, and which, I guess, will increasingly become a minority niche in all respects, i.e., who provides, plays and hears it.
Odd to watch the species being made obsolete, and the obsolescence embraced, and so quickly.
Excellent comment. I’ve been watching for a very long time now. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s anything odd about it anymore at all. That’s the worst part.
already happening.
When the theme of a movie cannot even remotely be imagined as anything else that ever was – does that make it “art?” I’m thinking of John Williams’ opening theme from the original “Jurassic Park” when the dinosaurs are first seen.
Even with no musical experience or ability, I think I can still recognize something worthwhile – even in pop music. The dead give-away is the drumbeat – which can either enhance the melody or drown it out. And, of course, “The Singer Not The Song” (in quotes because it’s the title of a great Dirk Bogarde/John Mills movie).
To hear Johnny Logan sing Roberto Danova’s”Born To Love You” is proof positive that humans will NEVER give way to AI crap.
Here’s a YouTube audio of “Born To Love You.”
What if Johnny Logan is AI? We have different music taste, I could find more soulful pieces than JL on ice, but let us respect our differences and preferences.
We have to live together.
In Japan and Korea the local corporate parasites (esentially trying very hard to be like the west, and going the extra mile) have been selling virtual pop stars for a while now.
The added horror of western insanity is that it is exaggerated to the extreme when it is forced onto other nations and races (also see the vileness of South American dictatorships and the brutality and atrocity of the local modernised urban cultures)
not forgetting Central America….
Speaking of Del Bigtree, Peggy Hall recently expressed concerns:
“WHY is DEL BIGTREE Promoting”VACCINE CONFIDENCE”?!I analyze this troubling bill from ICAN that I hope will go nowhere fast”
https://peggyhall.substack.com/p/why-is-del-bigtree-promotingvaccine
Is that difficult? Because DEL BIGTREE got a bunch of dollares. Next question.
Artificial music has degrees of removal from source-inspiration.
Music as pharmakon developed an externally assisted focus for inducing specific feelings & states of consciousness. Developing a theme is part of human exploration and experience. Becoming trapped in and subjected to or driven by our themes is a result of the “Fallen Angel” syndrome. Phished by self-image to be-live the experience of a lens of artifice. To grasp the image & form of desire as the symbol of a self-lack seeking union by possession or control.
The manipulation and manufacture of image and form applies no less to music than any other medium of exchange, as a-tempt to make love, get power or enforce peace by means that compound conflicts to toxic dissonances that can only be undone or healed at the level of their arising – a sense of driven self-lack framed in getting – for a sense of self & life framed in opposition, deprivation and denial.
To yield through the expressing to the movement of our being is a profound or total fulfilment. For by truly giving we receive and only by receiving can we truly give.
Back from the backstory to the modernity of a machine-mind…
Studio produced recording represents a significant shift from a living relational co-creation to a product for milking or generating markets and mindshare – in this case identity-forming musical backdrop to formative experiences. Recorded musical production interjected a machine between giver and receiver. But to the normalised or aculturated, this is invisible – and to a large extent a real musical intimacy is reframed as not real – as it isn’t through the official medium’. The ‘audience’ wants a fix, a psychic need to be stroked in favourite ways, replay their lives back – while iphones are held aloft as a further seeking of self-validation. “Did you get that?”
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.
Remember what?
Forget what?
Love and pain are woven together in our human experience.
By seeking to mask or blot pain out, we can engage fantasy as a form of regressive unconsciousness. There’s a market opportunity to cell the mind to substitution for the intimacy of Soul-connected movement of being.
For some time now I found Crassmas to have become such a ‘Satanic’ artifice of marketised and mutated ritual as to welcome its breakdown, for the truth of the Christ within is a holy instant within time – yet unbound by it. Transcendence of limitation at the heart is not waiting on anyone or anything to happen – or not happen, but a flow or flowering of an already-fulfilment. My cup runneth over.
Music of art is re verbing being, such that object models become transparent to the joy that can never be contained – such that in one form or another a music is in play.
‘Artists’ may shine into times that cannot or care not to recognise the gift, perhaps allowing a gift without strings attached? That can then serve a true seed in any other moment of time and space, past or future. Where else is inspiration but from a Now that we can not manufacture or conform to any presentation of self, life or world.
Who has ears to hear – let them hear!
Can’t edit, can’t post, can’t spell… “proletarianising”….
Every time there’s a new technology, there’s a fear of loss of humanity.
The industrial revolution brought similar fears.
But the AI is like the machines, it takes away the dull work, like POP music and follows the same formula that the grunts who write the soul less pop music.
Who cares if AI can mimic stupid dead art?
We aren’t falling into a trans human world….
COVID burned that bridge:
https://realleft.substack.com/p/no-conspiracies-please-were-reality
“As traumatic transformations go, the covid operation is up there with industrialisation and de-industrialisation, and for time compression it is out on its own.”
“And as for the rabbit hole trope – well, I don’t think we’re going down the rabbit hole at all. We’re climbing out of it into the light.”
Yes! I call this the sequel to 1984. The party lost the trust of the masses. Look how they’re trying to make us scared of war with China and Russia…. Meanwhile the oil and money still flows.
What a joke.
To use the Alice in Wonderland analogy, we were hallucinating in wonderland and now waking to real land which is much less insane.
The phenomena described above is what Marx termed “proletarianisation”. When a skilled operative transfers their knowledge to the machine they lose their value as a skilled producer. The knowledge is transferred as “stored” in the machine as an externalised storage device of memory and skills (the machine becomes intelligent via the transference from “dead labour-force”.) The living operator becomes “dumbed-down” as alienated from necessary production as “anti-value” producers (Harvey.)
Far from confined to music, this is the general trend of all knowledge-workers and all economic knowledge-production in total; transference of technical skill into machines who have greater than biophysical memory and biophysical sensorimotor capacities. Our machines ceaselessly and systemically do our work for us without tiring, multiplying the biophysical living labour-force by several orders-of-magnitude; expanded by all that dead labour-force (and a great deal of the earth’s resources and hydrocarbon power-density.) Freed from production, this allows us to collectively engage in more technical and theoretical “General Intelligence” that we then can export for proletarianised production as an exponential technical-commercial economics; one in which we can then collectively consume up to the biospheric limits of their resource base.
Art is technology: it really is. If you look up the etymology the Romanised ars is transliteration the Greek tekhne. Tekhne had a much broader meaning of craft, skill, trade or art. All tekhne is therefore definitionally art, artisan, artifice, and artificial…. Including the language (logike, grammatike, rhetorike are all tekhne or ars); including collective intelligence (mnemonically “stored” as information in the language and technical programming languages—as “dead information” or “dead data”—multiplying as we expand.)
So we externalise, express, and export our innermost desires throughout artificial technology as a machinic empowerment far greater than any (relatively weak and slow) individual could. And we do it all at once (unifying space.) And we do it all the time (unifying time.) And we do it everywhere the artificial technical economy is present…. Unifying our spatio-temporal or spatio-technical anthropogenic presence as a proletarianisating panglobalism.
And we do it by transferring skilled ability and even skilled memory—as knowledge-production—to artificial technical machines as “mechanology” (Simondon, Steigler) or global hypertechnical humanism or Hyperhumanism (hyperanthropos)…. Where hyperanthropos is “superhumanism” for some of ‘us’—the First World technical-commercial consumers—who literally embody the technical-commercial production of the Unpersoned “subhumanism” for the Rest of ‘them’ with the surplus embedded in our commodities and metabolically embodied in our bodies.
In this way, by the expression, externalisation, exportation and proletarianisation of production the whole Rest of the world became our economic and metabolic engine…. The Unperson as Unpeople became our machines. As a generalised anthropogenic proletarianisation, alienation, and expropriation from our owned, expendable, disposable and (absentee) killable labour-force; that which literally empowers our somatic energy as ATP—“created for commercial purposes”—which has a maximum expected “utilitarian function” without a human face.
Who cares if this is completely biosynthetic and subliminally dysfunctional as technical “real art” manifested by AI insanity? In a completely proletarianised and parasitoid global Hyperhumanism, d’ya think anybody will subliminally recognise the artificial technical-commercial ‘soul’? That is probably because that—as an alien technical animism—that is exactly what the actually extant ‘soul’ is—world-alienating, earth-alienating, earth-expropriating, and shit tunemaking artificial intelligence and commercial technology. And we are trying to maintain mental hygiene by not looking at it in any sort of realistic way.
So the tunes do not matter, the earth does. It is going to take a lot broader understanding of “artificial-technical” or “technical-artificial” intelligence behind our actual socio-ecological metabolism to deproletarianise the whole earth of such ecotoxicological commercial contagion embedded as embodied in our superhumanist commercial commodities, activities and bodies. If that collective intelligence is not really artificial artifice, I don’t know what is.
Art as understood in the English language refers primarily to creative works and hence is very different to technology.
At a certain point, art veers towards technology. But in the same (bit?) coin, technology can veer towards art. I mean, anybody forgot Bob Dylan going electric and being called ‘traitor’ in Newport and at the Albert Hall in 1965? I was there. It’s always called a disaster. But something emerges out of the ruins.
technics v. technology
Quoting Simondon and Steigler–even the Nazi Heidegger–I tried making that distinction a month or so back. If you can see their is a distinction to be made, I am genuinely in awe of you. As for making that distinction common knowledge so we all think of it that way…. not a chance.
If not before, ever since Duchamp marked a “found object” as “R Mutt” any distinction between the two has become blurred. As I wrote above, wander into any gallery and there will plenty of interactive video display and so on. We have invested nearly all of our current knowledge-production in technical machines. Has no one noticed even this site is a virtualised human-machine interface… hosted in cyberspace.
We come here, hosted by the Machine, to intonate on how the human, commercial technology, and AI are all separate things…. via commercial AI!
Something emerges from the ruins? Are you sure that is not a Terminator! 😂
Well, not in the ‘artistic sense’. I don’t think RoboCop will be Turner-ing out any Leonardo or Michaelangelo work quite yet. The variety of the different schools of art have always been inspiring. But as it has been said many times and in many different ways, ‘We are standing on the shoulders of GIANTS.’
I’ve always loved art and poetry, and always will. As for the contemporary art scene… ?
I was recently reading Byung-Chun Han’s Shanzhai which deals with differing concepts of originality, process, making and so on. Our concept is rooted in concepts of being, essence, individuation and of course ownership. The Chinese concept is based on process, change, and collective “persisting production” unattributable to a singular creative genius.
Did you know that Michelangelo used to borrow paintings, paint a copy and keep the original? I wonder which is worth more now!
Yes, Daoism and Confucianism, not forgetting that Zen came from India, dealing with our relationship(s) with elementary forces, all the way down to where to locate your bathroom.
I’ve read ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ several times, which tends to colour what I think I remember about Michelangelo.
So art is not an extension of inner embodiment via technique? As I made perfectly clear; language is technology vis logike tekhne, grammatike tekhne, rhetorike tekhne as ars logica, ars grammatica and so on. So, according to the technological artifice we call “english”–art is definitively technology.
I wonder if you have been to any art installation recently? You know, with the light displays, the TVs, the digital monitors and so on? Or you could have paid $69 mil for a digital “Beeple” which does not even exist except as a file. Crypto-art is definitively technology.
If Marx is against it then I’m all for it
Far from confined to music, this is the general trend of all knowledge-workers and all economic knowledge-production in total; transference of technical skill into machines who have greater than biophysical memory and biophysical sensorimotor capacities. Our machines ceaselessly and systemically do our work for us without tiring, multiplying the biophysical living labour-force by several orders-of-magnitude; expanded by all that dead labour-force (and a great deal of the earth’s resources and hydrocarbon power-density.) Freed from production, this allows us to collectively engage in more technical and theoretical “General Intelligence” that we then can export for proletarianised production as an exponential technical-commercial economics; one in which we can then collectively consume up to the biospheric limits of their resource base.
Art is technology: it really is. If you look up the etymology the Romanised ars is transliteration the Greek tekhne. Tekhne had a much broader meaning of craft, skill, trade or art. All tekhne is therefore definitionally art, artisan, artifice, and artificial…. Including the language (logike, grammatike, rhetorike are all tekhne or ars); including collective intelligence (mnemonically “stored” as information in the language and technical programming languages—as “dead information” or “dead data”—multiplying as we expand.)
So we externalise, express, and export our innermost desires throughout artificial technology as a machinic empowerment far greater than any (relatively weak and slow) individual could. And we do it all at once (unifying space.) And we do it all the time (unifying time.) And we do it everywhere the artificial technical economy is present…. Unifying our spatio-temporal or spatio-technical anthropogenic presence as a proletarianisating panglobalism.
And we do it by transferring skilled ability and even skilled memory—as knowledge-production—to artificial technical machines as “mechanology” (Simondon, Steigler) or global hypertechnical humanism or Hyperhumanism (hyperanthropos)…. Where hyperanthropos is “superhumanism” for some of ‘us’—the First World technical-commercial consumers—who literally embody the technical-commercial production of the Unpersoned “subhumanism” for the Rest of ‘them’ with the surplus embedded in our commodities and metabolically embodied in our bodies.
In this way, by the expression, externalisation, exportation and proletarianisation of production the whole Rest of the world became our economic and metabolic engine…. The Unperson as Unpeople became our machines. As a generalised anthropogenic proletarianisation, alienation, and expropriation from our owned, expendable, disposable and (absentee) killable labour-force; that which literally empowers our somatic energy as ATP—“created for commercial purposes”—which has a maximum expected “utilitarian function” without a human face.
Who cares if this is completely biosynthetic and subliminally dysfunctional as technical “real art” manifested by AI insanity? In a completely proletarianised and parasitoid global Hyperhumanism, d’ya think anybody will subliminally recognise the artificial technical-commercial ‘soul’? That is probably because that—as an alien technical animism—that is exactly what the actually extant ‘soul’ is—world-alienating, earth-alienating, earth-expropriating, and shit tunemaking artificial intelligence and commercial technology. And we are trying to maintain mental hygiene by not looking at it in any sort of realistic way.
So the tunes do not matter, the earth does. It is going to take a lot broader understanding of “artificial-technical” or “technical-artificial” intelligence behind our actual socio-ecological metabolism to deproletarianise the whole earth of such ecotoxicological commercial contagion embedded as embodied in our superhumanist commercial commodities, activities and bodies. If that collective intelligence is not really artificial artifice, I don’t know what is.
Just a comment/update on my journey of spirituality and metaphysics if anyone is interested in this subject.
Having done all the ‘experiments’ I ever need to do on philosophies like the ‘Law of Assumption’ I am now confident in my conclusion that Faith is many, many orders of magnitude stronger than reason!
I thought I would write this on a few social media platforms because this knowledge has helped me in these strange times and given me a new lease of life. I hope many others who are interested in this stuff go on a similar journeys – it really is worth it. Life and the world around us is not what we are conditioned to believe it is. Be vigilant in this weird era we live in of course, but above all, have faith in yourself and focus on the joyful goodness & beauty of the world! Faith is (purposely?) underrated in modern times?
When you mention faith without clarifying what the object of faith is, you are generally understood to be talking about abrahamic religion and the unquestioning submission to insane and inhumane narratives and directives…
In their own book of plagiarisms, distorted myths and half-truths it says “by their fruits ye shall know them” ….
You bring up a point that can start a good discussion (if still interested of course)!
Well to start with, I go with the official dictionary definition of ‘faith’ like the online Cambridge definition: “Great trust or confidence in something or someone”.
As you most probably DO know, faith is not only an important factor in the different current mainstream religions and philosophies (and definitely not just the Abrahamic religions!!) e.g. Buddhism and Sikhism, to name two but also an important one for individual philosophers who like to explore ‘off the beaten track’, as it were.
Related to the former (mainstream religions/philosophies) I read a very interesting take on twitter earlier today:
”
Blue pill = Buddhism / some religions / some philosophies = The real nature of reality is beyond any concept.
Red pill = Judaism / some religions / some philosophies = The real nature of the Creator is beyond any concept
”
I am not part of any organised religion but am fascinated by the assortment of different religions past and present around the world (as well as less conventional spiritual philosophies and metaphysics) and especially their individual takes on the nature of reality. My ‘journey’ (I don’t like using that word in this context but can’t think of another suitable word at the moment) on this subject has been the following:
— over the last decade I explored different mainstream religions’ thoughts on the nature of reality
— relatively recently (about three years ago) started studying the subject from less conventional angles and it has been compelling! For instance, even the basic ideas of ‘consciousness’ and the concepts of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ in the metaphysical sense opens up new paradigms, interests, and of course more questions.
— Currently, I am interested in exploring, specifically, the idea of our own consciousness being the power behind our own reality/realm/universe/multiverse (and the building and maintaining of it) and whether we are all part of one consciousness or part of a tapestry of consciousness. The results of my ‘pilot experiments’ have helped me come to the conclusion that we do indeed make our own realities and build the world around us (good, bad or neutral) wittingly or unwittingly. Note: an interesting question that leads off from this conclusion could be: if it is the case that human beings can create their own reality and world around them – why have our modern-times leaders, teachers and syllabuses not highlighted its vital importance? Have they even purposely tried to hide it albeit in vain because information is so freely available on the internet now? If you look at history (including ancient history), there have been quite a few eras that we know of (and imagine the eras that have been forgotten or hidden?) when the opposite has been encouraged not just for scholars but sometimes also for the masses e.g. Ancient Athens and the Gupta era in India where Buddhists had large universities like Vikramshila and Nalanda which attracted scholars from all over the world.
P.S.
To answer you question about “clarifying what the object of faith is” directly: obviously it would be a different answer from which side/angle you are looking from. For instance, the people who have faith in Heaven, religion, God, their parents or even the roof over their heads the object is usually comfort; for nefarious leaders and imperial institutions weaponise the idea of faith as a means control (not all religious institutions of course, for genuinely scholarly institutions people’s faith is a stepping stone to research and explore of a plethora of religious and metaphysical ideas e.g. at the Gupta era Nalanda university.
[Without typos version]
P.S.
To answer you question about “clarifying what the object of faith is” directly: obviously it would be a different answer from which side/angle you are looking from. For instance, the people who have ‘faith’ in Heaven, religion, God, their parents or even the roof over their heads the object is usually comfort; for nefarious leaders and imperial institutions people’s faith is weaponised as a means of control (not all religious institutions have or do this of course, some are genuine e.g. scholarly institutions where people’s faith is a stepping stone to research and explore a plethora of religious and metaphysical ideas like at the Gupta era Nalanda university).
The job is not to ‘be-lie-eve,’ it’s to connect with the divine every moment possible beyond thought.
Ergo: It’s a practical matter.
Jeff Buckley Hallelujah
https://youtu.be/y8AWFf7EAc4?si=87cv8zspM5dtMYA8
Returning the Gift Robin Wall Kimmerer
https://grateful.org/resource/returning-the-gift/
We Asked AI to Write a “Hallelujah 2.0” Duet in the Styles of Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley – Check Out the Results
https://americansongwriter.com/we-asked-ai-to-write-a-hallelujah-2-0-duet-in-the-styles-of-leonard-cohen-and-jeff-buckley-check-out-the-results/
Ain’t No SunshineBill Withers
https://youtu.be/YuKfiH0Scao?si=3W805sGcmTKjMRJ1
I think to myself … Genesis by Jorma Kaukonen
The Basketmaker“Through the practice and poetry of basketmaking, lives, cultures, and generations intertwine.”
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-basketmaker/
WW3 is a few psychopaths closer:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/giving-ukraine-missiles-declaration-war/5858146
“we were always at war with EastAsia”
Orwellian cold war bullshit to keep us afraid…
Why is it that gas still flows through Ukraine?
Why is it that Russian oil still gets sold through India?
Fake war like in 1984
Next time Ukraine receive missiles we will hit the Nato Command Centre in Ugledar Ukraine to show we mean business, next time Nato do it, if they do it again.
Statement from Kremlin June 2024.
People who are promoting AI are a danger to humanity. Please, good people, wake up and let’s stop the bastards? The final goal is to kill normal humanity. That’s not funny anymore.
it is well past time to start posting names and adresses somewhere
Nobody promised you a Rosegarden here on earth. On the contrary we were kicked out from paradise for unlawful behaviour.
There is a purported IP guardian body under UN. Yet, all AI are being trained on published works without permission. Artists, illustrators, singers and other musicians will be among the first victims. Already, the IT giants have appropriated millions of books, magazines, articles and reports for profit.
AI represents another major front being opened up in the on going spiritual war.
I’m sure Thomas Huxley, Nietzsche, Darwin, Keynes et all are all doing their little dance down in hell.
Real music is not commercial.
Real music comes from the heart. It must touch the heart too. It’s not that the author/s wants to sell anything, actually he/she wants to express some emotion and put it into music, with lyrics or not.
Just compare these three (and there are countless more) with the AI-generated sterilized emotionless thing.
https://youtu.be/diieNwqJSP8
https://youtu.be/-g4TombXqog
and
https://youtu.be/R7uBEWiYxvU
Can any AI generate these?
A while ago I’ve read a comment about the first band, quite correct I think – it was something like this – “If you discover some /new/ emotion or feeling – wow! – these guys already have a song for it”.
As for the “commercial” music – doesn’t it sound all the same nowadays?
I take ear plugs wherever I go. They help my peace of mind and clear thinking a lot.
Ahh music, my passion.
A lot of modern pop music, to me at least, sounds like a melody free/vapid lyric zone.
Maybe I’m just an old stick in the mud.
Vocal gymnastics, great musicianship and excellent production, including the ubiquitous auto tune (where the singer’s vocals are made pitch perfect) come together often resulting in ‘lifeless’ songs.
Let’s face it, there’s only so many chords to work with, so from Bach and Beethoven to the Beatles and the Beach Boys, there is a limited palette to colour the airwaves and our minds.
Fortunately, there’s still a few singer songwriters/composers who are creating good music for movies, video games and small venues and festivals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=712bGHPMLuQ
The tortured poet/songwriter is alive and well(?) and living in Melbourne;
He is one of those unvaccinated?
That, I don’t know, but I assume he’s not had the jab.
I think if I were not so busy keeping myself comfortable, I would have plenty of time for playing music.
No pain no gain?
Sorry, not buying the AI thing
It’s just a distraction whilst they’re moving the scenery for the next act.
“unless the artist singing the song wrote it themselves, which of course is common”.
Less common than we’re told I’d suggest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccEhmQ0M4FY
(See also his video on the recording studio Muscle Shoals which contains strong evidence the Rolling Stones neither wrote nor played the instruments on the song ‘Wild Horses’).
The Beatles were very fortunate to come under the influence of George Martin, a classically trained musician.
That serendipitous synchronicity resulted in something unique in popular music, that, in my view, has never been equalled.
I missed ‘Tavistock’ in the liner notes…
“As long as humans are humans, I still think people will need to put a face to their favourite songs, a human face, not a computer one.”
How do you know it’s a human face? Can’t AI now generate phony people?
In any case, as I intimated previously, everything in our mass produced media saturated “culture” has already become so formulaic and, since recordings hugely predominate, it’s almost impossible (perhaps totally impossible?) to determine what was real in the first place. Indeed, the very concept of “reality” has become more pressing now than ever. Even if a pop star really exists, how much of the presentation of that star is “true”. Or is it even valid to discuss the matter of truth in this way? All pop stars are media creations.
100% 👍
Do you remember the Archies?
(Sugar Sugar)
I used to absolutely love that song, ‘Sugar Sugar’, by the Archies! I well recall skating round the ice-rink to it, in 1970/71, when I was a kid of 12/13!
Re: the Bigtree clip:
First off, that presumably machine manufactured songs only goes to show how formulaic pop music (and, to be fair, most other genres) have become.
But whether this is music is genuinely written by machine, the idea that it was so written only goes to “justify” the very baleful effects that are being described. So … is this Del Bigtree a genuine critic or is he just presenting what has been planned in a way that sounds critical but which is, through this “criticism”, only being validated?
I’ll say what only a couple have kind of hinted at throughout these comments. Yes. Dell bigtree is controlled opposition 100% paid for. One of Klaus Schwab’s lap dogs. There are endless others out there of course. But they weren’t the focus of this article. LOL