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by janetmissed 869 days ago
music is one of the most subjective things in life, and what one person considers good or meaningful music is based entirely on non-mathematical forces like culture, early child exposure to music, and personal taste. Music only is mathematical in the same way everything can be represented by mathematical concepts. While I have no doubt ai will be able to make presentable music in the near future, music is about expressing the human experience, which is something ai can't do. Treating music like its a product that can be perfected shows a deep misunderstanding as to why people find value in music

I really like hacker news but the users here have very strange perspectives on art.
1 comments
dist-epoch 869 days ago
Question: could you enjoy a song if you knew absolutely nothing about the artist? Let's make it instrumental so you can't judge the voice.

From what you say I infer you couldn't, you need to know about their life, their struggles, their views on things, etc.

Some people can actually enjoy just the pure sound. Electronic club music tends to be like that, where if you listen it in a club or on the radio in a long mix you might have no idea what song is being played, the vocals and lyrics are ultra-minimal so no "human expression" there.

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janetmissed 869 days ago
of course I think you can enjoy music as just "pure sound". I have no doubt that generative music models will make perfectly adequate music, and will almost certainly have the capacity to make songs that are great and moving. But just like visual mediums, music is more than just a file. Music is cultural. Electronic music is absolutely human expression, even if it isn't making some grand statement on society or the human condition it exists in context of other electronic music tracks. By simply having someone feel the drive to create a song and making creative decisions about how that song should sound and feels it makes a comment on the genre of electronic music, and contributes to the cultural project of music.

thanks for the thoughtful comment and I hope you have a nice day.

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