[colechristensen]

>music becoming superficial and lacking intentionality, or dare I say it, soul.

This phrase though could be plunked down at any point in the last hundred years and you'd find someone making it.

About autotune or electric guitars or rock or jazz or punk or disco or Philp Glass or Stravinsky... one could go on for a long time.

[thepryz]

You’ll always have naysayers, but I think there’s a difference between someone who doesn’t understand or share the appeal of rock or jazz or an artist like Philip Glass where music is made by someone choosing what notes to play, what rhythms, what words and the music that comes out of a statistical model.

You can’t tell me that Philip Glass didn’t understand or agonize over the music when creating it. The creative process is vastly different and that’s my point.

Oh course, there will be artists who use AI in new and creative ways, someone like Brian Transeau who routinely codes tools for creating electronic music. but for most artists, I fear it will just lead to mindless button clicking and prompt manipulation until it’s formulaic because the base model is the same. Or it will result in fewer people learning instruments or music theory and truly experimenting with things that haven’t been done before.

I see AI as having great potential in both art and productivity but maybe it’s just that I don’t trust people to use it responsibly. We’re inherently lazy and easily distracted by anything that will give us that dopamine fix.

[colechristensen]

I definitely meant John Cage instead of Philip Glass, for some reason those two share the same headspace if I'm not thinking carefully.

I don't think John Cage agonized over 4'33" (I was thinking about making this an elaborate joke, but I haven't the energy. That piece is 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence. It has been performed in public to sophisticated audiences)

When Stravinsky's Rites of Spring was first performed publicly it nearly caused a riot. There were arrests. It deeply upset people and was accused of not being music.

Penderecki likewise composed much that was aggressively argued was not real music and is featured in several prominent Horror/Thriller kinds of films, Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood was heavily influenced for the score of There Will be Blood (listen and tell me if the sounds are just orchestra noise or real music.

Rock music and Jazz music got heavy, heavy pushback from people that this was just not real music and was garbage noise.

Your response fits the common pattern "I know people have said the same things in the past and were wrong but THIS TIME the same argument is correct"

>mindless button clicking

Sounds like all electronic music since its inception :)

Point is, there has always been garbage music and there have always been people criticizing the new thing as the demise of real art. Yawn.