Hey dude, I do appreciate the thorough and thoughtful response. I respect where you’re coming from and largely agree with most of what you’ve said, but I think a key point where we differ lies in our respective interpretations of homo homini lupus.
I’ll have to simmer on it for awhile myself to develop a more nuanced argument, but my first instinct is two-fold; there have always been wolves among us eager to rip our throats out, yet humanity continues to grow and progress despite (and frankly to spite) them. Man may be a wolf to man, but ape together strong and we are capable of overcoming the wolves in our midst.
Secondly, I think you’re letting the misanthropy in too deep. I think the injustices you and I and many others are witnessing, both in the music industry and the world at large, are the product of small men wielding outsized control, power and influence over those without. The music industry is a prime example of capital alienating the worker from their labor and that, I think, is the true root of the issues informing your disillusionment. I won’t go too deep down the anti-capitalism rabbit hole (this time) but I will pose to you a question; who benefits more from generative AI, the wolves or the apes?
As I said, I’ve got more thoughts to distill into coherency but that must needs happen in the light of day, not the grey of dawn.
That said, I’m absolutely capable of coherency when it comes to discussing heavy avant-garde and especially saxophone. Frankly you are likely the only person I’ve interacted with who is capable of appreciating this story;
I emailed Jørgen about…15 years ago at this point? After Ihsahn released After but likely before/around Blackjazz dropping. I was playing tenor sax in high school at the time and wanted to know if he’d transcribed any of his work on After. He replied! And told me “Sorry I made it all up on the spot” which was disappointing but also made me respect him all the more. I was on the barrier for the Nightside Eclipse anniversary tour a few months ago when I recognized the man setting the synth up. You should’ve seen the doubletake he did when I called out his name! Emperor obviously slayed, but that little interaction with Jørgen is my favorite memory of that night. His work has inspired me for a long time and I absolutely agree that saxophone as well as other traditionally orchestral/symphonic instrumentation is capable of fitting into metal and other non-traditional genres. Ne Obliviscaris is another prime example with their violinist.
The level of deconstruction (shoutout Hevy Devy) required to dismantle a genre and piece it back together in new ways, with new instruments and concepts and to make it all coherent is human creativity at it’s finest. You mentioned the sax to voice transition in Pho Que as an example of emergent creativity, but I posit (and insist) that those pieces already existed within the realm of humanities creativity. Vocoders have been in use in some form or another for a very very long time (Cynic’s Focus being my personal favorite) and connecting the dots between them and saxophone isn’t much of a leap IMO.
True musical innovation, true creativity comes from connecting much more disparate dots in new ways and our current socioeconomic systems are more than happy to replace those qualities with generative AI trained on stolen human creativity in order to line their pockets further. You’re absolutely correct that the machines aren’t killing us; their owners, however, are more than happy to build orphan-crushing machines. The wolves are absolutely the problem and they are shoveling slop at us to make us slow, stupid, and fat. Don’t fall for it.
Thank you for your well thought out, stimulating thoughts on this. I am sorry it took a while to get back to you on this, and it was really fun running into you in another thread. Writing this makes me feel like one of those guys from history writing letters back and forth on the topics du jour of their era.
I am glad that you had those positive interactions with Jørgen , and it is one of the fun parts of going to live gigs. It does also suck seeing our favourite musicians having to be their own roadies and merch guys, but it allows us to connect to them in a personal level. But at least our money is going to the right people.
You are right that these technologies enable the wolves to have more power. I posit that it’s always been the case; but technology marches on, what was once a bronze spear that allowed tyrants to grab more land eventually evolved into surgical tools that allow surgeons to heal people. I feel that philosophically, human beings need to understand the new tech and tools that arise and contextualise them to be used for good and not for harm. However, there will always be people using it for harm. But those people harming us can already harm us anyay. Like I said, they were making slop in boardrooms anyway. It’s not the generative AI’s fault that the next wave of artificial pop is going to be made in a server.
We’ve had hatsune miku; a popstar that only exists as a literal product and entirely within the machine. Interestingly, there are multiple ways to view the commercial use of generative music AIs.
For example, the people making money off it now aren’t the Sonys and BMGs of the world, it’s random anonymous people exploiting the common people’s desire for mood music. Before this, there were loads of anonymised videos/compilations on youtube with titles like “relax cafe” or “lo fi beats to study to”, leaving credits of the musicians out of the video. The AI generated music fits the same niche in the same way. The music they make isn’t very good, but it’s not like a megacorp is exploiting this to crush the music industry further. It’s just augmenting the same trend that already existed. The person getting rich off it, for now, is some dude somewhere that has had enough of life kicking them in the face and made something generic and tried to get money for it.
Would the people that look for that mood music be better served with authentic musicians for whatever mood it is they are searching for?
Yes.
Is this something new in the world of listening or music?
No.
It’s the same thing as the pop music problem : the listener is an unsophisticated idiot, and wants slop. They don’t care about who wrote this, what pedigree it has (family trees of bands, evolution of musical styles, compositional ideas etc), they just want “Sad, feels like raining piano”. This need could be met with decent curation and attributed, or you can just buy a compilation CD of re-interpreted pop songs you already know on piano, slowed to the right tempo with a gentle woman’s voice softly singing the lyrics.
Same slop. No thoughts. Handmade analog crap that’s as sophisticated as mc donalds.
That’s why I don’t particularly see the generative AI itself as the problem. It’s been generic slop and tinpan alley songs for generations already. The teenagers killed music in the 50s, it’s already dead. What’s another spit in the face of the dead art?
The other part is the stuff I already covered. You can experiment and find new ideas with low skills. It’s something that can enrich your life and inspire you. Some things I didn’t mention is empowering creatives with less skill in other areas. You can make art for a game or music for a game if you can’t draw or create music. And maybe, later on, if you make connections with people, you can replace the AI placeholders with human generated ideas. But on that path, you can empower yourself to bring yourself to a stage where you can actually participate with the creators of the arts instead of being a faceless nobody.
Thank you once again for these discussions. You are in the back of my mind from time to time, I’d love to send you some guitar tracks and see if we can make some Zu/Sunn like music together, but its likely to take a long time. Stay safe, stay well, stay happy.
Hey dude, I do appreciate the thorough and thoughtful response. I respect where you’re coming from and largely agree with most of what you’ve said, but I think a key point where we differ lies in our respective interpretations of homo homini lupus.
I’ll have to simmer on it for awhile myself to develop a more nuanced argument, but my first instinct is two-fold; there have always been wolves among us eager to rip our throats out, yet humanity continues to grow and progress despite (and frankly to spite) them. Man may be a wolf to man, but ape together strong and we are capable of overcoming the wolves in our midst.
Secondly, I think you’re letting the misanthropy in too deep. I think the injustices you and I and many others are witnessing, both in the music industry and the world at large, are the product of small men wielding outsized control, power and influence over those without. The music industry is a prime example of capital alienating the worker from their labor and that, I think, is the true root of the issues informing your disillusionment. I won’t go too deep down the anti-capitalism rabbit hole (this time) but I will pose to you a question; who benefits more from generative AI, the wolves or the apes?
As I said, I’ve got more thoughts to distill into coherency but that must needs happen in the light of day, not the grey of dawn.
That said, I’m absolutely capable of coherency when it comes to discussing heavy avant-garde and especially saxophone. Frankly you are likely the only person I’ve interacted with who is capable of appreciating this story;
I emailed Jørgen about…15 years ago at this point? After Ihsahn released After but likely before/around Blackjazz dropping. I was playing tenor sax in high school at the time and wanted to know if he’d transcribed any of his work on After. He replied! And told me “Sorry I made it all up on the spot” which was disappointing but also made me respect him all the more. I was on the barrier for the Nightside Eclipse anniversary tour a few months ago when I recognized the man setting the synth up. You should’ve seen the doubletake he did when I called out his name! Emperor obviously slayed, but that little interaction with Jørgen is my favorite memory of that night. His work has inspired me for a long time and I absolutely agree that saxophone as well as other traditionally orchestral/symphonic instrumentation is capable of fitting into metal and other non-traditional genres. Ne Obliviscaris is another prime example with their violinist.
The level of deconstruction (shoutout Hevy Devy) required to dismantle a genre and piece it back together in new ways, with new instruments and concepts and to make it all coherent is human creativity at it’s finest. You mentioned the sax to voice transition in Pho Que as an example of emergent creativity, but I posit (and insist) that those pieces already existed within the realm of humanities creativity. Vocoders have been in use in some form or another for a very very long time (Cynic’s Focus being my personal favorite) and connecting the dots between them and saxophone isn’t much of a leap IMO.
True musical innovation, true creativity comes from connecting much more disparate dots in new ways and our current socioeconomic systems are more than happy to replace those qualities with generative AI trained on stolen human creativity in order to line their pockets further. You’re absolutely correct that the machines aren’t killing us; their owners, however, are more than happy to build orphan-crushing machines. The wolves are absolutely the problem and they are shoveling slop at us to make us slow, stupid, and fat. Don’t fall for it.
Thank you for your well thought out, stimulating thoughts on this. I am sorry it took a while to get back to you on this, and it was really fun running into you in another thread. Writing this makes me feel like one of those guys from history writing letters back and forth on the topics du jour of their era.
I am glad that you had those positive interactions with Jørgen , and it is one of the fun parts of going to live gigs. It does also suck seeing our favourite musicians having to be their own roadies and merch guys, but it allows us to connect to them in a personal level. But at least our money is going to the right people.
You are right that these technologies enable the wolves to have more power. I posit that it’s always been the case; but technology marches on, what was once a bronze spear that allowed tyrants to grab more land eventually evolved into surgical tools that allow surgeons to heal people. I feel that philosophically, human beings need to understand the new tech and tools that arise and contextualise them to be used for good and not for harm. However, there will always be people using it for harm. But those people harming us can already harm us anyay. Like I said, they were making slop in boardrooms anyway. It’s not the generative AI’s fault that the next wave of artificial pop is going to be made in a server.
We’ve had hatsune miku; a popstar that only exists as a literal product and entirely within the machine. Interestingly, there are multiple ways to view the commercial use of generative music AIs.
For example, the people making money off it now aren’t the Sonys and BMGs of the world, it’s random anonymous people exploiting the common people’s desire for mood music. Before this, there were loads of anonymised videos/compilations on youtube with titles like “relax cafe” or “lo fi beats to study to”, leaving credits of the musicians out of the video. The AI generated music fits the same niche in the same way. The music they make isn’t very good, but it’s not like a megacorp is exploiting this to crush the music industry further. It’s just augmenting the same trend that already existed. The person getting rich off it, for now, is some dude somewhere that has had enough of life kicking them in the face and made something generic and tried to get money for it.
Would the people that look for that mood music be better served with authentic musicians for whatever mood it is they are searching for?
Yes.
Is this something new in the world of listening or music?
No.
It’s the same thing as the pop music problem : the listener is an unsophisticated idiot, and wants slop. They don’t care about who wrote this, what pedigree it has (family trees of bands, evolution of musical styles, compositional ideas etc), they just want “Sad, feels like raining piano”. This need could be met with decent curation and attributed, or you can just buy a compilation CD of re-interpreted pop songs you already know on piano, slowed to the right tempo with a gentle woman’s voice softly singing the lyrics.
Same slop. No thoughts. Handmade analog crap that’s as sophisticated as mc donalds.
That’s why I don’t particularly see the generative AI itself as the problem. It’s been generic slop and tinpan alley songs for generations already. The teenagers killed music in the 50s, it’s already dead. What’s another spit in the face of the dead art?
The other part is the stuff I already covered. You can experiment and find new ideas with low skills. It’s something that can enrich your life and inspire you. Some things I didn’t mention is empowering creatives with less skill in other areas. You can make art for a game or music for a game if you can’t draw or create music. And maybe, later on, if you make connections with people, you can replace the AI placeholders with human generated ideas. But on that path, you can empower yourself to bring yourself to a stage where you can actually participate with the creators of the arts instead of being a faceless nobody.
Thank you once again for these discussions. You are in the back of my mind from time to time, I’d love to send you some guitar tracks and see if we can make some Zu/Sunn like music together, but its likely to take a long time. Stay safe, stay well, stay happy.