So there's a difference in how you cook and present Representatives and Senators?
Would you suggest a 5 course meals for Senators and a quick stir fry for House of Representatives members?
For those of us in a Parliamentary system based on London that would be 5 course meals for front bench Cabinet members and a stir fry for everyone else. ;-)
The debate is between Chris Anderson, Iim O'Reilly and John Battelle.
A quick synopsis would be, from Chris Anderson's keyboard: "The competition for attention is growing, thanks to the Web’s low barriers to entry, and the advantages of high-production content (from TV to, yes, magazines) are lost in the browser-centric marketplace, where all content looks more or less alike, context is lost, session times are measured in seconds, and brands are blurred in a river of atomized text and pictures."
Starting to sound familiar? Let's continue: "Apps, for us, are just a way to put our best foot forward, to package text, images, video, interactivity in a designed package that can engage people for an hour, not a minute. It’s early days yet, but we’re already seeing an order of magnitude difference in iPad app session times compared to the same content on the Web."
In short Wired failed to adapt to the open Internet and now, to save itself, proposes a closed one. While that's buried deep in the debate and takes a while to get there, with Anderson dancing around it all the way, we do get there.
It's a self serving story designed to going the chorus that's already coming from the "high end, professional" class of content providers to move to the iPad/iPod/iPhone Apple world where content is controlled and walled in.
Just the ticket for Verizon/Google/Comcast/AT&T
I'll bet we're gonna get a torrent of this kind of story over the next short period of time. And, who knows, maybe Mike will shift his position on net neutrality a wee bit after reading this and the avalanche to come.
The Web is still here. Netscape is no more, Active Desktop is a horrible nightmare best forgotten and push, while it exists, is kinda by invitation only and on life support otherwise.
OK, I have to ask, off topic or not. Just WHAT exactly is an internet dildo and how would it differ from an Internet dildo, a Wal-Mart dildo or the ones you can get in that beat up old store down on the corner with all the windows papered over?
They're still going to pretend they're on a cute seal hunt and try to whack it to death with a big club with a spike through it.
Like Mike I think they've misread the tea leaves or entrails or whatever they're consulting. Apps are certainly the "trend du jour" something tech commentators need and invent as need be so they have something new to talk about.
I just love the now and then chart!(http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-09/ff_webrip5_f.jpg). Last time I checked the browser is an app. The little things he's calling apps have a long standing analog in Firefox extentions, last time I looked. (A lot more useful that most of the iPhone/iPad apps I've had the misfortune of looking at and using.)
Then Javascript and Now as Objective-C strikes me as a tad too Apple centric. To be honest I've yet to see an iPad in the real world outside of retailers. Yeah, I know how many have sold but I'm beginning to wonder if a lot of them haven't become super expensive door stops.
Then as HTML and Now as XML shows a disconnect with reality as the Web itself shows if you land on most CMS sites. As Mike points out HTML 5 is on the way and then we'll see.
As for the Internet becoming a group of walled gardens, we'll see. This isn't the first time the death of the Web has been announced in favour of walled gardens all over the Interet but somehow it's survived. Maybe because it's flexible enough to contain just about anything?
And the walled gardens that have gained so much favour in the past have all but disappeared.
My guess is that all this seems to be about "excitement" over apps/gadgets is being taken far too seriously by some.
As for Jobs alignment with "traditional" media models that's not really much of a surprise as he builds his iTunes, iPad, iPhone house of cards. It's hell of an idea but all it takes is someone with the moxie to invade that space to knock it all down. Google anyone? Anyway, to a large degree the "i" world still relies on the web for an awful lot, as do the other services mentioned.
It may be that we're seeing a convergence rather than a revolution.
Funny thing is that it all reminds me of the architecture of UNIX a kernel (HTML5) supported by applications (apps) that do one thing an done thing only extemely well and built up from there. (Not the best of news for Jobs, I suspect.) Oh yeah, and the Internet transporting the whole kit and kaboodle along with ancient, forgotten things like usenet, IRC, Gopher and more. (All still very much alive.)
What you say about people who won't go to the beach unless there's free parking says more about the culture of Miami than it does about the discussion free vs paid parking.
A few years ago the Vancouver Parks Board introduced paid parking thoughout their system including the beaches which led to a lot of grumbling but no drop in beach usage at all. Right now it's on its way to 30C today and the beaches will be packed.
Parking meters are a fact of life in many cities, particularly in the core. Yet the "destination" shopping in Vancouver and Victoria remain in metered areas and where off street parking is horrendously expensive in both. (BTW, it's the same in Seattle and Portland OR) You better believe the tourist traps in the cores of now 4 cities are heavily metered and off street rates are a joke yet they remain packed with visitors. (Tourist is a bad word so it isn't used much anymore.)
Things change in the burbs, of course. "Free" parking is provided in endless cookie cutter strip malls and in mega store parking lots but the consumer pays for that, too, either in increased retail cost or reduced selection.
As for people heading off to the beach, spending more money in surrounding shops and such, it's up to businesses that cater to the beach crowd to locate there and not furniture stores, right?
There's one other cost to "free" street parking and that's in increased municipal taxes because those roads have to be built and maintained somehow and guess who pays?
The balance is in what's more valuable to the city's economy and dynamism not in who goes to Wal-Mart.
Yes, there are on line options available, lots of them, but in many cases people still want to go to bricks and mortar and see the stuff they're thinking of purchasing. Destination shopping will remain that because it's being in the destination that's as or more important than actually purchasing something and the shops that set up there know that. Tourist traps remain tourist traps that the locals avoid in favour of less expensive fake local stuff.
There are lots of arguments for and against paid street parking and, as I tried to say above it has nothing to do with taxes because, in the end, the residents of the city will pay for the new roads and road maintenance regardless.
I wasn't aware that the vast majority of Americans voted anymore.
Not that I can look down my long nose at Americans as we Canadians are getting just as bad or more clearly recognizing the futility of voting when it serves no purpose as it becomes clearer that Pete Townsend was right: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
Or perhaps the imaginary patent held by the mythical little guy isn't worth a pile of cricket poop?
Holding a patent no more means that the market wants it than my calling myself a poet means that the market wants a collection of my drivel in a little book.
(There, got copyright and patent in a single post!)
I suspect he's rather looking for a dichotomy that didn't exist in the question or just deflecting the argument himself.
That said, he's right in that western musical notation did come out of the Church though not only the Roman church but the Orthodox church as well. In fact, notation began in the Orthodox church as was borrowed by Rome then borrowed right back again. Not BCE.
That there was music notation before that isn't arguable though we haven't the faintest idea in what we call the west what it was.
The idea of a metronome existing in the form and function that it serves now two thousand or more years ago I find interesting though I have my doubts.
Time does and has always existed in music on that we agree ever since Og picked up his first rock and clipped out a steady beat on another rock.
The argument about Newtonian/Einstienian (new word?!) time in a discussion about music is a red herring as the two applications and context are entirely different.
"Doesn't open source software work like that? Do you have stars, or does everyone just contribute as they can"
Open source has it's stars as does every other endeavour. Others contribute as and when they can. (For star of open source see Linus Torvalds.)
"And if everyone creates, then everyone has music to give. The division between who makes good music and who makes average music might disappear with smart tech tools."
There have been a number of discussions over the decades that have ended up asserting that everyone does, in fact, have music to give be it banging on a drum to composing the 9th.
That said the professional will continue to exist because it not only takes more talent than the pedestrian musician it also takes more in the way of drive.and the willingness to make the bet on his/her ability to make music.
Recording industry or not music and professional musicians will continue though, perhaps, somewhat differently than they do today.
Cast back to the idealized village and there are people making and creating music there out of whatever exist that they can use as instruments. The steel drum, is a good example of that.
Computers are no different in how they're applied as tools or instruments in their own right. Sooner or later producers will stop layering effects over singers voices that makes them sound like 1950s robots or compression on radio announcers voices that make them sound annoyingly unreal.
As I've said before our ears and our emotions call tell the difference between the real and the unreal when it comes to music.
There are, it seems to me, already two styles of professional. The first is the musician who makes a living off only music and the second is a creator who creates no matter what and does it with all their skill and talent and expects no living from it. Of course there are many colours and hues in between.
Either way its how it affects you emotionally that counts not how it was made. If it gives you an emotional uplift it is good (for you) and if it doesn't it's not. No matter what anyone else has to say.
Music is now and always will be a primarily emotional event. We humans are wired that way. For whatever evolutionary reason we fall in love to music, we cry with music, we hate with music, we dance with music, we celebrate and grieve with music. It is the one thing we do which bypasses our intellect completely and connects with our emotions. If you prefer, our souls.
The professional is the musician or composer who makes those connections in us. How they do it or whether or not they have a day job, use or don't use computers, or are superstars is irrelevant. The resulting music is good only if it connects to those emotions deep inside us as nothing else short of falling (and staying) in love can.
I'd say that's an artefact of the production and, I admit, that I find it hard to listen to as well. It sounds hollow and mechanical and rather like the TRON computer of so many years ago.
A lot of that kind of production is used for "dance" music where the point is to communicate a dance rhythm, invariably in 4/4 time dominated by percussion rather than voice which gets mixed in later.
In that sense it's kinda throw away music rather than the sort of thing you'd want to lean back and listen to for any other reason. It's still music and the computer(s) creating the effect are still tools whether I like the outcome or not.
Ironically, the cross over from dance to pop can be blamed, if you want, on Cher who needs no electronic help at all to belt out a song, who used the compression in a hit and opened the floodgates on the pop side. I'm sure there that she and her producer used it strictly as an effect rather than flooding the song with it.
If you're ancient enough (he says leaning on his wheelchair) to remember when the Beatles released Rubber Soul complete with this strange sitar thing that it only seemed weeks before everyone else was ab/using it as well. The recording industry does nothing so well as copy, you know.
I have to agree with your overall theme that given a number of factors things are changing in music and that we aren't going back no matter what.
"I won't try to convince you of it, but I think I should at least mention the possibility that there might be more to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony than you are seeing (or rather, hearing)."
There might be but for pretty much 99.99% of us it's the music that's important and not what critics and "analysts" have piled on since it was written. I'm equally certain that that's all that was in Beethoven's mind when he wrote it and none of the layers applied since.
Music, as you point out, isn't an algorithm it's a human creation which has broad appeal to us for a number of reasons. Our species is unique in that not only do we use musical tones for communication but for sheer enjoyment. We are alone in that we use it for synchronized activities such as dance or work.
Music strikes our emotions in a way that no other art form is capable of.
None of that precludes using a computer program or series of programs to help create it.
Think of distortion pedals that guitarists use. They're little computers. So, of course, are synthesizers which can be purchased inexpensively from any Radio Shack or similar store you might name. (One can argue that large pipe organs are large synthesizers as well.)
"What, science can't be created by an iPhone app? Why not?"
Depends on the app but I wouldn't rule it out. Not advanced science but still science unless you are wedded to the notion that science is some mysterious practice only the initiated are capable of creating or understanding.
That seems to be your argument around music.
"In science, computers are the slaves, but in music they are in line to be the next Beethoven."
Let me correct that. In science computers are the tools as they are in music.
As long as you're on endlessly about Beethoven one of the reasons, perhaps the only one, that the 9th is well known is that he wrote is as he was going deaf. People who aren't musicians or blessed with musical talent, of which Beethoven had oodles, find this amazing. It isn't really.
Why? He knew and lived music.
He knew notation like the back of his hand. It was, after all, his tool. Deaf or not he could still hear the music in his head.
He could still "hear" what he wanted to express and used the notation (code) to express it. He knew orchestras and the sound of the instruments and could arrange it. Again using such things as notation (code) and charts (more code) to get it across. He knew the sounds the human voice is capable of and could, when called on, use notation and charts to arrange that as well.
By the by, western musical notation isn't the only notation (code) used in the world.
I'm a singer, a passable guitarist and I read music but I don't see the notes in my head as I'm singing or playing I "hear" the song, hymn or chorus in my head microseconds before hitting a note on the instrument of with my voice. That part of me I didn't need training for, I was born with it. It just is.
I can "hear" the music in my head even if no one is playing it and sing the song note for note perfect.
"It's possible, right now, to have an algorithm that could create music that would fool people who know nothing about music."
I honestly doubt that for no other reason than humans are innately able to discern the real for the fake with music just as we are able to, to this point, discern the real from the fake when we "discuss" with a computer. The Turning test hasn't been passed in either discussion or music as of yet.
But, then, that depends on your meaning when you say music. Do you mean music in the broad sense of all music or are you, as I suspect, one of those elitists who defines music as that of the historically short lived "classical" period (for sake of discussion I'll include that over blown horror known as Grand Opera) then on to "modern" and "post-modern" orchestral composers who seem more interested in being clever than in actually making and performing anything remotely recognizable as music.
Just what separates music from the tools used to make it, be it instruments, notation or a computer program is that thing that is still uniquely human which is our complex emotional response to it. That's something that a computer program no matter how well written either understands or is capable, as yet, or recreating.
The proper response to your fearful and ignorant responses in this discussion is, then: "So what?"
As long as we're on the topic of Beethoven's 9th or the majority of other works he created let's recall that he was being paid by a patron or commissioned by some prince or other to create these works.
That doesn't make them better or worse that's merely the way it was.
And no, it's not all about life experience or hard won skill, often it's about youth, enthusiasm and sheer talent, as well. As it was in Beethoven's case.
It's been a long time since composers could find a baronet or prince or monarch to support them so things have changed, just a tad, don't you think.
Now, if the serious ARTS community would let go of the piece and just let the rest of us enjoy it perhaps we, too, might find the ART in it. Ditto for Shakepeare, just let me go to the play, keep your opinionated yap shut and let me see it. (Newsflash, Shakespeare wasn't interested in art or ART he was interested in bums in seats so he could pay the mortgage on The Globe Theatre.)
It's our fault the recording industry is pushing out tripe?
And no, we're not talking lowest common denominator we're talking a chance for others to take part in their (our) own culture.
And I'm sure if you were in charge of the "standards" we'd be silent and kept that way. So would Gilbert & Sullivan, Rogers and Hammerstien, Lennon and McCartney and shall I go on?
"The reality is, most artists out their who really do make good content people like, have to do it as a side job, or "hobby", and they have to have a full time job to make ends meet."
I'd not only like to know how this is any different from the last quarter century but the last half dozen or so.
Just where, please, is it set in stone that someone setting themselves up as an artist deserves to earn a middle class or better income simply because s/he calls themselves an Artist. (Almost always with the capital A when they start on about this.)
To you it may be sad that they might have to work for it, rather like the rest of us, but that's the way it is, has been and always will be.
I hate to tell you this but the rest of this rabble you say demands "free content" are capably creative in our own right even holding down full time jobs and do that creative thing because we love it.
Not every garden out there went in courtesy of a landscape artist or bored housewife. Most went in by people dragging thier asses home at the end of the work day and in a labour of love created something beautiful.
Let me add, if I may, that this same digital world has allowed people like designers, photographers, individuals who design fonts and a whole slew of others to meet and come together to help a writer self publish now with near "professional" level quality. (Actually better if some covers I've looked at recently are any indication.)
It's becoming, in that sense a co-operative effort between these people to an end.
I've seen the results. (Toss in mandatory plea for people to visit the local ma and pa book store cause that's often where you find these things because the owners themselves are book lovers.)
What begins at the bottom level often bubbles up in new and interesting ways that don't involve, want or need traditional publishers, record companies and other "gate keepers" particularly in times of economic stress where that's often the only way the middle class gets to join in the creation of art.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The rise of the part-time creator
I'm not to sure. Which isn't to say that e-books don't have they're place but there are many cases where an e-book is NOT the answer and is unlikely to be such as manuals, cook books, some gardening books and other places where the situations that the document is being used either aren't idea or require/invite making notes, dog-earing and so on.
As long as copyright stays as it is I can't see a publisher allowing on demand printing without a stiff price equal to, at least, the cost of the shelved book.
And I'll line up with Dark Helmet on this one the serious readers I know under 35 think the Kindle and it's like are jokes, hard to read and just silly and they actually prefer the dead tree version.
The reasons range all the way from them not being books or as flexible as books to the DRM and the fact that properly bound books are simply "better" in their eyes. The up front cost is a factor as well.
On the post: Las Vegas Review-Journal Thinks Suing Sites Over Copyright Will Mean More People Link To It
Re:
Oh, been there, done that got head handed to plaintiff; sorry.
On the post: Las Vegas Review-Journal Thinks Suing Sites Over Copyright Will Mean More People Link To It
Re: Re: stupid
Would you suggest a 5 course meals for Senators and a quick stir fry for House of Representatives members?
For those of us in a Parliamentary system based on London that would be 5 course meals for front bench Cabinet members and a stir fry for everyone else. ;-)
On the post: Reports Of The Web's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Through Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
The Real Wired Story Is In The Debate
Mike, you may want to look at it.
The debate is between Chris Anderson, Iim O'Reilly and John Battelle.
A quick synopsis would be, from Chris Anderson's keyboard: "The competition for attention is growing, thanks to the Web’s low barriers to entry, and the advantages of high-production content (from TV to, yes, magazines) are lost in the browser-centric marketplace, where all content looks more or less alike, context is lost, session times are measured in seconds, and brands are blurred in a river of atomized text and pictures."
Starting to sound familiar? Let's continue: "Apps, for us, are just a way to put our best foot forward, to package text, images, video, interactivity in a designed package that can engage people for an hour, not a minute. It’s early days yet, but we’re already seeing an order of magnitude difference in iPad app session times compared to the same content on the Web."
In short Wired failed to adapt to the open Internet and now, to save itself, proposes a closed one. While that's buried deep in the debate and takes a while to get there, with Anderson dancing around it all the way, we do get there.
It's a self serving story designed to going the chorus that's already coming from the "high end, professional" class of content providers to move to the iPad/iPod/iPhone Apple world where content is controlled and walled in.
Just the ticket for Verizon/Google/Comcast/AT&T
I'll bet we're gonna get a torrent of this kind of story over the next short period of time. And, who knows, maybe Mike will shift his position on net neutrality a wee bit after reading this and the avalanche to come.
On the post: Reports Of The Web's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Through Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
Re: Re: Re: Re: Wired is a confusing pub
On the post: Reports Of The Web's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Through Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
Re:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.03/ff_push.html?pg=1&topic=
The Web is still here. Netscape is no more, Active Desktop is a horrible nightmare best forgotten and push, while it exists, is kinda by invitation only and on life support otherwise.
On the post: Reports Of The Web's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Through Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
Re: Re: Wired is a confusing pub
Just asking :)
On the post: Reports Of The Web's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated Through Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics
Re: Re: Re: Bring out ya dead!
Like Mike I think they've misread the tea leaves or entrails or whatever they're consulting. Apps are certainly the "trend du jour" something tech commentators need and invent as need be so they have something new to talk about.
I just love the now and then chart!(http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-09/ff_webrip5_f.jpg). Last time I checked the browser is an app. The little things he's calling apps have a long standing analog in Firefox extentions, last time I looked. (A lot more useful that most of the iPhone/iPad apps I've had the misfortune of looking at and using.)
Then Javascript and Now as Objective-C strikes me as a tad too Apple centric. To be honest I've yet to see an iPad in the real world outside of retailers. Yeah, I know how many have sold but I'm beginning to wonder if a lot of them haven't become super expensive door stops.
Then as HTML and Now as XML shows a disconnect with reality as the Web itself shows if you land on most CMS sites. As Mike points out HTML 5 is on the way and then we'll see.
As for the Internet becoming a group of walled gardens, we'll see. This isn't the first time the death of the Web has been announced in favour of walled gardens all over the Interet but somehow it's survived. Maybe because it's flexible enough to contain just about anything?
And the walled gardens that have gained so much favour in the past have all but disappeared.
My guess is that all this seems to be about "excitement" over apps/gadgets is being taken far too seriously by some.
As for Jobs alignment with "traditional" media models that's not really much of a surprise as he builds his iTunes, iPad, iPhone house of cards. It's hell of an idea but all it takes is someone with the moxie to invade that space to knock it all down. Google anyone? Anyway, to a large degree the "i" world still relies on the web for an awful lot, as do the other services mentioned.
It may be that we're seeing a convergence rather than a revolution.
Funny thing is that it all reminds me of the architecture of UNIX a kernel (HTML5) supported by applications (apps) that do one thing an done thing only extemely well and built up from there. (Not the best of news for Jobs, I suspect.) Oh yeah, and the Internet transporting the whole kit and kaboodle along with ancient, forgotten things like usenet, IRC, Gopher and more. (All still very much alive.)
On the post: Is Free Parking Costing Us Billions?
Re: Book is a weight...
A few years ago the Vancouver Parks Board introduced paid parking thoughout their system including the beaches which led to a lot of grumbling but no drop in beach usage at all. Right now it's on its way to 30C today and the beaches will be packed.
Parking meters are a fact of life in many cities, particularly in the core. Yet the "destination" shopping in Vancouver and Victoria remain in metered areas and where off street parking is horrendously expensive in both. (BTW, it's the same in Seattle and Portland OR) You better believe the tourist traps in the cores of now 4 cities are heavily metered and off street rates are a joke yet they remain packed with visitors. (Tourist is a bad word so it isn't used much anymore.)
Things change in the burbs, of course. "Free" parking is provided in endless cookie cutter strip malls and in mega store parking lots but the consumer pays for that, too, either in increased retail cost or reduced selection.
As for people heading off to the beach, spending more money in surrounding shops and such, it's up to businesses that cater to the beach crowd to locate there and not furniture stores, right?
There's one other cost to "free" street parking and that's in increased municipal taxes because those roads have to be built and maintained somehow and guess who pays?
The balance is in what's more valuable to the city's economy and dynamism not in who goes to Wal-Mart.
Yes, there are on line options available, lots of them, but in many cases people still want to go to bricks and mortar and see the stuff they're thinking of purchasing. Destination shopping will remain that because it's being in the destination that's as or more important than actually purchasing something and the shops that set up there know that. Tourist traps remain tourist traps that the locals avoid in favour of less expensive fake local stuff.
There are lots of arguments for and against paid street parking and, as I tried to say above it has nothing to do with taxes because, in the end, the residents of the city will pay for the new roads and road maintenance regardless.
On the post: Is Free Parking Costing Us Billions?
Re: Re: Milk Money
Not that I can look down my long nose at Americans as we Canadians are getting just as bad or more clearly recognizing the futility of voting when it serves no purpose as it becomes clearer that Pete Townsend was right: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
On the post: Will The NAB Agree To A Performance Rights Tax In Exchange For Having RIAA Support Mandatory FM Radio In Mobile Phones?
Re: Re:
On the post: Why The Oracle Java Patents Were Literally A Joke Played By Sun Engineers
Re: Mudak
Holding a patent no more means that the market wants it than my calling myself a poet means that the market wants a collection of my drivel in a little book.
(There, got copyright and patent in a single post!)
Please go away.
On the post: Rolling Stone Offers 'A Big Fat Thanks' To The RIAA For Screwing Up Music Online [Updated]
Sad it took so long and that the RIAA won't listen.
If it's real.
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re:
That said, he's right in that western musical notation did come out of the Church though not only the Roman church but the Orthodox church as well. In fact, notation began in the Orthodox church as was borrowed by Rome then borrowed right back again. Not BCE.
That there was music notation before that isn't arguable though we haven't the faintest idea in what we call the west what it was.
The idea of a metronome existing in the form and function that it serves now two thousand or more years ago I find interesting though I have my doubts.
Time does and has always existed in music on that we agree ever since Og picked up his first rock and clipped out a steady beat on another rock.
The argument about Newtonian/Einstienian (new word?!) time in a discussion about music is a red herring as the two applications and context are entirely different.
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nitpicking
Open source has it's stars as does every other endeavour. Others contribute as and when they can. (For star of open source see Linus Torvalds.)
"And if everyone creates, then everyone has music to give. The division between who makes good music and who makes average music might disappear with smart tech tools."
There have been a number of discussions over the decades that have ended up asserting that everyone does, in fact, have music to give be it banging on a drum to composing the 9th.
That said the professional will continue to exist because it not only takes more talent than the pedestrian musician it also takes more in the way of drive.and the willingness to make the bet on his/her ability to make music.
Recording industry or not music and professional musicians will continue though, perhaps, somewhat differently than they do today.
Cast back to the idealized village and there are people making and creating music there out of whatever exist that they can use as instruments. The steel drum, is a good example of that.
Computers are no different in how they're applied as tools or instruments in their own right. Sooner or later producers will stop layering effects over singers voices that makes them sound like 1950s robots or compression on radio announcers voices that make them sound annoyingly unreal.
As I've said before our ears and our emotions call tell the difference between the real and the unreal when it comes to music.
There are, it seems to me, already two styles of professional. The first is the musician who makes a living off only music and the second is a creator who creates no matter what and does it with all their skill and talent and expects no living from it. Of course there are many colours and hues in between.
Either way its how it affects you emotionally that counts not how it was made. If it gives you an emotional uplift it is good (for you) and if it doesn't it's not. No matter what anyone else has to say.
Music is now and always will be a primarily emotional event. We humans are wired that way. For whatever evolutionary reason we fall in love to music, we cry with music, we hate with music, we dance with music, we celebrate and grieve with music. It is the one thing we do which bypasses our intellect completely and connects with our emotions. If you prefer, our souls.
The professional is the musician or composer who makes those connections in us. How they do it or whether or not they have a day job, use or don't use computers, or are superstars is irrelevant. The resulting music is good only if it connects to those emotions deep inside us as nothing else short of falling (and staying) in love can.
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re: Re: Re:
A lot of that kind of production is used for "dance" music where the point is to communicate a dance rhythm, invariably in 4/4 time dominated by percussion rather than voice which gets mixed in later.
In that sense it's kinda throw away music rather than the sort of thing you'd want to lean back and listen to for any other reason. It's still music and the computer(s) creating the effect are still tools whether I like the outcome or not.
Ironically, the cross over from dance to pop can be blamed, if you want, on Cher who needs no electronic help at all to belt out a song, who used the compression in a hit and opened the floodgates on the pop side. I'm sure there that she and her producer used it strictly as an effect rather than flooding the song with it.
If you're ancient enough (he says leaning on his wheelchair) to remember when the Beatles released Rubber Soul complete with this strange sitar thing that it only seemed weeks before everyone else was ab/using it as well. The recording industry does nothing so well as copy, you know.
I have to agree with your overall theme that given a number of factors things are changing in music and that we aren't going back no matter what.
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
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There might be but for pretty much 99.99% of us it's the music that's important and not what critics and "analysts" have piled on since it was written. I'm equally certain that that's all that was in Beethoven's mind when he wrote it and none of the layers applied since.
Music, as you point out, isn't an algorithm it's a human creation which has broad appeal to us for a number of reasons. Our species is unique in that not only do we use musical tones for communication but for sheer enjoyment. We are alone in that we use it for synchronized activities such as dance or work.
Music strikes our emotions in a way that no other art form is capable of.
None of that precludes using a computer program or series of programs to help create it.
Think of distortion pedals that guitarists use. They're little computers. So, of course, are synthesizers which can be purchased inexpensively from any Radio Shack or similar store you might name. (One can argue that large pipe organs are large synthesizers as well.)
"What, science can't be created by an iPhone app? Why not?"
Depends on the app but I wouldn't rule it out. Not advanced science but still science unless you are wedded to the notion that science is some mysterious practice only the initiated are capable of creating or understanding.
That seems to be your argument around music.
"In science, computers are the slaves, but in music they are in line to be the next Beethoven."
Let me correct that. In science computers are the tools as they are in music.
As long as you're on endlessly about Beethoven one of the reasons, perhaps the only one, that the 9th is well known is that he wrote is as he was going deaf. People who aren't musicians or blessed with musical talent, of which Beethoven had oodles, find this amazing. It isn't really.
Why? He knew and lived music.
He knew notation like the back of his hand. It was, after all, his tool. Deaf or not he could still hear the music in his head.
He could still "hear" what he wanted to express and used the notation (code) to express it. He knew orchestras and the sound of the instruments and could arrange it. Again using such things as notation (code) and charts (more code) to get it across. He knew the sounds the human voice is capable of and could, when called on, use notation and charts to arrange that as well.
By the by, western musical notation isn't the only notation (code) used in the world.
I'm a singer, a passable guitarist and I read music but I don't see the notes in my head as I'm singing or playing I "hear" the song, hymn or chorus in my head microseconds before hitting a note on the instrument of with my voice. That part of me I didn't need training for, I was born with it. It just is.
I can "hear" the music in my head even if no one is playing it and sing the song note for note perfect.
"It's possible, right now, to have an algorithm that could create music that would fool people who know nothing about music."
I honestly doubt that for no other reason than humans are innately able to discern the real for the fake with music just as we are able to, to this point, discern the real from the fake when we "discuss" with a computer. The Turning test hasn't been passed in either discussion or music as of yet.
But, then, that depends on your meaning when you say music. Do you mean music in the broad sense of all music or are you, as I suspect, one of those elitists who defines music as that of the historically short lived "classical" period (for sake of discussion I'll include that over blown horror known as Grand Opera) then on to "modern" and "post-modern" orchestral composers who seem more interested in being clever than in actually making and performing anything remotely recognizable as music.
Just what separates music from the tools used to make it, be it instruments, notation or a computer program is that thing that is still uniquely human which is our complex emotional response to it. That's something that a computer program no matter how well written either understands or is capable, as yet, or recreating.
The proper response to your fearful and ignorant responses in this discussion is, then: "So what?"
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
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That doesn't make them better or worse that's merely the way it was.
And no, it's not all about life experience or hard won skill, often it's about youth, enthusiasm and sheer talent, as well. As it was in Beethoven's case.
It's been a long time since composers could find a baronet or prince or monarch to support them so things have changed, just a tad, don't you think.
Now, if the serious ARTS community would let go of the piece and just let the rest of us enjoy it perhaps we, too, might find the ART in it. Ditto for Shakepeare, just let me go to the play, keep your opinionated yap shut and let me see it. (Newsflash, Shakespeare wasn't interested in art or ART he was interested in bums in seats so he could pay the mortgage on The Globe Theatre.)
It's our fault the recording industry is pushing out tripe?
And no, we're not talking lowest common denominator we're talking a chance for others to take part in their (our) own culture.
And I'm sure if you were in charge of the "standards" we'd be silent and kept that way. So would Gilbert & Sullivan, Rogers and Hammerstien, Lennon and McCartney and shall I go on?
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
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I'd not only like to know how this is any different from the last quarter century but the last half dozen or so.
Just where, please, is it set in stone that someone setting themselves up as an artist deserves to earn a middle class or better income simply because s/he calls themselves an Artist. (Almost always with the capital A when they start on about this.)
To you it may be sad that they might have to work for it, rather like the rest of us, but that's the way it is, has been and always will be.
I hate to tell you this but the rest of this rabble you say demands "free content" are capably creative in our own right even holding down full time jobs and do that creative thing because we love it.
Not every garden out there went in courtesy of a landscape artist or bored housewife. Most went in by people dragging thier asses home at the end of the work day and in a labour of love created something beautiful.
Any more complaints?
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
Re: Re: What Is Happening In Book Publishing.
It's becoming, in that sense a co-operative effort between these people to an end.
I've seen the results. (Toss in mandatory plea for people to visit the local ma and pa book store cause that's often where you find these things because the owners themselves are book lovers.)
What begins at the bottom level often bubbles up in new and interesting ways that don't involve, want or need traditional publishers, record companies and other "gate keepers" particularly in times of economic stress where that's often the only way the middle class gets to join in the creation of art.
On the post: Which Is Better: A Tiny Number Of Creators Hitting The Jackpot... Or Many Making A Living Wage?
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As long as copyright stays as it is I can't see a publisher allowing on demand printing without a stiff price equal to, at least, the cost of the shelved book.
And I'll line up with Dark Helmet on this one the serious readers I know under 35 think the Kindle and it's like are jokes, hard to read and just silly and they actually prefer the dead tree version.
The reasons range all the way from them not being books or as flexible as books to the DRM and the fact that properly bound books are simply "better" in their eyes. The up front cost is a factor as well.
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