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The Future of Music – Future Music
In one of the last topics, the aspect of time travel appeared and when I reviewed the topic again, I suddenly realized: we have two time travelers among us: Mona & Lisa. I don’t know how they did it, maybe they also drive a DeLorean, but they are back to the 60s. Once there, Mona and Lisa got a Rickenbacker and a Ludwig Oyster Black Pearl Drum Kit, inclusive two or three bags full of good mood, groovy songs and lots of Beatlemania, then rushed back to the 21st century and voilà :The result is this wonderful music that we all love. At least that’s what the legend says.
Well, maybe it didn’t quite happen like that, but the fact is that the MLT have managed to save the music from days gone by into the present time. Modern, contemporary and technically state-of-the-art and yet they have preserved the soul of beat and rock music.
At this point, the following question arises to me: if we could also travel with a time machine towards the future, what kind of music would await us in the future? How do you think Mona & Lisa’s music will develop?
And yes, what development will the entire music industry take? Are old trends being reprocessed, such as in the fashion industry and sold as something new, or are previously known music styles merging into something completely new? Will there be musical pioneers again, such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield and Jean Michel Jarre (and many more), who will decisively change the course of future music?
Will new revolutionary instruments be developed again, comparable to the electric guitar or the synthesizer, which will open up completely new possibilities or will music in the future be presented predominantly only virtually, so that artists are not absolutely necessary?
And another interesting aspect: will people’s listening habits fundamentally change? Music can now be heard anywhere and at any time. Will this trend intensify? Music as a nice background sprinkling? The conscious perception of songs then plays only a subordinate role, the classical music media such as CD and LP disappear at some point completely and the world is conquered by compressed music formats, in which quality plays a subordinate importance, but availability is the most dominant factor, so to say “music to go“? And what happens to the music labels? Be bought up or displaced by some big players like youtube, apple music, spotify? And music will soon only be offered in combination with advertising, appear and disappear arbitrarily in a cloud? Will the creativity of the musicians no longer be in the foreground, but only the advertising revenues decide on the success or failure of a band? Questions about questions, but I’m sure, you certainly have a lot of answers.Will the future bring us a new kind of art, for example the fusion of music and computer-designed instruments or even the creation of entire virtual orchestras?
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13 Replies
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Will there be live performances as long as there is intelligent life in the universe?
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In My Humble Opinion,
AI will never reproduce intuition or motor skill or nuanced reasoning.
But they are going to try. This gets into a very dark topic.
Regarding music.
It’s hard to imagine AI achieving that balance between order and chaos, but the music you shared above is listenable.
Does it get redundant after a while?
Thanks Jurgen
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Hello Thomas, thank you very much for your answer. I agree with you that A.I. will never replace human creativity or as you rightly wrote: “achieving that balance between order and chaos”. At this point in time, artificial intelligence can only repeat and join what already exists (and will probably never exceed this point). Maybe it will be a helpful tool to create for example film music. Or for people like me, who don’t know an instrument, it might be a nice help to get a little creative yourself. From the point of view of every musician certainly only a gimmick and yes, it robs the soul of music. Let’s wait and see what the future holds.
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Hi Jurgen, what an interesting topic! I think a thesis could be written on this topic alone.
While new instruments and interesting new sound effects may be in store for the future of music, I think a moving and inspired melody, and the many different methods/techniques/mechanics around how sound, and the way you move between notes create emotion and tension will always be the underlying foundation of music that won’t change. While AI (artificial intelligence) and mediocre uninspired song writers may learn ways to utilize music techniques to create moods, they are like elevator music, bland and uninteresting and tiring. AI lack creativity and artistry. The kind of music Beethoven and the Beatles wrote that truly move people to tears and joy, is at the heart of what art is. This gets into very subjective and philosophical areas, but it comes from an intangible place I think, at the heart of what life and love is. John Lennon struggled with this, and he said his best music came when he finally gave up after struggling with writing, and it all just came to him from the subconscious realm when he relaxed and let go. Bob Dylan described it as a “spring well” of inspiration. Whether it’s Beethoven or Paul McCartney, Shakespeare or Robert Ludlum, art that can move people and express the nuanced feelings a person felt during an intense moment in their life that an inspired song writer writes is timeless and I don’t think changes. Certainly styles will change over time, but at the core of what makes good art I think does not change, and machines and AI can never create something original and inspired.
I loved your time traveler analogy with Mona and Lisa. They are the keepers of the faith of great melodic song writing that originated in the 60s. One thing Mona and Lisa have in common with the Beatles is harmony. Some critics state one of the things that made the Beatles so great among many things was their harmonies, and Mona and Lisa have incomparable harmonies to match and exceed. As to how will Mona and Lisa’s music develop? I think their music will keep getting more moving and emotion grabbing, and their singing and harmonies will keep getting richer and more amazing, not that it isn’t already. Case in point, “Summer Rain” for example. Their musicianship is superb, and their vocals and harmonies are supernatural! Incomparable. Witness their breathtaking and moving singing prowess on this piece. Overflowing with their magic. Sends shivers down my spine every time.
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Hi Jung, thank you very much for the detailed answer and in summary I can only say: Yes, you are absolutely right. Point. 🙂
The choice of the topic was not so much about A.I., but really about the point of how music will change. And it will change, whether we like it or not. I don’t see the trend negatively at all and I’m happy about new innovations. New generations of music listeners are coming after us and they probably have completely different needs than we have. The right mix makes it. When the Beatles arrived with their guitars in 1962, many studios waved it off: “Thank you guys, but your music is dead”. When synthesizer-pop was increasingly produced in the 80s, it was called: “Soulless, emotionally cold music”. I love this kind of music a lot to this day. Then New Wave, Techno, House, Rap Music, etc. appeared. You don’t have to like everything, but it expresses the attitude to life of an entire generation. The Stones weren’t exactly popular with older generations at the time. “Sex and Drugs and Rock’n Roll”. Anything else?
For the future of music, I wish for a common creative coexistence of many different musical genres. If I feel like guitar rock: I listen to MLT. And if want to listen to Techno-Pop: Depeche Mode. I think it will be more and more difficult for future musicians to develop new trends, because there is already such a great variety of music. Sometimes I have the feeling that in this day and age it is almost impossible to develop something completely new. And that is precisely why the desire will remain with young musicians to try something new, something that may not have existed before and which gives this new generation of musicians their own identity. And I’m sure they’ll use new technologies and develop new trends. So it was with the Beatles, with the Stones, but also with music genres like New Wave, Punk, Heavy Metal. Whether you like it is another matter, but one thing music will always remain: a creative process in which the well-known but also the new merge.
The only thing that worries me is the fact how the marketing of the music will develop. And that’s why I’m glad to support Mona and Lisa in the path they have chosen. I think it’s very brave not to go the usual way through any casting show and sign dubious record contracts. In this way, many young, talented musicians are simply abused and quickly dropped. Therefore Mona & Lisa: please keep it up.
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Hi Jurgen, in regards to the direction of music, I had to think about this one a little while. 🙂 From the way music has evolved over the last 500 years, the changes seem to be like a massive ship with a lot of mass and momentum that changes direction ever so slowly. From Medieval to Baroque to Classical to Romantic took about 500 years or so. And in my honest opinion it stalled after the Romantic period of late Beethoven (he arcs between classical and romatic), Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky. But I think after that, the music started to get more abstract. The likes of Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, etc…took music in a direction that lost a lot of classical music enthusiasts. Pieces became very complex and technically challenging for the musicians, but lost the melody and harmony and became musically inferior. The timeless music that is still played are that of the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic period. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky…
I think modern popular music that encompasses jazz, country, pop/rock is the same way. With pop/rock it started in the late 50s and peaked in the 60s and 70s. I think dead end sub-genres like disco, grunge, rap/hip-hop, 80s techno pop, punk, heavy metal…etc took off but all became dated and no longer actively survives. But songs like the Beatles “A Day In The Life”, Simon and Garfunkles “Sounds of Silence”, Led Zeppelin “Stairway To Heaven”, Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Pink Floyd “Comfortably Numb” etc are timeless and people will be listening to them for generations like Classical. Unfortunately I think the music labels and producers will push every dead end sub-genres that they can squeeze the $$$ out of. What I love about Mona and Lisa, is they are about making good music that is timeless, the kind of music you never tire of and that can keep on giving. The kind of music that was created in the 60s and 70s by great legends like the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle.
The music will evolve slowly. There will be something after Romantic period, but what that is has not been established yet, as it has stalled for now. The same with Rock/Pop, it stalled after the 70s, and we have MLT, truly talented and inspired musician/singer/songwriters, and others like them which is rare these days to move it forward. And hopefully they can inspire a new generation of talent in the future.
Perhaps continuation of classical or music in general is the pop/rock music of the 60s led by the Beatles. Time will tell.
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Jung, I’m very happy that you write something on this subject again. 500 years of music history so nicely summarized and then even faster than the time machine from H.G. Wells novel would have ever managed: I am impressed. I liked the picture of the big massive ship and the excursion about the development of the classical music in the different epochs I found very exciting. (I confess, when it comes to classical music, then I am more of a large unmaneuverable ship: The helmsman is dozing off, the captain has fallen overboard and the sailors are well filled with rum. But someday my ship will also sail in this direction, so thank you for that).
Your division of music into dead-end genres and timeless music, is a good approach to understand the development of music and you have given me an idea 🙂 : is there such a thing as an evolution of music? For sure, but does the evolution of music also follow the rules of evolutionary theory, i.e. the principles of mutation, variation and selection? Does music evolve almost like a living organism, because music is an integral part of our own evolution?
So first of all, there is the mutation. The evolutionary pressure. I come back to my idea that there is something like a genetic code or a predisposition in us that we humans use to communicate with each other in the form of music. However, the interpretation of this code or its translation into music can change over time How could this happen? For example, drastic cultural or political changes come to mind. It would be interesting to look at the history of the world, for example, what exactly happened during the transition from Medieval to Baroque to Classical to Romantic (since this would fill entire books, we’d better not do that now). Further reasons for the mutation pressure of music: The language of the people changes over centuries, the living conditions change partly also drastically, I think only of the rural exodus and the industrialization in many regions of the world. But people’s world views are also constantly changing. The general conception of the world, the political situation, the level of knowledge of science, etc. And music is also exposed to all these influences and changes accordingly. A globalized society will once again increase and accelerate the mutational pressure of music.
The next principle of evolution is variation. Music is full of it. Different musical styles and directions that exist parallel to each other and occupy their own niches, just like Darwin’s finches on Galapagos. You called this sub-genre. Which variation is permanently established, which is popular and which is quickly forgotten again, depends in turn on how we humans and especially how our needs change. People in the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc. sometimes had a completely different attitude to life and also completely different ideas about what they expected from life. The music that best matched this was then usually the winner.
Then the principle of selection is still missing. Why do some sub-genres end up in a dead end and die out, while other music styles survive, evolve and become something new? Darwin called it the survival of the fittest. If you want to understand the principle of selection in music, you should realize that music always fulfills a function and there is always a motivation to listen to music or to play it yourself: Messages to other people, fun and joy, distraction from everyday life, processing of current events, expression of feelings, creation of community, to name a few. The current needs of people determine which style of music has a high acceptance and will continue to develop. The kind of music that best reflects the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist) will probably survive. But also, as you rightly wrote, the influence of the music industry and the power of money is not to be underestimated. Music and its promoters, another important point. Beethoven and his contemporaries were also dependent on patrons supporters at that time: the nobility and the royal houses. Today it is their majesties Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
Basically, music behaves like a living organism or better like its own species. In which direction music will move exactly nobody knows of course. But if I want to understand in which direction music will change, then I look best at the development and behavior of humans. And this brings me back to the questions I asked at the beginning of the topic: will new art forms develop in music, will A.I. make its way into music, etc.? If we become an even more technologized society, this will also have a direct impact on music. Will the future of humanity change for the better or will we manage to ruin our planet? A rich, contented society develops quite different forms of music (and has quite different opportunities to develop music) than a society in need, struggling to survive.
So much for the attempt to understand music as an evolutionary process. One possible explanation of many. The fascination of the music can be explained with it certainly neither comprehensively nor completely and music remains what it is: one of the most beautiful creations that humans have ever produced (in this spirit, I wish you and your family a beautiful Thanksgiving).
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Today was yesterday’s future. Technically true, does that statement carry the same wonderment for Ai as it does for us?
What did you think when you read the first statement? My mind runs to things I might have done differently if not for the want of a nail. And then to how that might’ve have changed today’s outcome. Would the Ai just pass it by as a true statement?
JP
Jung, thumbs up for The Best Years of Our Lives. They really show their range here. Shivers for sure.
Here is a kool song that reminds me “The future is now”
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Hello Johnnypee, I am looking forward to your answer. I just find it interesting to think about how music could develop. Artificial intelligence should not be a focus of the topic at all. It’s just one of many aspects (Okay, AI is redundant. I understood. Next topic). You are right: Today was yesterday’s future. But what comes next? I’m just interested in how other people see and assess the development of music. Especially here in the forum, where many music lovers or musicians are on the road, an exciting question for me.
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Interesting topic, leaves it wide open, as of now anything is possible…. though I do hope human creativity is still an integral part still in future, A.I. just can’t perfect humanness no matter how close it can try …. Every century/generation/decade always sprouts new innovative ideas, etc… Only the future will hold the answer but I for one, believe it’s vital to maintain the human component /capacity, and/or at least Choose to do so, to continue… that’s my 2 cents worth….☮
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Hello Jacki, thank you for your reply. Then the current interim score in the topic is 4:0 for more human creativity in music and better not too much technology. Heart wins. 🙂
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Emphatically agree!
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