Prelude: In the movie Amar Akbar Anthony, a very popular song features Amar as one-man band playing on multiple music instruments and singing at the same time. True, for any popular movie stunt, one can find folks who go lengths to copy the moves depicted by their icons but we are not sure how many musicians managed to ape the “Amar One-Man Band” at that time. But in the technology-assisted times we live today it’s not at all difficult to imagine why it can’t be done and done better.
From Terminator to Matrix to Avatar our sci-fi movies have shown us the power of technology..robotics to be precise. If the recent trends of driverless cars, robot assisted operations in hospitals are an indication of the things to come Robots dominating the Earth might be a scenario which seems unreal as of now but then no one can disagree with the fact that technology has managed to enter pretty much every field and has made some remarkable contributions. Same goes for music.
Digital and online technologies have resulted in the most revolutionary change in music since the recording technology introduced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While on one hand technology expansion has facilitated distribution of music among musicians, composers & audiences on the other hand this technology-enabled distribution poses challenges for commercial distributors as it reduces their importance, and might probably soon make them redundant altogether.
Digitization has given artists untold freedom and levels of control. Pro Tools, Ableton, Logic Pro: These and other programs let musicians work on recordings anywhere they can plug in their laptops. It has also led to unorthodox ways of releasing music. For instance, Beyoncé has released her last few albums and singles online. Music mixing apps make life real-easy. iPad has a pool of these apps to offer.
Digitization has provided people with inexpensive ways to mix and remix music. And then there are loop machines, and live DAW’s such as Reason or Ableton Live which makes it possible for one man to play the music that previously took a whole band. These options might never be able to replace the full rock or metal band, but they can certainly make a dent. Bands like Genghis Tron don’t even have a drummer! It’s all done electronically.
But this also means that bands can now move up the ladder easily because they have lesser baggage to carry. Its simple math: lesser band members would mean more convenience plus more money for each member. MIDI is an invention which has reduced the pains of redoing a work. One simply needs to readjust every off-note. This has surely triggered controversies as some believe it makes music cheap and untrue. Without entering this debate one thing can be said for sure: this ability opens up the market to a bunch of creative entities to take the stage, who were previously unable to do so.
Talking about the most sought after theme in the world of science fiction moves – Artificial Intelligence. In simple words, we have robots making music. Researches at Sony’s Computer Science Laboratory in Paris have shared a track made by a robot. This robot analyzes a database of existing songs to learn the various music styles, identifies commonalities and then makes different combination to synthesis original music. This program (robot) is called Flow Machine and it is set to release a full album this year!
So does this mean we would soon find ourselves buying tickets for a concert performed by Robots?
Well, maybe because the trend seems to be moving in favour of technology-enabled music.
That said, it needs to be acknowledged that none of the music produced by these robots are entirely original. They are heavily influenced by one or more artists. Here we can’t stop but recollect a scene from the popular web series Tripling where a DJ is trying to make the traditional people of Rajasthan understand his music. They simply conclude that camels of Rajasthan can make better music. But let’s not do the same for we must even if we dont want to, open up to this new world of music that is fast gaining popularity.
Circa 2020 (Somewhere in the US): The 2020 Academy Awards winner for the most popular tune of the year [01101011010101] goes to ROBOT SAREGA.2.In “its” speech the Artist of the Year “Robot Sarega.2” described that there was indeed a true “power drive” behind this “unique coding” and hoped that all “like-minded” folks will “APP”-laud it.
Disclaimer: This article is not a work of any LTO-Bot nor any robo-write*.* but contributed by a very talented budding marketer who goes by the name Poornima Venugopalan
Robots may come or not come we really dont care. What we know is Music will always be there and thus we at Localturnonconcentrate on the following “Turn On Music || Turn on Happiness || Turn on Life!”