I had to catch myself editing the last post – as I discussed my use of virtual instruments in place of the actual instruments and the new plausibility of thoroughly AI music, I was tempted to overuse the word “verisimilitude.” Is that really something essential to the art of music? I like the cranky not-quite-real sound of the Mellotron after all. If musical art should be imagination, music itself certainly doesn’t care if the instruments are real – though musicians might, from legitimate guild concerns. Then we moved to having the computer play the instrument, and that too asks about human-displacement – and now we have AI creating songs outright from very generalized prompts. If you’re a composer, a musician, or a listener, this raises questions.

Let’s start by being honest with ourselves as listeners in avid or casual modes: as we pass through life, music becomes a sort of sonic homeplace – a location where something sounds similar to what we’ve heard before, with just enough difference to stave off boredom, just enough new to add the spice of novelty. Some musical ears live in homogenous towns, others in more diverse ones, but we go to music for the effects we’ve learned to appreciate.

Current entirely-AI music exploits this: taking what we know of form and sounds, following its predictability in a way listeners have been known to appreciate, and serving our aural expectations back to us. When they do that, the robots are telling us something about ourselves. As I ended my last post, if we object to AI music, it may be from the romantic feelings we retain for human artists. We want fellow humans to make these sounds with and for us, and our response may rise to disgust when we are tricked. And here’s a problem: it’s getting harder to say you won’t be tricked.

If this is so, what hopes do we have? One: imperfection, at least of a kind. Let me interject here that I’m not talking about the imperfections of boredom, of which there are many. I’m talking about music that may be a bit more haphazard and unpolished. If machines can precision-target our musical comfort-center receptors, then let us distrust that response at least in part.

Commenting reader rmichaelroman has already guessed that might be part of it, mentioning the performance, rough in recording quality and musical finesse, from the LYL Band at an Alternative Prom in someone’s basement years ago.  Even stored on honest recordings – live music, particularly live music that is truly live, with unplanned-out moments, with instruments reveling in their specific bodies, breaths, and vibrations – offers vivid imperfection.

Or too: voices with less talent than intent. I try to not over-burden my listeners with self-made excuses for my singing voice – but for all its limitations, it remains the one I have handy to realize the songs. Would AI be able to duplicate those imperfections? Perhaps, but it’s unlikely to want to.

When music practices and equipment reached points of greater mastery in the 20^th century, reaction in the form of purposely avoiding those felicities arose. Midcentury pop music was opposed by the rising Folk revival and by early Rock’n’Roll. Then later, perfected Rock recording technology and improved musicianship found themselves met with Punk and Hip-Hop premised on the idea that a minimum of tech or muso-chops can still make an effective statement. By the way, I believe those technical hierarchies produced worthwhile music, but those that dispensed with them did so too.*

And when I wrote about voices with more intent than talent: for all the romantic imprecision of assigning internal motivation from a separated artistic product, what we believe we understand about why a piece of music was produced has importance. AI-music, however good it is at mimicking the technology and sound of music we like, presently offers only the weakest and least admirable answers to the question of why it was called into existence. To make some money? To make inoffensive sonic décor? To sell drinks to dancers? To show it can be done, as if that “verisimilitude” was the most significant thing about art? Some music I have liked was made for such mundane reasons, but in the future we may find intent more necessary to weigh.

I’ll leave with one more brief metaphor as AI-music reaches a level of musicological competence: we may have come to something analogous to painting’s role as photography entered the realm of visual representation. AI music in artistic hands may eventually seek out flagrantly subjective use of the technology – and music made by humans holding physical objects in real time will increasingly began to value qualities beyond sounding customary and “correct.”

If my energy holds out, there’s at least one more post in this AI series before I return to our regular combinations of literary poetry with original music, this one will address in more detail some of those music things I call “guild concerns.” If you miss the usual Parlando Project fare, there are over 800 examples of that here, so feel free to look around.

I wouldn’t want to call this performance imperfect, but there’s a human unexpectedness to it that satisfies me

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*The 1950’s-early ‘60s folk music revival had elements that I found closely mimicked by the Punk/Indie movement of following years: the DIY convictions, the gumption to form or transform venues and record labels, the opportunities for out-of-the mainstream ideas and sounds to sneak in between the more polished and “professional” acts. Similarly, Hip Hop followed the folk process: use what instruments were at hand, assertion before sounding “correct,” recombining shared culture materials (floating verses and borrowed tunes for the banjo brigades; turntables, cheap drum machines, and samples for Hip-Hop, contemporary social comment for either). Musicologist Ethan Hein said in a BlueSky post that helped spur me to write this series, “You can get across the essential elements of hip-hop and house with buckets (Hein here is referring to overturned buckets used as drums –FH)  and voices. Computers and sound systems are nice to have but inessential. Long after Spotify is gone, people rapping over beats will still be with us.”