Got the AI Blues? Here's A Prescription from Dr Dre

[GreatGazoo]

Anthropologists tell us that singing preceded speech. Humans make music for all kinds of reasons -- it feels good, it squeezes out some grief that needs squeezing, it expresses feelings that words alone cannot, it takes us to a deeper state of mind, trance-like and rich with possibilities. AI doesn't do any of that. It can't. Never intentionally will.

It's November 1971. On the radio a new song uses something unheard before. The "drum" has the character of dripping water and the beat is clock-like; "perfect" yet not as cold as it should be because there are lush soulful vocals, bass and Billy Preston's keyboard over the top of it. The era of drum machines and disco is born with the release of Sly and the Family Stone's "Family Affair".

July 12, 1979. Comiskey Park, Chicago. A crowd of 20,000 was expected. 50,000 have showed up. As promised, a crate of disco records is blown up on the field of the MLB double header between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Crowd members storm the field to stomp the records into shards or throw the intact discs at each other like Oddjob's hat weapon in "Dr. No". Due to the riot, injuries and the mess, the second game is forfeited. To Motown.

January 1993. An infectious swingbeat super-spreads to all who will listen. A way to put the human touch into the backline of rap music is being popularized by Dr Dre. "Nuthin' but a G Thang" is instantly recognized as a revolution in Rap because it is imperfect, its beat not quantized. Listeners didn't need to know exactly what was different to know it was more satisfying. It felt different. Connected emotionally with the deepest and oldest parts of our psyche.

It's March 2027. Suno was expected to be the end of music as a craft. But it wasn't. Turns out that, unlike with chess or trivia, humans have a huge advantage when it comes to music. We will always feel the difference. We will always crave and recognize the connection with human joy or sorrow expressed as it only can be by other humans making music.

[Dave Bowman]

1. The whole "Disco Sucks" movement was mostly composed of racists and homophobes.

Disco started with African Americans and gay folks having a blast at more or less underground events/venues. The Stonewall Inn was a dance club.

[GreatGazoo]

3. Yes. On my scorecard disco lost some appeal when it went mainstream

and the eroticism and soul was watered down or lost altogether. Mainstream labels who had resisted the genre came in late, chasing the success of Saturday Night Fever, and they still didn't get it. There was good and bad disco (for example Stars on 45). The bad stuff was soulless and overly mechanical, like AI.

I mentioned Disco Demolition night as a dark moment in American culture. Divisive and violent.

My intended point was that we can steer AI but only if we understand its limitations better.

Stonewall was mafia-owned, filthy and shunned by many who resented the oppression and shakedowns. Mancuso's Loft was the more liberating environment in that period.

[Dave Bowman]

5. One stupid song that comes to mind: Disco Duck.

[kwolf68]

6. Glad you said mostly

George Clinton was anti-disco as well. Parliament and Parliament Funkadelic was comprised of brilliant musicians and a lot of musicians saw some forms of music (disco, punk) as minimalistic. So there was a huge backlash against both.

[Oneironaut]

2. AI Music is just a cold, unfeeling vomit from an algorithm.

It’s the end state of an unchecked Capitalist society eating itself. We are becoming an artless society with no culture that treats everything like a get rich quick scheme. Everything is a scam, and, everything is a grind for endless money as people are squeezed further and further by rising prices and inflation.

The end result is a society of idiots who have no creativity. You don’t need creativity to produce wealth for billionaires.

[Hellbound Hellhound]

4. I prefer AI music, honestly.

Modern Popslop is just formulaic, scientifically designed to tickle the chemical receptors of your brain; it's biohacking end-stage capitalism and nothing more, backed by Capitalistic pushes to make that type of thing popular and mainstream. Because humans are chemically unable to resist, they buy in.

Meanwhile, with AI music, I can set my own parameters, set my own guidelines; Right now I'm listening to the sound of sea shanties with a set of pre-written scripts I've written myself in various cants and languages, using different instruments or no instruments at all. I can change the parameters and have a new playlist in less than ten minutes, rather than swapping Spotify channels every song because "Ensonata" has come on for the fiftieth time today.

Modern artists are scams and are just chasing whatever suits the algorithm in the "Now".