Are we lazier music makers now?

Obviously, advancing technology has enabled many of us to take short cuts and produce music in less time and with less effort, but is there also a culture of impatience (and dependency) creeping in? Are we getting lazy - is the finished product and the urgent need to get stuff out there taking away the joy of the journey ?

I can only speak from personal experience, but when I first started making songs I was completely alone and my mixes would be 10 or more tracks long and would take days, weeks sometimes to complete.

Then as I found collaborators I put the burden on them and just became an ideas creator, director and icing spreader, maybe 2 days work.

Next I found karaoke sites where I could use famous songs and just change the lead melody and lyrics to make new songs and hope listeners wouldn't notice :) a few hours thought perhaps

Now, being here I feel that all the hard work has been taken on by more qualified musicians and I have the luxury of adding one simple idea..... voila, a new song in 30 minutes maybe.

But along the road we have AI and in just a few minutes we can ask it to write us a new song with rhyming lyrics on a topic of our choice........ why bother even getting out of bed to make music ?

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That is right Shamika. My opinion is that years of live music and then live studio recording are at the end. Technologies giving new easy options with less cost, time and effort. This is not only for music but for movies industry, writers, etc. Ansver of question what i prefer is Live, direct recording and less side technologies. Of course this is just my opinion.

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Krasimir, it is possible that many wikiloop musicians feel as you do. We are going to be the dinosaurs of the music industry maybe :)

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Such an interesting conversation to start here Shamika. I don't play an instrument so all I have are my voice and my words and the melodies that fly around like butterflies and paperplanes....you know what I mean, right ? I never know when a song is going to start and the lyrics will pop into my head without warning, so finding the Loops was an absolutely amazing thing for me. A place where there are so many talented people willing to share their music and their friendship is something to be treasured and it really fills my <3 Yes, there are quick ways of doing things and shortcuts and now AI, but here is where the music lives and breathes and I am so very grateful for that. Collaboration done in friendship where the music is the key....just wonderful <3

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Hi Shamika,

I totally understand your confusion. I am (only:o) a drummer.Not even a good one. Drum is easy to replace by software stuff.
With a few clicks people get a perfect backbeat for their creations. Better than I could ever play it. All I can do is practice and ignore all this.
Use all possibilities , play around with it. after all it gives you the possibility to find out whats really important for you.
:)

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Hey you people are so nice but so modest...

Shi "all I have is a voice and words"
Seriouss "I'm only a drummer" :o

But just reading your post Shi I see hidden poetry "Butterflies and paper planes" that must be a song ?
and Seriouss, you are real ! Machines may be faultless but you are human and always do your best
and we love that <3

I'm happy to be thinking up new subjects for posts.... but I'm also shy (unbelievably) and lacking in confidence at times - you may think I post too much, but you should see how much stuff I delete.:( We all have to learn that no-one is going to judge us when we have off days and the great praise on good days is so heartwarming it cancels all else out :)

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for me personally, i wouldn't say lazier, even with technology changing and making certain things easier.

coming from a primarily rock/blues genre background, i played in bands and enjoyed that musician camaraderie you get with "in-person" music creation/playing/etc. with rock, the typical "band" consists of bass, drums, guitar, and a singer. i feel like you can learn a lot from others when you create with them, or along side with them. i'll call this my "creative exposure". since members usually stayed for quite some time, that individual "creative exposure" was small, or had a small footprint. my band days and jamming days would pretty much end in the late 90s.

fast forward to wikiloops. after being here about 3 years, this is like a buffet of music :o:D it's on a platter that you can pick and choose from, or you can create your own unique dish to put out there. i would never get the chance to jam with a saxophonist, flautist, keyboardist, etc, if i was still doing in-person rock band stuff. i feel like my "creative exposure" has multiplied exponentially now. there are some very talented people here, and i believe in "iron sharpens iron".

i'm including wikiloops in the category of advancing technology, so have i've become a lazier music maker now? i would have to say no. i'd like to think i've become craftier, maybe more music intelligent as my "creative exposure" has expanded, because of wikiloops. i've maybe become more "selective" in what i do create as well.

but to be fair, do i put in the same time now that i would put into when in a band? no. band practices were like 4 days a week, 4-5 hrs at a time. i may jam 4-6hr a week now. but i'm also more selective, it's a couple of songs, as opposed to a band set list. my viewpoint has also changed, music is fun for me, and shouldn't feel like "work". band practice always felt like "work". the live performance was the "fun".

that's the one thing that is missing, in my opinion with advancing technology, that adrenaline/endorphin and fun you have with a live performance and live audience reaction. but i'm in my 50s now, i guess i don't need that anyways :) but it was everything in my 20s and 30s

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I envision a future where A1 plays along with us, real time interpreting a medley of data gleaned from sensors we wear in an effort to gauge and mirror our humanness, our emotional signals etc. But the experienced will know the difference. I digress.

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I enjoyed the detail in your post rootshell, I've never performed in public and I can imagine you would miss that live connection. Sad that you think being in your 50s is a time to ease off gigging but then again you have put the time in and deserve the relaxed luxury of your Music Buffet here :)

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Bradford, you weren't digressing, A1 is very relevant to our future. Odd to think we need creators to create something to do our creating for us. the circle gets smaller and the reach gets wider :|

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Lazier music makers, for one reason, because computers saturate areas of the brain that could be used for better musicality. One can learn to time these things in steps, downloading wanted tracks, creating templates, mastering some before recording, but it is very painstaking and consumes work energy that is extra and should be placed elsewhere in life, imo. Saturation, in terms of reading menus, remembering shortcuts, creates the second reason, extra teaching and learning. Everytime I use my computer, I feel that artistic curve cutoff that can have a positive effect on life outside music. Lately, I end up using my 8-track recorder (a smaller computer itself) and doing less cool things with the computer.

During some of my busier wikilooping times, I would spend evenings contemplating famous records and the simplicity of paying some kid out of high school or college to engineer, while a nearby producer can make 'the brainier' decisions of where to go and what to do during recording sessions.

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AI as it is today is mostly about imitating what exists already. It still takes human musicians to advance the art (you cannot improve an AI system by training it on AI generated content since that contains nothing "fundamentally new").

Will commercial music make use of AI? For all I know they already do... making even more uniform junk in less time and for less money, and although I guess some people did this for a living, it's hardly a fulfilling task to write such music. Here's a funny video about writing soulless music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=AIxY_Y9TGWI

AI replacing a human composer may be a bit like photography replacing a painter. Even though everyone and their cat can make photos today, there are still people taking painting lessons, there are still paintings being made, and painting itself has evolved to new styles, which cannot be accomplished with a photo camera. Photographers also have evolved beyond merely trying to imitate old paintings. Getting a photo-realistic image no longer is the only final goal of a photographer.

I think in a similar way, some symbiosis will be possible between AI and music, for those who like to do so. In a music industry that cares more for short-term gain than for art, I guess AI will lead to some job losses, but e.g. wikiloopers make music for a different reason, and that reason has not changed with the advent of AI.

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Rootshell, you are a mere youngster! But my path is similar, bands when young and free but we were never very good. I was lucky to be the right age for UK punk when it wasn't cool to be a clever musician, so I made a few records, played lots of gigs, got some national radio play... but to be honest we were awful. lol
Then marriage, family, work made all that impossible though I played bass in a reggae band that mostly just jammed in a warehouse once a week.

So to the topic - this was when it became possible to do everything yourself at home for very little financial outlay with a 4-track portastudio so that's what I did - it was that or nothing. I was a "starter" - I'd make backing tracks (drum machine, bass, keys, guitar) and post them to old friends now a hundred miles away who'd sing and add sax and melodies. We were quite creative between us.

Then cubase evolved from pure midi to a multi-track thing so I did that, again it was that or nothing, I was trying to provide for a family, buy a house and all that - wife didn't work.

I don't think technology made me lazy, it enabled me to make music of a sort all on my own but I never finished anything, I just played around trying to be composer, producer, artist, mixer. The results were... dull. It was better than not doing it at all.

Then I found wikiloops while looking for singing to steal to cheer up my efforts. I found Shi's vocal tracks and pinched one - that was how I saw it. Then felt guilty, came back and looked around, posted my song and rediscovered that it's soooo much more fun to spark and be sparked by others.

Technology is a double edged sword. I have what would have been a multi-million £ studio on my cheap computer but when it comes down to it, it's not technology that makes good music, it's people. People do unexpected things, the technology enables it. Yes, technology has enabled people to make lazy music but it's never very good is it? I think it's impossible for technology to replace a collection of people who all hear something different in the same thing and react to it in different ways. The possibilities are infinite.

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Very interesting subject for the xxx time Shamika, you have got me hooked now :) If you stop posing interesting forum threads I will cold turkey, so you can't stop. Ever B)

It's a great and deep subject. All technology in a way makes us "lazy". Before cars people used to ride horses or walk 3 hours each day just to go to school. Or we used to write a letter, takes half an hour to write, get envelope, stamp, go to the post box, and then 10 days to arrive if it were from Europe to USA for instance. So technology helped us to get stuff done quicker.

If I look at emails and texts, it seems that with the speed and immediate response the language has suffered and we're back to using hieroglyphs instead of sentences :o (did you see what i did here :; ?)

With music, what I hear on the radio is more and more formula type music, all sound the same, all are perfect in every way, the vocals, the beat, the timing, it is all fixed and quantized and autotuned, for me it is boring. I think musicians now get away with doing sloppy work because the technician can fix it afterwards. You can do 100 takes until you hit the right one - in the past you used to get 3 days in a recording studio to make a complete album, and it was one or two takes per song.

So yes, I think technology has had a big effect on poplar music.

However, it also enabled me to create music and albums that 30 years ago I did not dream I could ever do. And I used all the tricks that cubase had to offer to get it done so it sounds good, although I did not use autotune or quantised the drum tracks, and left the odd "mistake" in there. Gives it a bit of character.

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Let me catch up here, so many good reads.

MikeB ...You're right, brain space is being taken up with non-musical, non-art necessities - it's a barrier for non-technical artists and the simpler side of creativity. Glad that you're taking a step back from that in a way :)

Shiihs ... Well informed points about the development of music and art generally (I've started to watch the vid, will continue later) You made me think in particular about photography, I went as far as having a small darkroom to develop my own pics... there wouldn't be any joy or point in that for me now. Many arts have become accessible to the masses, this is great for many but sadly, it can diminish what was achieved without technology... although in a way we may appreciate that more - oh dear, I'm circling on this topic now, but that's what forum discussion is all about :)

Zedders ... Music making, as you point out, has become very isolating. Long distance collaborations help but they take time, patience and the risk of not including everyone's ideas - I know that was the same in 'real life' but a good shouting match never has the same effect virtually. It's strange to know that you can create an orchestra or a stadium band at your desk at home... and who would know hearing the finished product in many cases :)

TeeGee ... Glad you're getting into these forum posers. I felt the need to offer ideas and gather info and views. I'm sure these topics have been discussed before here but there will always be more to add, different angles and of course, as we touch on in this thread, subjects advancing. To sum up, the Japanese have a phrase for beauty in imperfection, Wabi-Sabi and I'm all for that :) Might even start a new thread about it haha! :o

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"To sum up, the Japanese have a phrase for beauty in imperfection, Wabi-Sabi and I'm all for that."

Yes, yes and yes again. Computers don't do that, or don't do it right. But we can just use our computers like tape and as TeeGee says - this is something us oldies dreamt of but didn't have the necessary £M to do. It's fantastic.

As far as isolating goes, yes and no. It can be, but that's purely because we can now do things we couldn't - it's a bonus? I can't see that as a negative. Wikiloops breaks through that though and I know there is software that somehow allows people to jam in real time across the globe - how that could possibly work I have no idea!

When I was young, record companies (and the listening public) wanted NEW things - things that were different. Now they want a rehash of what was recently successful. It's not the artists fault and that's obvious when you hear music that isn't "pop" - there is so much new and interesting music about, it's just not pushed by the money centric record companies because they want safe and secure income with no interest in the content beyond "will it make a fat profit.

If we go back far enough, every home had a piano for hobby music, now we have a computer. It's all good IMO. You had to put a lot of hours in to be good on a piano, now you have to put the hours into operating software efficiently, but in reality that's very easy if all you want to do is use your computer like a multi-track tape?

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