August 14ths

8/14/2005

Still from Sacrifice film shoot at Rosehill Cemetery.  

[8/14/2024: Cemeteries have many uses, obviously as film locations and for taking photographs, as well as for the showing of films. Rosehill in Chicago is a popular cemetery for photographers, as is Graceland Cemetery, which I have been to many times, both by myself and with photo groups. It’s not a macabre activity at all, although superstition could color the moment at some point in the future if for example something happened the following day, or on other August 14ths. Of course there is Helen Sclair, the “cemetery lady”]. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8/14/2017

What will 2020’s music sound like? Popular technologies will drive it, and most likely will be shaped with AI, as that seems to now be the cool “guitar” everyone wants. In 1964, this same question was probably asked, and by the end of the 60s, music was vastly different, primarily because of advances in electronics and recording technology, and also generally by postwar hyper-growth. 2020s music may sound mostly the same, unless new kinds of instruments are invented and widely used.            

[8/14/2024: This is a pretty accurate prediction. However it is not a repeat of the 1960s in terms of learning to play an instrument. If 2024 was 1964, a guitar would be more of a plastic toy. Even the toy guitars in 1964 had strings on them. Where the Beatles went from 1964 to 1969 was where music would ultimately go in terms of being more of a cultural phenomenon than it was about music and became more intertwined with conceptual art. Perhaps AI music will be in a similar place in 2029 where it’s not about what it was 5 years earlier].

[8/14/2025: AI music is far more established as a possible new mainstream, 4 years earlier than I thought last year].

[8/14/2026: Users have soured on using Suno because they keep changing what the instrument does. Music as software is an interesting metaphor, but it's still not hardware. Also, the music of the 2020s wasn't innovative at all because there is no avant-garde informing what the mainstream does--no Paul McCartney going to art galleries and having it affect the music. Until AI music becomes more experimental and has more options, it won't affect the way artists work. The mainstream has been affected only because anyone can use software out of the box and no one is working outside it, precisely because it's so air-tight. You can generate music that sounds like the 60s but the essences aren't there. What's unique about AI music is that it lets anyone be a "griot"--for example writing songs about history a la Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger. AI music generators are a "banjo". I wonder if Bob Dylan uses it?]

8/14/2022       

Music that is reduced to notation can be timeless in the sense that a recipe handed down through the generations can still be made. “Timeless” may infer that the essence of it remains, sans all the cultural trends. If you can play it on an acoustic instrument, or play an identifiable rhythm or riff, it is timeless.

[8/14/2026: As interesting as AI is for spinning out an idea that's from notation, it can't create a score and parts for what it generated without a human to shape it--and who would go to the trouble if there are few that play the instruments?] 

8/14/2023

David Bowie once said to the effect, “Inside every musician is an interior decorator”. Similarly, one could say “inside every musician is a photographer or painter”, and that is certainly the case with Andy Summers, Ron Wood, and all the other musicians who were also visual artists. They naturally have an “eye” in the same way that designers do.

 8/14/2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8/14/2025

"Wordrum" (You Know It's a No-No")           


 

 

0814 by meta4s