Therefore, the service to humanity by true artists, composers, will still be needed.
As a disclaimer, I know nothing of AI generated 'music,' have done no research, and am unqualified to make any statements. But I am going to anyway. I act on the license enabled by "free speech," even in uninformed hands.
In the 70's and 80's, I could go a short distance and listen to live bands, folk music, guitar players, piano music, and jazz trios for the price of a drink (about $2.00) and listen all night. On Friday nights, they also gave two drinks for the price of one and free food (good food) to draw people in. There were few "big names," just people playing. Live, and mostly acoustic, music was a staple of life. In town, people said the little pubs that littered certain streets were AA -- 'Attitude Adjustment' opportunities. They weren't wrong. After sitting and listening for hours, I'd walk down empty city streets on the way home, lost in no-thought, my body having become like a rippling stream, serene but constantly moving, invulnerable, resonating with and still vibrating from sound. Live music transformed, and uplifted. I reminisce; because I miss it.
There is very little "live music" near me now -- a chamber music group, a town band, an amateur orchestra -- and they are often rather pricey. This week, however, out of the blue, the library offered a "
healing sounds" session. Being auditorially deprived, of course I attended. A woman played two dozen
crystal bowls (99.992% quartz, no less) -- each a different size, sound, vibration. (Some were small and could hold about a gallon of water; many were quite large -- nearly 2 feet across and almost as high). The bowls were set on the carpet in a small room in two rows. She walked amongst them with a mallet, touching one, then another, for 40 minutes or so. I was consumed by vibration. I became the vibration. Several grievances I harbored simply dissolved. I was uplifted, serene, transformed; reverberating in a state of no-thought. The "I" was, for a moment, no longer present. I was one with the universe.
At the stolen history website, some people propose that the function of what we now call "churches" and "organs" was vibrational correction of unhealthy or disturbing thoughtstreams that constricted the body or mind. That people would go to these buildings whenever they needed to, to get a "great reset," the right kind of reset; something like an atmospherically derived acupuncture that allowed one to shed impediments and open circuits in the body and mind to facilitate the proper flow of energy so people could step out of their bog, and grow and glow.
While attending the 'healing sounds' session, I felt as though I experienced such an existential acupuncture -- an alignment of my energies with something bigger, greater, and better than me. Something verging on the infinite and the eternal.
Am I being naive and silly, taken in by a 'new fad' and a new 'experience?" Not sure. There is such a thing as 'existential validation' (
by their fruits you shall know them). I intend to pursue my interest in these bowls, so time will tell.
At the moment, I (somewhat euphorically) think that it would be a service to humanity (and a significant demise of "health care" and toxic Rx) to establish a series of "healing sounds" rooms across the nation for all to attend, whenever needed, as a public service -- like the "churches" may have been at one time. However (sad to say), anything that obviates malicious intervention by the medical industry would probably be corrupted before it got too well established.
By comparing this recent experience of being immersed in real-time, person(ally) generated sound, my guess is that AI music is superficial noise; a dead squirrel on the road that you try to avoid when driving. It's a squirrel all right, but it's no good now; the life is all gone out of it. Like lipstick or rouge, it might serve a function -- camouflaging emptiness; but is that function worth fulfilling? Filling air with uninspired sound? Even if it could replicate a pleasant melody like the 1940's music, could it have any chemical, physiological or spiritual effect, because it is, so simply, uncreative, uninspired?
So it makes me consider:
what IS (real) music? What is the intent behind it? What is its purpose? Why do we listen to it? Does it "do" something, "remove" something, "fill" something? If so, what existential state does it achieve, fill, obviate, move, or transform? What is "writing" music, and why do are we moved to do it? When we compose, what are we actually transforming into a unique series of sounds? When we play, what is the spirit that moves us? I'm starting to think about this. "Intent," "effect," and "inspiration" seem to be key words in the definition and understanding of what can be called 'music.'
In the end, I wonder if music is ......
"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness......[where] the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see
it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken
it[?]" (Isaiah 40 KJV) Can a computer do that?
www.ikmultimedia.com
