NEW from Rick Beato: How Auto-Tune (And Computers) DESTROYED Popular Music

[highplainsdem]

Cross-post from Music Appreciation.


I added a couple of words, in parentheses, to Rick's title, because he's talking about more computerization of music than just auto-tune.

Posted yesterday:

[hlthe2b]

1. Anyone who knows the best in music--regardless of genre--prior to auto-tune

already knows this. It only allows for the highly-produced "created" stars, regardless of how mediocre to emerge.

[highplainsdem]

2. Please see the YouTube comments (5,000 already), too.

[msongs]

3. autotune is just another popular trend. if you've grown up with it is normal and expected like

if its all you've known its cool. it's an effect which may be used to cover up crappy vocalists or just cuz people like its sound. I don't care for its sour sound.

[TexasBushwhacker]

10. Autotune is a tool

Tools can be used or abused.

I enjoy Rick Beato's channel, but his griping is sounding more and more like an old fart, and he's 5 years younger than me!

[Archae]

4. I actually like it.

Well, I do.

[highplainsdem]

5. I want to hear real voices. Did you watch the video? It isn't just

about auto-tune, but about other computerization, especially AI, potentially making human artists almost superfluous.

[Kaleva]

6. Nickel Back will always be Tru to their roots

[hunter]

7. Don't think your job can't be automated...

The only opportunity left to most humans will be art performed live, anything from poll dancing to the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Gods know we are not all brilliant artists.

How will we build an economic system where everyone can be an artist?

This is why we need a comfortable universal basic income. We can't let the major corporations decide who gets to be "successful" and who starves.

For example, at this point it's pretty easy to imagine computer generated movies. You give the computer a script, which may itself be computer generated, you choose your actors from anytime in history, and you click "compose." And there you go, it's done, the next Casablanca set in a Star Wars galaxy far far away. Top ten on Amazon Prime, rated "R" for sexually suggestive dialog, partial nudity, and smoking.

[highplainsdem]

8. There is the important question of copyright, which is

mentioned at the end of this piece published a couple of weeks ago about a film written and directed by AI, by ChatGPT:

https://nofilmschool.com/2022/12/filmmakers-use-ai-write-and-direct-short-film-and-it-actually-makes-some-sense

There could be a wrinkle, however. Who would own the copyright? We’re no copyright lawyer, but a recent legal precedent, set by the case of a monkey who took a picture with a camera, stated that a copyright cannot be owned by anyone other than a human being who actually had a hand in the creation of the intellectual property. So unless laws are changed, any derivative works made by an AI could actually be in a legal gray area.

The Rick Beato video in the OP shows him asking ChatGPT to write Ed Sheeran-style lyrics. I posted a GD thread last month about an article where a Kindle writer mentioned using AI to copy the style of fantasy writer Jim Butcher: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217495259

I wouldn't be surprised if there are already lazy wannabe horror novelists asking AI to write Stephen King-style novels for them, dreaming of literary auctions and huge advances with no need for work or an original thought.

I hope that enough lawsuits, and then tough laws, will force all AI-generated works of any type to be identified as such, mandate that the scraped sources be completely identified, and punish attempts to pass off AI-generated work as original with such stiff criminal penalties that they will be stopped.

I think that will also be the only way to stop AI from undermining education with AI-generated essays, dissertations, theses, etc.

I've seen some pro-AI arguments saying AI is just another tool, but that's BS. AI is a substitute for the human brain. And a basic universal income will not prevent the drastic collapse in people's ability to think and create that will happen if AI is allowed to take over.

[hunter]

9. If you've ever written anything useful to the Military Industrial Complex or a Major Film Studio...

... it's always going to be a fight and not one that favors the original artist.

Our world economy is severely biased against those who don't have a price.

The most subversive thing you can do is to give it away.

Unfortunately we all have to "make a living' even though most of us don't have anything to do with growing food or building shelter with our own hands.

That economy works fine for the small stuff but it's a lot like "free speech."

Here in the U.S.A. we are free to say any damned thing we please so long as we are ineffective.

Effective art has consequences.

If anyone wants to feed my 36,000+ DU posts into an AI and tell it to "write like hunter" they can have at it.

Just don't blame me when that AI discards all the crazier stuff and becomes Emperor of Earth.

[highplainsdem]

11. Artists and content creators, including writers of non-fiction, should be

able to make a living from those abilities, IF they choose to, and if they're good enough.

The combination of AI and an audience dumbed down so it doesn't matter if singers can't sing, musicians can't play, artists can't really draw or paint, and so-called writers let machines plot and write for them, threatens to wipe out most of those invaluable parts of our society with people who CAN create. Who ARE origjnal. Who DO see value in thinking rather than letting machines do it for them.

If you think we have an idiocracy now, wait till you see what we have with a society that turns creativity over to AI.

I've seen arguments that this will "democratize" creativity, supposedly making everyone an artist. But it doesn't. It discourages the development of real creativity and real singing ability, real musicianship, real talent of any type. It cannibalizes past accomplishments to entertain. It's disastrous for humanity.

[hunter]

12. My parents are artists. They met in Hollywood.

They didn't become full time artists until my dad retired from his unrelated day job with a decent union pension.

Two of my siblings tried to make a go of it as Hollywood actors, which was my grandmother's dream. Neither were able to make acting a full time job, but they do have some screen credits.

I flunked out of television as a four year old. My mom says I used to stare at Very Important People as if they were interesting insects, which they found quite unsettling. These days they call it "autistic spectrum," which is a diagnosis I picked up later. In those days they just blamed my mother.

My sister works just enough to maintain her SAG-AFTRA membership, possibly as a vanity, but also in support of the union.

My wife is an artist too, but that's not her day job. She makes enough money that our home is stuffed to the rafters with art she's bought directly from the artists -- paintings, books, CDs, everything.

My mom occasionally worked as a ghostwriter when I was a kid. It paid some bills but I don't think it's an art she's proud of, spinning rat's nests of celebrity recollections into dollars, a cog in the machine.

In George Orwell's 1984 an endless supply of trashy media was mechanically produced for the proles. With or without computers, that's not the world I want to live in.

[Jade Fox]

13. K&R