"It seems to me that to organize on the basis of feeding people or righting social injustice and all that is very valuable. But to rally people around the idea of modernism, modernity, or something is simply silly. I mean, I don't know what kind of a cause that is, to be up to date. I think it ultimately leads to fashion and snobbery and I'm against it."
Jack Levine: January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010
LEVEL BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EXISTENCE
Sunday, June 1, 2014
The Musical Limits of Technology
I use the Finale music program to arrange, write and, on rare occasions, play music, it makes a lot of things so much easier and so much faster than pencil on paper. One of the advanced features of that is an alleged "human playback" feature that will put in some algorithmic slowing and speeding of the music typed into it, allegedly the way a person would. I'm not impressed with it and keep that feature of it turned off for virtually every use I've made of it.
A machine can't do what a person would do, it's impossible for a machine to simulate that without reference to an actual performance to base it on. This is a neat feat of engineering. Music, I wouldn't call it that. Whenever they try to capture music, scientists and engineers can only go a short way to the goal.
[Trigger warning: This makes my teeth hurt, avoid earphones]
Do you mean to say that not everything in this universe is reducible to algorithms?
ReplyDeleteYou are clearly not of the body.....