The State of the Arts in Twenty Years Time.pdf

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Anna Marck

Professor Graeme Harper

Honor's Colloquium 100

26 November 2012

The State of the Arts in Twenty Years Time:

Music's Human Touch in a Connected-Techno World

During my search to hear the music of 2032, I realized that there is a certain anticipation

for music of the future. It sounds digital, cold, and robotic with synthetic beats. Our inner ear

predicts the advancement of technology, and so hears exactly that: steel, crisp, musical

combinations created by computer software. However, computers and devices can do that now.

What our inner ear fails to anticipate is the advancement of human artistry. Michio Kaku

describes "The Cave Man Principle" in his book, Physics of the Future..., as the constant

tendency to please our primitive "proof of kill" desires: watching a concert on TV, for example,

versus hearing and seeing the band up close and personal and being able to say: "I was at that

concert; I met them; it was amazing!" (Kaku 13). This is why, despite numerous predictions to

the contrary, live music has not gone extinct, and never will, because humans are, at the core, a

competitive and hands-on species. We will not settle for playing "Moonlight Sonata" on a screen,

we will want a real, tangible piano. And most importantly, we will always desire the glory that

arises from creating, from composing, from discovering. In 2032, technology will not be the

voice of music, but rather, music will be the voice of technology's true capabilities. 2032 will be

the start of a new "Golden Age" of music, where the public is creating unique sounds, due to

their musical knowledge and technological aids.



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In order to uncover this future for music, the first question to ask is: what will music

sound like in 2032? There is a video exploding on YouTube right now titled "Will We Ever Run

Out of New Music?" The creator, Michael Stevens, takes a mathematical standpoint and states

that because of 12 musical tones that the ear can distinguish (in an octave), the finite number of

musical patterns that the ear truly enjoys, and due to the sheer amount of music that has already

been written (billions of songs), composers have gravitated toward repeating the same song

structures over and over again. In 2009, the comedy band, "Axis of Awesome," came out with a

song called "4 Chords." This song was a giant mashup of 36 pop songs that used the same four

chords. So will this be the future of music? Remixing the old stuff? Repeating what has been

done before? Have we actually run out of new music? Of course not. We have gravitated toward

similar song structures for a number of reasons: we are inspired by what we have heard before

and have unconsciously "copied" earlier creations, we are also using these earlier songs to

connect ourselves to other people: the people who wrote the song and the people who know it,

and finally, we are comfortable if we have a set of rules to follow (like those four glorious

chords). However, the main point that Michael Stevens uncovered in his 11 minute video will

catapult musicians. Stevens stated that even though we have gravitated toward song structures

we "like," the amount of musical possibilities is enormous! For one 5 minute audio file, there are

2^211,000,000 possibilities of what this "song" could sound like. This is a 63,000,000 digit

number. No, the number is not 63,000,000, but the number is 63,000,000 digits long. Yes, it is

still a finite number, and included in this number are certainly audio files that our ears won't

enjoy, but by exposing ourselves to this huge amount of possibilities for song, we will feel freer

to experiment, discover new sounds, and ask: what else could be musically beautiful?



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Undoubtedly, composers will have a much vaster pool of inspiration to draw from.

Nowadays, thanks to YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, and The Cloud, songs have become

increasingly accessible and sharable. Look at the song, "Call Me Maybe". One viral video with

Justin Bieber later, and this catchy song is instantly recognizable. Carly Rae Jepson, who, "at this

time last year was still largely unknown outside of her native Canada," is the owner of an

internationally known song, which has been covered by millions of people all over the world

(Sculley). "Call Me Maybe" is a prime example of shared musical knowledge which is

exponentially growing. Because our knowledge of music is growing, we can become aware of

many more styles. What this means is that: futuristic music will employ the mashing of many

different styles of today, fused with the new sounds of the future.

Technology will aid in a huge way in the way we compose music, hear it, and share it.

Composers will use "connected" instruments that notate the music as it's being played (similar to

Finale's MIDI keyboard), allowing these artists to spend much more time on the music rather

than the process of writing it down. Similarly, an advanced version of Dragon Dictation will be

able to record a singing voice and take down the lyrics and singing notes immediately. These two

advances, combined with progressions in the area of home mixing (futuristic versions of

GarageBand) will allow everyone to be composers: on their phones, on their tablets, and any

other mobile devices, with the ability to instantly share. No longer will music producers and

recording artists jangle the keys to the music kingdom, but rather, the public will have power

over what is heard on the air. "The air," too, will be much different. "Streaming music

subscriptions services like Spotify will continue to grow, letting you listen to millions of songs

from an online cloud. But for those times when you’re not able to get online... you’ll be able to



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hold 20 million [songs] in the palm of your hand. Mobile devices are projected to hit... as much

as one terabyte. The bigger challenge will be engineering a new generation of batteries to keep

you listening" (Kushner).

As the 1999 Sound On Sound article accurately stated, "New developments in technology

often originate in other fields, and are only later applied to the world of music" (Shapton). Music

will continue to benefit from advances in other fields, but it will always maintain its emotional

"human" touch. After all, the goal of a song is to express what words can't, to connect people,

and to exemplify human's proficiency at art. And even if we do not discover new sounds for

music, even if we continue to repeat song structures over and over again, even if the public does

not take advantage of the tools available to make them composers, we will never ever stop

listening to music. Technology has made it easier for us to listen to music, but the music made it

easier for us to listen to ourselves.



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Works Cited

Kaku, Michio. Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily

Lives by the Year 2100. New York: Doubleday, 2011. Print.

Kushner, David. "The Future of Music Technology." IEEE Spectrum. TechTalk, 20 Aug. 2010.

Web. 26 Nov. 2012. <http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/the-

future-of-music-technology>.

Sculley, Alan. "Carly Rae Jepson Enjoys the Life on Bieber's Tour." TribLIVE.com. Tribune

Review, 15 Nov. 2012. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <http://triblive.com/aande/2897705-74/bieber-

jepsen-song-justin-album-kiss-call-maybe-billboard-canada>.

Shapton, Dave. "The Future Of Music Technology." The Future Of Music Technology. Sound On

Sound, Oct. 1999. Web. 26 Nov. 2012. <http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct99/articles/

cutting.htm>.

Will We Ever Run Out of New Music? Perf. Michael Stevens. YouTube. VSauce, 20 Nov. 2012.

Web. 25 Nov. 2012. <http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DAcjV60RnRw>.Citation Style: MLA.

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The State of the Arts in Twenty Years Time.pdf