MIT MEDIA LAB: TOWARDS NEW MUSICS: WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR SOUND CREATIVITY

 READING NOTES

• The Prospects of Recording, Glenn Gould (1966), set out to revolutionise the dreary elevator music into something that enriched the ear drums.
• Gould thought that suscepting people to this "background music", could train listeners to be more sensitive to their surroundings, including the structural forms, buildings and hidden meanings of music. 
• However, this did not pan out for him, later the magnetic tape recording was born which, allowed for songs to be recorded and distributed on a wider scale 
• Streaming music and music distributed via the internet has become the "elevator music" of today
• The fact they offer endless songs and create playlists for the customer based on thier likes is downgrading music's potential to create something new, instead its just generated sounds following a trend. 
• Could there be a way to use the fluidity of streaming services and music to create something different? Something that will evolve the more you hear it? Like an abstract way of replicating a CD or record, one scratch on the CD changes the whole thing. Its not something we liked but, it involved an interaction. 
• Can listeners and the environment play a role in listening to the music?
• The process of recorded music has made it static. The songs are maybe too refined, too edited and tuned, until it really is not the song it was in the beginning. 
• The future holds a new wave of music, an evolved version where it is no longer static recording, being a more dynamic interchangeable sound 
• Potential of music no longer being the output but the system itself
• Charles Holbrow is working on "evolving media" environment. This is where the composition of music will change over time. 
• A feedback loop that causes a recording to permanently update itself based on how it is consumed and shared by the internet. 
• "To make this possible, he is re-designing multiple existing technologies, from the software that we use to record, synthesise and mix music; to the cloud servers that stream content to listeners; as well as the playback apps on listeners' devices — interconnecting them all in a single, iterative platform, allowing for:
• Notation and annotation by the artist to be bundled like enhanced, hyperlinked liner notes.
• Compositions could be updated or revised, either by the artists or algorithmically.
• It becomes much more practical for other artists to remix, cover, and collaborate.
• The system leaves behind a history of the song's evolution, a record of that song's compositional process.
• This "procedural" content could produce "infinite compositions" that evolve forever.
• It could be that, as with Snapchat, only the current state of the evolving composition would be available to listeners or collaborators, then gone forever, making forward evolution an essential – and only partially controllable – part of the composition itself".
• Critiques say that popular music is beginning to sound more and more similar
• Streaming services very rarely promote new, or interesting music, mainly just the same as what you have been listening to, therefore dulling your exploration of music