Rick Rubin on AI (& now Graeme Revell, too)

[machinesworking]

Another sub genre of punk is hip-hop. It doesn't get more punk than that. Dudes couldn't play any instruments let alone afford them so what do they use? Turntables. They didn't give a f**k what other musicians were using and they didn't give a f**k that turntables - as instruments - play other peoples work (Copyright infringment).
Dudes couldn't sing worth shit but they didn't give a f**k. Know what they did? They talked. It's called rapping. They talked about real issues and dealings living life on the streets predominantly in the U.S.
Well that and about gettin' down to the groove man let your ass move cause the beat is tight yea let's do it all night yadda yadda blah blah.
To add to what was played on turntables they had drum machines (probably stolen - they didn't give a f**k) and if they didn't have drum machines, they didn't give a f**k, know why? Cause they would just use their mouths. It's called beat boxing. No labels wanted them, no radio wanted them, no problem.....shoot your way in. Start threatening. They had the guns and the man-power from the streets to get their way in. It doesn't get more punk than that. In fact that makes punk rockers seem like silver spoon brats (and I'm pretty sure many of them were).

Loved early hip hop, but being a music dork a few things:
MCs in early DJ sets that became Hip Hop, well the rapping style is directly from the MC, some dude might get up and announce the DJ, tell the crowd to get moving etc. that had been around forever. It pretty much naturally turned into a scat type deal and morphed into rap. DJ's would play the most danceable part of a song over and over to get people moving, and that led to sampling, drum machines etc. No one came in with guns and forced people to put out their records until years later with Death Row, that guys in prison, and the drum machines being stolen, that's kinda a crazy profiling BS thing to say. The truth is the Sex Pistols Steve Jones stole their gear out of the back of David Bowies tour bus. A well documented fact, not stereotyping.
The one rap group where it's well known that they started with drug money was Eazy E a decade or more from raps beginnings, then later Sug Knight was an actual Blood who threatened peoples lives to the point of killing an extra on the set of Straight Out of Compton driving through a crowd of people angry he wasn't getting a cut of the profits etc.

I 100% see a correlation between Punk, Rap, Industrial and the more brutal Metal genres, but it was the original pale ass Punk movement that had petty thieves in the crews, no reason to push that on rap.

[BONES]

I also see that problem with AI, and what I call "averaging out" cuz the biggest share is the math "average" and the "out" is everything else.

You could say exactly the same thing about the music industry as a whole - as the money has disappeared, non-mainstream music has been discarded in favour of the bland and the boring. When, for example, was the last time you heard Nine Inch Nails on the radio? The Tron: Ares soundtrack is the first time in 30 years I've heard NIN without having to go looking for it.

The most steamed song in Australia last year, for the second year running, was Vance Joy's Riptide, a song from 2013 that is so bland, so boring, so utterly inoffensive that I originally thought it was written specifically for a TV commercial (because that's where I first heard it). If that's where AI is headed, it's simply following a trend that's been around for decades, which likely means it will be way more successful than we'd originally imagined.

[Michael L]

If that's where AI is headed, it's simply following a trend that's been around for decades, which likely means it will be way more successful than we'd originally imagined.

Maximising ROI requires that AI go in that SEO-type direction. OpenAI has a multi-billion agreement with iPhone-Jony Ive to design wearable AI so people can use it to avoid making any decisions or learning anything, as they become more conventional, predictable and manipulated by the biases built into the algos of LLMs.
Some people believe that "Human Punk" subcultures will develop as a mental health strategy.

[jancivil]

I don't even understand where this ridiculous idea that anything is "averaged out" by AI even comes from.

I wouldn't know where any particular statement derives, or if this impression is in common currency, but AI is at essence an averaging engine. It does not generate ideas; as one person just put it, it has nothing we can call taste or an opinion or a genuine thought. It has no capacity to reason through any problem. It's utterly dependent on what it finds and it will go strictly by prevalence, ie., averages. So it would be fine for construction of music that is already averaged out, wholly dependent on what one finds and maybe kinda sorta recombines or puts their own words to the thing. Here, however the human is liable to come up with a genuine twist.

There is currenlty absolutely no possibility for a Large Learning Machine Model <- to do any but "average out". What it does is not intelligence.

As to 'punk rock', it originally signaled attlitude(s), didn't it? Even an aesthetic. "AI" hasn't any.

The interest for me is how it calls into question what creating something in a conformist genre or style even means.

[Aloysius]

It wasn't about hey, let's make an angry style of music for no reason. People really felt they had NO FUTURE. The climate was not very positive.

There are millionaires out there today pretending to be punk and/or hip hop.

There are billionaires out there pretending to be victims of whitey. How they are oppressed and held back. I'm sure the looney left will tell us what their religion has to say about that.

Come on. We worship them because?

[VOODOO U]

It wasn't about hey, let's make an angry style of music for no reason.

For many yes it was. Just make loud "angry" music (more of a release), do drugs, have sex, leave town and play in clubs etc etc.
It was something fun to do besides doing the responsible adult thing known as "work".

People really felt they had NO FUTURE. The climate was not very positive.

The climate is never positive and i wont bother listing numerous examples of that. The difference now is people are preoccupied with internet life. It's a mesmerizing drug. Akin to a parent giving their kid a pocket video game to keep them occupied while the parent does grocery shopping.
It can almost eliminate "punk".

There are millionaires out there today pretending to be punk and/or hip hop.

Well i think the whole sex pistols thing was just a fabricated concept to help promote the punk mindset. It was heavily funded.
To help push that punk image to the masses they build marketing stories like "Steve Jones stole gear from David Bowie and blah blah blah."
All marrketing hype. It makes the band seem like legit evil punks. Johnny is highly intelligent so i think he just did a lot of weed and coffee and used punk and music as a way to pay the bills.
Is it possible steve really did steal from bowie? I guess. I'm not a sock puppet to fall for it at face value though.
So basically, it's all.millionaire fun and games. Always has been in my observation.

[Aloysius]

He gave the drummer some money on his show to pay him back. Jonesy's Jukebox.

I think the guys were for real but McLaren saw opportunity. He was not punk himself. Without him maybe the thing would not have taken off in the UK at least. It's intertwined I think. McLaren being the guy who saw potential and produced an overall vision.

[Opaque]

I don't even understand where this ridiculous idea that anything is "averaged out" by AI even comes from.

I wouldn't know where any particular statement derives, or if this impression is in common currency, but AI is at essence...

I know it's very easy to mess up with multiple quotation layers, but just wanted to point out that the thing quoted is from BONES' reply to me, as I agree almost entirely with what you're saying.

[Aloysius]

The lefties have their list of good billionaires.
The righties have their list of good billionaires.

Astonishing really.

I 100% agree with VOODOO U about the internet being a strong sedative. Things are quite possibly even worse now than they were in the seventies. Zero hours contracts. No possibility of ever owning a home. Wars. The list goes on and on.

[machinesworking]

Is it possible steve really did steal from bowie? I guess. I'm not a sock puppet to fall for it at face value though.

You made up a story about black people stealing drum machines then this nonsense.

Your flat out lunacy here pretty much sums up what's wrong with the world today. Nothing is real unless it aligns with your preconceived world view, and you pretty much admit it here.

[Aloysius]

AI spreading misinformation again I assume.

During the 1977 NYC blackout, widespread looting occurred, with many stores targeted, including hi-fi and music shops, leading to the theft of DJ equipment like turntables and mixers, which ironically helped launch the hip-hop movement by making gear accessible to aspiring DJs who couldn't afford it, including figures like Grandmaster Caz who took equipment himself

[ksandvik]

Punk is a good example of the quote: "Revolutions eat their children."

[ksandvik]

Substitute this with <any political movement>, <music style>, <tech bro hype from Silicon Valley> and so on....

[Bunny_boy]

Substitute this with <any political movement>, <music style>, <tech bro hype from Silicon Valley> and so on....

Dogs eat their breakfast?

[Freaqpeak]

No one works alone. Does it really matter if your bassline was laid down by a session bassist or AI? Or if your string arrangement was done by an orchestrator or AI? Historically, these are things that would be outsourced when making a record.

Likewise, does it matter if you use AI for programming grunt work instead of hiring a code monkey to do it? The purpose is the final product, not the process that got you there.

Why don't you hire a lyrics-ape to do better lyrics for you instead?
The time you try to make cool and unique lyrics are just a waste of time when AI can do it in seconds. AI does better lyrics in a few seconds, and the final product is the purpose so what does it matter? I mean people outsource lyrics to someone else all the time.. use AI instead, much faster and accurate if you know how to use the tool that it is.

Vibe coding can be used for things that have already been done before. But AI can't invent new things. Period. Todays wave of ML and AI isn't "learning by doing/trying" - from a "how nature works" perspective.
AI cant do anything without some human first telling it WHAT the correct answer should be or what the result should be or what to look for based on what you have uploaded to it first. Everything is a matter of guessing within context and just guessing the next word or note to play - based purely on what it has been "learned" off previously by humans.

The journey and the process of learning, doing and creating is a huge part of the purpose for humans in large. Happiness is directly coupled with the process of curiosity, learning and exchanging ideas - and relationships - with other beings. This will continue to be true no matter what happens in the future, even though some people don't see it.