Jazz Blues – Bites – Artificial intelligence is invading these musical forms as well, which is a problem։ Videos

Reference of our Association։ As the most faithful readers know, the role of this column of thoughts out loud is to point the finger at open problems. And the relationship between jazz and electronics is certainly one of these, even if it is the object of a certain repression: which does not mean that it does not exist, indeed, the repressed is more of a problem than what is explicitly recognized as such.

Important preliminary clarification: here we are not talking about amplifiers and electrified instruments, but about synthesizers and similar, about PCs and tablets, about more or less self-sufficient and autonomous software. In a few words, electric and electronic, watts and bytes are not synonymous: electric has already been metabolized for decades in the history of this music.

In accordance with the vision of this blog, we look at the issue from the perspective of the listener, especially the one who has years of jazz experience behind him and who therefore has in fact his own implicit and tacit idea of ​​the irreducible essence of this music, a definition that is instead extremely problematic to articulate with clarity and rigor on a theoretical level.

Years after the penetration of digital in Afro-American music, the relationship with it by many listeners is still difficult and problematic. And this despite a now prolonged and very often decidedly willing attendance.

The attitude of a good part of musicians is different, for many of whom the world of electronics appears to be a wonderful and apparently inexhaustible ‘toy box’. Apart from the fact that the use of digital seems to respond to a trend that is now widespread and essential, unless it calls itself out of the central current of contemporaneity.

But in the darkness of the audiences, jazz’s irresistible weapon of seduction has been and still is its ‘organic’ nature: a music in which man and instrument interpenetrate each other, with the former trying to impress upon the latter his personal and individual style, his own sound that distinguishes him from all others. Physicality, total adherence to a vital rhythm that is always elastic and irregular, has always been an essential characteristic that radically differentiates it from the rigid abstractions that academic music, especially European music, has sprung up into.

In the digital field, at least in the experiments carried out so far, these characteristics of irreducible individuality, of ductility, the man who challenges the instrument even by forcing its technical limits, have not been seen so far. And given the current technology, it also seems difficult to glimpse them in the short term.

But let’s be fair, and dust off a golden maxim of my spiritual guide: “music is industry”, especially jazz which has always juggled material and economic conditioning of all kinds, largely unknown to European academic music.

The long-term crisis of the independent music market leads to performances in increasingly smaller and sparser groups, if not even solo. Clearly electronics can replace para-orchestral effects in the impossibility of producing it with human instrumentalists: legitimate and ingeniously creative.

Michael Leonhart: a fine example of ‘complementary’ electronics that allows you to put a wide-ranging project into play with relatively limited resources. Here too, keep an eye on the two ‘Suites’, fascinating. Gil Evans smiles from above.

But at the bottom of this brilliant shortcut lies a significant pitfall: the onset of a syndrome of absolute individual control over music, which excludes dialectical interaction with others. The legendary ‘interplay’, so to speak. Even the very last Miles Davis, the one from ‘Tutu’ onwards, was seduced by these sirens: I remember him saying that if he could he would have gone on stage alone with at most the company of the sorcerer’s apprentice Marcus Miller, a great specialist of 1986 electronics that today appears like a tender toy. But immediately afterwards he added: “But the public wants to see people on stage….” Before giving vent to half-hearted anathemas against the diabolical and cynical Miles, let’s remember that the tendential logic of certain overdubbings and montages of the 50s Tristano moved in the same direction… ;-).

This solipsistic temptation appears to be in radical contradiction with the peculiar and innovative characteristic of jazz: that of being a music that is made, created together, without giving rise to the dictatorship of the omniscient composer that has brought European academic music to a standstill.

Instead, there is a use of electronics aimed at expanding the limits of the acoustic instruments that you have in your hands or to create a connective texture between them: this ‘complementary’ use of digital has appeared especially in the orchestral field with rather significant and interesting results. Maybe we will be able to witness a return of ‘big bands in pocket format’: who knows, let’s hope.

But let’s go back to the fatal enchanting sirens. Another is that of ‘music ex machina’, of electronics that completely frees itself from human control and generates music autonomously, even overwhelming the intervention and contribution of the human operator who tries to communicate with the machine. In a word, ‘Blade Runner’ in music.

Let’s also put aside the fact that the “electronics that make music” almost always ends up generating sequences that are not only repetitive, but also rigid and schematic, the antithesis of that swing elasticity that is essential in jazz. But there are also other critical issues.

Jason Lindner is someone who largely builds electronics himself, and you can hear it. Following him in his adventures, unfortunately McCaslin has taken easier paths

First of all, ‘who plays what’ is still an essential question for a good part of true jazz enthusiasts: a situation in which the musician man is confused with the musical android is not only paradoxical but also seems sterile of those results of personalization and individual creativity whose importance we spoke about earlier.

Second. In light of the current developments of Artificial Intelligence, it is quite easy to predict that it will be much more skilled in managing the combinatorial possibilities of the vast panoply of musical electronics than the artisan creator man, who concretely risks being marginalized if not even supplanted. Above all because the latter often enters the labyrinth of mirrors of digital music without that clarity of ideas and sense of proportion necessary to orient oneself: in the labyrinth of mirrors the temptation of randomness is fatal.

Finally, a final observation that already arises from the experience of today’s live music. In the studio, many things are possible, including a complete set-up of the electronic instruments and their full control. And in any case, if something goes wrong, there is always the second take. A possibility that is not given on stage…. And live you have to deal with the babel of computer incompatibilities, with technical incidents, with the indocility of many software and hardware.

How many times have we seen sampled sequences, loops and the like slip out of hand with tragicomic and embarrassing results. In short, the musician finds himself paying for what can be defined as the ‘fatigue of performance’, which takes away resources and concentration from the creative work that instant jazz composition requires. Not to mention the fact that often the audience will notice that they are faced with a reduced and weakened version of the elaborate and hyper-controlled productions heard on record.

Anyway, and just to avoid being seen as reactionaries, this papello is interspersed with some clips that exemplify happy and promising moments of the encounter between jazz and digital. The fact remains that we must always be ready for a radical reset, as Stanley Kubrick’s prophetic and visionary “2001: A Space Odyssey” taught us way back in 1969. Milton56

Cinematic year 2001, spaceship Discovery near Jupiter. The persuasive mainframe HAL9000 has incurred an unpleasant ‘system error’ that has transformed the hibernating astronauts into ice statues to face a journey of several light years beyond the solar system. With impeccable logic he proceeds to remove the consequences of the inconvenience by also murdering the two vigilant astronauts who begin to doubt him. The first crime succeeds, but with Keir Dullea/Dave it’s a whole different story…

With a crazy sortie without a respirator Dave manages to re-enter the spaceship from an emergency entrance, dribbling the blocks placed by HAL (try to transliterate a letter forward… Keir armed with a screwdriver enters the chamber containing the mainframe’s memory units….

And here the Italian voice actors have a stroke of genius that surpasses the American original: listen to the voice of HAL ‘in agony’…. Dave has evened the score, but has transformed himself into a castaway of space-time on a ship now uncontrollable, adrift in the galaxies beyond..