WHAT IF? ALGO-RHYTHMIC

 

APP -TASTIC : 

 THE MUSIC OF TOMORROW  

ALGO-RHYTHMIC 

WHAT IF?  

               COPY-WRITE BOTS KILL OFF CREATIVITY ?

                           

In the wake of the latest Ed Sheeran plagiarism case, it will soon become fight or flight time for most musicians, struggling to survive in the post pandemic/New Cold War  world of the 21st century.  

All in all, if we are not vigilant, we may see the end- game for rock music as we know it. 

Plagiarism is a very loose word. Particularly when it comes to music. And music in itself is always evolving into something else.  

One idea builds upon another and follows trends. If there wasn’t a little leeway, then we wouldn’t have Rock & Roll sprouting from the blues, or Blue Grass evolving from Country music. Heavy Metal and Punk is the extreme of Rock & Roll and Grunge is built upon Punk and Heavy Metal combined. So no band can ever exist in a vacuum from other musicians. 

They learn and thrive off influencing each other. And yes, that includes lifting guitar riffs but hopefully to make them into something new.  It draws the line between plagiarism and homage, it defines copying from emulating and without that give and take system, there is no future for Rock & Roll. 

There was a time when The Beatles had to cross Liverpool just to knock on a fellas door and find out what a B9 chord sounded like. And if it wasn’t for the US Navy and the shipping trades, Rock & Roll itself would never have proliferated across Britain, Europe and into Communist Russia. 

With the advent of the internet, everyone knows who the Foo Fighters are, even kids forming rock bands, in what we class as third-world countries and war-torn provinces such as Iraq etc. But that proliferation might all end in the wake of unchecked artificial intelligences. 

Put it this way: once rock music becomes 'algo-rythmic' or app friendly, it will spell certain doom for all musicians concerned. The digital age (with its army of Copyright Bots) will essentially block all artists from attempting to put their tunes online, unless it passes certain music ‘requirements’. Thus there will be no more blues music or rock n roll because anyone creating a song with a 12bar riff, will be subject to copyright. 

Any A-minor to G’s or three chord progressions, would cease altogether because there’s only so many combinations and all of them and (again) would be subject to copyright. That’s before we even get into Melodies of songs and that in itself would be up against the firing squad, if we allow a free-for-all with lawsuits, on any given doe-ray-me. 

Drum beats wouldn't be safe either. Dave Grohl would be out of a job for sure. Drummers would get sued for playing Motown and disco beats. And it wouldn't just end there. Drum & Bass, Hip Hop, traditional Rap etc anything that uses a ‘sampled beat’ or a borrowed rhythm would all End. 

Technology itself would become the judge of what music we should be playing and in doing so would be become the soul arbiter of what is musically permissible. In the future, Digital guitars (with laser strings) and other instruments might even flag you with a copyright warning for strumming certain chords that might sound a bit like Stairway and essentially block you from playing that song. 

Hell, such futuristic instruments might not even let you play a chord at all, unless it passed some Algo-Rhythmic Authentication app, that ultimately only allows Gobbledy-Gook to be played. You wanna play that A-minor to G idea? Forget it. Your new Yamaha Digi-Lazer-Guitar3000 has now blocked your ass from ever playing that riff. 

Yep before you know it, we'll all be playing the equivalent of those kiddy toy guitars with the stupid buttons on the fret board. 

So yeah, in the future it would probably get to a point where music, (as we know it) would become unlistenable and only good for radio jingles to sell shower products. In order to survive, young up-and-coming musicians of the future, would have to replace the traditional 4/4 timing we all love, with new timings altogether, so complex, to the point that most conventional western music would go out the window and Dave Grohl wouldn’t know what to do with himself. 

Thus the music of tomorrow will be as alien to us, as our current music might be to the ears of the Victorians. That said, rules are made to be broken. And that is what musical expression is really all about.