A.I. Reanimates the Beatles

The whole world-why restrict it-the entire universe-knows that the Beatles have released a song called Now And Then. This Frankenstinian effort was, as the YouTube P.R. says: “brought to life and worked on anew with contributions from all four Beatles.” The reconstruction entailed using AI to extract an old John Lennon vocal track and adding new musical backup.

Now And Then is probably the highest profile use of AI in popular music. It shows us that this technology can do something that couldn’t be done before: separate sounds that had already been mixed together. A machine-learning algorithm is trained to learn sonic patterns and create a neural network capable of isolating individual voices or instruments. It can then re-synthesize them to try and match samples of those instruments or voices. It took Lennon’s voice off the demo cassette tape and recreated it, giving us a sampled version of Lennon’s voice (and Harrison’s guitar).

My own view is that the song is maudlin and turgid; glib romantic tripe surrounded by white-bread music. Disclosure: I feel the same way about Let It Be, a McCartney song knee-deep in pseudo-religious semi-anthemic bathos. Worst of all, I never “got” Imagine. 

Now to something slightly more objective: the music industry is desperate. People don’t want to pay for music and for 15 years, album sales and music sales have declined. MRC Data, a music-analytics firm says that old songs represent 70 percent of the U.S. music sales. 

Record companies are plumbing their catalogues for music that can save their plunging bottom lines. But the real force in music is not record companies which are, in any case, a very small piece of very large international corporations. They are technology companies: Amazon, Google, Apple and Spotify, who own the download market. How many of these companies are out there looking for and signing new musical artists? None. It's no surprise that the music industry will use any tool it can to maximize its resources, especially if this tool simultaneously minimizes expenses.

I’ve read through a number of websites from in and outside the music industry. They acknowledge the drawbacks of AI (in a word: it’s not human), but overwhelmingly embrace the use of the technology. Here are some extracts to give a sense of what I mean.

As one website puts it: “AI can help with tasks such as music recommendation, content curation, and even music composition. By leveraging AI as a tool, the music industry can be at the forefront of the next wave of innovation.”

Another site says: “One of the most significant benefits of AI in music production is the ability to quickly generate new ideas and variations.”

A trope widely used is this: “It has democratized music production, making it accessible to those who may not have traditional musical training or expensive equipment.”

Another website states this “Con”: Because many people see music as such an innately human expression, it is often considered as too precious to impart onto technology. The thought of a computer generating a ‘random’ piece of music that hasn’t been painstakingly created by an artist is almost seen as sacrilegious.” However, a few paragraphs later, we read this: “Instead of shying away from the idea of this Black Mirror-esque future, the best approach to take is one of optimism and curiosity. While there are always bound to be diehard old school musicians who refuse to use tech, as there are readers who still refuse the Kindle, music producers should consider AI as something to be embraced.”

Another acknowledges this issue: “Moreover, while AI can generate music based on patterns and trends, it lacks the ability to understand cultural context and emotional nuance. Music is not just about melody and rhythm; it’s a form of expression that reflects the human experience. AI, as advanced as it may be, cannot replicate this aspect of music creation.”

It seems as though consumers of music are being asked to choose between an archaic “humanistic” attitude that rejects AI, or a “realistic” one which accepts, even appreciates it and, as the technology gets better and better, will narrow the gap between human and machine-made creation to indistinguishability. People will take sides on this and will impute moral and ethical judgements to buttress their positions.

It would be ridiculous to say the aesthetic application of AI falls into the life-or-death category of debates surrounding technologies like cloning, gene splicing or nanotechnology. Some of the debate is morally murkier, but some applications are obviously abhorrent. For example, as used in the streaming cesspool, to avoid having to pay money to flesh and blood musicians.

I love the Beatles. They were a force; born and fostered in an era when a group might make it past a second album that didn’t sell that well. In my youth, “Rubber Soul,” and ”Revolver” competed for turntable time with Miles, Getz and Coltrane. Now, rather than a generative force, they are a symptom of a systemic breakdown. The whole business is reminiscent of the holographic resurrection of dead musicians.

 It's only a matter of time before the Beatles get the Rod Stewart and Ella Fitzgerald treatment, which gives new meaning to the expression “half-dead.” Yes, pairing Rod and Ella is like putting Twinkie creme filling into a Godiva chocolate; like putting Donald Trump's hair on Sophia Loren's head. It shouldn't be conceived of. It shouldn't be done. But it has been, and it will.

Can anything be done? Those few musicians with real power might exert that power to force streaming companies to pay a fair share to artists. We might all demand those changes. We might also take note that the enemy is us and pony up for recorded music the same way we shell out for HBO, to see a movie, a show or a dance concert.

In Praise of Raspberries. A La Recherche du Fruit Perdu

 

Monsieur Proust is welcome to his madeleine. Those little cakes may have a rich provenance, but they are a rather wan substitute for more gorgeous desserts (crème puffs, chocolate mousse, etc). That a madeleine was transmuted by Proust to a “precious essence” can only be ascribed to a hypochondriac’s aversion to leaving his bed. If Proust had smelled and tasted the raspberries in my backyard, his prose would not only have risen to greater heights, he would have been a less dour mec and might even have moved out of his parents’ house.

But I have come to praise raspberries, not bury Proust.

First of all, each raspberry is unique. We’re told as children that no two snowflakes are alike, but all snowflakes taste, smell and look the same-except under a microscope, whereas the variations in size, color, taste and bouquet of raspberries are infinite.

Light pink when emerging, the fruit grows deeper in color, changing over the course of two weeks or so to a deep purple-red. Although a raspberry may be perfectly formed, don’t pick the fruit too early in the cycle. The bouquet is not developed and the taste somehow both flaccid and acrid. As the color deepens the taste and bouquet emerge.

Oenophiles speak of a wine’s “nose” and “body.” The word “raspberry” comes from a mid-15th century word raspise--"a sweet rose-colored wine" and all the complexities imputed to vintages from the Haut-Médoc may be found in this fruit. The bouquet and taste intertwine to create an experience that is pungent and regal; delicate and insouciant; subtle and stentorian.

A raspberry should be eaten in its natural state. Sugar and pectin are no friend to the raspberry, which does not translate well to jelly, preserves, even tarts. Freeze them if you must, but like a person with titanium implants who must respond to excess humidity, they will never be quite the same.

Unlike blackberries, when you pick a raspberry, it will come to your fingers without the central torus: hollow; with nothing pulpy to detract from the taste. When fully matured, the surface texture is pure velvet. A raspberry should yield slightly to the touch, but the tiny sections must cohere. Breeds of raspberries other than my own have many fine qualities, but tend to crumble in the hand, and no matter how quickly you shovel the pieces into your mouth, the experience will be disjointed, like listening to a stereo record through one speaker.

While Proust’s madeleines transported him to les temps perdue, eating raspberries anchors me in the present. It is one of the things in my life that effectively brings me here now. My bushes have yielded fruit annually for the last 20 years, making mid-July glorious even when the weather is not. I have done very little to help my raspberries prosper. Every spring, I cull the dead shoots; no fertilizer, no special watering or weeding.

With apologies to Matthew 6:28-33: Consider the raspberries of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  

                                         

 

Booker Little "Out Front" (Recorded April 4, 1961)

 

The cohort of 1950s trumpet players is a pretty astonishing lot. Booker Little, one of that (often ill-fated) group, died of uremic poisoning at 23 and only recorded between 1959 and 1961. The album Out Front (released in 1961, now being reissued by Candid), is arguably the best recorded representation of his unique voice as trumpeter and composer-arranger. The lineup: Booker Little, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto sax; Julian Priester, trombone; Art Davis and Ron Carter, bass; Don Friedman, piano; and Max Roach, drums. All compositions are by Little.

From Memphis and schooled at the Chicago Conservatory, Little was a master technician on the trumpet. His unique tone managed to be both pleading and stentorian, copper and silver, focused but not excessively narrow. His varied use of vibrato, and of the extreme registers of the horn, together with his compositions, were the tools he used to investigate crucial, foundational aspects of jazz.

Although less bluesy/funky, there’s something of Charles Mingus in Little’s compositions, particularly in the stops and starts, along with the variations in tempo. I also hear similarities to the voicings used by Wayne Shorter in his arrangements, such as, for example, in Freddie Hubbard’s 1963 album Body and Soul. (Why so many Shorter tunes have become standards while Little’s are seldom played may be a result of the often through-composed structure of his compositions and, of course, the brevity of Little’s career).

Little was looking for a certain kind of freedom, but it was not the freedom of Ornette or of Dolphy, though they sound very natural playing side by side. Little’s idea of liberty called for more strictures. “Moods in Free Time” is a good reflection of this. The time here is not “free” in the customary sense. It derives its flexibility from a subtly crafted shifting of time signatures — from 3/4 to 4/4 to 5/4 to 6/4 meter.

The songs “Man of Words “and “Hazy Hues” are actually “program music” — a format seldom approached in jazz. The first is Little’s attempt to describe the journey of a writer confronting a blank piece of paper. Ideas are tested until a pattern emerges; at that point the real work has been accomplished. The second tune, almost a concerto for trumpet, limns a painter at work, starting with the germ of an idea and bringing it to completion.

Despite Little’s technical proficiency and knowledge of harmony, he considered technique less important than communication. Little said, “If you insist that this note or that note is wrong … you’re thinking conventionally–technically, and forgetting about emotion.…There are certain feelings that you might want to express that you could probably express better if you didn’t have that [bounding, continuous] beat. Up until now if you wanted to express a sad or moody feeling you would play the blues. But it can be done in other ways.”

Little’s oeuvre is distinctive and deserves wider attention. This reissue is an excellent place to begin to explore his very brief career. Don’t be surprised if you listen and two thoughts arise: “Why didn’t I know this music?” and ”What if…”

Embalmed, Blotto and Owled: Moving from Dry January into Dry Martini February

 

Edmund Wilson; a man who doesn't look like he enjoys his work.

Otherwise known for more high-fallutin’ work, writer Edmund Wilson did some of his best work when he compiled The Lexicon of Prohibition, in 1927. He said the list was arranged “in order of the degrees of intensity of the conditions which they represent, beginning with the mildest stages and progressing to the more serious…” I’m not certain I agree with Wilson, although what 'half screwed' meant in 1927 may differ from how we see it now. 

Lit, squiffy, oiled, lubricated, owled, edged, jingled, piffed, piped, sloppy, woozy, happy, half screwed, half cooked, half shot, half seas over, fried, stewed, boiled, bent, sprung, crouched, jazzed, jagged, canned, corked, corned, potted, hooted, slopped, tanked, tight, full, wet, high, horseback, liquored, pickled, ginned, shicker (Yiddish-can be either an adjective or a noun), spifflicated, primed, organized, featured, pie-eyed, cock-eyed, wall-eyed, glassy-eyed, bleary-eyed, hoary-eyed, over the Bay, four sheets in the wind, crocked, loaded, leaping, screeching, lathered, plastered, soused, bloated, polluted, saturated, stinko, blind, stiff, under the table, wapsed down, paralyzed, ossified, out like a light, passed out cold, embalmed, buried, blotto, lit up like the sky, sit up like the commonwealth, lit up like a Christmas tree, lit up like a store window, lit up like a church, fried to the hat, slopped to the ears, stewed to the gills, boiled as an owl, full as a tick, loaded for bear, loaded to the muzzle, loaded to the plimsoll mark, to have a bun on, to have a slant on, to have a skate on, to have a snootfull, to have a skinful, to draw a blank, to pull a shut-eye, to pull a Daniel Boone, to have a rubber drink, to have a hangover, to have a head, to have the jumps to have the shakes, to have the zings, to have the heeby-jeebies, to have the screaming-meemies, to have the whoops and jingles, to burn with a low blue flame. 

As of this writing, I'd move "fried to the hat" to the top of the list. Or is it the bottom?