@tzzsmk - thanks for two nice comments.
Tempting to write an essay supporting your comments - I'll try to brief instead

In your first comment

Thanks for describing the main issue so well. I would contest (only slightly) your last sentence where you said
> "that to me, seems pretty impossible"

The current 'humanising' features, found in various disguises, in lots of software are obviously very limited.
They are very 'mickey mouse' - but it's always worth a laugh to check them out.

How smart can these humanising features become with future generations of AI?
A few personal predictions:-
[1] I expect to see lots of clever 'stylised' facilities that offer things like
- "make the drums more laid back 'in the style of' popular drummer X"
- "make the bass more pushy 'in the style of' popular bass player Y"
[2] I predict that many or most listeners will be unable to tell the difference between the humanising AI and a human performer.
[3] I predict real musicians will always be amused or insulted and only very rarely impressed.

I'll be happy to use whatever I can make work - no rules about what's correct!

==

In your second comment

I like your sentence
> "because repetitive parts within a composition are core component of music composition for centuries"

- Without 'some' repetition there would be no patterns to recognise.
- Without patterns to recognise, all we would hear is chaos
The trade off is always between "give my brain what it's already heard" versus "give my brain something new"
That is a core issue for all art at every level.
In music it's relevant at the broad composition level and at the micro scale of articulating notes and at all stages in between.

Everyone has their own boredom threshold (and we're all entitled to our own biased preferences)
If I hear four bars start to repeat, there had better be something different the second time round or I'm going to be immediately bored.
And hopefully those changes will be everywhere, in the composition, and in the performance, and in the sound sculpting.

 

I understand the reason for loops .. especially when your a major producer and are expected to pump out hit after hit ... but it still feels like im sleeping with another dudes girlfriend and not mine .. if that makes sense

 

I understand your argument
but having trouble figuring out whether you're calling it a guilt trip or a recommendation.

 

TRUE: @Epcot, can you pretty please throw-up a link to a piece of music or a song that satisfies your criteria?
FALSE: I'd pay top dollar to see you wonk your warez on the dancefloor.

 

I second this. Please share a link to (preferably modern-day)music you would consider not "loop-y", it'll make it much easier to discuss then.

 

I've been listening to a lot of Mozart these days and discovered he has a very intricate way of using loops that form phrases that form movements that change scales but have intervals that remain constant which makes him my favorite loop master of all time.

 

Mozart's set of variations on 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'; allegedly written as piano exercises for his music students.

Always the same - always different, in a gobsmacking kind of way.
Irritatingly brilliant!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCKBl-TpRzc

 

Interesting request.

You see, the influx of foreign cultures from all over the world into Western music has driven it to sheer stupidity.

This is why it is not possible to give a notable example of contemporary music. Rhythm in Western music today is so stupid that it destroys all music. Until the attacking rhythms are expelled to their original homelands, we will not see rationality in music.

 

A loop or a sample can be another instrument, texture, or a starting point for a song. I don't make music with guitars, I'm not going to say all music doesn't need a guitar in it. OP please don't add using loops to the pile of things being canceled in 2020. We can use 2020 tech to make a said loop turn into something it never was. Tools like reTune, Pitchmap, melodyne, and loopcloud can morph and alter a loop to become a new thing entirely.

Loops are such great tools for artists who want an element in their song without going through the pain of recording it themselves. If I want an African tribe choir in the breakdown of my song I'm not going to fly to Africa live with a tribe for a week mic them up and do multiple takes. If you have that kind of money and time feel free to do you boo boo. I'd rather go through my loops find an element that fits. maybe retune it to be in key with my song and keep it moving.

 

For argument's sake. this song is entirely an altered chaka khan sample throughout. its a dancefloor classic with multi millions of plays:

https://www.whosampled.com/sample/41/Stardust-Music-Sounds-Better-With-You-Chaka-Khan-Fate/

 

That is deliberate xenophobic garbage.

Either you actually believe it, in which case you are beyond contempt
or you said it just to provoke, in which case you're a boring offensive troll.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and kindly assume that your inner and outer troll just exploded again.
(the lesser of two evils)

Your comments are incoherent (as they often are) and they're deliberately trying to be offensive.
For me that means they are pure garbage.

 

Well considering all the musical ideas we have are just recycled over and over since the days of classical composition, might as well just throw music in general out the window altogether.

 

@curtified, I love the way people can agree on how various ideas and techniques can enable each of us to pursue our individual creativity. It's why I can genuinely enthuse over, and totally agree with, everything you said in the comment above and then still have my own totally different personal (biased) opinion and taste in music. So, what did I think of the track you posted here

I can hear and appreciate how the artise(s) enjoyed being creative with their morphing of the chaka khan fragment.
I can acknowledge that they had a hit with it too (good for them) and that entertained millions of people (again good).
But I (personally) couldn't (quite literally could not) bear to listen to that for my own listening pleasure.
I endured it just once to hear what was involved.
I was technically interested - but musically and emotionally bored to death the whole time.

Ain't it wonderful (seriously) that we have so many differences in personal tastes.
It did at least remind me that the original artiste - Chaka Khan - is cool and that she seemed to surround herself with some great musicians too. I can definitely enjoy listening to that.

 

for f#ck's sake fTRoLLster...

 

That

And that (good one pal)

@Epcot is the former nick-named Foster, a provoker-style troll who has been banned from here like 10 times in the last 4 years.
He starts threads pretending to ask or share his opinions only to answer himself babbling polemic shit in order to make us argue with him and each other.

The best way to deal with him is to downrate and report him, not to reply. Of course you do what you feel like guys.

 

I fully agree. We all have our own personal taste in the type of music we enjoy, make, etc.

There isn’t a single true path to life. I don’t understand how so many people believe that their life experiences are the way everyone else has to live.

Enjoy life!

Enjoy the music you want while u are here.

enjoy the food you want while you are here

Do or don’t practice your own religion while you are here

have sex with whoever you want while you are here!

one thing we don’t know for sure is this life being a loop. Take advantage while you can

 

You said (or maybe asked)...
> I don’t understand how so many people believe that their life experiences are the way everyone else has to live.
Not sure I'll ever understand it either, so not sure if this partially explains it.
I think people guilty of that kind of prejudice are nearly always very insecure, and usually tiny-minded as well.
They crave security, are fearful of change, and don't have the capacity to cope with change,
or feel the joys that change can bring.
Their only option is to wish the world was downgraded to be the same as they are.
On an unkind day, I just call it sad and pathetic.

 

where can i sign that petition.

 

why not just erase the concept of Western music instead?.. and go back to the ancient music concepts?

 

the discussion about mozart/bach is interesting.

i think you have to differentiate between 3 types of "loops".

1.)
the most obvious is using a sample and loop it again and again. this is the worst of all, and under all aspects.

it is tasteless, shows that no effort is put into it, it lacks being a custom composition at all, and the brain can easy track that it is a digital sample. (there is even a term for describing this effect from the 90ies - but i cant figure it out now.)

2.)
the repetition of a melody or the use of ostinatos, or the appearance of more-or-less constant percussion elements in a song.

or, of course, a major grammar system with 3 or 4 sections, verse, refrain, guitar solo, outro, you name it.

this is, well... simply put, the difference between pop music and other music (wheras a mozart menuette or rondelle or a middle age folk song would have be filed unter "pop".)

3.)
the repetition of structures which do consist of a lot more than just the repetition.
this is absolutely "legit", if not required to create a good piece of music.

...

perfect repetetion and absolute random are almost unusable to create something aesthetic.

joachim ernst behrend, niklas luhmann, others, have tought us why humans like some sounds (or melodies, or geometric figures), and the answer is shockingly simple: when their structure is similar to our own physical structure.

now how does that look like? well, in nature, everything can be described by its order, and the order of the nature is sometimes called "chaos", sometimes we also talk about "fractal" sctructures.

fractals are based on small integer number systems - with moments of self-similarity and with other moments with "errors" - and of an infinite complexity.

you can try yourself:

- repeat the same 5 notes over and over again.

- let a sequencer play random notes acreoss the whole piano spectrum

- repeat the same 5 notes over and over again, but transpose the notes for +3 every 12 beats (mathematically: making a pattern out of a complex number), and dont use a sequencer but play it yourself on a pinao and record it. (mathematically: allowing errors)

which one do you like most? which one can you listen longer to?

(if 1, you are probably an autist. nothing wrong with that, just sayin.)

mozart and bach didnt know shite about this, but they are probably the most famous composers because they used such structures.
this stuff is great. but noone really wants to hear those lame etudes by diabelli or six hours of white noise, because it lacks that "self-similar small integer number" stuff.

and i can detect a computer genrated "random" melody after about 15-20 notes when i hear it.