Futuristic music and synths

The Lounge General Discussion
#34

This opening melody sounds like the future to me. I remember hearing this when the release was fresh and I thought “holy shit, the future is going to be amazing and we’re going to drive it…”

This track, to me at least, was emblematic of the optimism of the coming interconnected world. I’ve been dying to hear Uwe Schmidt’s opinions regarding this release in retrospect. It was prophetic yet the social dynamic of interconnectedness has become mostly a huge disappointment I feel, as people use it for distractions instead of problem solving.

PS, I’d be eternally grateful for a PM of Uwe’s contact details.

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#35

As I was contemplating what I listen to that I would consider futuristic, I started to see that it’s really about what comes off as sounding or seeming timeless. Björk Vespertine still seems fresh whenever I revisit it and it’s almost 17 years old now! I also believe it works both ways because you can have a modern record that mimics older music and does it well enough that it will seem timeless.

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#36

Agreed. I think Homogenic occupies a special space as well, maybe more so if one understands the context of contemporary releases at the time. Much of Homogenic was done with a MPC2000.

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#37

Absolutely, I read an article not too long ago about Homogenic and how crazy it is when measured against the contemporary records of the day, and again whenever I listen to it I’m still blown away. Edit:(here’s the article https://www.stereogum.com/1963786/homogenic-turns-20/franchises/the-anniversary/)

I’m thinking I may have to weird out my younger coworkers tomorrow with a Björkathon

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#38

I think the Waldorf Quantum is a good example of a ”futuristic” synth.

To me, futuristic music has no 12TET tunings nor familiar 4/4 rhytms… So it will not be popular any decade soon :diddly:

#39

  • Syl Kougai’s ΙΧΘΥΣ is the most futuristic album I can think of.

  • IMO music from the future would be found on SoundCloud more than on Spotify :wink:

  • Without necessarily sounding futuristic per se, the collective I play with is constantly trying to explore instinctively uncharted territories, in a forward thinking manner. I wonder where we’ll stand in a few years but we’ll definitely not sound the same nor like any past band, I guess.

  • Going modular lately, I totally understand why this sounded futuristic in the 70s, and still naturally gives birth to experimental music today.

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#40

To heck with that! I’m living in Back to the Future pt 2(the good part- with hoverboards).

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#42

Agree +1, when we talk about future, it inherently includes everything that has preceeded, everything that has survived.
I think quite a bit about the future, and, even the possible theory of the Future dictating the Past. It takes another type of thinking beyond binary. I feel that things are eventually, even past this Age going organic, when all machinery both natural and artificial share information and method. (A glimpse of the future is rooted in the past.)
There seems to be a narrowing, a unifying principle. The present is very much concerned with exploration and exhange of information and pushing boundaries, I would say the purpose is to arrive again at a larger mutual boundary, which is going to be hightened by our common interest in basic survival.

So, as far as music and instrumentation, I always pictured a techno-tribal society: the overriding context going back to primitive ritual and ceremony in a world even hyper-socialized and structured out of necessity. I do not think there will be many new musical inventions, but tech augmentations to ones that have carried strings, or made of wood, metal, etc., electro-acoustics, new methods of stimulating the air, moving it, perhaps even directly to neurons…
Plus, there may be new materials, too, or genetic alteration of materials and highly personalized, interchangable components- think the modular industry going mass scale, customized printed components on the cheap.
It is more likely in the near future it will be more common to sell ideas/schemes and fabrication to consumers than actually set up shop. I am just not seeing too many Apples in the future, I suppose there will always be some, but I am semi-inspired by the tech malls in China, with the plethora of copies, and parts and young people hacking away and the demystification of tech. We are all simply going to HAVE to be programmers, and necessity requires decentralization.
Add with this AI and biotech, and computing on the atomic scale/optics, our own bodies will again have a new “sacred” meaning. But, again, an ethics of tech will have be the final say, as the present cause of invention “just because we can” will seem irresponsible and regressive.

So, in my mind what will be most important is not HOW it will be played, but WHY, which will reflect a paradigm after all knowable knowledge and power has been acquired.

#43

Interesting point of view, @MixedSignals…
May I ask use your words in my next gig ? I was looking for a similar text…

Btw, Blade Runner is still future to me, when a lot of other imagined futures have decayed to some clichés…
How artists’ projections shape our vision of future?

#44

Sure, why not!

I don’t necessarily think artists in general have power to shape, which suggests a type of control- maybe- but instead drawing out the mass subconscious that is already there.

#45

Thx, dear :slight_smile:

I was more thinking of some artist’s vision shaping the future, not really the artist themselves.
Like, a perception, a projection is made public / set free and the crowd is making it is own.
In such way, the artist doesn’t really have control on what they unleashed, and they might well spent the rest of their life chasing this momentum…

#46

utilising four-part harmony theory to support Trip Hop melody lines in a mellifluous fashion whilst maintaining a fresh attitude, could be possibly futuristic from some perspectives.

it might or might not be easy to come up with a cool melody line that makes sense yet doesn’t dance all over the place. but to then complement that line with another one or two concurrent lines that interweave and interplay enjoyably is pretty cool - and potentially futuristic… or at least, fairly cinematic :joy:

new styles of beats either reinterpreted or newly sequenced are often a strong indicator of difference between timezones.

#47

Future always sounds like what we imagine it sounding it like today. In the 90s pretty much nobody would have thought that in the 2010s slowing down 80s synth funk or speeding up pop songs and anime openings would even count as music, let alone spawn their own subgenres and subcultures.

For a less outlandish example, the 90s dance scene probably didn’t think that in 2010s the most popular electronic dance music genre would (at least for a while) basicaly be random honks over mid-tempo 4/4 jackhammer beats. The copyright lawyers of the era probably dreams of hip-hop stripped off all sampling and reduced to an ultra-minimalistic synthetic style, but Trap was never an inevitability.

It doesn’t even take 20 years to be completely myopic about what is around in the corner. Nobody in the early 2000s thought that there would be very soon commercial boom centered around basicaly slowed-down, shuffled Neurofunk with jarring trance/house sections glued on top. And at the peak of the Dubstep boom nobody probably thought that soon producers would turn their eyes several decades backwards and Synthwave would boom, and suddenly the future would sound just like a more polished version of the past.

Our perspective is limited, the future is entirely inscrutable. For all we know music in the 2030s could be acoustic after a solar flare has wiped out all the electronics. The future sounds exactly like what you think it will sound like, and it will sound like nothing you imagined once it has arrived.

If robots forced me at gunpoint to speculate about the Next Big Thing I would say it would be something like Footwork or other genre with comparatively unusual beats. EDM and Dubstep succesfully assaulted the pop sensibilities built around melodies and harmonies with their near amelodic, borderline unharmonic krrrzzts, wub wubs, toots and bwäääääps. The 4/4 and syncopated kick-snare-kick-snare are the next ones that are gonna get vaporized. Or then not.

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#49

somehow this track seems incredibly meaningful … or perhaps the buildup to the chorus rocks my world … or the background synths in verse 2 …

and the lyrics with the ironic rephrasing at the completing verse outro …

One step ahead of you
stay in motion, keep an open mind
Love is a race won by two
Your emotion, my solitude
If I stop I could lose my head
So I’m losing you instead
Either way I’m confused
You slow me down, what can I do?
There’s one particular way I have to choose
One step ahead of you
Always someone makes it hard to move
She says, Boy I want you to stay
But I save it all for another day
If I stop I could lose my head
But I’m ready for romance
Either way I’m confused
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
I can only stay
One step ahead of you
Da, da, da, da, da
Da, da, da, da
Da, da, da, da
Da, da, da, dumb
Stop, I confess sometimes
I don’t know where I’m going
Part of me stays with you,
I’m slowing down, what can I do
It’s hard to stay one step ahead of you
(Uh huh)
One step ahead of you
Time is running out
Catching up with you
One step ahead of you
When I hold you close
Can I really lose?
One step ahead
Only one step ahead
She’s one step ahead of you

#50

Future in music has little to do with the specific sound and more to do with the harmony and composition. Mostly with harmony. Gear dos not matter.

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#52

True. Well, I think the sounds are and will remain important too, but definitely composition, and it definitely won’t rely on gear.

#53

Hehe so True

#54

Always have always will… rely on gear that is. Take the electric guitar for example. The gear is actually what makes the innovation possible

#55

Sure, but it’s not a geeky matter of a “Yahama H3944” vs a “Kurzweil T2000” or whatever, in my opinion. A synth sounds like a synth at this point in time, unless you’re a geek like us, and the truly innovative sound design/compositions won’t rely on the miniscule differences between modern day synths (was what I meant with my comment) - wavetable vs analog sinewave with waveshaper and this and that filter, it’s just not really a massive difference. Potentially opening a can of worms here, and I know synths sound differently obviously, but by and large, they’re kind of the same thing. :slight_smile:

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#56

Synths are slowly evolving, just like the piano and guitar have done before. (In that sense, even 100 years ago, development was dependent on technological advances)

Obviously it’s people who create change, not technology…

People are slower to change than technology is, perhaps, which is why we have so many analog synths about these days, but in time, new and exciting tech will allow smart people to make new and exciting music. I hope. :slight_smile: