Which Gear or Software Do You Think Will Most Shape How Music Sounds in the Near Future

Okay, this is kind of an open ended question. I am wondering what piece of gear or software you think lends itself to being misused in such a way that it could become the next audio trend (eg: auto-tune). Or, a design or innovation that will change how music is made (eg: samplers). Do you have any experiences with a piece of gear where you felt like “damn, I don’t feel like I’ve ever heard something like this before”? It could be a compressor, guitar pedal, synth, plug-in, whatever. I’m just curious where people see innovation coming from. I don’t really have any examples of this firsthand. I’ve totally made sounds I have never heard come from gear before but most of the time it is for good reason I’ve never heard anyone else do it.

Just waiting patiently for the Volca Kazoo

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Generative music devices. Just before AI music takes over the World.

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If there is any notable change in how music of the near future sounds (and I am skeptic all of that actually occurring), it’ll be cheap, easy to use (and abuse) and totally ignored by current trendsetters and tastemakers. It’ll likely be utterly, hopelessly uncool, at least at the moment.

Now where did I put that electric crumhorn…?

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Samplers and beat machines, and beat machines and samplers

Scot_, I think you are probably onto something. I am also a skeptic that much will change in the near future (at least in a massive way) But I love the idea of it coming from something cheap and easy to use.

Captain8 - Samplers are what got me thinking about this. They are the instrument that I feel like we haven’t even really scratched the surface of what they can do and the ways they can stretch music.

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MPE? Poly AT? Naw…
iPad? Touchscreens? Naw…
Guitars & basic monotimbral synths. Yah…

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The revival of the Katzenklavier of course!

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Rhythm Wolf

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IMO even synthesizers haven’t been used to the extend possible. This said, what should we expect from new technology?

Maybe I am very wrong, but I have the impression that many performing keyboarders are using synths as sound sources with quite fixed presets. That an electronic instrument can do much more, seems to be overlooked. There is much more possible than using the mod- or pitch-wheel or wiggling the cut-off at times :wink:

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Until the industry (and most consumers) get over their obsession with the past, not much is likely to change.

A sort of utopia would be that school kids get taught more than just a few scales on an old bontempi and that they are taught not just how to code, but how to apply that to music making (a la Max MSP etc.). Then the future of music seems limitless.

As much as I don’t use them, computers are the future of innovation, this current trend for dawlessness and hardware is probably mostly to do with the developmental maturity of DAWs and people getting bored of it. Once someone figures out a way to make using a computer as much fun as using a Digitakt, everyone will flock back to their laptops, as the hardware boom will have plateaued (innovationally speaking) and they’ll all want a bit of the shiny new thing.

As far as identifying the “thing” that pushes music in new directions, who knows. It always feels like everything’s been done already, right up until it hasn’t.

Someone needs to tell all the angry boys that putting a contact mic in a tobacco tin full of nails and crying into a fuzz factory ain’t it though. Not even close.

And no, it’s not going to be the electric kalimba either. So stop it.

I’d like to see some sort of Behringer bending scene take hold, much like the circuit bending and chiptune scene 20 years ago. Think about it, all those cheap clones just begging to be opened up and turned into something more interesting.

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When AI settles in, the human mix of skills+emotions+dreams+… will even be more valuable in the arts to counterpart the robotness of the mainstreams.

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Hoping it will be attitudes and not gear.

Where they cross over is in people’s attitudes towards gear. The classic example is the ‘vintage is better’ attitude, but other takes exist :wink:

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It’s a two way street. Musical innovation drives new musical styles, but those innovations catch on because there is demand for them. People didn’t start playing electric guitar because they thought they were going to change up the sound of music, they just needed to be heard over all those loud goddamn brass instruments that were showing up everywhere. For some time the 4 string banjo was actually preferred to the guitar just so it could cut through.

So ask yourself, what musical innovation would be in demand right now? I’d say AI is about right. We live in the age of content. Quantity matters. Imagine AI algos that help you turn 8 bar loops into full tracks. I think it could lead to some very strange sounds that could then be integrated with more traditional human songwriting.

For example, check out the weird sounds openAI jukebox generates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sFXsP71wfA

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Something like minimoog! :point_up:

P.s

Remember the guitar? And how there was electric guitars befor hendrix?

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I hope that user interface continues to improve, very few electronic instruments have a great UI, where precision, expression, handling and accessibility are the focus. The technology exists for better UI’s but as yet I have not really seen anything too exciting, aside perhaps from bespoke/diy stuff.

IMHO UI is more important than AI, but maybe AI can be employed to improve UI, much more interesting to me than AI generated music.

Dedicated music computers interest me too, but not anything that relies on win/mac/linux.

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AI for pop music, modelling software for hobbyists. A small Industry for physical devices will renkain for the enthusiasts.

Something I’ve been thinking for awhile was the idea of “super chords”. I haven’t figured out how to go about it yet, but the basics of the idea is a single chord being part of a larger chord. Maybe this is already around but going by a different name?

Virus Ti 3 aka Virus Ai

A lot more drum synth stuff. Nobody’s using samples anymore because of pure computing power.

You’re onto some interesting stuff (particularly teaching “music” and flow-based coding), but I want to challenge this part:

I disagree, if we imagine over the short to medium term (I’m thinking ~15 years).

Digitakts are already computers. They’re hardware, a processor, memory, non-volatile storage, and firmware hosting tracker and sample editor software. The trig buttons are basically a Cherry keyboard. We’re living through a massive expansion of places we can place “computers”/processors, and I suspect that’ll continue. Most of “IoT” is rubbish, but the drive to put processors into tools is only going to keep pushing forward for years yet. I think the drive for more “fun” in instruments, toys and creative tools will persist, but it won’t go to the laptop form factor, it’ll go towards novel computers-which-look-like-instruments.

I’ve seen discussions on HackerNews (which is like the Silicon Valley hive-mind) recently about the rise of specialised computing platforms, and the end of general-purpose home computing. A growing proportion of the world only access the internet through a handheld computer (a “phone”) and entirely skipped the desktop/laptop phase. I don’t think it’s a cut-and-dry “end” of “laptops”,. but I’m certain about the widening range of dedicated hardware with “brains”.

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