Analysis of Technology
This week's topic from ITEC was emerging technology and interestingly, a look at technology throughout history, some predictions that had weight and were fully realized after some time, and some predictions that completely missed the mark. One of my favorite examples from this week was the future of flying cars and how it was fantasized and predicted to overtake ground vehicles. Of course that was first predicted in the early 1900's by Henry Ford, it is now 2023 and to no one's surprise, flying cars are nowhere to be found amongst the common folk. Of course what seems like a utopic vision, and even a pipe-dream, now to me seems like a total over-complication.
It seems kind of crazy to me that there was an expectation for flying cars to be an everyday vehicle when a full automobile industry wasn't even fully realized. The first freeway was built in 1940, and in 1954, most cars didn't even have seatbelts. 1998 was the first year where all future models of cars required airbags in both front seats.
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Bay Area startup Alef seeks to build and sell the first flying car |
Those are seemingly basic automobile requirements now, and it took roughly 50 years since the prediction of a flying car. If flying cars were taken serious, we might've never seen those essential renovations. To me it seems like a complete waste of time to invest in the industry of flying cars, when planes, helicopters and aerial vehicles already exist and have their own guidelines, laws and mandates.
The idea to me now sounds like a total failure, and is completely impractical. While the future of technology is often unpredictable, it made me realize the technological predictions that are made fully realized, and have actual weight are often the technological innovations that improve productivity, bring about a greater convenience across the board, and limit human error.
Tech of Interest
The kinds of technology that interest me are of course music related. One particular piece of technology that was invented for music that has changed music forever and was a huge success is auto-tune. Auto-tune is one of those devices where people either love it or hate it, but you will never stop hearing it.
For the three reasons I mentioned above, anyone with a musical idea can now sing in tune with a piece of music. It increases productivity for the singer, no longer having to record multiple takes until you can ensure the phrase is in perfect tune and timing. It's very convenient to music makers all around, enabling vocalists who are not great at keeping in tune, can now share their musical ideas and feel confident about their performance. It's also a device that limits human error, singing in key, and in perfect tune is a skill only so many people have, with years of training, or are naturally gifted with a strong voice.
It's a device that enables so much creativity, and now with the advancements of auto-tune, you can make it sound so subtle that a person sounds like an amazingly great natural singer.
Auto-tune is such an incredible 21st century technology, that takes place in all records made today, most you would never expect or hear the effect. And there's still so much further a journey tuning software is going.
One of my personal favorite auto-tune effects is from a company called Slate Digital, named "Metatune". What makes this auto-tune effect special is its ability to utilize a feature in audio called "lookahead". Lookahead is essentially a software's ability to detect an audio source's information earlier than its current playing position. An auto-tune that can detect and retune a sample faster than the audio can play, which makes the resulting effect incredibly fast, robotic, and full of color. It's the first of its kind, enabling retuning of up to negative 3 milliseconds. I am interested in seeing more options down the road for auto-tune with lookahead features. |
Melodyne tuning software |
Other tuning software such as "Melodyne" puts you in full control of the way the software retunes on a graph, rather than a static effect that does all the work for you. You can choose the notes the sample plays, both in polyphonic (stereo) or monophonic (mono center) mode. This software goes beyond just vocals, but live recorded instruments and digital instruments, can now be retuned in spectacular fashion.
Digital Musical Exploration
I could go on about more music technology that is changing the sound of music forever, for 20 pages. I utilize it so often, and it excites me thinking about all the ideas in my head for new technology, expanding the horizons for digital and live recorded music. To keep myself focused, the next 3 pieces of technology are truly innovative.
The first piece of technology is from a company called Izotope, who created a digital audio workstation for restoration, and even cooler music rebalance. Imagine a producer who finds an amazing piece of music, full of beautiful instruments, vocals, bass and drums, a full length record. Perhaps this producer wants to hear only the pianos in a song. Well without the tracks being separated from the studio engineer who mixed the record, he can only hear the mastered version of the song with all elements in one track. Izotope's RX makes it possible for anyone to separate fully mastered tracks through an algorithm, to hear only specific elements. Through RX, that producer can split the vocals, bass, music, and drums, which was once an impossible task. Needless to say, this technology is not only innovative, incredibly convenient, increases productivity, and prevents the need for a human engineer to provide separated tracks, it's of incredibly great quality.
Next, is a company called Accentize with their amazing reverb-sampling software. Reverb is an effect that has been popular since the 1950's, and while Accentize is not trying to reinvent the wheel, they created a reverb software called "Chameleon". Chameleon gives a producer the ability to not only load any reverb effect of their choice, but to sample and recreate a preset of any reverb from any audio source. I love reverb effects, I collect a ton of different impulse responses and different algorithmic reverbs, because not one reverb fits all, and no space sounds the same. Chameleon allows me to collect even more reverbs, even from my favorite records. The way it works is I can take a mastered song that contains a beautiful reverb effect, and run it through the Chameleon software. Chameleon then detects and reproduces a replica of the space, and even the proportional amount it is used in the song. Truly, a remarkable device and promotes the use of everyone's favorite effect.
Lastly, I would like to not talk about a specific effect, but something in music technology that is truly spectacular is general randomization. Randomization is not something that can be produced by any human where there is a true probability that any given range of effects can happen. Randomization can be often chaotic, but also beautiful in a lot of cases. Notes can be randomized giving a feel that there is no centered scale, chords can be randomized giving the effect of reckless modulation, but even further, any event can be randomized. Imagine the rhythm of a drummer is randomized, no one can tell which beat he will play or not play. Imagine a delay effect is turned on at a completely random time event, and turned off at another random event. The results are unachievable by human ability for the most part, and impossible to record without software and algorithms to constantly change or not change parameters for us.
If you'd love to support me and other artists from the Bay Area; Listen to music produced and engineered by Aux on Spotify here:
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