The Future of Music

Hatsune Miku, Live Concert.

The Future of Music

1. Motivation

I grew up surrounded by my parent’s music taste, even though they are not musicians but professors a variety of international and national music has been great part of my childhood. My mom, for example, loves to dance and sing, she is always listening to Brazilian and American pop artists, my dad, in the other hand, really enjoy the lyrical content of songs, so he listens to 80s disco music, Brazilian traditional pop and Bossa Nova.

Influenced by my parents, I developed a love and curiosity for music. During my life I had listen to many styles, from Japanese-Harajuku underground rock scene till 60s Motown Records biggest hits, I explored genres to find out which ones I truly like. 

"In a very personal note, I consider music a gateway to express and understand my emotions. Music has helped me to, overcome bullying, breakups, hardships, comprehend my sexuality, and even make friends."

An Cafe, Japanese Harajuku Visual Kei

The Supremes, Motown Records

Living here in Seoul, every day when I do a 25-minute walk from my house to the university I listen into music. I use it as a soundtrack to distract me from the city noise and helps me to avoid any unwanted conversation on my way. On another note, music for me is extremely related to dance, as a club and street dance enthusiast I get mesmerized every time I experience a good music performance, is incredible the ability some people have on moving their bodies according to a beat or melody.

This work is based on this personal relationship I created with music during my life.

"Besides my goals as a designer, my personal idea is to represent a future of music which people like me are going to be able to improve the relationship with their mental health through music."

2. Scientific data

According to COLLINGWOOD, 2016, music has been used for hundreds of years to treat a variety of illnesses, but only some recent research data could prove the real improvements music has been making on health. Data has shown that elderly people who receives music therapy have less symptoms related to depression and a develop better sense of self-esteem. Similar results were also found among cancer and chronically anxiety patients.

Other findings are in the studies of THOMA, 2013, after testing sixty healthy females the research team observed that those individuals with the highest cortisol concentration have being listening to music prior to a stress task, and smaller concentrations were found in the ones who had being listening to a relaxing sound like ripping water for example.

Snooki feeling the beat.

In the same article the study demonstrates that listening to relaxing music prior to a stress task affects biological stress symptoms. Even though, some of the participants in the study which had music therapy improved their recover after a stressful situation or trauma.

Specially, music can also help with memory and cognition, experiments carried at University of California found that students who had listened to recordings of Mozart had better scores than the ones who didn’t listened, the article speculate that this may happen because listening to music helps the brain to create pathways and develop better memory.

3. The Future of Music

After researching all the scientific benefits of music, is now important to understand the current state-of-art on music technology and development, only this way we are able to create a proposal of what the future of music will look like in the year of 2025.

Founded on late 2016 the company Amper Music Inc, is a startup from Columbia which created an online platform for music composing with the help of an Artificial Intelligence database. The CEO Drew Silverstein explains that even though the user without no experience on producing a music will be able to achieve the best result.

By the beginning of 2017, Amper has already raised 4 million dollars in funding the company’s technology, with the support coming from ventures such as, Foundry Group, Kiwi Venture and Advancit Capital. Even though there’s already other AI-based music platforms going on, because Amper is for free and collaborative, got the attention of this investment ventures.

Another company creating machine learning music technology is the British Jukedeck, founded on early 2016 aims to train deep neural networks to understand the process of compose and adapt music, so we make it easier for users to personalize the music they need.

The CEO and his team most all students from Cambridge University are focusing their effort as professionals from the music field to share passion for music and technology to users all over the world.

Last but not least, it’s important to feature the work of the company Doppler Labs which created in 2016 the device called Here One, a smart headphone which has the ability of transforming the audio in the environment around the user, so called Augmented Audio can be used to volume up or down the using the “real-world volume control”, also is possible to choose filters like “Office” were all the low-end conversations are filtered, or “City” which cuts off wind noise and the buzz of passing cars.

Using Here One’s “Live- Mix” tool you can add instrument-like effects on the sounds around you, some of the options include “Echo” and “Reverb”, this tool complete changes the experience of being talking with a person or listening into a music.

Doppler Labs - Here One

4. Proposal

After a deep look into the high-tech devices and platforms available I was able to combine those ideas and came up with a concept for this project. The main goal is to represent visually a technological jump for the year of 2025, with that in mind my proposal is to create a music video which the main character has a Augmented Audio earphone connected to his central nervous system. That technology will provide the character a ability of changing his emotions during the day through music. For example, 

"imagine going to coffee shop but instead of nice and calm lounge music he selected to be in a rave party, the body will react and feel like is in the rave environment."

Bjork music video.

On that system artists like Adele for example, will still exist but every person will be able to create through AI assistance their own version of Rolling in the Deep, 

"so Adele will sound like a heavy-metal artist for some and a R&B artist for others."

Moodboard - Music Video Visuals

5. References

https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-power-of-music-to-reduce-stress/2/

http://www.factmag.com/2017/08/20/how-bio-hacking-can-change-the-future-of-music/

http://www.factmag.com/2016/11/30/vr-music-video-technology-2017/

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/02/amper-funding/

https://www.jukedeck.com/about

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734071/

https://www.ampermusic.com/

https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/lang-upload/future-music-collaboration-between-humans-and-ai

http://www.businessinsider.com/doppler-labs-here-one-earbuds-review-2017-2/#if-youre-wondering-why-youd-ever-need-to-do-that-outside-of-a-concert-though-you-got-me-the-big-problem-with-the-here-one-is-that-for-as-remarkable-the-tech-is-within-it-few-of-its-audio-augmenting-tricks-solve-widespread-problems-its-an-incredibly-neat-thing-to-own-but-throwing-300-at-something-just-because-its-neat-is-a-tough-sell-for-non-futurists-8

https://hereplus.me/pages/product-details

Tiago.