Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    Assuming that the human physiognomy remains approximately the same,
    I believe that instruments, acoustic or electronic, will still fall
    into the same tonal families; percussive (membrane vibrating), 
    horns/woodwinds (air-column vibrating) and string-vibrating.  And
    the music made will still use timbre, pitch, dynamics, melody, and
    harmony, thru time as a model.  There will be scalar and harmonic
    and time-signature evolution.  
    
    karl

A recent column in Frets worried about the decreasing supply of the kinds
of exotic woods from which good-sounding wooden instruments are made.  Most
of this stuff grows in the tropics, where forests are being cleared at a
dangerous rate to meet short-term economic goals of developing nations.

    Five bajillion years from now, music will come directly from the
    composer's mind, directly to the listener's mind.  The composer
    will express the musical experience he/she/it wishes teh listener
    to experience, and the listener will interpret it however literally
    or idiosyncratically he/she/it wishes to.
    
    len.
     

    God will squash this place like a bug long before we ever hit 5000000
    years from today. 

    Brad (.4) is right, but in the next 20 years all *serious* musicians
    will have MIDI jacks in their foreheads.  Then you just think the
    music, eh?
    
    Ashley in smog (and today I do Mean SMOG) land

	Since there won't be any electricity after the revolution, I think
all the instruments will survive, including Steinways, which will be made
by hand again. 

	/pjh

The materials problem may be solved with synthetics.  (Somebody has built a
carbon-fiber-reinforced acoustic guitar.  I have no idea how it sounds.) But
even if electronic instruments "take over", I would not expect keyboards to
take over.  They are just too big, and too hard to learn to play.  That is,
there is only one way to play them, and you have to do it that way. If your
finger dexterity is not up to it, you are out of luck.  Non-keyboard
instruments are generally smaller, and involve the use of other muscles. (Never
mind the Cage prepared pianos played with spoons on the strings.) 

A high-school marching band with keyboards slung around their necks?  Can't
see it.  Lugging an ESQ to a folk festival for hallway jamming?  (Though
I have seen banjos that were almost as heavy.)

Any keyboard instrument as small and as light as a mandolin is not going to
have the same range, as the keys are too big. Of course, somebody could invent
a new shape for keyboards.

When the power goes off for a few hours (which it does from time to time
out in the boonies where I live) I can still drag out the dulcimer, the
mandolin, or the autoharp for some fun.  I even have a non-battery-operated
pitch pipe in case the tuner is dead.

RE: .-1
    
    I wonder if it's true that keyboards are an inefficient means of
    producing music. Seems to me the design is pretty good: flexible
    enough to produce all the tones we've grown to like (especially
    with microtuning), yet scrutable enough to enable the majority of
    people to do pretty well with them, and some people to appear
    completely unrestrained.
    
    I think a standard keyboard pattern takes a bit of beating.
    
    Richard.              
    

    Is it realy important to keep acoustic instruments? Something like
    Chopin fighting to keep his PLAYEL grand piano instead of our Steinway
    or YAMAHA (better) piano today. You realy think that Mozart was
    happy with his clavecimbel? See electric instruments as add on's
    and lets see how the acoustic instruments survive the competition
    (ore not). Tom, don't worry, as long as good music survive's, the
    instrument is only a source to expres.

    By that time, I figure bioelectronics (or whatever you want to call
    it) will have progressed to the point where many of our computers
    are based on neural systems.  Instead of using silicon, we may be
    using organic forms for systems.  So, the instruments we use may
    be run by living tissues that can repair themselves and reproduce
    as well as learn how to play particular kinds of music.  Membranes,
    strings and such would be able to repair and adjust themselves.
    
    Imagine having your instruments live in a fish tank ...
    
    Steve

    RE: .10
    
    I'm sure the labor needed for creating will go down a lot.  Who knows,
    maybe these "organic" instruments will be smart enough to
    actually write the music for you!

    Sounds like quite a labor saving device to me!
                         

    Maybe we should ask what does music mean to us now and what will
    it mean in the future. The instruments that we use are a means to
    an end not an end in themselves. Historicly new technology has had
    an impact on the way music was produced. Usually the new technology
    gets absorbed into the mainstream of music over the long run. The
    "old" instruments occasionally get pushed aside but most remain.
    	The piano was quite a technical improvement over the harpsichord.
    It had/has a far greater dynamic range, and richer tonal qualities.
    Yet despite this there are still harpsichords around today.
    	I doubt very much that electronic instruments will ever totally
    replace the "traditional" acoustic instruments. Factors such as
    lower cost and ease of use may make electronic instruments more
    common, but won't replace the older instruments.
    	The bottom line is that music will always be a means for creative
    individuals to express themselves and for others to enjoy the results.
    No matter how it is produced. I don't care how you produce your
    music. You can bang on a log with a stick or put a MIDI jack into
    your skull...no matter! Its the end product that I care about.
    	As a musician, I am excited over how many more possibilities are
    available to me today then there were even ten years ago! I wonder
    what any of the great composers of the past would have done if they
    could have had what we have now.
        	
    	Mark

    Why wait 5,000,000 years. I'll bet that by the year 2000, the need for
    most acoustic instruments will dissapear, as more replacement equipment
    shows up. Yes the marching bands will be playing Casio Sax's, Tuba's
    and Yamaha Midi Drums (Heck, they may even sequence the whole thing
    and jsut march along waving batons). In general, I suspect that there
    is more truth to this than not. We've all argued tha issue of drum
    machines versus drummers & many of us are using drum machines (I own
    4 of various vintages) in place of drummers. Most of us are using
    synthetic horn sections, and fake Hammond B3's, thanks to some
    processed silicon & copper wires. What Will survive?? Hard to say. In
    the next 20 years, guitars & keyboards will probably dominate. Who'll
    eventually win? Probably keyboards with a zillion patches/samples &
    AI sequencers. The only people who will know how to play the old stuff
    will be the Amish.

							    Jens

Marching bands are LOUD.  There will have to be some breakthroughs in battery
technology to get that much power on foot.  With 15 inch speakers on the
tops of their hats?   Make that a breakthrough in magnet technology as
well.  A few D-cells feeding a 4-inch speaker won't do it.

Radio link to the PA system won't work - you have to hear the people around you
to balance properly.  (You get the beat by watching the conductor though. If
you listen to the drums bouncing off the stands you will be behind due to
speed-of-sound lags.) 

Actually, we can probably hope for the downfall of football long before
then, so the need for marching bands will no longer exist.

>
>Actually, we can probably hope for the downfall of football long before
>then, so the need for marching bands will no longer exist.
>

NOt true!!  There is another type of marching band that has onthing to do
with football -- the drum (and bugle) corp!  they march and perform for the sake
of doing it sans football.   

I do agree that it is a good idea to hope for the downfall of football 
though :-)

Chad

    You can bet, 5,000,000 years from now, The Grateful Dead will still
    be doing acoustic sets live at Madison Square Garden. /:^}

      Don't forget about replacing the human voice while you're at it.
    Maybe we will see software that will help use design voices and
    even libraries of voice patchs for a new voice-machine.  
    
      I can envision programming in Tina Turner's voice and singing with
    my fingers, or knees, or feet, or shoulders...
    

    
    
    re: .-1
    
      Don't laugh too hard, but one of the boys over in DECTalk may
    be doing just that...
    
    /pjh

    re .18
    
    Lucasfilms ASP sound machine was design just for that.
    George Lucas wants a library of actor voice characteristics so that
    he can synthesize the actor's voice without the actor, for overdubbing,
    etc. The claim is that the ASP is fast enough to translate one actor's
    voice into another actor's voice in real time.
    The parts cost for an ASP is $100,000. It's big.
    Tom Holman (the designer of the Advent preamp and founder of Apt,
    the high end preamp and power amp company) is the manager of the
    Lucas sound lab.
    I saw this several years ago while evaluating Lucasfilms as a vendor.
    Most of the lab efforts are finally appearing for sale or being
    spun off, e.g. Editdroid and Pixar. The ASP cannot be too far behind.
    
    Also, Kurzweil (the guy) is in a great position to build and
    sell such a box. He has voice signal processing technology in one
    company and sound synthesis technology in another.
                                                    
    Dennis
    

    I think it is unrealistic to speculate what may happen in 5M years.
    It is more realistic to wonder what will be happening in our lifetime
    and our childrens lifetime.
    
    Right now the whole energy issue is placing doubts on whether or
    not we can afford to air condition or heat our homes in a few years,
    nevermind using electricity for recreational purposes. We are all
    fortunate enough to live in a country where we have enough to eat,
    a roof over our heads, and an income. By the year 2000, we may all
    have to make some adjustments/concessions in our lifestyles. Giving
    up some of the modern conveniences may be necessary. All of the
    high tech equipment coming out has one thing in common, they all
    require power to operate. Back in the 50's and 60's we used to
    see visions of the future on shows like the Jetsons, and in various
    sci-fi movies. We all expected to have telephones with tv monitors
    on them by now. The technology is here, but it's too costly to be
    universally employed. I believe the energy issue will eventually
    catch up to us, and we will have to sacrifice some of the creature
    comforts we now take for granite. When that happens the trend will
    be to return to the old standby. Heck, all we would need is one
    good war, and we would all have to sacrifice our silicon for the
    sake of defense. The ability to play acoustic instruments without
    electricity will probably keep them in existance for centuries to
    come.
    
         I love buying new equipment, but I am the first one to admit 
    that buying more equipment means having more things to worry about,
    more stuff to haul, and more things to maintain. There is a lot to 
    be said for getting back to basics. Simplist is best.
    
    	When was the last time you tried to get tickets to see your
    favorite groups? The price and availability of tickets is making
    a lot of people stay home from the concerts. It's getting to the
    point where I would rather see a small town act in a pub than
    fight the traffic, and pay the high price of concerts. Eventually
    the street corner may be the best place to hear music being performed,
    mostly on acoustic instruments. Being able to participate is a
    big advantage as well. In some of the remote parts of the US where
    bluegrass is popular, people congregate on street corners and play
    music. Anyone that wants to join in is generally welcome.
    
    Then there are the die-hard classicists or traditionalists. Most
    of these people think a synthesiser is something you tie onto your 
    boat to keep it from floating away. There are some very interesting
    possibilities in the acoustic instrument arena, but they are not
    getting a whole lot of attention. After hundreds of years of going
    unchanged, acoustic instruments are beginning to be experimented with.
    Has anyone ever seen some of the new guitars, violins, etc. that
    use sympathetic strings to add a new dimension to the sound. One
    that comes to mind is called a Suzalene (sp) which is a violin
    with sympathetic strings running below the fingerboard.
    
    I go through cycles where I will ignore all my electronic toys for 
    weeks or months and concentrate on acoustic guitar or banjo. Then 
    I will hear a band play a really hot electric piece, and I get 
    inspired to pull out my electrics again. The same goes for acoustic.
    I haven't touched my acoustic for the past few weeks, but a month 
    ago, all I could think of was buying a new flattop. The same can
    be said about the attention span of the listening public. 2 years
    ago, most popular music was migrating to synth-pop. In the last
    2 years, however, I have seen a trend to return to the guitar
    and some of the acoustic instruments. People may have gotten 
    burnt out on hearing nothing but synthesized music. 
    
    	Five million years from now ????? who knows if the earth will
    even be able to sustain life, nevermind music. A better question 
    is, is there life out there, and if so, what do they do for entertainment ?
    
                                                 
    Mark Jacques
    

    re .21
    I used "5 million years" because I don't believe we can predict
    100 years in advance any better than 5 mega years.
    As far as electricity shortages, it's true that our standard of
    living will decline, but electronics use materials and electicity
    very efficiently and more efficiently every year.  That's the resources
    meaning of getting 8 voices for $500.  Electricity shortages coming
    to Massachusetts are a political/business problem, not so much a
    problem of society's wealth.  Electric power generates wealth.
    Society needs to pick the way of power generation to encourage.
    Corner bars are going electronic.
    Fewer people in the band, therefore cheaper.
    Tom

< Note 1705.21 by ANT::JACQUES >
>Back in the 50's and 60's we used to
>    see visions of the future on shows like the Jetsons, and in various
>    sci-fi movies. We all expected to have telephones with tv monitors
>    on them by now. 
        
    That's a bandwidth problem, and will be addressed by the installation
    of fiber networks.  Also image compression/decompression algorithms
    are being refined, lessening the required bandwidth.  I look forward
    to jamming with someone in Massachussetts, realtime, with great
    fidelity (stereo multiplexing?) within the next couple of years.
    
>    I believe the energy issue will eventually
>    catch up to us, and we will have to sacrifice some of the creature
>    comforts we now take for granite. 
    
    That means Rock music will never die !  (sorry)
    
    karl lounging on Buzzard Beach

    re .21: my entire studio setup (see the sign-in note) uses about
    as much electricity as an iron.
    
    People will be wearing wrinkled clothes before we have to give up
    our electronic instruments due to power shortages.
    
    I for one never "expected" to have a telephone with a TV monitor.
    Bandwidth, expense or power consumption aside, people just don't
    need or want this sort of capability.  If they did, we'd find the
    bandwidth, and the cost would be acceptable.  Consider cellular
    telephone.  It's real because it's worth it to enough people.
    An awful lot of "pop sci-fi" (e.g., Jetsons-style) predictions of
    the future are way off the mark, not for technological reasons,
    bur for social reasons.  Read any classic SF about personal computing?
    
    Finally, there's more energy showering down on the Earth than we
    can ever use.  The "energy issue" is not a physical limit we face,
    it's a reflection of the stupidity of our policies for exploiting
    resources.
    
    len.
     

    re .24:       
        -< Issue for Election Year 2000: Music or Pressed Clothes? >
                                                          
    Listening to the current charts makes me go for the pressed clothes.
    
    (Casio will have invented a midi'd smoothing iron with 88 note
    polytimbrality by then, anyway).
    
    Richard.

    
    
    re .21 - Uh, tv phones have not been popularly received in testing
    due to the fact that people have become quite used to talking while
    in various states of appearance. Having to dress to talk to Aunt
    Martha or whomever was defintely unappealing...
    
    re .25 - Although i traditionally wearr unpressed clothes, i echo
    the sentiment on the current charts. And, since i really hate
    1980's production values I suppose i'm supposed to hate all the
    electronic toys this conference babbles about.  However...
    yes i'm old-fashioned and poor and actually play my instruments
    rather than code them (oh, sure i cheat with the rythm stuff) I
    do find plenty of new and interesting sounds to make. But then again,
    it seemed to me I've done alot of that over the last 25 years or
    so of playing guitar.
    
    	I guess the point i'm making is that for me at least, the tools
    are merely the means of making music. I've got primitive tools
    compared to most of the players here, but I think i'm beginning
    to make some real good music. My poor little DD-5 may be a real
    cheap machine, but it claps hands with more precision than I do
    amd there are times I want that. There are also times I do not.
    So, we just trade hands. 
    
    	I'm relatively sure the future holds new musical toys in store.
    But so what - it's more what interesting expressions we make of
    these that count.
    
    				bs