Jaeyong(Jay) Park
10.01.2021
Music 256A / CS476a, Stanford University
I have completed all the tutorials. There was a lot to digest for me since I have not worked with Unity or C++ before. The tutorials were intuitive so that it was easy to follow along but I will need more practice to get used to working in this environment.
An initial idea I had for this project is to make a 3D "soundscape." This idea has been inspired by sndpeek, where the spectral graph looks like a landscape. My idea is that the soundscape would be viewed from the middle point and the camera would turn to wherever the change in frequency is the biggest. So in a way, we are turning our attention to the sound being made.
In Chapter 2 of Artful Design, Ge writes “music is essential to our human experience.” With the ever so fast ongoing development of music technology, we now have access to millions of songs just by a single touch. And yet, Ge draws the boundary between music consumption and music production and emphasizes that music production has been on the decline ever since. This tendency can be in part due to the rising standards associated with the accessible abundance of quality music. The quote at the end of Chapter 2 from the excerpt of MUSICKING by Christopher Small seemed to highlight this discrepancy well: that the “talented few are empowered to produce music for the untalented majority is based on a falsehood.” I also suffer from a similar sentiment: after listening to masterpieces, I am inspired to create something on the computer, only to be disappointed by the quality of the result that I quit before putting the work to make music. Ge’s perspective reminded me that I have taken music consumption for granted and expected it not to have any influence on my music production. Instead of focusing on making music myself, I currently have the goal to create computer-generated music based on my music consumption, which may be too much of an easy way out.
If the lack of music production is a problem, which it is, based on the premise “music is essential to our human experience,” then indeed, a plausible solution is to make music production more friendly by integrating it into the everyday objects that we use. In particular, I agree with principle 2.6: Technology should create calm. In a music production sense, the music streaming platform does not necessarily create calm – it may obscure the need for music production by providing high-quality music. And yet, since music streaming platforms are already integrated with our lives, if there were toy-like features in Apple Music or Spotify that enable users to play around with the music, then it could turn the table around for music production. An example would be an interactive UI where one would be given a set of instruments that would ideally be in accordance with the song playing and could add one’s style to it. It would be a playful toy that makes people less intimidating by reducing the process of selecting instruments and their tones.