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Comment by dsign | Hacker News Reader

I watched the other day Rick Beato's "What If Stairway To Heaven Came Out Today?" and what stroke me is that his granddaughter remarked that the song didn't have auto-tune. First, she has great musical ear. Second, she destroyed my illusion that "true" musical producers were in the business of zapping the singer whenever they went out of tune, not of using auto-tune, which is something more becoming of the plebeian musicians who make songs from their bedroom.

With that said, a silver lining of AI learning to imitate mainstream producers is that the (big players of the) music industry may finally lose their grip on people's musical taste. Maybe people will start searching for alternative styles, and going to their (minor artists with a unique voice) performances in person.

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Led Zeppelin was influenced by musical traditions that placed an emphasis on playing with intonation and rhythm as a technique for conveying emotion and creating musical tension. Producers back then would have known that, and known knot to mess with it even if they did have the tools back then.

But also, a perfected, highly produced sound is part of the aesthetic values of modern popular music. So producers who do it now aren’t necessarily wrong, either. They’re just following taste. If people start loving a loosey goosey White Stripes sound again, producers will go back to leaving it in.

> With that said, a silver lining of AI learning to imitate mainstream producers is that the (big players of the) music industry may finally lose their grip on people's musical taste. Maybe people will start searching for alternative styles, and going to their (minor artists with a unique voice) performances in person.

I share the belief that this accelerated the rise of Angine de Poitrine, who use microtonal stringed instruments and uncommon time signatures. Both of those things have been around for a while, but never went viral until now.

Interestingly, Beato has discussed how his son has perfect pitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Cb1qwCUvI

Some people get really disheartened when they see examples of young people with perfect pitch like this, but they really shouldn't. Perfect pitch (or absolute pitch) is one of those things that is obviously incredible on its own, but it's not really necessary to make amazing music. Presumably it might make music making easier, but the idea that perfect pitch destines someone for musical virtuosity is somewhat more a marketing pitch than a thing. Mastery of relative pitch and ear training in the context of songs is, for the most part, far more important. So much so that I'd argue perfect pitch is kind of irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

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