By TARCÍSIO PERES*
Abuse in the use of technology leads to a perception that music is becoming overly synthetic and dehumanized
1.
Artificial Intelligence and, in particular, machine learning with its most recent offspring – generative Artificial Intelligence – have been widely promoted as a revolutionary innovation, capable of transforming several industries, including the production of texts, art, music and other forms. of content creation. The similarity between the hyperbolic dissemination of pyrotechnics and generative Artificial Intelligence and the stories of Baron Münchhausen, popularized by Rudolf Erich in 1785, is notable.
A concrete fact is that, despite the enthusiasts on duty, this technology is overrated. While it can process vast amounts of data and identify complex patterns, it lacks a deep understanding of the context, emotions, and cultural nuances that express human creation. For example, a text generated by Artificial Intelligence may be technically correct and informative, but it lacks the emotional structure, originality and unique voice that characterize writing.
Computational productions materialize in superficial and generic content, incapable of capturing the richness and complexity of human experiences. It is worth remembering that human creativity is driven by personal experiences, emotions and an intuitive understanding of the world, elements that are intrinsically difficult to encode into algorithms.
Discussing the technical details at the heart of this issue can be a bit tedious. For this reason we will continue, suggestively, experimenting with an approximation, in the light of time, with musical aesthetics.
2.
In Antiquity, singing was an essential part of religious and cultural practices. The Greeks, for example, had a rich tradition of choral music and investigated the mathematical properties of sound, establishing musical intervals that formed the basis for musical scales. Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher and musician, identified the relationship between the frequencies of sounds and developed the theory of consonant intervals, such as the octave, fifth and fourth.
During the Middle Ages, Gregorian chant stood out as the main form of sacred music in Western Europe. This monophonic style, characterized by simple melodic lines and no instrumental accompaniment, emphasized the clarity of the liturgical text. Singers developed breathing and projection techniques to maintain the purity and continuity of sound in reverberant spaces like cathedrals. Neumes, symbols used in Gregorian chant manuscripts, provided only a rough indication of the melody.
It was in the late 9th and early 10th centuries that Western music began to use the diatonic scale, a series of seven notes that became the basis for Western music theory. Guido d'Arezzo, an 11th-century Benedictine monk, is often credited with inventing a form of notation that evolved into modern sheet music. He introduced the tetragrammaton, a set of four lines that made it easier to read musical notes, and created a mnemonic system to teach musical intervals (which later evolved into “C, D, E, F, G, A, B”).
During the Renaissance, polyphony, with multiple interconnected melodic lines, became predominant. Composers, such as Palestrina and Josquindes Prez, explored harmony and contraposition, demanding from singers sophisticated vocal control and the ability to maintain independent melodic lines. Musical notation evolved with the five-line pentagram, becoming standard and allowing greater precision in the representation of note pitches.
In the Baroque period, opera emerged as a new musical genre, with which new singing techniques were developed. Singers needed great vocal flexibility to perform complex ornaments and express a wide range of emotions. Techniques like bel canto, which emphasized the beauty of the melodic line and breath control, began to form. Singers like Farinelli, one of the most famous castrate, exemplified the technical and expressive virtuosity of that period. Musical notation became more sophisticated with the introduction of treble clef, bass clef, and other clefs to indicate different vocal and instrumental registers.
Neoclassicism and Romanticism brought additional stylistic changes. Opera and concert music required voices capable of projecting themselves over large orchestras. The development of the lyrical singing technique, which emphasizes vocal power and clarity of timbre, became central. Singers such as Maria Malibran and Enrico Caruso exemplified the ability to combine refined technique with dramatic expression.
In the 20th century, vocal technique continued to evolve with the introduction of new musical genres, such as jazz, the theater musical and, eventually, the pop and the rock. Techniques such as microphone use allowed for a more intimate and natural approach to singing, while classical training still provided the foundation for many singers of different styles. Vocal pedagogy has also advanced significantly, with a greater understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the voice.
Concluding our historical retrospective, in recent years, technology auto tune was introduced into music production, providing a tool for adjusting and correcting vocal pitch. It works by automatically adjusting sung notes to those closest to the correct pitch, which allows singers to maintain perfect pitch even if their performances are not technically impeccable.
3.
An interesting question arises in our analysis. A technology used to correct small imperfections in a singer's tuning – the icing on the cake in the ancient perspective of the music we have just reported – is beginning to be used to help an average singer be more in tune. Over time, the use of auto tune it transcended its original function of discreet correction and began to be used in a more obvious way, creating a characteristic vocal effect. This stylized use of auto tune, popularized by artists such as Cher in the late 1990s and later by T-Pain, gave rise to a new sonic aesthetic, marked by an artificial and robotic quality to the voice, which became a staple in many hits contemporaries.
This practice has generated a series of debates and criticisms within the music industry and among listeners: the abuse in the use of technology leads to a perception that music is becoming excessively synthetic and dehumanized. Listeners become less tolerant of vocal imperfections, expecting performances always impeccable, both in recordings and live, generating greater pressure on musical production, perpetuating the cycle of artificiality.
Furthermore, when used intensively, the auto tune significantly alters the original quality of the voice, erasing nuances that are essential for vocal expressiveness. A clear example is the effect on vibrato, a vocal technique in which the singer slightly oscillates the pitch of a note to add warmth and emotion to the song. performance. Vibrato is a characteristic particularly valued in singers of opera and other classical styles, such as tenors, whose ability to control and vary vibrato is a sign of advanced vocal technique.
O auto tune, trying to automatically and precisely correct pitch will inadvertently soften or even eliminate vibrato, resulting in a voice that sounds mechanically stable and monotonous. This loss of nuance makes the performance less natural and emotional, creating a feeling of artificiality. Instead of enhancing the vocal performance, the auto tune, in this context, ends up standardizing the unique characteristics of each voice, nullifying the technical and expressive work of the singers. In other words, after centuries of rich evolution, music is being blatantly pasteurized by computational practicality.
In addition to vibrato, the use of auto tune negatively impacts several aspects of performance vocals and the quality of the music. A singer's emotional expressiveness can be reduced, as subtle variations in pitch, dynamics and timbre are essential to convey emotions. Vocal timbre, which is unique to each person, can also be standardized, making different voices sound more similar and less distinctive. Dynamics, which is the variation in voice intensity and volume, is crucial to creating a performance engaging and emotionally rich. O auto tune it evens out these variations, resulting in flatter, less dynamic performance.
The quality of resonance and harmonics produced by the voice can also be altered by auto tune. Harmonics, which are additional frequencies generated along with the main note, contribute to the richness and complexity of the vocal sound. Digital processing can modify these harmonics as well. Advanced singing techniques, such as melismas, glissandos e behaviors, lose their naturalness and fluidity when digitally adjusted.
These techniques rely on precise vocal control and can be softened or made artificial by digital processing. Furthermore, the relationship between the voice and the accompanying instruments may be affected, as the auto tune adjusts the pitch of the voice independently, creating a subtle disconnect between the voice and the instruments, especially in musical genres that value spontaneous interaction between musicians.
The dependence on auto tune it also affected vocal training and music education. A diligent economist would call this side effect a “negative externality”: basically, if technical excellence can be achieved through digital tinkering, there is less incentive for singers to invest time and effort in developing their natural vocal abilities. Additionally, the auto tune has addicted listeners to a new musical and aesthetic standard, pressuring natural artists to imitate this effect to reach the public, which leads to a homogenization of popular music and a decrease in the appreciation of genuine vocal talent.
4.
Apparently, none of this was mentioned by Baron Münchhausen in his quixotic adventures. In a similar way to auto tune in music, an experienced reader is fully capable of detecting the lack of emotional depth and authenticity in texts generated by Artificial Intelligence, while a casual reader may simply feel that something is “missing” or that the text sounds “too perfect” and "impersonal".
If the pasteurization of music is a celebratory event, the current nababesque pyrotechnics around Artificial Intelligence are truly fair.
*Tarcísio Peres He is a science professor at the Technology Colleges of the State of São Paulo. Author, among other books, of Profiting from the sharks: the traps of the stock market and how to use them to your advantage.
References
BURKHOLDER, J. Peter; GROUT, Donald Jay; PALISCA, Claude V. Norton Anthology of Western Music. WW Norton & Company, 2019.
GROUT, Donald Jay; PALISCA, Claude V. A History of Western Music. WW Norton & Company, 2014.
RASPE, Rudolf Erich. The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Penguin Classics, 1993.
RUSSELL, Stuart J.; NORVIG, Peter. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Prentice Hall, 2021.
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