Will AI kill us all?

Jon

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#21
#21
Wow, you do have quite an extensive musical background then. I've often wondered if the keyboard is harder to learn than something like the guitar. It seems you can get quite good sound out of a guitar fairly early on, while the keyboard requires much more training. I tried to learn the guitar for a bit and the acoustics were sounding quite good to me with a bit of strumming and rudimentary skill. Before that I had some keyboards for years but was never any good at it.

Those organs look hugely complicated with their ton of buttons, multiple keyboards and so on!
 
T

The_Doc_Man

Founding Member
#22
#22
They can be intimidating. The Technics F5 has seven voicing "channels" that can be routed to either of two keyboards. With full MIDI compliance (and maybe a little more), it has over 100 different voices (sound component profiles). Except for the "Solo" channel which is monophonic, everything is polyphonic which means you have a fistful of fingers making chords as well as melodies. And it is a full organ, meaning a pedalboard for notes. It's not an AGO model, though (American Guild of Organists), so only 25 notes on the pedals vs. 32 for AGO.

The first organ I ever played was a spinet model that had something like five or six voices for the upper keyboard, three or four voices for the lower keyboard, and one pedal voice. My F5 is a full console that has over 200 controls including the automatic drum set, automatic rhythm accompaniment, and automatic voicing sequencer. In fact, with this model I can literally play a duet with myself by pre-recording the first sequence and then manually playing the 2nd sequence to go with it. But I play it straight up and don't rely on the automation. I learned to play "for real" and don't use the fancy-schmancy stuff.

That's actually why I now play a Technics. The Lowrey instruments were GREAT until they came out with a new model that had so many bells and whistles that if you really WANTED to play it straight, you had to turn off over 30% of the organ, and some of the accompaniment effects were only available with the automation.
 
Jon

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#23
#23
I just had a quick look at the F5 on ebay and there is one going for $300!! I couldn't believe what you could get for the money! Stuffed full of buttons. Would make a great present.
 
T

The_Doc_Man

Founding Member
#24
#24
If it is in good shape, it is a positive STEAL.

Other than the fact that the damned thing weighs in the 250-300 pound range so isn't portable, I could imagine rock groups that would KILL to have such an instrument. AND it has jacks so you could direct-feed either 2-channel or 3-channel audio from it to auxiliary amplifiers.
 
Jon

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#28
#28
I don't know how they cope with so many buttons! But I suppose it is the 80:20. You only use 20% of them 80% of the time.
 
T

The_Doc_Man

Founding Member
#29
#29
Because some of the controls interact with each other, that is true. You can have only one rhythm at a time, only one "Solo" instrument at a time, one "Percussion" instrument at a time, one "Brass/Woodwind" at a time, one "Voice Preset" at a time... that sort of thing. Out of 200 controls, less than 40 can be simultaneously activated.

As to "coping" - you learn as you use them and it gets to be second nature after a while.
 
Jon

Jon

Administrator
Staff member
#30
#30
Ah right, that would explain it. You could have 100 buttons, one for each sound. Gotcha. Some of these synthesizers have one button with a ton of functionality on it. That is what I was comparing it to in my mind.
 
T

The_Doc_Man

Founding Member
#31
#31
Sort of in line with the titular topic, even if only tangentially so: a lot of the sequencer controls automate the process of "orchestration changes" (where one complete set of voices is replaced by another). In other words, a limited example of AI assisting in playing a complex piece with lots of different tonalities at different parts.

Another feature of the F5: There is a thing called "auto chord" that fills in notes on the upper keyboard's melody line by repeating notes from the chord being played on the lower keyboard. Since I learned to play that the "right" way, I hardly ever use that feature, but it IS an AI feature that "dumbs down" some keyboard work.

Another feature that is AI related: The auto-accompaniment will play "strumming" notes behind the chords you are playing if you are using any of the pre-defined rhythms.

So that's three AI features that won't kill us - but might expose us old-line musicians to competition from a younger, less skilled group who has better and more modern electronics. Therefore, this little excursion actually IS on topic in a tangential way.
 
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