Putin Bombs Music.

In lockdown I turned to Youtube to improve my music education. People like Rick Beato and Adam Neely are amazing (human) musicians with an honest desire to pass on musical knowledge. They are now both livid (my word) at Universal Music Corporation who police their ownership rights by taking down any video containing snippets of existing players and songs in a Putin-esc land grab for territory. Their weapons are algorithms that analyse audio to spot facsimiles. At college I read textbooks from our long history of scientists and mathematicians daily but as music exists as sound, once it stops there’s nothing, silence. Great players, singers and song writers exist in their performances and without hearing those leaves a huge hole in education. And UMC’s algorithms aren’t perfect either. But Universal Music Corporation has a bank of lawyers and money enough to kill any counter claims, the other weapon in their armoury. Like libel law these two weapons in combination become unchallengeable to lesser mortals. This will become the universal powerlessness of us all. Forget government and the law they’re outdated and hopelessly slow being human based. An algorithm will have you in court quicker than your solicitor can pick up a pen and who’ll likely advise you have zero chance of winning anyway and losing will take everything you own. We humans are already behind the curve and it can only get worse. Aspiring musicians will not be allowed to hear these works in an educational context and without it know only the basic rudiments and create our future music in that fashion. Already current music is unengaging, elevator music’s elevator music and it’s likely future music will be created by algorithms to avoid paying a (human) creator’s royalties. It’s a farcical example of shooting oneself in the foot when the Universal Music Corporation curates the universal death of music. I’m livid too.

The Faustian Pact.

Just been watching Sajid Javid responding to questions on Good Morning. He remained implacable throughout, each answer considered and positive with no trace of emotion. He was a steamroller in its lowest gear flattening the road ahead applying a resolute glaze over whatever lumpy detritus in his path, be it human, animal, vegetable or mineral. To some eyes he might have looked statesmanlike consummately capable of re-framing every question and awkward fact into a pleasant still life of apples and peaches lit by his very own pink spotlight. But there was a giveaway. Still lifes take time to assemble and light appropriately. It’s only one to two seconds, the time of a possibly necessary intake of breath, but you can see it happening if you look closely. The eyes still to a wide open glaze as items are internally rearranged for the right effect, like a deck of cards where every fourth needs to be an ace. Once placed animation returns and the deck played. There is no truth, no real response in the silent placing of cards. One knows the trick, the corruption, but the slight of hand in the mind is never provable. (black is white in certain lights) “If we all just keep saying positive things over and over again with not the slightest hint there is any other truth it will work”, and it will, like nursery rhymes to children. Ask them where did Jack and Jill go? And they will all shout, “up the hill”, and we will smile and say, “Exactly.” But we must never tell them the truth of what we really think. This is the commitment, the bargain. If you can’t you must leave. Of course this is a Faustian pact but it will underpin our success. We will succeed as the world about us fails; we wouldn’t want it any other way.