[HN Gopher] Two Turntables and a Microphone (2006)
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Two Turntables and a Microphone (2006)
Author : mellosouls
Score : 44 points
Date : 2025-01-03 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (goodfuzzysounds.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (goodfuzzysounds.com)
| diggan wrote:
| Fun ad/poster included in the article
| (https://goodfuzzysounds.com/ma/img/phonovox_250.gif) which has
| pretty much exactly the same sentiment today where companies try
| to replace people with AI, like https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/12/artis...
|
| I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as
| controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about work-
| life balance" is today.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as
| controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about
| work-life balance" is today.
|
| Ex-Orchestra player here.
|
| I don't think so. A musician who's not playing in an orchestra
| pit in a play/performance can always play in a concert or in
| future times in a recording orchestra, or have a solo career.
| Using the same skill set they have, and even earning more in
| the process.
|
| Employees replaced by AI find that their whole skill set
| captured by the said AI, and they're now irrelevant without a
| new set of skills. Getting a new skillset requires time, money
| and effort, and sometimes substantial background. What we're
| going through is much more damaging. The former one was
| transformative, not destructive.
| diggan wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'm dumb or something, but I don't see the
| difference in your examples.
|
| First: Musician used to play orchestra, but now automation
| might replace them. Musician can take their skills elsewhere
| as they still posses them
|
| Second: Software developer (for example) used to write CRUD
| apps, but now automation might replace them. Developer can
| take their skills elsewhere as they still posses them.
|
| I don't see how in the second example, somehow the skills as
| "destroyed" while in the first example, they're used
| somewhere else instead of destroyed.
| bayindirh wrote:
| A cello player is a cello player everywhere. They can use
| the same instrument, same reflexes, and what they used to
| play in a different environment.
|
| Consider a developer versed in CRUD apps obsoleted by a
| code generator AI and, they need to pivot to something
| different. e.g.: UI, simulation, games or system. That
| pivot will require different languages, different mindset,
| different knowledge (simulation and games needs different
| sets of deep math, UI needs new tools and paradigms, system
| requires a different knowledge stack from hardware to lower
| levels of OS, etc.).
|
| They need to learn, get experience, go through hoops, etc.
| A musician can play in an orchestra pit in 2PM and play
| with a symphony at 8PM. They just need a little rest and a
| meal in between (had friends doing exactly that).
|
| If said musician is forced to change their instrument. e.g.
| from cello to tuba, or cello to timpani, the effect will be
| the same as software developer's. Some things would carry
| over, but others needs to be replaced completely.
| diggan wrote:
| > A cello player is a cello player everywhere. They can
| use the same instrument, same reflexes, and what they
| used to play in a different environment.
|
| But programming is exactly the same. A programmer knows
| how to program, and they can program all sorts of
| different things, with different languages, without
| having learn how to program from scratch each time. Most
| programming languages/projects are more similar to the
| rest, than different.
|
| > A musician can play in an orchestra pit in 2PM and play
| with a symphony at 8PM.
|
| In your developer example, it would be more fitting to
| compare it to that they could build CRUD apps, or desktop
| applications, and it wouldn't be that much different.
| Plenty of programmers work in multiple "fields" at the
| same time, just like a Cello player might.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > But programming is exactly the same.
|
| Respectfully, no. You're right about picking up
| programming languages, but missing the nuance about
| developing different genres of software.
|
| I develop utilities, material simulation systems (think
| finite element, boundary element, etc.), and used to
| develop an AI system (a multi-agent collectively
| intelligent system, an autonomous marketplace).
|
| The knowledge required in each one of these is vastly
| different. First one requires OS knowledge and is
| generally I/O bound, so you try write good code, talk
| sensibly with the OS, but you don't need to optimize
| beyond the obvious pain points.
|
| Writing simulations is completely different. I do care
| about the language, how it behaves, how I can extract
| every bit of performance from the CPU, while implementing
| numerical differential equations which needs to be exact,
| accurate and precise, while not compromising the
| performance of the codebase. I benchmark memory and CPU
| separately and as a whole, while not deviating from
| ground truth values. Otherwise things go very bad.
|
| AI system was latency sensitive. I needed to make it fast
| while not bogging down the system as a whole, it needed
| to scale while being intelligent about what to do, and be
| flexible enough. This required strategies, self-tuning,
| etc. It was no neural net, so it was a completely
| different beast.
|
| System programming is similar. Latency sensitive, talking
| correctly with the OS, and not bogging the system down
| while doing useful work.
|
| Learning programming languages is easy. Implementing
| differential equations with demoscene levels of
| optimization while being exact and accurate is not.
|
| Heck, even the usage patterns for the same programming
| language is different between different genres of
| software.
| diggan wrote:
| I feel like you're mixing the domain which you are
| programming in, versus "programming" as a concept, while
| I'm focusing purely on programming.
|
| I do understand that different domains require different
| skills, that much is evident in itself. But then we're
| moving on from just discussing programming to also
| discussing programming domains, which detracts a bit from
| the core discussion.
| bayindirh wrote:
| My first comment already had domains in "pivoting" parts,
| so I didn't change the scope from comment to comment.
|
| So domains is at the core of the discussion since the
| beginning, as the programming itself. At least that's how
| I formed my comment, and that's my intention while
| writing that comment.
| diggan wrote:
| But if you're talking about domains in the programmer's
| example, you'd have to do the same for the cello player's
| example.
|
| So in that case it would be that the cello player could
| seamlessly (without training) change between genres for
| example, which clearly isn't true.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Changing genres are easy. Some of my orchestra mates were
| multi-genre (jazz/classic for example). I used to play
| metal and classic back in the day.
|
| What's hard is changing instruments, which I have given
| as an example in one of my comments. Yes I did go
| thorough that one, too.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > But programming is exactly the same. A programmer knows
| how to program
|
| That approach works much better for more experienced
| senior devs. It takes time to go from knowing a
| particular language for a particular type of software to
| recognizing the universal patterns and picking up new
| languages and types of software project quickly.
|
| I've been in it for around 15 years and feel pretty
| comfortable picking up a new language and jumping around
| between stack, frontend/back end/db, and languages. That
| takes time though and I still have plenty I could learn.
| 5 or 10 years ago I may have _felt_ confident in that bit
| I 'm not so sure I'd have been able competitive if the
| industry all went into the job market post-LLM layoffs
| (hypothetical?).
| diggan wrote:
| > That approach works much better for more experienced
| senior devs.
|
| I don't think we're talking about junior developers here
| since the counter-example is a Cello player in orchestras
| and symphonies, those have to be considered "senior" as
| well no?
|
| > I've been in it for around 15 years and feel pretty
| comfortable picking up a new language and jumping around
| between stack, frontend/back end/db, and languages.
|
| Yeah, but that's comparing it to a musician switching
| instrument, instead of just a musician switching the
| place they play. The comparison then would be that a
| desktop app programmer does a todo app, or they do a
| calendar app. Both involving still the same
| instrument/area of programming, but different
| environments of sorts.
| pjmlp wrote:
| AI will replace programming languages, as optimizating
| compilers replaced Assembly programmers.
|
| Anyone that thinks code generation will stay as is, is
| fooling themselves.
| whtsthmttrmn wrote:
| Well yea, of course you can say that on an open ended
| timeline.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well, some apparently still think code generation won't
| go away, like those Assembly devs when Fortran was new.
|
| Even if we consider a similar timeline, it means we have
| about 50 years to enjoy programming as we know it.
| qsort wrote:
| I don't see the point. If/when that happens, programmers
| start doing the thing that comes next. The thread was
| about skills, ASM skills aren't irrelevant for doing C, C
| skills aren't irrelevant for doing Python and so on.
|
| One-trick ponies aren't good programmers in the first
| place.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Many things that come next isn't programming as we know
| it.
|
| Already today, see SaaS products for content management,
| CMS and no-code frontend.
|
| There is zero programming, what one ends up doing is
| configuring SaaS products to connect among themselves,
| plug data sources, have AI algorithms process marketing
| data, export a generated UI into Vercel/Nelify and that
| is about it for 90% of customers.
| qsort wrote:
| For all those SaaS products today, you see legions of
| consultants, system integration projects, a cottage
| industry for customizations...
|
| The _skills_ aren 't irrelevant.
| pjmlp wrote:
| True, but it isn't programming.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Consider a developer versed in CRUD apps obsoleted by a
| code generator AI and, they need to pivot to something
| different. e.g.: UI, simulation, games or system. That
| pivot will require different languages, different
| mindset, different knowledge (simulation and games needs
| different sets of deep math, UI needs new tools and
| paradigms, system requires a different knowledge stack
| from hardware to lower levels of OS, etc.).
|
| This is nothing new, though. There used to be very
| lucrative job titles like "webmaster" or "web developer"
| whose daily work consisted of creating bespoke, static
| websites created with raw HTML and CSS. Whenever a
| customer wanted their website updated, even if just
| textual content updates, they got to bill a few hundred
| bucks to copy and paste the text into their site and
| upload the updated files onto whatever shared web hosting
| they were using.
|
| Tools were invented: first WYSIWYG editors like Microsoft
| Frontpage, then content management systems so users could
| update their own websites, then full-on SaaS website
| designers like Wix, and now the current state of, well
| maybe your business doesn't even really _need_ a website
| because you can just make a Facebook page instead.
|
| When I was going to university in 2005, I was heavily
| warned by (cough) _" experts"_ that due to this, plus the
| imminent wave of outsourcing of "IT" to low-cost
| developers in India and Bangladesh, that learning web-
| based software development was a dead-end career path,
| and US software developer salaries would cap out at $75k
| unless you got into management... yeah.
|
| So, yes, you'll need to pivot as you always have in the
| industry. Any potential threat from AI isn't anything
| new. And it's not nearly as impactful as switching from
| playing cello to piano.
| saltcured wrote:
| I feel like you're ignoring the amount of training that
| an expert musician does to learn a specific piece of
| music and maintain their proficiency in it. For the most
| part, they don't go to professional gigs and play
| something novel.
|
| Traditional musicians have a whole live or real-time
| performance aspect as do athletes, dancers, etc. I think
| the amount of time they spend preparing for this can be
| similar to the time we spend working on one programming
| task. Bigger problems take more preparation. The
| difference is we don't have to then do a live performance
| after we've figured out how to program it. We just
| accumulate a recorded artifact and ship it, rather than
| doing a live recital after we've figured out all the
| difficult bits.
|
| So it's difficult to draw parallels. Programmers have
| more in common with writers, painters, and sculptors who
| all work on a tangible artifact that is delivered after
| the fact and which acts as an accumulator of time-shifted
| work product. Some crafts, like glass blowing, are more
| like live music in that you develop a skill but then have
| to make a real-time performance each time you produce the
| artifact.
| zachwill wrote:
| An insightful comment! Had never drawn those parallels
| before -- great call.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Actually no. When you're learning a piece from scratch,
| you start with 60bpm or slower and slowly polish your
| performance and reach to the normal speed of the piece.
| If you're going to perform with an orchestra, you also
| rehearse a lot. We started 14 weeks before the actual
| concert date (used to play double bass in a symphony).
|
| Learning the instrument is akin to learning the
| programming language. Music theory is the same thing as
| programming languages / intro to computation courses. You
| pass through them once and revisit as needed. Not
| everyday.
|
| However, when you finish a piece, 95% of the skill
| required to play it _again_ is permanent. You just
| rehearse it a couple of times and, viola. The performance
| is there.
|
| The constant exercise part is very on par with what
| programmers do every day. You either code (work) or
| playfight/practice (hobby projects). Also, composers and
| genres have similar structures in their pieces, so when
| you get used to them, you can just fly through them, even
| if you play for the first time.
|
| There are a couple of comments which say that we're
| talking about senior programmers here. Senior musicians
| can play what they see in the first pass, or just
| improvise/remix what they hear for the first time (see
| [0]).
|
| So, in most cases, the partitions in front of the
| musicians are cheat sheets. I remember just looking at
| the section and playing half (sometimes most) of it
| without even looking to it.
|
| The live/improvised performance is akin to "hacking" in
| programming. I had my mentor who taught me playing double
| bass had to improvise a bridge section of a piece because
| he forgot that specific part. He said that since he knows
| the motifs, he bridged the part on the fly, in a solo
| performance in conservatory, and he got a pass because
| how he handled it. This is how we hack something together
| when we're in a rough spot and dig our way out of it by
| knowing what we're doing, but improvising and trusting
| the process.
|
| So, I draw these conclusions from 10+ years of live
| concerts and 15+ years of professional
| sysadmin/programming/research work.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pYHCGYJbw0
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| If automation takes your job, there are now less overall
| positions and more people competing for them (you and
| everyone else who got laid off) so its not like you can
| "just" take your skills elsewhere, there may be nowhere
| else to go.
| diggan wrote:
| How is that different from the hypothetical Cello player?
| Once enough automatized cello players exists, how could
| they go anywhere else?
| whtsthmttrmn wrote:
| This is assuming we're at some sort of job ceiling and no
| new jobs will ever be created.
| vunderba wrote:
| I agree with respect to that old advertisement, but GenAI +
| acoustic physical modeling (SWAM) are likely poised to
| disrupt music more than you'd think.
|
| You can 100% believe that the moment a composer/company/etc.
| can sketch out the cello/viola/whatever line of a song as
| pure midi and have an AI that can render it in a realistic
| articulable fashion (think some kind of futuristic band in a
| box coupled with physical modeling of the instrument)... a
| TON OF GIG/SESSION musicians will unfortunately lose their
| jobs.
|
| It also wouldn't surprise me with the advent of MPE
| (Seaboard, Linnstrument, Osmose) that we start to see more
| instrumental approximations that are considered good enough
| for many lines of work.
|
| Obviously though live performances will always have their
| place.
|
| https://youtu.be/11Qprwtzl6s?si=qKlWX35zeOHIkiSS
| bayindirh wrote:
| The comment I have written taken both examples during their
| eras of the respective advertisements.
|
| So it was what records did to orchestra players vs. what AI
| did to programmers. Good sound fonts, a good sound cards
| (DACs) and MIDI was already good enough to render complex
| orchestrations at impeccable quality since 00s. We're just
| seeing it trickle down to ordinary attic musicians' budget
| limits.
|
| I like Venus Theory's channel and videos for that reason.
| He shows what can be done with bog standard software of
| today, but it was already possible yesterday.
| wiml wrote:
| I've read that there was familiar controversy over player-piano
| rolls in the early 1900s/late 1800s. They'd be created in the
| eastern US and then be duplicated out west, potentially putting
| pianists out of a job.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. That's why the copyright license to record a composition
| is called a "mechanical license".[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_license
| Animats wrote:
| > I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as
| controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about
| work-life balance" is today.
|
| Yes, it was. Here's the view from Local 802, American
| Federation of Musicians. _Nowhere else in this mechanical age
| does the workman create the machine which destroys him, but
| that's what happens to the musician when he plays for a
| recording. The iceman didn't create the refrigerator. The
| coachman didn't build the automobile. But the musician plays
| his music into a recorder and a short time later the radio
| station manager comes around and says, "Sorry, Joe, we've got
| all your stuff on records, so we don't need you anymore." And
| Joe's out of a job._ [1]
|
| This finally came to a head in an 800-day strike. The outcome
| was that performers started getting royalties from recordings.
| An unexpected side effect was the end of the big band era and
| the rise of the pop star.
|
| [1] https://www.local802afm.org/allegro/articles/the-silence-
| was...
| diggan wrote:
| Thanks a lot for digging this up, the outcome of introducing
| royalties is very interesting.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| > I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as
| controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about
| work-life balance" is today.
|
| I'm not sure about controversy, but I do think they will look
| similarly silly in retrospect.
|
| Early vendors of new technology tend to over-promise and
| under-deliver. They sort of have to, as they are creating a
| new market. People need to be moved in order to be convinced
| they need it.
|
| The technology (if there is real merit to it) usually evolves
| over time based on who pays for it, which helps separate the
| actual uses from imagined ones.
|
| I do not think today's AI will replace everything, it's
| unclear where it will be used and where it wont. Just keep
| doing what you are doing. The salesmen are just doing their
| thing.
|
| As for whether musicians specifically will be impacted, sure,
| some will. Good musicians, the ones who channel and share
| their feelings with listeners will always (well, until AI has
| something resembling real emotion) have work. Today's AI does
| not have emotion, and I expect people will know the
| difference. I'm sure the music industry will go wild trying,
| but people will always create music for themselves, and real
| emotion will resonate far further than 'art' created via a
| prompt.
| keep_walking wrote:
| bottles and cans just clap your hands just clap your hands
| HankWozHere wrote:
| Where it's at!
| 23B1 wrote:
| obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLY-BugKWk0
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