Imagine a robot piano playing whatever you want in the style of whichever dead musician you want. It’s possible, sort of, as long there’s a way to sample the dead musician’s style. Almost like putting a ghost in the machine.
Of course, the musician doesn’t have to be dead. It’s about sampling, but not sampling licks or recycling snippets, it’s about sampling style. And even selling it.
According to this in Wired:
The concept goes well beyond basing the avatars in guitar-based videogames on famous performers, although the idea is similar. Using complex software, North Carolina’s Zenph Sound Innovations models the musical performances of musicians from Thelonius Monk to Rachmaninoff, based on how they played in occasionally old, scratchy recordings. Using that model, the company creates new recordings as they would be played by deceased musicians, if they were around to record with today’s equipment, to critical acclaim. And that’s just for starters.
It’s not exactly bringing back the dead. Just their disembodied performing style. Using this technology, it might be possible to keep Keith Richards alive forever.
And imagine a future in which they can sample the dancing style of dancing greats, perhaps from old film, and then somehow inject it into our nervous systems, turning us all into potential Fred Astaires or Michael Jacksons.
Of course we might need a wardrobe update, too.
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