Superiority of the Human Voice

 Right now music listeners are analyzing AM, it's weird sound.

I remember the different medium they used to make a cartoon movie more realistic. They debuted Space Jam, then Toy Story, until the likes of the movie Transformers  was launched, followed by Avatar. There was no confusion. We just enjoyed whatever new medium they explored and experimented with. Google AI termed it evolution of photorealism:

1. Space Jam (1996) - The Hybrid Hand-Drawn Era

2. Toy Story (1995) - The birth of Full CGI 

3. Transformers (2007) - Industrial Realism

4. Avatar (2009) - Biological Photorealism

Whatever medium it is that I'm not familiar with technically, my experience with it never introduced any semblance of confusion, but sheer excitement to watch the movie itself.

However even in the AV world, as well as in the AM world, there is this great concern for fake news videos edited like it was the real deal. Thus, they created means to detect the fake ones. Likewise US Copyright Office through Supreme Court decision, decided that AM cannot be copyrighted (indefensible in court if plagiarized). Thus, creating means to take down copycats that has no semblance of showing itself as just fictional or not the real artist it portrays to be. That's the legal battle today they're working with.

Anyway, should we just become used to more AM and AV just like we've become used to the evolution of photorealism? Maybe more AM and AV technology will still come. And we're just beginning to see its starting point.

Well maybe as long as it will not lead to being used to create for example a fake video of me robbing a bank, and everybody believing it as real, then there's nothing to worry about.

And there's no inherent evil in using Michael Jackson's voice on a new song very similar sounding to a popular song topping the chart right now, as long as it is declared in some way as an altered or synthetic content, made fictional and not deceptive as the real artist it portrays, etc.

However, the superiority of the human voice shines brilliantly authentic than an AM voice that even non-audiophile can perceive. It is the human voice's capacity to communicate feeling and meaning that we are concerned about.

It seems the audio quality of a human voice is irreplaceable according to our sense of hearing. It seems then also more relevant than the video quality of a human action that is replaceable without any problem as we've experienced from the evolution of photorealism.

Do you care at all if you will watch a Mission Impossible movie and after some time of being a blockbuster, declared by the producers that they didn't use a single real thing making the movie, that they're all just an AV.

In short, present events are already forecasting that Suno will be releasimg a new Michael Jackson album imminently.

We don't care at all as long as it's a good music and film. An inherently evil music and video maybe is what is more concerning. The psychological effect of an artificial seems negligible compared to the effect of immorality.

Nevertheless, we maybe are just getting used to an AM voice, and would just later accept the reality of its medium as just another alternative musical category.

We don't always only watch superhero movies today though they're the chart topper. We still enjoy human drama, true to life stories, etc. Maybe they're just the in thing today, gone tomorrow, replaced by the latest whatever.

By the third trimester babies can recognize their mother's voice and even prefer it after birth. I guess psychologically, we trust a voice even though we don't see it. I just don't know how far the human ear is the superior one than the human voice.

I guess the science of psychoacoustics have to explore more such human super power of hearing and trusting than mere limit of the human ear to hear. Our first tool for connection and trusting happened to be our sense of hearing. Is it why our voice can mimic and produce the sound it hears, and where the human voice's real power comes from?

Do you know that the amniotic fluid in the womb make it sound a bit like underwater to a baby, which the Wildflower song utilizes? And the lyrics telling the story of trust issues blocking love to bloom is really quiet a dillema to handle.

 Love blooms in the anchor of peace and trust.

Live Performances

 When there isn't a recorder yet, electronic enhancers, etc. human beings need to be a virtuoso in terms of playing music, instruments, and singing songs, from start to finish, again and again, memorized or notated. 

During the 18th century, they even developed the "modern" opera house with superior acoustics than the proscenium that allowed Mozart to compose more complex, intimate music because he knew the "better" indoor acoustics would allow the audience to hear the fine details of the instruments.(Gemini 3 Fast)

Today a DAW expert can compose a song from start to finish at the comfort of their own room without knowing how to play any instrument, or even sing, or even read notation, or explain musical theories. Of course using a DAW is another kind of drudgery before even one can hear a melodious tone and good rhythm. I know first hand from being a Cool Edit Pro, etc. user way back in 2000. Just don't call me jurassic.

Today a one time brilliant performance can be recorded using a good camera and a good mic, uploaded to YouTube, and watched by millions repeatedly all over the world, not just in one place.

Today a faint idea of a non-musician can be prompted to an AI music generator, which produces studio finished song in seconds.

What's still the use of live performances?

Let's take the case of the song If You Leave Me Now by Chicago. Although it's a recorded live stage performance, I want you to compare it to its master record. Also there is a live studio and stage performance of it by Leonid & Friends.

What is a live performance? It's a performance from start to finish. As a stage actor/singer myself, we are trained to continue the performance even if we committed mistakes, and just have to make an ad-lib or improvise if need be. That's why mastery of one's role is important that's made possible by so many repeated practices. This is what's also being pointed by studio engineers as the main reason why old records sounds better than contemporary ones that are already mostly heavily edited.

I want you to imagine saying this sentence with feelings: You're nothing but a second rate, trying hard copycat!

Now imagine we have to edit your last word "copycat" several takes before you get the feeling the director wants projected. That's not live anymore. In real life, you don't stop at telling your enemy that full sentence.

You need lots of practice to produce that brilliant one take on the day of the performance on stage or on studio without pause or retake anymore.

It's like proposing to your girlfriend the line you've practiced and memorized. But the moment of saying it becomes a spontaneous outburst of the heart. Nothing comes close to such.

Do you think artists deserve the awards given them, all judges being impartial? We are giving such honor for their hard work at internalizing a life not of their own and projecting such to an audience like it's a spontaneous real event, bringing to life an event that we can only imagine while reading a novel.

So if Wildflower sang by Billie Eilish is her own real story, do you think we will hear it more deeply? I mean I already want to feel sorry for her and give her a hug.

Psychologically, the nonverbals are a part of a live performance as well which isn't present from an audio-only experience. 

MTV and onwards are also a different kind of category. However, due to the budding world of artificial video we may refer to as AV, it becomes a harder thing to tackle. I mean we can identify a cartoon show from a real human drama. But when AV becomes indistinguishable from real human video or HV, we don't know the experience yet anymore. Cartoon TV shows have entertained and inspired me as a child, so I know what it is. There is no question about the feeling and the meaning it triggers. Could it be giving us a clue that AV and AM will just be the same, and that we only need some time to getting used to it?

We don't have any issue just replaying an NBA finals we missed due to a hectic schedule. We are now used to it. We don't have any problem capturing the feeling and the meaning of a replayed live Coachella concert as well. I think it ends our inquiry in that regard. There is no problem with AM and AV as well. Or is there any that still needs further clarification?

Why Artificial Music Forces Us to Redefine the Human

 Its high time again to describe ourselves anew at the backdrop of an AM seemingly sending it's listeners the intended feeling and meaning. Socratically, telling ourselves we don't know what an AM is, will make us examine our lives so that we can worthily live it, and thus we can know what an HM really is, we can know ourselves.

AM doesn't. It just seemingly.

A human being will, wether or not he/she is singing, send you the meaning and feeling.

Of course technology will evolve and will sound more human. But unless human session artists perform the AM song, then the actual sending of feeling and meaning will not be recaptured again. Why recapture? Because AM song is trained on HM. And we already said that we need to respect the source of its ability. Otherwise we would hate ourselves.

The brilliance of an AM song is "applaudible," and Alfred Nobel wants us to celebrate the right technology and its use. Nothing is inherently evil with AM in comparison with an atomic bomb. We just have to use AM technology correctly.

Right now though, we are still in the process of knowing what AM really is.

Someone who understands and feels can actually also communicate such complex meaning and feeling. It's just that a song was in my opinion the highest form of capturing for communication the feeling and meaning at the same time.

As a being-for-others, human beings create songs that are by nature designed to be heard by others or Other. Human beings always tend to attract his fellow human beings and form a communion, or to commune with God.

The Inspiration

The specific inspiration is the 2026 Grammy Award winning Song of the Year Wildflower by Billie Eilish.

The context? The world of music is in shambles what to do with generated AI songs.

It seems Billie Eilish rendition of this song captures the separation of what a human song is from a generated AI music song. It's not just full of emotion like a generated AI song is. There is meaning in what she is singing. The music isn't just guiding us to feel. The music is incarnating the meaning of the lyrics, the subjective experience of the singer putting him/herself in the shoes of the one telling the story. Perhaps it's a good contrary idea to read aloud to others the lyrics as a stand up comedian, and the lyrics is now in a different world of meaning.

Let's call it henceforward Artificial Music or AM, and Human Music or HM.

Here is a breakdown of the Wildflower info (from Gemini 3 Fast), which looks like more as family affair.

The Core Team

• ​Composers / Songwriters: Billie Eilish O'Connell & Finneas O'Connell.

• ​Producer: Finneas.

• ​Vocals: Billie Eilish.

​Instrumentation & Performance

​While many modern tracks use a rotating door of session musicians, Finneas handled almost every physical and digital instrument on this track:

• ​Drums & Percussion: Finneas.

• ​Guitar & Bass: Finneas.

• ​Keyboards & Synthesizers: Finneas (with additional keyboards by Billie Eilish).

• ​Glockenspiel: Finneas.

​Technical & Engineering Credits

• ​Mixing Engineers: Jon Castelli & Aron Forbes.

• ​Mastering Engineer: Dale Becker.

• ​Editing Engineers: Billie Eilish & Finneas.

• ​Assistant Engineers: Noah McCorkle, Katie Harvey, and Brad Lauchert.

The brother-sister tandem captures the original music they hear from their mind up to its actual production. Most importantly, no higher-ups can muscle their own idea against what their musical creativity is guiding them to. Editing their own raw talented performances ensures that the meaning they are intending to be heard via their musical medium drives emotions (their own and their listeners) on its proper color. 

Feeling and meaning are interdependent.

Introduction

 I intend to make this book two of MagPhenoTayo. I intend to digress into the better part of using phenomenology. If the first book seems to ask how to do the phenomenology of St. John Paul II in the situation I am in, the second book delves into another more limited scope of life, the life of feeling and meaning.

This time though, the author has realized that doing phenomenology for its own sake seems ineffective. Now the focus is more on the life of the emotion and meaning, and that phenomenology is just there always available as a tool for a kind of thinking it only can produce. Anyway St. John Paul II isn't a pure phenomenologist but used it when the line of thought he is pursuing necessitates a kind of analyzing or scrutinizing the inner life, not always starting in the light of faith but also in the light of reason by aid of phenomenology, a bracketing of the inner life, than just always starting from spirituality.

Next is that my exploration of solution to my career life, seemingly starting from a phenomenological method clarification, is a kind of a blind man guiding his fellow blind. But now that the method of phenomenology we've first clarified has now become more crystalized, maybe we can now proceed with a better probability of clarifying what we are problematizing hypothetically, the life of the emotion and meaning.

And what about the hypothesis? I think I intend to make it in such broad category as feeling and meaning. Remember that in book one MagPhenoTayo I started with my limited personal career problem. Yet I still ended up with the macrocosm I was actuating in.

 Methodically, I will be discussing to you using my full power of reasoning, not limited by just phenomenology. I do not intend to tell you which of my mode of thinking though is phenomenology and which is general reasoning. Let me be excused to use all modes of thinking very fluidly, including my faith as a kind of reasoning of its own kind. Nevertheless let me be redacted as having only degrees in education, psychology, and philosophy. That is where my main degrees are focused, although I have interest and broad experience and knowledge about music, computer technology, etc. that I might have short courses certification with only.