Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, say, who's
Speaker 1: that playing the guitar. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vokeman,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we were going to
Speaker 1: talk about the future of music, specifically when it comes
Speaker 1: to musical performance, and kind of talk all about how
Speaker 1: how sometimes the instruments that we have at our disposal
Speaker 1: can actually shape the way we create music, and the
Speaker 1: sound of the music can actually create entire revolutions in music.
Speaker 1: I got an interesting trivia question for y'all. All right,
Speaker 1: what's older music or farming. I'm gonna go with music music. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because agriculture. I mean, I sit there and think about that. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure when we were hunters and gathers were still
Speaker 1: bashing a little ewoks skulls to make the music because
Speaker 1: we had walks before we had it was a long
Speaker 1: time ago, Lauren, but it wasn't in a galaxy far
Speaker 1: okay anyway, So yep, numb. So that's for the old
Speaker 1: school fans who like the pre uh messed with version
Speaker 1: of the original trilogy. Well, yeah, actually, uh so the
Speaker 1: even the e Walks had music, and they were a
Speaker 1: fairly primitive society. Yeah that they didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of advanced technology, but they still had a fairly robust
Speaker 1: music scene. Is it fair to I honestly don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to this, and maybe you you do, Joe,
Speaker 1: because you were looking into some of the earliest musical instruments, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: is it fair to say that some of the earliest
Speaker 1: musical instruments were percussion instruments? Well, they could be. Uh
Speaker 1: if we're part of the problem is we just don't
Speaker 1: know how old because so few things survived. We know, Um,
Speaker 1: we know music is older than say, agriculture, because we
Speaker 1: have a pretty good idea that agriculture began about ten
Speaker 1: to twelve thousand years ago, and when the rolling stones
Speaker 1: are older than that. We have musical instruments that are
Speaker 1: we now believe about forty years old. Yeah, not percussion instruments,
Speaker 1: but the percussion may have preceded them because obviously, what
Speaker 1: were the first musical instruments, Well, they were our bodies,
Speaker 1: right before people were building things with their bodies and
Speaker 1: were building you know, making tools. Yeah, they were. They
Speaker 1: could clap and they could sing. And there's actually some
Speaker 1: really interesting research about why singing started. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean think about it. Why did we start making music
Speaker 1: instead of just comun talking or grunting or etcetera. Gesticulating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: One interesting theory is that music performance started um as
Speaker 1: sort of an organizing principle for tribes of apex predators.
Speaker 1: So it was staying Yeah, and so you listen to
Speaker 1: the way wolves howl, Well, wolves howl for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1: We think some of the main reasons they do it
Speaker 1: are to establish like a a social dominance hierarchy, to
Speaker 1: establish the borders of their territory, and to sort of
Speaker 1: create a defense alertness network within their territory UM and
Speaker 1: to sort of coordinate during hunt's interest. And those are
Speaker 1: all characteristics that would be displayed by predators, actually predators,
Speaker 1: which are the same kind of role that early hominids
Speaker 1: would have played, like Neanderthals and our direct dominid ancestors um.
Speaker 1: And so there's a pretty good there's a pretty good
Speaker 1: basis there for thinking, wow, well, maybe our ancestors had
Speaker 1: organized systems of vocal calls the same way that wolves
Speaker 1: have howling systems, but obviously we have um more versatile
Speaker 1: vocal cords than wolves do, and so we have even
Speaker 1: more ability to you know, maybe we could kind of
Speaker 1: create an even more intricate and and well thought out
Speaker 1: system of vocal signals, and from there you have the
Speaker 1: idea that well, maybe that's how the first songs came about.
Speaker 1: And of course, I mean, this whole topic ties in
Speaker 1: very closely with the one we looked at earlier, the
Speaker 1: storytelling topic and the idea of how music has become
Speaker 1: part of our way of sharing stories and h and
Speaker 1: culture to a point where you know, you could imagine
Speaker 1: a lore teller someone who is in charge of gathering
Speaker 1: information about the people and passing that on also communicating
Speaker 1: that in the form of song, which can make things
Speaker 1: easier to remember and can also have a very very
Speaker 1: deep emotional impact, as anyone who enjoys music can tell you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know there are people out there who
Speaker 1: just don't get music. It's just doesn't speak to them
Speaker 1: in any way. But for others, like I include myself
Speaker 1: in this, certain types of music can get a huge
Speaker 1: emotional response from me. Kenny g makes me really angry,
Speaker 1: it's it's obviously not my favorite form of artistic expression.
Speaker 1: It's harder for me to consume it than other forms
Speaker 1: of art, so I I tend to consume less music
Speaker 1: than other things. But it, but it definitely has a
Speaker 1: huge um I think a mnemonic impression on our brains.
Speaker 1: That the patterns and the mathematics and it are something
Speaker 1: that the bits of your brain that you're not using
Speaker 1: to listen to the words of a story you are
Speaker 1: going to kick in well. And it's hard to deny
Speaker 1: that it's deeply social's singing together with people really helps.
Speaker 1: It creates a sense of oneness and harmony, a kind
Speaker 1: of you know, a spiritual bond. I've even seen each
Speaker 1: other some recent some recent scientific studies that have suggested
Speaker 1: that singing with a group of people can help improve
Speaker 1: your mood drastically, Like it can be a true psychological
Speaker 1: aid for for people who are suffering from a depression
Speaker 1: or they're just they have anxiety issues. Um, assuming that
Speaker 1: you don't have an anxiety issue with singing with a group.
Speaker 1: But but but it is it's more like kind of
Speaker 1: choral singing. It's not that it's not like you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna get singled out to do a crazy Yeah,
Speaker 1: so all of that obviously speculation. I mean, there's just
Speaker 1: there's no physical evidence for that. It's just we we
Speaker 1: can look at how other animals behave and we can
Speaker 1: sort of guess how things like that came about, but
Speaker 1: there's no way to really know. What we do know UM,
Speaker 1: and that can be tested by radiocarbon dating and stuff.
Speaker 1: Is that at the at the very latest thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and some new tests reveal probably more
Speaker 1: like forty to forty two or forty three thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: We had bone flutes um found in caves in Germany.
Speaker 1: There are these uh flutes made from the birds of
Speaker 1: bones and and they're just little hollow bird bones, but
Speaker 1: they've they've clearly been carved, so they're carved holes along
Speaker 1: the length of the flute um where you would place
Speaker 1: your fingers to cover them up and create notes. And
Speaker 1: researchers who found these have created wooden replicas that they
Speaker 1: say are are pretty solid, like you can play them
Speaker 1: and create some pleasing harmonic frequency. So the other thing
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about before we get into some
Speaker 1: of the crazy instruments that we've seen UH that are
Speaker 1: are trying to either reshape music or just create new
Speaker 1: ways of playing music. We wanted to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about some of the instruments that were really familiar
Speaker 1: with today that had uh through their creation and and
Speaker 1: people playing them, have really transformed music in big ways. Now,
Speaker 1: there are way too many to name. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: if we were to go and and even if we
Speaker 1: were to just focus on just the the Western Hemist
Speaker 1: fear musical traditions, because obviously music is very different in
Speaker 1: different parts of the world. We all have different rules
Speaker 1: for the way we make music, We have different instruments
Speaker 1: that we play, there are different techniques, but there are
Speaker 1: certain ones in the Western traditions that have had an
Speaker 1: enormous impact, particularly on modern music, the music that we
Speaker 1: listened to today. Um. You know, clearly we could talk
Speaker 1: about even the invention of just the guitar itself, and
Speaker 1: not the electric guitar, but just the guitar, which came
Speaker 1: in pretty late in the Renaissance. But I think the
Speaker 1: one we really wanted to start with it was a
Speaker 1: different musical instrument, one that is featured still quite heavily
Speaker 1: in music today, the piano, right right, Yeah, Um, well,
Speaker 1: stringed instruments appear in basically every culture across the globe.
Speaker 1: Everyone has versions of these, But the piano itself was
Speaker 1: not invented until about seventeen hundred, or maybe innovated as
Speaker 1: a better word, because before the piano, we had the
Speaker 1: harpsichord and the clavichord, and these were two, um, two
Speaker 1: stringed instruments, the clavichord being a having these bi chord
Speaker 1: strings that were struck by tangents at the end of
Speaker 1: the keys that you would press down. Um, just a
Speaker 1: really simple lever motion. Um. It allowed for dynamic expression
Speaker 1: the way that we get in a in a modern piano.
Speaker 1: But it was very quiet, but beyond about you know,
Speaker 1: the length of a room, a good few feet beyond
Speaker 1: the actual instrument, you couldn't hear it very well. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't a concert piece at all. UM, And the
Speaker 1: harps harpsichord was a little bit louder Um. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a set of strings that are plucked by quills
Speaker 1: moved by jack's when you press the keys. So it's
Speaker 1: an extra layer added on to that basic lever motion.
Speaker 1: But uh, it was it wasn't as dynamic. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty um uh steady level of sound. You can
Speaker 1: get the emotion that you can that people talk about
Speaker 1: getting from piano out of a harpsichord, right like with
Speaker 1: a piano where you can you can press the different
Speaker 1: pedals to to allow a string to be somewhat muffled
Speaker 1: or make it louder with a With a harpsichord, you
Speaker 1: you push a key, and that sound that you get
Speaker 1: as the same sound you're going to get no matter
Speaker 1: how you push that key right exactly. And you know,
Speaker 1: but beyond the pedals, what's really innovative about the piano
Speaker 1: is that um, you can you can press a key
Speaker 1: at a different um, different hardness or softness, and get
Speaker 1: a different sound out of that string. Um. And and
Speaker 1: those innovations were all due to um. Bartolomeo Cristoforio maybe
Speaker 1: that might be how you say it, who worked for
Speaker 1: the Royal court. He was Italian, an Italian craftsman of harpsichords.
Speaker 1: He worked for the Royal Court of Italy at the time,
Speaker 1: repairing their their machines, music machines. And yeah, he created
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of innovations that a lot of them
Speaker 1: were so complicated that they didn't actually come into common
Speaker 1: use until a century later because they were so expensive
Speaker 1: to to create. I mean really really interesting things like
Speaker 1: a like an escapement mechanism that let the hammer fall
Speaker 1: away from the string instantly after the hit, so that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it would it would let the string vibrate freely,
Speaker 1: or a stopper to prevent the hammer from coming back
Speaker 1: and hitting the key, all kinds of all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff that that sounds really simple when you say it
Speaker 1: out loud like that, but it was was really completely
Speaker 1: revolutionary for the instrument. And at first they were so
Speaker 1: so individual and expensive to make that they really were
Speaker 1: only used by royalty and extremely famous concert players. But
Speaker 1: but innovations eventually let them be smaller, added more keys,
Speaker 1: added greater expressions of sound, and um, they wound up
Speaker 1: being in basically every affluent home and eventually every home period,
Speaker 1: allowing people to learn how to play music on a
Speaker 1: very you know, the keys are laid out in this
Speaker 1: very obvious way on like a guitar where you have
Speaker 1: to kind of play with the frets and figure out
Speaker 1: how to how to do these complex hand motions. You
Speaker 1: can just look at a keyboard and see where your
Speaker 1: sounds are going to be coming from. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a very obvious visual correspondence between the keys and the
Speaker 1: musical scale itself. Sure, sure, although of course you can
Speaker 1: play with such great complexity that for some of us
Speaker 1: that obviousness is obvious skated by the deft fingers of
Speaker 1: a talented pianist. Well, it is interesting just to think
Speaker 1: about everything that the piano allows you to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the one stop shop for the single composer.
Speaker 1: You know, you can use a piano to compose much
Speaker 1: more complex pieces of music. Sure, sure, yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You can hold a note with a single key the
Speaker 1: way that you can't on a lot of on on
Speaker 1: a lot of the predecessors. And um and yeah, and
Speaker 1: and dynamic is the word that people always apply to
Speaker 1: it in this kind of literature. And it's it's fascinating that,
Speaker 1: um yeah, I mean, you know, so solo piano concerts
Speaker 1: didn't happen until like the eighteen hundreds, and and it's
Speaker 1: such a such a major part of musical existence these days.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's they couldn't be incorporated into
Speaker 1: concerts until Christopheros. Um. Yeah, the fourte piano or piano forte,
Speaker 1: which of course means uh. Well, if it's fo four
Speaker 1: to forte, piano means loud soft and pianoforte means soft loud,
Speaker 1: meaning that this instrument was capable of of producing both
Speaker 1: types of sound, either the very soft, subtle sounds or
Speaker 1: it could be quite loud and dramatic. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to look at here is not just how this is. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a cool instrument. It makes a new sound. It
Speaker 1: actually changed music. Sure, it changed the whole music scene,
Speaker 1: and it changed what people would do and the kinds
Speaker 1: of songs they would write. Yes, yes, And it eventually,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Lauren, I mean, the fact that
Speaker 1: pianos became more affordable ad meant that it was a
Speaker 1: more accessible instrument for a larger potential audience. So you
Speaker 1: started seeing pianos being that that sort of became the
Speaker 1: entrigue musical instrument for a lot of people. Now Ever,
Speaker 1: since most since a lot of households had them, um
Speaker 1: and since especially women were expected to know how to
Speaker 1: play to entertain their families, but we're not expected to
Speaker 1: appear on stage. In fact, it women were banned from
Speaker 1: the stage for playing pianos for a long time, ragtime
Speaker 1: and jazz. In fact, we're partially originated on pianos due
Speaker 1: to due to different different ways of playing uh using
Speaker 1: the instrument to play right, I was going to pick
Speaker 1: up with another musical instrument that truly revolutionized music, although
Speaker 1: uh when it was being worked on it was being
Speaker 1: during the invention of it, that wasn't necessarily the intent.
Speaker 1: That's the electric guitar. Now, the electric guitar, the first
Speaker 1: one really that we can point to, was designed by
Speaker 1: Lloyd lore in N who was an engineer with Gibson
Speaker 1: Guitar Company, and he had created was called an electric pickup. Now,
Speaker 1: this pickup is essentially it's an electro magnet that is
Speaker 1: part of the guitar and um and it's hooked up
Speaker 1: to a pre amplifier. And what happens is when the
Speaker 1: string vibrates, it creates a fluctuation in the magnetic field.
Speaker 1: That fluctuation in the magnetic field induces a current through
Speaker 1: the pickup, which then goes to the pre amp where
Speaker 1: it can amplify this tiny electrical current and turn into
Speaker 1: something that that can then be sent on to other
Speaker 1: equipment like speakers, so that you can actually have a
Speaker 1: much louder sound come from a guitar, because one of
Speaker 1: the problems was that trying to play something like a guitar,
Speaker 1: which does not make like acoustic guitar, does not make
Speaker 1: a very loud sound in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: if you want to play for a really large group,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to do. If you're incorporating it into
Speaker 1: a larger orchestra or exactly. Uh, you could put a
Speaker 1: microphone directly in front of the the the instrument, but
Speaker 1: that usually meant that you had some distortion of what
Speaker 1: the sound was like, and you wouldn't get a true
Speaker 1: representation of what a guitar sounded like. You would get
Speaker 1: some something that would be musical, but you would have
Speaker 1: some artifacts in that a little bit. Yeah, there's more
Speaker 1: for feedback also, that's also true. Yeah, So so doing
Speaker 1: this was kind of getting around that, and in fact,
Speaker 1: for the longest time, electric guitars were really just meant
Speaker 1: to be a representation of what an acoustic guitar sounds like,
Speaker 1: just louder. Now, I've seen a lot of arguing about
Speaker 1: when the actual first what we should call an electric
Speaker 1: guitar was put together. So there's some people say that
Speaker 1: It wasn't really until the Rickenbacker frying Pan uh and
Speaker 1: other people would say that the other models around nineteen thirties, say,
Speaker 1: late twenties, early thirties. Yeah, there was a Hawaiian guitar
Speaker 1: that was played. It was like a lap guitar you
Speaker 1: played in your lap and it had that sort of
Speaker 1: kind of twanky sound that you would associate with Hawaiian music.
Speaker 1: That was one of the earliest electric guitars. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it's is one of those things where it all depends
Speaker 1: upon whose definition you you, uh, you pay attention to
Speaker 1: when you're talking about the modern electric guitars. Something that
Speaker 1: really shaped the music in a in an interesting way.
Speaker 1: You gotta get all the way into really the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: That's where you start seeing the electric guitars that really
Speaker 1: had a big impact. And that's where you see the
Speaker 1: guitars from uh Leo Fender. You know, he created the
Speaker 1: first mass produced solid body electric guitar in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: and then you had less Paul. Of course, everybody thinks
Speaker 1: he invented the electric guitar. Now he certainly, he certainly
Speaker 1: had played a huge part in and of course he
Speaker 1: built his own electric guitar called the log that looked
Speaker 1: like just a big solid piece of wood that fit
Speaker 1: into another body. So that but he was it was
Speaker 1: sort of a his own little hobby, but it was
Speaker 1: never meant to be sold as an actual guitar. UM
Speaker 1: but his models started hitting the market in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: and uh, this was when you started seeing musicians play
Speaker 1: with the fact that they could create different sounds with
Speaker 1: an electric guitar by messing with different settings and creating
Speaker 1: distortion and echo effects, this sort of thing where they
Speaker 1: weren't trying to accurately recreate the sound of an acoustic guitar.
Speaker 1: They were trying to make new sounds. And there was
Speaker 1: a little bit of um, not a little bit, there was.
Speaker 1: There was quite a bit of resistance in some in
Speaker 1: some genres of music when the electric guitar became prominent,
Speaker 1: So rhythm and blues and rock and roll, obviously they
Speaker 1: they adopted the electric guitar pretty quickly. Other genres were slower.
Speaker 1: In fact, when Bob Dylan showed up with electric guitar,
Speaker 1: that was that was a controversy in the folk music world.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you've betrayed us. Country music also, I
Speaker 1: mean there was there were certain types of country music
Speaker 1: that that adopted it quickly, but um, these these were
Speaker 1: instruments that eventually became the backbone of a lot of
Speaker 1: popular music today. Obviously, not every genre of music relies
Speaker 1: heavily on on electric guitars, but a lot of it does.
Speaker 1: If you listen to your typical radio station in America,
Speaker 1: for example, you're gonna get a lot of electric guitar. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not as uh as central in every genre as
Speaker 1: it is in in say, your standard rock and roll band,
Speaker 1: but you'll find it featured even as a background or
Speaker 1: textual instrument in tons of music. Sure, yeah, most. And
Speaker 1: that also brings us to another musical instrument that has
Speaker 1: become pretty heavily featured in a lot of music, the synthesizer.
Speaker 1: And this sort of ties into where we're going to
Speaker 1: be going with this in the future. But I want
Speaker 1: to talk about first the one of the earliest h
Speaker 1: This is not truly a synthesizer in in the respect
Speaker 1: that it was never called that, but it was a
Speaker 1: musical instrument that I had to talk about, the tell harmonium,
Speaker 1: also known as the dynamo phone, dynamo phone Dynamo phone.
Speaker 1: It was the saxomaphone and the Dynamo phone. It was
Speaker 1: invented by Thaddeus Hill or K. Hill. And uh, it
Speaker 1: was a steam powered synthesizer with it had steam powered steamer,
Speaker 1: a steamer you might want to steam powered instrument. It
Speaker 1: had electromagnetic generators, and it had a It had velocity
Speaker 1: sensitive key is like a piano, meaning that if you
Speaker 1: played the keys gently, it would make a softer sounds.
Speaker 1: So this is something that tries to kill you in BioShock.
Speaker 1: It could create different sounds simultaneously, so you could actually
Speaker 1: have it make different quality sounds. And uh, and it
Speaker 1: weighed a mirror two hundred tons. Two hundred tons steam
Speaker 1: powered synthesizer. I want this what I could play heart
Speaker 1: and soul on that for defeating your enemies and driving
Speaker 1: them before you. You don't even have the missical ax
Speaker 1: in your hand. So now the first synthesizer that was
Speaker 1: actually called a synthesizer was made by Harry f Olsen
Speaker 1: and Herbert Blair for our c A in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: Are a quote unquote Bob Moag, Thank you Noel for
Speaker 1: the correction, Thank you Joe for letting me let Noel
Speaker 1: know that he was thanked for the correction. UH created
Speaker 1: a voltage controlled oscillator and amplifier module with a keyboard.
Speaker 1: Would we now call the move synthesizer, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that his last name apparently was pronounced Mog. So here's
Speaker 1: the cool thing is that Noel's actually gathered a little
Speaker 1: bit of a Moog synthesizer. So you can hear what
Speaker 1: it sounds like, a SUSI hear it. You're going to
Speaker 1: recognize that sound. I guarantee it, alright. So, and of
Speaker 1: course synthesizers became another one of those things that that
Speaker 1: went beyond what the intent was. The intent originally was
Speaker 1: to try and create a musical instrument that could recreate
Speaker 1: certain sounds, that could synthesize the sounds of other instruments
Speaker 1: and do it in a way where you could, you know,
Speaker 1: have have at your your disposal and entire orchestra, even
Speaker 1: if you just had one instrument. However, they the sounds
Speaker 1: of synthesizers were pretty distinct, or another way of saying
Speaker 1: that is, they didn't sound anything like the actual instruments
Speaker 1: they were trying to to emulate at that time. In fact,
Speaker 1: they were kind of hilarious. It certainly was. I mean,
Speaker 1: those early synthesizers were hilarious. If you wanted to listen to, like,
Speaker 1: this is what a piano sounds like. It doesn't sound
Speaker 1: anything like any piano you've ever actually, yeah, or or
Speaker 1: banjo or whatever. It just be this weird kind of
Speaker 1: electronic sound that sounds almost but not quite exactly, not
Speaker 1: like what it was supposed to sound like. But the
Speaker 1: cool things that musicians found ways of making music with
Speaker 1: this where that was that was the the draw of
Speaker 1: the music. It wasn't that they were trying to make
Speaker 1: the synthesizer be some other musical instrument. They were using
Speaker 1: the synthesizer for what it was, right. They realized that
Speaker 1: it had its own unique sound that that could be
Speaker 1: incorporated into questionably pleasing music. I'm not gonna go with
Speaker 1: questionably pleasing you, or you get to go sit in
Speaker 1: the corner of shame. Because new wave new wave music
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm mostly I'm mostly the roots that our
Speaker 1: theme we new wave music. That I loved the new
Speaker 1: wave era. So we're talking about the early eighties when
Speaker 1: we had all this music here in the United States.
Speaker 1: We had all this music come over from the UK,
Speaker 1: where it was a lot of bands experimenting with different
Speaker 1: sounds and different instruments, including synthesizers. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of sythen I'm giving it crap, but I would give
Speaker 1: any genre crap. I think that, I think that any
Speaker 1: genre is technically m questionably pleasing. Well, oh, I mean again,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine the music scene today without computer
Speaker 1: generated tones. Sure, I mean that that come a long way.
Speaker 1: And early synthesizers weren't computer generated tones, sorry, electronically generated.
Speaker 1: I mean now we have I guess you'd say digitally generated. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: Sure that that day that auto tuning became a thing
Speaker 1: that people did on purpose, as opposed to something to
Speaker 1: correct the occasional sharp or flat note, suddenly became a style.
Speaker 1: The whole purpose of auto tuning was for it to
Speaker 1: be unobtrusive, that you wouldn't notice that it was happening.
Speaker 1: And then you started to get artists who again took
Speaker 1: this tool that wasn't meant to take center stage and
Speaker 1: turn it around. I remember I did a podcast about
Speaker 1: the auto tuning software and the creator was sort of
Speaker 1: amused that it had become this this tool for people
Speaker 1: to make songs. That's really they're using it for the
Speaker 1: opposite reason for why I made it, by the way
Speaker 1: that guy now makes and did at the time, makes
Speaker 1: software to help oil companies find oil under the ground
Speaker 1: through sound. It's true, that's terrific. That is interesting how
Speaker 1: like a tool designed as a recording tool became a
Speaker 1: weapon of performance, to be fair. To be fair, he
Speaker 1: was working on that first and then came up with
Speaker 1: the auto tune idea. So it's it's sort of but
Speaker 1: but they were related. So that's interesting that, like, we
Speaker 1: found oil and we were able to make this guy
Speaker 1: sing okay. So we know that new music is brought
Speaker 1: about by new instruments. When you've got something different in
Speaker 1: your hands that makes a different sound, that's played in
Speaker 1: a different way, it creates news genres. And that's why
Speaker 1: it's hard to predict what the music of the future
Speaker 1: is going to sound like, because you don't know what
Speaker 1: people are going to be using to create it necessarily
Speaker 1: right now. I think one thing we can definitely predict
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the music performance in the
Speaker 1: future is going to be electronic. It's going to be digital.
Speaker 1: A lot of people will be you know, they're performing
Speaker 1: their music with a laptop. But that aside, what are
Speaker 1: the kinds of instruments that we think might be coming
Speaker 1: about to change the way we produce music in the future. Well, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got lots of people musicians, engineers, scientists,
Speaker 1: mad scientists, all coming up with different ways to create music.
Speaker 1: And we've all sort of gone out and kind of
Speaker 1: looked up some different musical instruments that are kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, they're on the cutting edge, or some of
Speaker 1: them are a little you know, quirky or more like
Speaker 1: performance art based type stuff. But we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of the kind of creative
Speaker 1: approaches to creating music. I've got I've got one right
Speaker 1: here called the art of Phone. Have you guys heard
Speaker 1: of this? Okay, So the art a phone kind of
Speaker 1: looks a little bit like a guitar. It does have
Speaker 1: it's got a neck with with sort of fretwork, but
Speaker 1: it's all digital threats and you actually plug an iPhone
Speaker 1: into this this device, and the iPhone has an app
Speaker 1: that works with this particular device. So you plug the
Speaker 1: iPhone in and that's what allows you do select different songs,
Speaker 1: different sounds, different things like the percussion. You can create
Speaker 1: loops so you can play something, loop it and then
Speaker 1: add in a drum track and loop that and add
Speaker 1: in another track. You can play it like it's an
Speaker 1: upright basse. You can play it like it's a violin. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it actually has a little digital touch area where
Speaker 1: that acts like the strings. You move your fingers against that,
Speaker 1: and that's what allows you to play this thing. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to create a blog post. We're
Speaker 1: going to include links to these different devices so that
Speaker 1: you can actually listen to what they sound like. I
Speaker 1: listened to this one on a video on YouTube, and
Speaker 1: it was pretty impressed with what it could do. I mean,
Speaker 1: considering that this is using a smartphone as the real
Speaker 1: brains of the device itself, it was really kind of
Speaker 1: remarkable and that you could even with this thing, create
Speaker 1: music files in different formats and export it directly from
Speaker 1: the instruments. So you have a if you wanted to
Speaker 1: compose something, you could do your percussion track, your bass track,
Speaker 1: your main track, recorded all on this one device and
Speaker 1: export and you've got a song. Pretty neat. Yeah, My
Speaker 1: and my my favorite thing about about this incredible future
Speaker 1: of of technology that we're currently experiencing. Is that really
Speaker 1: with with things like capaciti of touch, anything can become
Speaker 1: an instrument. My a few months back, my very favorite
Speaker 1: Raspberry Pie application of the day, because I have a
Speaker 1: new one about about every day, UM, was something called
Speaker 1: a beat box. This is a b e et box
Speaker 1: because because it's a wooden box with an audio amplifier,
Speaker 1: UM and root vegetables placed in the top and uh
Speaker 1: and and with the circuitry from the Raspberry Pie, you
Speaker 1: touch the beat and it and it creates a percussive sounds,
Speaker 1: so it registers your touch and that becomes that's insane,
Speaker 1: so you can actually play vegetables. Joe, do you want
Speaker 1: to take a swing at one of these? Well? Uh, First,
Speaker 1: I guess I want to talk about how one type
Speaker 1: of thing that I definitely see happening is this sort
Speaker 1: of acoustic electric mash up okay type of instrument that
Speaker 1: we see a lot of. Um. We can talk in
Speaker 1: a minute about this, uh this awesome music instrument design
Speaker 1: festival that they have Georgia competition around here, but a
Speaker 1: couple of the coolest enturies, like one example is this
Speaker 1: thing uh called the elect trumpet, which is. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: an acoustic electric mash up. So it's a it's a
Speaker 1: traditional acoustic trumpet that you play like a normal trumpet,
Speaker 1: except in addition to the traditional controllers that control airflow
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, it also has digital controllers so
Speaker 1: you you hook like I think. It also has an
Speaker 1: iPhone as the main controller of interesting. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: it's got multiple types of buttons, so while you're playing
Speaker 1: the trumpet like you would normally play a trumpet, you
Speaker 1: can also manipulate digital controllers on it to create all
Speaker 1: kinds of you know, weird effects, manipulate and modulate the
Speaker 1: sound you're creating. Um. Another one is this is really cool? Uh.
Speaker 1: Keith McMillan Instruments produced this thing called the Cabo Violence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I watched the video that you sent out with this.
Speaker 1: That was really I mean, it was very alien sounding
Speaker 1: to me because it doesn't sound like anything else you've
Speaker 1: listened to. Necessary So what is what is this thing?
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't actually have time to check it out. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a so it's a violin bow um. Actually
Speaker 1: it can go with ultimple instruments. Is violin, viola, cello
Speaker 1: and bass um but so it's a stringed instrument bow. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what I think he's trying to do with it is
Speaker 1: to um capture both the original sort of full range
Speaker 1: of dynamic expression and emotion that you can get with
Speaker 1: a stringed instrument, which is really hard to capture in
Speaker 1: like Middi's say, electronic music. To get all of that
Speaker 1: depth of expression and the different subtleties of that sound
Speaker 1: with digital control at the same time. So this is
Speaker 1: a bluetooth enabled bow UM that connects wirelessly with a
Speaker 1: piece of software on your computer so that while you play,
Speaker 1: you're getting all the let's see here it's got on
Speaker 1: the press release, so it's got um. It's since his
Speaker 1: motion on the X Y and z axes, grip pressure,
Speaker 1: hair tension, tilt, angle, and the position of the bow
Speaker 1: relative to the instrument, and like all of what you
Speaker 1: had dinner, but all of the but like a stringed
Speaker 1: instrument player will tell you all those different things, uh
Speaker 1: go into creating the very complex texture of sound that
Speaker 1: you create with a string. Sure, it's how the bow
Speaker 1: is interacting with the tension of the string and therefore
Speaker 1: creating a library of sounds. Yeah, and and so what
Speaker 1: this thing does is it. It tries to capture all
Speaker 1: of those subtleties and still make them translatable to a
Speaker 1: digital medium. So you can you can send this signal
Speaker 1: to your MIDI studio on your computer if you want to,
Speaker 1: like you know, record the notation of what you're doing.
Speaker 1: But you can also send it to controllers that you
Speaker 1: can use, just like I was talking about with the electrumpet,
Speaker 1: to you know, modulate the sound you create. UM and
Speaker 1: and so I see that's one big avenue of change
Speaker 1: in future instruments is sort of these electronic acoustic mashups,
Speaker 1: trying to keep what's great about the classic instrument, but
Speaker 1: to sort of beef it up with all this electronic
Speaker 1: cape ability. This also reminds me of UM the artists
Speaker 1: image and heap formerly fr fru had Um or Frau Frau.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly how that goes if you're British.
Speaker 1: Has these these gloves that that she did a TED
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of years back that UM were
Speaker 1: inspired by gloves that she saw at the m I
Speaker 1: T Media Lab designed by Ellie Jessup, and these through
Speaker 1: gesture can control the reverb or grain of a note.
Speaker 1: They can select harmony, change vibrato, and when she pairs
Speaker 1: them with other software like I like a connect on stage,
Speaker 1: she can use her whole body movement and interaction on
Speaker 1: stage with the audience in order to change the sound
Speaker 1: and add add in more sounds. She's got a little
Speaker 1: microphones in her gloves so that she can live orcord
Speaker 1: bits and live loop them into the music that she's playing,
Speaker 1: so it becomes not just a performance, a musical performance,
Speaker 1: but but almost a dance performance, right. You know. Part
Speaker 1: of what she was saying about why she wanted to
Speaker 1: create these things is that she she was a digital artist, um,
Speaker 1: you know, working working with creating her own sounds and
Speaker 1: and uh and and refining them on computers, and realized
Speaker 1: that playing those for an audience was pretty boring. If
Speaker 1: you're just stuck behind a keyboard or laptop, you know,
Speaker 1: you might as well be checking your email. You know,
Speaker 1: no one knows the another Another instrument that's similar to
Speaker 1: that in the sense that I think, while it's cool,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't necessarily do something that you can't
Speaker 1: already do with other instruments, but as a new form
Speaker 1: of performance and expression is called the alpha sphere, which
Speaker 1: is you you imagine a sphere that's made up of
Speaker 1: forty eight elastic pads. So these pads look like little
Speaker 1: they look like little trampolines. And some of them are
Speaker 1: bigger than others. So you've got some that are about,
Speaker 1: you know, the size of a small saucer, and then
Speaker 1: there's a few that are maybe the size of like
Speaker 1: a half dollar or something in the United States, I
Speaker 1: guess that doesn't help you if you're not from the US.
Speaker 1: But anyway, they're varying diameters, and by pressing these different
Speaker 1: elastic pads, you will create sounds because they're they're keyed
Speaker 1: up two different sounds and uh. And by pressing, you know,
Speaker 1: more firmly, it will change the quality of the sound.
Speaker 1: By moving your finger around, it kind of bends the
Speaker 1: note in various ways. And so you can actually play
Speaker 1: a full song by manipulating all these different pads, and
Speaker 1: it becomes more like again some sort of performance art.
Speaker 1: You're watching an artist as they are manipulating this musical
Speaker 1: instrument in an interesting way. And again, while the sounds
Speaker 1: you hear are similar to that to what you would
Speaker 1: hear and from maybe a synthesizer, it's visually really interesting,
Speaker 1: and that becomes another element. So you might not necessarily
Speaker 1: go out and buy someone's latest c D that they're
Speaker 1: rock in the alpha sphere, but you might want to
Speaker 1: go and see someone perform this live. UM. And it's
Speaker 1: also got an LED light in the center that changes
Speaker 1: color as you're playing, so it's very visually oriented. UM.
Speaker 1: And then I've got the Eigenharp. Have you guys ever
Speaker 1: heard the Eigenharp. It's really cool, very expensive electronic instrument.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be. According to to uh Eigen Labs,
Speaker 1: which is the British company that offers up the Eigenharp,
Speaker 1: they build it as the most expressive electronic instrument ever made.
Speaker 1: It has seventy two keyboard keys, it has twelve percussion keys,
Speaker 1: It's got a capacitance touch strip controller and a mouthpiece
Speaker 1: that's optional. You don't have to have it in there,
Speaker 1: but you can. And it looks like if you had
Speaker 1: ripped the neck off of an upright bass and replaced
Speaker 1: all the strings with lots and lots and lots of buttons.
Speaker 1: And the capacitance touch strip is on one side of it,
Speaker 1: so you can you move your hand up and down
Speaker 1: the capacity, its touch scripts strip rather and you use
Speaker 1: the different buttons to change the different sounds. And like
Speaker 1: other instruments like the the artiphone that I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: you can record loops and create an entire um song
Speaker 1: that way. And in fact, when we do the blog
Speaker 1: post with this, I will include a video that has
Speaker 1: a guy playing a particular television theme song on one
Speaker 1: of these things. And uh, and I was very much
Speaker 1: amused and entertained. Um I when I first saw these
Speaker 1: come out, the first thing I thought was, how can
Speaker 1: we get one of those? For how stuff works? And uh,
Speaker 1: at the price range, I don't think we can. Sadly,
Speaker 1: might as well get a Dynamo phone. Yeah, I'm still
Speaker 1: wearing a back order on that one. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: wanna mention one really cool and really practical instrument, I thought, um,
Speaker 1: which was the roly cboard? Right? This was? Wasn't this
Speaker 1: one of the ones featured in the Georgia Tech Musical competition? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should mention the competition. So it's the musical maybe Guthman.
Speaker 1: I've never actually attended it. It's but we'll see full
Speaker 1: of pronunciation. It's the Guthman musical instrument. Competition at george
Speaker 1: To Tech. So yeah, it's and it's a lot of
Speaker 1: our ideas were uh instruments that were featured in this competition. Right.
Speaker 1: So this is a competition that that Georgia Tech, which
Speaker 1: is local to us. It's right down the street from
Speaker 1: where we work. Uh. They have this competition every year
Speaker 1: where they invite engineers and students and and musicians to
Speaker 1: kind of submit these crazy awesome musical instruments that transform
Speaker 1: the whole performance aspect of music or create music in
Speaker 1: a way you had never expected before. And they actually
Speaker 1: have a panel of judges look at these different musical
Speaker 1: instruments and then hand out awards based upon which ones
Speaker 1: they think are the most innovative and interesting. It's a
Speaker 1: really cool competition and you should go online and read
Speaker 1: about it if you get a chance. So the roly
Speaker 1: cboard is I think it was. It won some prize
Speaker 1: and I think it was second place. Okay, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: You should check out the video that we're gonna put
Speaker 1: up with this. So imagine an electric keyboard, just a
Speaker 1: standard electric piano, except instead of rigid key ease that
Speaker 1: you depress, it's got these flexible rubber keys and they
Speaker 1: actually respond to the dynamic pressure of your fingers. Well,
Speaker 1: that's just soft and loud, Joe. How wait, so they
Speaker 1: respond to the pressure of your fingers. Think about the
Speaker 1: same way a guitar player can bend a note by
Speaker 1: like bending a string, so it's just volume, it's actually
Speaker 1: the pitch of the note can change to too. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the way a guitar player can create like tremolow
Speaker 1: and like that, you can do just by pressing the keys.
Speaker 1: So if you watch a player use this, it actually
Speaker 1: gives more expressivity to what the pianists can play. Interesting
Speaker 1: and and that's kind of cool because I see that
Speaker 1: some of these things we look at like I think,
Speaker 1: on one hand, they're really cool, But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I don't know how much people really
Speaker 1: use that. This one really struck me. I'm like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like people would use this. Could
Speaker 1: I could easily see bands using something like that to
Speaker 1: incorporate into their music, particularly if it's a band that's
Speaker 1: known for exploring new sounds. Uh, you know that that
Speaker 1: would I could easily see that being Yeah, anything like that.
Speaker 1: That that gives you more control over the sound as
Speaker 1: you are making It is not to talk down the
Speaker 1: other really awesome instruments we feature, but just that some
Speaker 1: of them are more they're like weirder, you know, some
Speaker 1: of them are individualized something specific. Yeah, it's the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that you would think of, like, you know,
Speaker 1: you might go to say a Bjork concert and see
Speaker 1: some pretty crazy technology used in creating that music, and
Speaker 1: you might think this was an amazing experience. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you're not going to think everyone's going
Speaker 1: to be doing this in five years want all the
Speaker 1: music to sound like this. Yeah no, please no, but anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that there are tons of different examples of instruments
Speaker 1: that came out of that competition that are really pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and and then there are probably tons of
Speaker 1: things that people are working on right now that we
Speaker 1: don't even know about. Sure, I mean, the next electric guitar,
Speaker 1: the next piano, you know, it might be something we
Speaker 1: haven't even seen yet. I mean I've even seen someone
Speaker 1: turned a Nintendo Wii into a theremin. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so that ties into something I want to talk about
Speaker 1: in two different ways. So there are certainly people who
Speaker 1: have used sounds from video games in a fun way
Speaker 1: sort of to uh sort of repurposed music. And I
Speaker 1: think that's an interesting way of performing. You can take
Speaker 1: all the sounds normally produced by a game boy, as
Speaker 1: like sound effects or little musical blips that you might
Speaker 1: play in your Super Mario World on your game Boy,
Speaker 1: and actually make them into music based on their pitches. Sure,
Speaker 1: and and kind of in the same way that I
Speaker 1: think distortion of of guitars started out as something that
Speaker 1: was a negative point, the way that these low fi
Speaker 1: eight bit kind of sounds started out as as well,
Speaker 1: that's as good as they get right now, sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: it has turned into yeah, something something, Actually, it's something.
Speaker 1: It's something that actually makes them unique, and they sound
Speaker 1: kind of interesting now because of that. But the other
Speaker 1: thing that video games made me think of is that
Speaker 1: one thing in the future of musical performances, we might
Speaker 1: have more just flat out more people who can perform
Speaker 1: because of the idea of the gamification of music training. Now,
Speaker 1: I play a musical instrument, uh, mostly just for fun.
Speaker 1: I'm certainly not all that great at it, but I
Speaker 1: play the guitar and and it it was a painstaking
Speaker 1: process to learn to play. Um just I was in
Speaker 1: my basement I was a teenager teaching myself and and
Speaker 1: it probably shows because I never got very good, but
Speaker 1: it's very rewarding, and I'm really glad I play now
Speaker 1: because I have a lot of fun with it. Sure
Speaker 1: do you all have any experience with that? With like
Speaker 1: how rough it can be learning to play an instrument. Um.
Speaker 1: I tried to have a friend to teach me how
Speaker 1: to play guitar all of once and got really frustrated
Speaker 1: really fast, and I don't think I've ever picked one
Speaker 1: up again after after that. I do very much enjoy
Speaker 1: singing and I and I do understand that vocal training,
Speaker 1: like playing an instrument, is a really intensive process, and
Speaker 1: I've never done it in an official kind of way,
Speaker 1: but it's something that I have fun doing in my
Speaker 1: kitchen when i'm you know, washing dishes or whatever. I
Speaker 1: play apple a chan dulcimer. Taught myself how to play that,
Speaker 1: but I also play ukulele. Taught myself how to play
Speaker 1: that too. Um. Not very good at either of them,
Speaker 1: and but I, again, I find enjoyment from it. But
Speaker 1: you know, the whole idea of adding gamification so that
Speaker 1: you have another reward system in place besides learning to
Speaker 1: play in musical instrument is interesting to me, right totally
Speaker 1: because yeah, you know, I just said that I don't
Speaker 1: play any musical instruments, but um, but I had a
Speaker 1: friend who hooked a midikit up to a actual electronic
Speaker 1: drum set and used it to play rock band with
Speaker 1: which which there are there's a rock band setting that
Speaker 1: you can switch over pro drums and it will allow
Speaker 1: you to work up to playing the way that the
Speaker 1: song is played on a full drum kit at home,
Speaker 1: and and I loved playing with that. That was actually
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Yeah, it's a lot easier to
Speaker 1: learn to play when you can play in a in
Speaker 1: a digital game environment, I think because just because there
Speaker 1: you can program in so much incremental reward, uh and
Speaker 1: and just kind of this naturally fun environment that takes
Speaker 1: away some of the humiliating early stages. Yeah, what you're
Speaker 1: saying there, and you're thinking, my hand does not make
Speaker 1: that shape? How am I supposed to play this chord?
Speaker 1: This hurts and it sounds bad, and and so that
Speaker 1: makes me think that, well, if you can. So, there
Speaker 1: are lots of people who can't play musical instrument, but
Speaker 1: they can play the hell out of some Guitar Hero, right,
Speaker 1: but then you get Guitar Hero and guitar playing are
Speaker 1: very different exactly, and that's where I'm heading. You can
Speaker 1: take so you've got a normal Guitar Hero controller that's
Speaker 1: not really like playing guitar. It might have some of
Speaker 1: the same skills, just like rhythm and coordination, right, But
Speaker 1: I I do think that the rock band kids anyway
Speaker 1: designed the button movements to mimic the chords on a guitar. Well,
Speaker 1: but that's loose interpretation. They're all online, so it's not
Speaker 1: like you have to move your fingers across the fret
Speaker 1: the way you would. But I I know I've seen
Speaker 1: some sort of some hacks and upgrades on similar games
Speaker 1: that take a controller that's essentially like a real guitar,
Speaker 1: or you can even just use a real guitar. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a fancy ones with all the buttons. Yeah right.
Speaker 1: There's some that uh that Roland makes, for example, where
Speaker 1: they have specific software where you can get a guitar
Speaker 1: and you plug it in and you have it hooked
Speaker 1: up to the software, and there are not just here's
Speaker 1: how you play guitar type tutorials, but also they add
Speaker 1: the gamification in there so that you are playing along
Speaker 1: with known tracks, and at first you might just be playing,
Speaker 1: you know, a certain percentage of the notes for one
Speaker 1: of those those guitar tracks, and it's just so that
Speaker 1: you get comfortable with the instrument and you can increase
Speaker 1: the difficulty as you go along until you're actually to
Speaker 1: the point where you can really play that musical instrument. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we we can imagine this easily with something like
Speaker 1: guitar drums. It really any instrument that you can digitize,
Speaker 1: you could probably create this kind of gamified training system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You could argue that one of the more advanced rock
Speaker 1: bands they added keyboards to it, so essentially you were
Speaker 1: learning to play keyboards with that game. Yeah. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was That was one I didn't really mess with that.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm going to leave that to Billy Joe.
Speaker 1: I went to I went to E three where they
Speaker 1: debuted that particular rock band, so I got a chance
Speaker 1: to play with it before it even hit store shelves
Speaker 1: and learned that that I may be a man, but
Speaker 1: I am not divo. Um. Well, anyway, that the upshot
Speaker 1: of that is that I think it's highly possible that
Speaker 1: with advances like that we might be looking at a
Speaker 1: future where even more people can play instruments, more people
Speaker 1: will be will be out of the interest, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great future. I mean I as
Speaker 1: someone who truly enjoys music it's and just the sort
Speaker 1: of benefits you can get from learning to play, I
Speaker 1: think that that's really encouraging, and I'm I'm certainly eager
Speaker 1: to see that. I'm also aware that we will see
Speaker 1: numerous YouTube videos of people who are in various stages
Speaker 1: of of of expertise playing their musical instruments. That's okay,
Speaker 1: too well. But the kind of music you produce for
Speaker 1: public consumption and the kind of music that you produced
Speaker 1: just to have fun playing it with the people, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, those are different levels and arguably serve different purposes.
Speaker 1: Um and even if it's just the latter, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's just people learning to play so they can
Speaker 1: play with their friends and experience that kind of bonding
Speaker 1: we were talking about, you know, even from the ancient
Speaker 1: days and the origins of music, that's really cool. I agree. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this has been a great discussion all about
Speaker 1: the future of musical instruments kind of the way we're
Speaker 1: going I think we are going to see this continuing
Speaker 1: uh convergence of the digital and the analog, and and
Speaker 1: this uh, this new evolution of musical instruments. Maybe some
Speaker 1: of the ones we mentioned today will still be talking
Speaker 1: about in you know, ten years. I think we'll see
Speaker 1: a lot of other developments come out that will make
Speaker 1: some of these seem quaint in comparison. And there are
Speaker 1: certain musical form factors out there, things like the guitar
Speaker 1: and the piano. I expect those will be around for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've already proven their longevity. It will be
Speaker 1: interesting to see if they are ever replaced by something else.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you think about it, the guitar kind
Speaker 1: of replaced a whole family of stringed instruments. Don't see
Speaker 1: too many lootes out there these days. I think the
Speaker 1: next big thing is the ok Arena of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great game, alright. So we're gonna wrap this up. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you have if you think that this is pretty
Speaker 1: awesome and you want to join in on the conversation,
Speaker 1: maybe you are an expert musician and you want to
Speaker 1: to let us know, point us to some videos of you,
Speaker 1: you know, really rocking out. Let us know, go to
Speaker 1: fw thinking dot com. That's the website where we've got
Speaker 1: all of the podcasts, the blog posts, the videos, articles.
Speaker 1: You want to go there and join in on the conversation.
Speaker 1: We're also going to post up, like I said, a
Speaker 1: blog post accompanying this podcast. We're going to have links
Speaker 1: to differ print examples of what we've talked about, so
Speaker 1: you can kind of get a an ear for some
Speaker 1: of these strange instruments we've mentioned, and I think you'll
Speaker 1: get a big kick out of it. And that's it
Speaker 1: for us, But stick with us because we'll be talking
Speaker 1: to you again, really simmer. For more on this topic
Speaker 1: and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places,