We’ve always shown a particular interest in how technology affects the way that we create or perceive music, therefore we must acknowledge the next issues:
Today everybody can make music without any previous knowledge of notation or even sophisticated studio equipment.
Technology has changed the whole music distribution system with the use of the mp3 codec and P2P networks.
Virtual communities such MySpace, or YouTube are breaking the schemes of the, once constricted, music industry.
And finally, some artists don’t even sing well anymore, audio engineers use special software and fancy machines to fix their faulty voices.

Now, imagine for a minute what could be going on next in this unpredictable music evolution.
We want to share with you some outstanding ideas that may be real in the near future.

1.- Virtual Singers

Today this is not a dream, Myriad Software has developed “Virtual Singer” which is a module for Melody/Harmony Software, some of the features are: each singer can be fine-tuned, by modifying its timbre, intonation or voice pitch (man, women, child, tenor, soprano, etc.) besides these features, several different voices will be able to sing at the same time, in several languages: British English, American English, French, German, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Finnish, Occitan. Also Virtual Singer includes the Real Singer II technology: you can create a voice from recordings of your own voice.
This module is a great tool if you want to sketch vocals in a track, unfortunately it still sounds like a synthetic robot voice, but in a few years this kind of technology could easily be more organic and accurate compared to the human voice… or why not? you will even be able to sculpt a perfect voice or emulate voices of dead singers like James Brown, Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald.

2.- Random Compositions and Improvisations

Imagine that you are a piano player who is making an improvisation, wouldn’t it be fantastic that you have the according harmonies and percussions depending which notes and scales you are playing along?
According to scientist Stephen Wolfram this is possible using simple music theory and mathematics algorithms and rendering them as music, and in fact, he has some experiments online, check out the Wolfram Tones example.

3.-Finally the idea of how you interact with music to play an instrument

As you can see in the reactable video interaction with devices is turning into unexpected ways, to complement this issue you have to read the story of researchers at Johns Hopkins University, who are developing a neural interface that will allow a virtual hand to play the piano, in fact they are making experiments with monkeys beacause it isn’t perfected yet to be used by humans, nevertheless the researchers are planning a live demonstration within the next six months, my question now is will the monkey be playing the Five Little Monkeys?

As you can see there’s a lot technological development going on, getting perfected and ready to take the following step, I hope this new wave of advantages will not restrain creativity on human beings… as Isaac Asimov once said “Leave for humans the creative tasks”.