It feels incongruous to read that you don't have time to learn a DAW, or an instrument, but you have time to upload to YT, in multiple formats, and compare outcomes between shorts/vids?
Small pockets of free time can go a long ways: putting in 15-30 minutes a day towards learning something new will produce tangible results.
Learning to create music is such a multifaceted pleasure: exploring tooling and mechanics, integrating somatic processes (feeling it!), investigating theory and history, increasing execution incrementally, exploring and expressing emotions+ideas, and maybe, eventually, conveying those emotions and ideas to listeners? What richness!
The Suno->Youtube pipeline feels like an attempt to experience a watered-down version of the conveyance bit, at the expense of the rest.
Though I must correct you in places. Uploading a video to youtube takes me 1 minute, if not less. I really think that learning instruments takes a lot more time. I don't upload into youtube in multiple formats. I only use one format (as is from suno).
I can play a little bit on guitar and ukulele. I know that this is definitely not a route for me. I use my small pockets of time to lead my hobby projects at github. In life you have to choose about how you invest your time. I have chosen. It is still fun to "create" music through suno. So please do not suggest I should be playing 15 minute a day, since this is my time and I will invest it the way I like.
I understand that "creating" music through AI might be a lesser form of creating music, but for somebody who does not have that time for music this might be a fun thing. I hope you can understand that.
I think that I am creating music, since parts of lyrics are written by me, the rest I accept as they are. I remember xbcd cartoon about how programmers argue about how "real" programming is done.
I also remember that Jean Michelle Jarre had troubles with being recognized because he created "electronic" music, which was treated as something of a lesser form. I remember Andy Serkis not being recognized for his work in motion capture.
I think that you can "do" music any way you like, and play with different tools and things. Sure some musicians will laugh at you because play from tabs, not from notes, but hell I despise elitism.
Ohhh, I never thought I'd see FCIT/lit2go mentioned on HN! I used to work in the sound booth for lit2Go, it was one of my favorite jobs. We had some wonderful vocal talent come through, and I learned much of what I know about recording/mixing from that work.The people in charge of organizing that project were diligent/earnest to the point of sainthood.
They have quite a few historic stereo-views scattered around their open source pic site, I always enjoyed browsing those with my 3d shades on:
I appreciated OP sharing their thoughts. But this piece didn't land for me.
I think it's a question of conflating aging with ossification. I know I will die, leaving things undone, unmade, unsaid. My body is falling apart in a lot of dreadful ways. Yet I can still grow, still learn. I intend to gather, change, be protean, until life draws the curtain closed. What a thrill!
As I age, I come to see the vistas I imagined when younger as shallow, half-baked. I wanted shallow things, having nothing to compare my desires to, no context for the myths and narratives of my own life aside from the media and socialization I was exposed to early on.
How could I -really- picture the world beyond, the richness and pains I would stumble into, almost entirely on accident? How could I imagine anything true or close to the source, having lived for such a short time, tasted so little of the complexity of our substrate?
Which brings me back to the OP's lament: of course they failed to make good art: they were not guided by an interest in touching the true thing, only in being recognized as someone that can touch the true thing. Trading the vulnerability of unfiltered experience for the rigid belief in their deserved/desired social status. What good fortune they yet live, can yet grow and change and make art!
I am reminded of Tarkovsky's Stalker, and the Stalker's Prayer:
"Weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being! Because what has hardened will never win."
I love this mindset. I don’t buy the other perspectives. When you fall in love with the craft… time, perception, age, etc matter much less. You care more about adapting yourself no matter how old to perfect the craft.
Your comment (re: "no matter how old") made me think of a beautiful bit from Hokusai, who did The Great Wave Off Kanagawa
At 74 (he painted the great wave a little before this iirc):
"From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of seventy is not worth bothering with. At seventy five I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see real progress. At ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At a hundred I shall be a marvelous artist. At a hundred and ten everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.'"
The severance package looks decent, but damn, I wouldn't want to be a developer in such a niche market space looking for new work. I wish the best to everyone getting the short end of the stick here.
I would hardly say the platform is dead. Apple just launched the Vision Pro. That's not a silver bullet but I'm sure they are looking for more apps and games. I hardly think VR is going away.
Not at all saying it's dead! Just a vastly smaller market space than say, doing crud stuff or ML in the year of our Lord 2024. I'm a huge VR enjoyer and I hope the medium flourishes.
I’m pretty sure they’ll be fine. I can’t imagine a CRUD agency being like “VR? No transferable skills! To the breadline with you!” Realtime state management is a highly sought after skill.
