2019 top album release, for me, is Holly Herndon’s “Proto”; and album that combines the primitive and cutting edge A.I technology – in this song, Frontier, the initial harmonies are Sacred Harp singing, a type of singing that is common in so called primitive baptist churches, mainly in the southern USA. “Sacred Harp” is really the name for the book of hymns that are used in the services, the style of singing is also called “shaped note singing”, due to the symbols indicating in which tone each word is ment to be sung; in fa, so, la or ti. The tones used are the mid range, in order to be as inclusive as possible for an untrained congregation – it is truly a fascinating style of singing; but I digress... The singing we hear in this sing is humans singing into microphones connected to an A.I, named “Spawn”, and then we hear the A.I’s own interpretation of te sounds it has just “head”, and it then sings its own interpretation. According to Herndon the album is an collaboration between human and A.I,, and she credits “Spawn” as a participant in the creative process; however – I feel that I should point out that “Spawn” is not a sentient A.I. We are not quite there yet – but the ability of computers to mimic human composition is on the verge of being flawless...
Listen to the album on Spotify <––– here Learn a tad more about Sacred Harp <–– here
