Charlie “Bird” Parker was one of the wonders of 20th-century music. During his troubled 34 years on earth, he changed the course of jazz history. Yet nothing is simple about the life of this drug-ravaged, volatile genius; even the inspiration for the saxophone maestro’s famous nickname is shrouded in folklore.
Charles Christopher Parker Jr was born on 29 August 1920 in Freeman Avenue, Kansas City. Parker’s upbringing was difficult. His father Charles was a drunken gambler – and a pimp, according to Parker’s third wife – who left the family home when Parker was nine and was subsequently stabbed to death in a fight when his son was still a teenager. Parker did, at least, inherit a love of music and from the age of 12, was hanging out in the alleyways behind the nightclubs lining Kansas’s 12th Street, trying to hear a jam session or catch a glimpse of his saxophone hero Lester Young.
Parker’s life has been thoroughly mythologised, including the time in 1936 when he got his chance to sit in on one of the famous jam sessions with Count Basie’s band at the Reno Club. According to legend, the 16-year-old’s error-ridden solo so infuriated Jo Jones that the drummer hurled a cymbal at Parker.
Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Parker was an extremely fast virtuoso and introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Parker's tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. He was known for the very clear, sweet and articulate notes he could produce from the saxophone.
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes struggle sessions over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here nerd
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
- 💙Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion -- reddit link
- 💙Resources for Palestine
Theory:
Can someone explain to me why I shouldn't be worried about AI replacing drawers and illustators? I got the vibe that most lefty types aren't very concerned about it and I wish I knew why. Isn't people seeing art as less valuable because they can just go online and click a button for it, pretty much objectively bad? Do we really want to make a society where people are discouraged from doing meditative activities like painting and sketching? Isn't the act of illustration by itself a big portion of the self-expression inherent to the art form? Why are techbros so smug about economically crushing an entire aspect of human existence?
It's a tool that an illustrator may use, and quite limited and stupid for being called intelligent. It's not going to be more impactful than some of the better functions in Photoshop.
So it's like just like any incremental productivity improvement due to automation. Socialists usually like to think this is unavoidable and a great opportunity for everyone to work less. Under socialism that is, which you know, definitely will win.
I think it's an excellent example of bad, destructive automation. The products are going to be worse and the technology will be used to drive more worker exploitation.
eh because it relies on the information of human work to produce said art in the first place, it kinda can't exist in the first place without a humans work to begin with, and we're not even talking about how a large swaths of artists would respond to seeing there are stolen for copyrighted work in the future
I like that I can better find/provide/articulate tattoo ideas to an artist, but that's like my only use case for either tbh
Hey, this is a systemic issue, not an individual one. If someone wants to use AI for their own project then I think they should be empowered to do so.
I did something similar with early (to me) image creation neural nets when contracting a graphic designer for a project about 5 years ago. Fed it some album art and the sketch of the logo we had as input data. Was mildly useful.
I hope this statement doesn't age like milk, but I feel like AI couldn't recreate real emotion and talent the way a human artist could. AI art can be really impressive, but humans create amazing emotion-fuelled art.
Yeah, but it'll be close enough that the soulless corporate ghouls who are already making movies based on what an algorithm spits out won't care. The treats will be tasteless and bland, but they'll be the only treats you can get.
This is my point basically, human art will still exist but "good enough" is enough to replace the majority of artists.
But my concern is that the average capitalism-human will not care about that emotion, and, from a material perspective, all of the people who thrive off of expressing that emotion will be in an even worse economic position than before.
Not to sound like a music snob, but look at the good chunk of pop music that's churned out by corporate music factories. It's super cliché, soulless, and it's bought up by the masses - but that doesn't stop other artists from creating masterpieces of emotion and soul. Real art will never die out, because it's one of the only ways many people can truly express themselves.
I mean, first, AI generated art is even easier to make then pop songs are, and second, visual arts being brought to the same place as music is still enough to suck. A lot.
Third, it's hard to tell the difference between AI generated art and human-made art, while pop music is it's own distinct genre which is separated from other genres in both quality and intention. While AI generated art can come very close to human made art in quality, and it's only difference in the long term is intention.
shitty, low-effort visual art already exists and has existed for as long as visual art has existed. this is such a melodramatic take
if people find self fulfillment they aren't going to stop doing something they love. and most people aren't doing particularly unique art rn, so ai being able to imitate it shouldn't matter too much
Honestly, neither of those things are comforting for me and mean nothing to someone who does art as a job and relies on it to live.
"most people aren’t doing particularly unique art rn"
People shouldn't need to do "unique" art for their self expression to be valuable. Fuck that.
What artists need right now is material support and material reasons for their job to continue to exist, not abstract notions of "human expression" or "fulfillment".
that's definitely not what i said? i misread your concern, i thought you were talking about hobbyists so my first point isn't relevant and i'm sorry about that, but that's definitely not what i said.
my argument with my second point was that ai art isn't as big a deal as techbros make it out to be because currently and for a while to go it's going to be more expensive to us ai art than to just commission something. and without a price advantage, which i think is a long ways off, i don't think the tech is nearly as advanced as these people like to ask, the uniqueness of a persons art isn't relevant, so it being copied by an ai won't matter. these are valid concerns, i just think it's not going to be important for a long time.
i agree with this, and i'm not sure how you got the idea that i didn't. again, sorry i misread your thing, you are right to be worried, and i totally get if my post isn't reassuring at all because i don't know too much about this, i just know that behind the curtain there's a lot of fiddling going on to make this tech seem more advanced than it is.
I'm sorry I was so touchy, as an art hobbyist myself seeing computers just... conjure images has really demotivated me, because I can just see people in the future actually saying to me "why do you draw you can just use DALLE" so I'm unhealthily invested in this subject. I'm making one more post and then logging off for a bit, actually (which I know is funny on a brand new account).
I was paranoid because I've seen the take that artists just need to "adapt" and make new art styles a few times. I'm sorry, again, I'm sorry for being so confrontational.
i get that. it's fine, i reread your original post and that worry is definitely more realistic than my first comment gave it credit. i still feel like it's a long ways away, but it could come quicker than i think
Thank you for being nice, I'm so sorry for being so rude especially on a brand new account.
:rat-salute: don't worry about it
still need operators for the technology & integration in a project. some really cheap bad products will probably get made with skeleton crews using AI but a lot of the utilization will probably be making drudgery faster so artists can focus on the bits an AI can't do.
It's already begun being used for illustrations to stories on media websites.
I know that automation of it is good, but there are plenty of good things that capitalists turn into bad things...