If you’ve seen the sci-fi movie Tenet, you know that people sometime in the future were passing weapons back to people in the present in order to start WWIII. It’s a pretty complicated movie but what I just discovered is that someone from the future is passing back to us photographs of future brass instruments. Weird, I know!
Anyway, I got my hands on some of the photographs and thought I’d share them along with descriptions that I’ve gleaned from notes passed down along with them.
The good news is that only one of these brass instruments will be used as a deadly weapon.
2. For bass trombone enthusiasts, here is a contrabass trombone that apparently is so heavy that it must be supported by both shoulders. As an accessory, a floating auxiliary bell can be used to project the sound remotely. This is convenient for those bass trombonists who complain about the sound latency caused from sitting in the back of the orchestra!
3.This next one is an example of technology that places a sheet of a particular advanced material that changes the sound based on how you dial it in. It can be made to synthesize anything from a screaming child to a supersonic jet engine but with additional brass instrument overtones. And yes, it does have a volume control.
This next one has another type of floating accessory, apparently to serve as a monitor of what is being played. It floats in back of the player’s head which also helps remind the musician of what it sounds like to be in front of a brass player!
This next one is somewhat disturbing. Apparently, they’ve been able to weaponize the technology of brass instruments. From what we can gather, it fires an explosively loud low frequency to a range as far as 100 miles away.
This next one is odd. The lead pipe must be surgically attached to the optic nerve, resulting in emitting music from the amplifier/bell that reflects whatever the player sees. Fortunately, the leadpipe can be easily removed from the instrument but is permanently attached to the player’s face. I’m guessing that it requires a great deal of commitment to play this instrument.
This next one is another of the stereo brass instruments. From my understanding, the bell pointing to the front is the high to mid overtones, and the bell facing down is for the low overtones. It seems to require quite an overbite to play this properly.
This last one is apparently a beautiful-sounding instrument. It picks up frequencies from the lower intake and based on the finger positions, creates otherwordly music. This is one brass instrument that does not require the player to buzz into any type of mouthpiece. Playing into a mouthpiece is optional but apparently ruins the resulting sound.
All these images were created by an AI image generator interpreting this photograph of me. And for those of you fellow MidJourney geeks, the basic prompt I used was:
low shot, long shot, science-fiction, ultra-realistic, soft shadows, no contrast, octane render, film photography –s 750 –ar 16:9 –v 5.1
The oddity of these images is due to the fact that as smart as AI has become, it has no idea of what a trombone is. It does recognize many other common images but just can’t seem to get its brain around the trombone.
The good news also is that other computer generators such as samplers and synthesizers are not very close to reproducing the subtleties of a brass instruments and pretty much produces only the typical blat blat blaaaaat.
Don’t count on that gap staying as wide as it currently is, however. The robots are coming for us!
Artificial Intelligence is already everywhere. Most of the talk is about ChatGPT, the large language model that does everything from giving you the perfect recipe
I received an email from a player asking my opinion on an alto trombone being sold on Reverb.com. The item was interesting, for one reason,
Take a look at excerpts from the music written in the 18th Century for the first trombone and you’ll find music written in alto clef.
Providing the best instruction and materials on learning and mastering the alto trombone, no matter what style of music you play.
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Michael Lake @JazzDigitalMarketing.com
