A Handfull of Scenarios: 10 Years from now (part 2 of 3)

This is the second scenario out of three, which I found on the website of "www.soundandmusiccomputing.org"

"The scenarios represent visions of how life would be when a few reachable (though not necessarily easy) scientific/technological targets are hit removing identified roadblocks and gaps" (Which are more specificaly explained on the website)

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Background
In 2020, many sound devices will have a general purpose computer in them and will include quite a number of real-time interaction capabilities, sensors, and wireless communication. Basically, any sound-producing device will be able to behave like a personalized musical instrument. Music making will become pervasive and many new forms of communication with sound and music will become available. Music content will be inherently multimodal and music making available to most people: music from all to all.

How I became a professional musician
One year ago I bought the new wearable mobile device from SMC Inc. It offered me the possibility to listen and interact with my favourite songs in ways that were not possible in previous generation of devices. It was now possible to change many aspects of the songs by gestural and vocal control. Some of my friends were really good at it, and I started to improve my skills by practicing on my home multimedia system. It includes a virtual musical assistant, which observes and analyses my body movement, my singing and my musical abilities in general. With it I can learn to express myself in the style of famous musicians. Learning looks like a game in which the goal is to pass different skill levels, by imitating and following directives by the assistant. I could match my skills by competing on the network with other users connected with their virtual musical assistant. I could play and jam with them over internet, and get more advices from more expert users or from their virtual musical assistant. After a couple of months I started to obtain good scores in the community. One day a group of users proposed me to join them in person at a discotheque. Once in the discotheque, each of us could use his mobile to plug into a musical role in the overall music show. There were all kinds of roles taken by the people present: some were projected as visual characters on the surrounding space and walls, some were projected into moving lighting, others like me were controlling expressivity of the music being played. Since I was a beginner, I took a simple role as the controller of timbral aspects of the drum. Another person took the control of the drum sticks. We had to dance to coordinate the rhythm in this shared drum set, and with the other visual and musical roles. I felt a much more physical and engaging experience than the usual at home. This was due to sense of community participation and collaborative effort, and to the various haptic devices in my clothes, augmenting my aural and visual perception and interaction with friends.

I met many times with these new friends and we practiced a lot in the discotheque and by myself at home. I developed my own style and developed good skills in controlling virtual instruments, with my virtual musical assistant evolving with me and my community. I could control expression and lead my friends in improvisations and jam sessions. Today I am a professional musician: an MJ (Music Jockey). I prepare my shows on my authoring system at home. I design the structure, framework, roles, and musical material to be used. In my shows, sometimes I improvise with acoustic instrument players. I can collect data on my sound device by monitoring their movement and their performance choices. I can also monitor and analyse all the events and behaviour of everyone involved in the show, including the audience.

From: http://soundandmusiccomputing.org