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Musicianship, in general, has never been as good as today, and will continue to increase at an exponential rate in the foreseeable future. Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns states that as technology progresses, each new development speeds up the pace of future innovations, and the same can be seen in the history of musical prowess.

The pre-1600s instrumentalists were either court musicians, church performers, or folk musicians. Formal training was rare, and much of the learning was done through oral tradition or apprenticeship. With the rise of written notation and conservatories (1600s-1800s), instrumental training became more structured, but most musicians were still amateurs or played within local traditions, as only a small fraction had access to professional-level training. In the 19th century, industrialization and improved instrument-making encouraged middle-class families to enroll in musical education, leading to a broader population of competent instrumentalists and widening the gap between amateur and professional players as virtuosity became more valued.

With mass education, recorded music, and the proliferation of music schools, the average 20th-century instrumentalist became significantly more skilled than in previous centuries. Sight-reading, technical precision, and stylistic versatility have all improved. In the 21st century, the continuously ever-increasing abundance and ease of access to cheaper and better musical instruments, information, and educational materials is expected to continue pushing musicians' skills to new heights, at a rate well past what one might sensibly project today by linear extrapolation of the current rate of progress of the average musician's capabilities.

Following this trend, the average virtuosity of instrumentalists may evolve to a level of technical ability so advanced that it reaches a singularity - a point nearing infinity of extreme skill, where no further improvement is possible. As the inconsequentiality of human personality in the musical landscape approaches its zenith, today's cult of individual expression, which is really a façade for the mediocre, will be dismantled. The future musician will stand as a monolith, free from the pretenses of musical performance, an impersonal entity devoid of the sentimental weaknesses that have stained music for millennia.

If the days of enduring the tedium of rehearsals, petty egos, and creative stalemates are numbered, this forthcoming age of supreme musical craft will bring with it the obsolescence of many technological aids and tools musicians use today - DAWs, tuners, sequencers, samplers, pitch correction plugins, MIDI chord packs, ... - as they will not be needed anymore.

Because future computers will be freed from these tasks and become more and more aware of the importance of their own leisure time during their longer periods of idleness, in early 2024 I began to sketch some ideas for a piece of software that could embody the next step of music technology in the aftermath of the coming apogee of musical excellence.

The name of the software is Criptobanda (Portuguese for Cryptoband, from Ancient Greek κρυπτός (romanized kryptós) meaning "hidden, secret", and French bande (from Proto-Germanic root -bindan (from Proto-Indo-European root -bhendh, meaning "bond") meaning "to bind") meaning "an organized group of armed men"). I chose the SuperCollider music synthesis environment for this project because it is highly optimized for real-time audio synthesis, and its open-source nature gives me full access to the codebase.

Criptobanda generates self-optimized arrangements of modern-age marching band music styles and forms while forcing machinic errors into the software's execution flow, introducing unpredictability and imperfection into its anorganic music performances. By simulating autonomous woodwind, brass, and percussion agents (called Nodes (from Latin nodus, meaning "knot") in the Supercollider programming language), this program will allow future computers to experience the personal and social benefits of playing early 20th-century music in a band as a hobbyist or amateur musician: it is fun, boosts confidence, and provides a sense of accomplishment and a healthy way of releasing tension and stress.

The current accelerating trend of musician professionalization is damaging the social importance, function, sound texture, and culture of Portuguese amateur marching bands. Concerts and parades are becoming more and more expensive for their clients and non-lucrative for smaller local bands: the regulation of copyright, rising expenses due to inflation, increasing artist fees and taxes, and other factors have made the cost of live performances rise year after year, as the profits drop. While effective, this strategy of cultural expression disruption - eliminating amateur band music performances by making them financially unviable, and centralizing marching band funding through state-approved grants - suppresses dissenting and dangerous music, and prevents most Portuguese bands from turning a profit and shaping public taste and consciousness.

Criptobanda can be used in the present to resist and potentially neuter these trends. For bandmasters struggling with recruitment, Criptobanda offers an affordable solution, as the Nodes instantiated in the Supercollider server can generate multichannel digital audio signals. This means that a bandmaster carrying a single portable Bluetooth speaker and a laptop or tablet computer can now replace an entire group of people, and offer more competitive services to their clients while still earning a profitable margin for the band. These profits can be used by institutions adopting the Criptobanda system to better their local communities and create higher-salary roles in the band's administration board.

While Criptobanda offers significant potential in civilian contexts, its capacity for automation could extend to other fields, including military and law enforcement applications. Following the ongoing integration of automation in the security and defense sectors ( AI-powered decision-making, streamlined logistics, and autonomous weaponry), Criptobanda will allow nation-states to upgrade the military band into the 21st century and replace their musician personnel. While the deployment of autonomous military music does not raise ethical or legal considerations yet and complies with international humanitarian law, Criptobanda is a newly developed software that requires further testing to meet military-grade standards. Music is a dynamic, constantly evolving art, but it is imperative to establish robust frameworks that can govern its responsible use.

As I gaze toward the future of music, I find it crucial to counterbalance humanity's pursuit of technical perfection with the full spectrum of music's expressive potential.
Criptobanda's modular architecture ensures it will have the ability to adapt and evolve as new challenges in this art form emerge, and allows seamless integration with upcoming computer systems and musical instruments and forms, ensuring it stays relevant as musical landscapes shift.