This is not possible with purely technological means. To "retune" and "adjust" even a single piece of music in a way that approaches just intervals you'd need an in-depth analysis of all meaningful dissonances, consonances, modulations, perhaps repetitions/imitations etc. etc. in the actual piece; and these are often not even evident from the actual notes because all music uses ornamentation at a variety of levels, hence lots of judgment calls are involved in the process. Where instruments are easy to retune in a flexible way (not really true of guitars, due to the use of physical frets) and the actual music allows for it, performers do use alternatives to equal temperament, such as a variety of "meantone" temperaments.
[0] http://www.garygarrett.me/?page_id=1922 [1] https://youtu.be/jA1C9VFqJKo
And most popular VSTs - Serum, Pigments, Massive, Phaseplant - all use wavetables and not 'the same old square and saw waves.'
Modern pop really isn't any more generic than 30s/40s jazz, 50s rock and roll and bubblegum, and so on. That's why it's called popular music and not experimental music.
Even considering the stuff that Queen did for tracks like Bohemian Rhapsody where they used dozens of layered tracks isn't really the same thing. They used that layering to create a sound that wasn't possible, otherwise. But the tracks themselves were made from recording real people playing real instruments.
Modern pop, in comparison, is just about commoditization, slapping out a track at as little cost as possible. Everything gets lined up on a rigid beat grid, neutering any texture or feel in the song.
Rick Beato has a great video on what exactly is going on and why there actually is a significant difference with "post-ProTools" pop from previous years. https://youtu.be/L-8EbHkc8tc
There's also a "trailblazer" effect which is kind of weird because it doesn't happen in classical music. Namely that we listen a lot more to Miles Davis and Coltrane than the random swing band of their age. Heck, Miles gets more props than the sublime big band swing of Duke Ellington.
Watching Cab Calloway do Minnie the Moocher in the 70s? Live? Paid for it? Priceless.
Working for Apple was awesome, as were the other places I've worked, but for sheer enjoyment per dollar, the Palladium in the 70s wins.
And how about the whammy bar? Maybe guitarists aren't consciously using it to untemper their intervals, but to say "rock guitar" is locked to tempered tuning is incorrect.
Go listen to some of Dimebag Darrell’s solos. They sound ridiculously bad if played in whole semitones. Fair enough, he’s fairly bluesy. But other genres of metal give the distinction you give the left hand to the right too - variations in pick attack wildly change the sound.
I’m guessing it’s fair to suggest that similar things exist in all genres of music, and on all instruments.
Yes, but almost nobody is dropping raw 808 kick samples onto their tracks. Even though it's a "traditional sound", usually artists do quite a bit of work to transform it. Kind of like what, you know, "real" composers do with "real" musical traditions.
https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2019/jacob-colliers-four-magica...
That's just the beginning. He posts long breakdowns of his tracks on YouTube explaining everything he does in detail. He's not only a musical virtuoso, but he's incredibly adept at recording and Apple's Logic/tech in general, so he's able to blend those skills seamlessly.
With Jacob and others getting people interested in tunings and unusual harmony, there are now lots of people on YouTube creating music that exploits shifting tunings or alternate systems like 24TET, etc. So to the grandparent post, don't worry - there has never been a time when so many young people are playing with and exploiting tuning systems to create interesting music.
I don't know this to be true, I see people building weird musical instruments all the time. As for electronic sounds (it's not always digital) the modular community is absoultely teeming with expression. Here are some fun guys: https://youtu.be/AGN5N4vn5Bs
Chaotic orbits for "waves", running audio through cmos gates to produce pitch changes, running ADSRs through a filter to produce more random envelopes,... and he seems to come up with new module ideas monthly if not more often.
My most favorite recent module of his is based on cellular automata.
You should explore more electronic music. This is either an intentional attack or an ignorant statement.
Edit:
> musicianship has all but died in Gen Z
See South Park S15E07 "You're Getting Old"
Unfortunately some sound examples are missing but a few of them are still online.
BTW, Sethares' research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sethares goes way beyond tuning music to simple ratios. His whole book is about working with a model of sounds being "in tune" with one another that doesn't just boil down to that.
I am surprised with all of the technology and VSTs we have now no one really uses self adjusting Just intonation or challenges A 440. Musical / mathematical / technical ability are a rare trinary intersection. It saddens me that no one is really trying to push the envelope of acoustic instruments or even new ways of producting digital sound. It's the same old Square and Saw waves with the same instruments we have had for hundreds of years. Sadly i think musicianship has all but died in Gen Z, quantization / pitch correction / take splicing / overuse of compression are rampant, and every popular artist is basically as fake as Milli Vanilli. Protools has raised a generation of lazy and uncreative musicians with awful rhythm. Get off my lawn! Ok i'm done.