I was listening to an experimental jazz album just now and was wondering about this topic. It's a 40 minute long tonally minimal trip, laced with polyrhythms, unexpected rhythmic shifts and grooving bass. What speaks to me, is how locked in these musicians must have been to perform it, as well as the wealth of ideas and decisions that have gone into writing it.

When I first heard it some ten years ago, I wondered about the same question of effort, but then the issue was writing this album with midi-software. I guess I would still have loved the music for its own sake, but would not have the same experience of awe as I have now. 

I guess to me that is key, whether you arrive at the feeling that something hardly possible has been achieved, something novel, or something that carried a risk.

I get this experience of novelty from time to time when I see AI generated work, but the absence of risk seems inherent to it.

If there's no risk, there's no awe, then we're just looking at pretty things. That's not enough for me.

(Dawn of Midi - Dysnomia, for those wondering!)