Scientific evidence - music's getting dumber

[apophenia]

The more 'style' boundaries you allow yourself to cross, the more 'musical possibility' you find. But then it gets harder to label yourself 'this' or 'that'. And people really do love (their) labels.

Indeed. These are all different 'genres' of electronic music -

• Ambient
  • Ambient techno
  • Dark ambient
  • Drone music
  • Illbient
  • Isolationism
  • Lowercase

• Break
  • Acid breaks
  • Baltimore Club
  • Big beat
  • Breakbeat
  • Breakbeat hardcore
  • Broken beat
    • Nu skool breaks
  • Florida breaks
  • Nu-funk

• Disco
  • Cosmic disco
  • Euro disco
  • Italo disco
  • Nu-disco
  • Space disco

• Downtempo
  • Acid jazz
  • Balearic beat
  • Chill out
  • Ethnic electronica
  • New age music
  • Nu jazz
  • Trip hop

• Drum and bass
  • Darkstep
  • Drumfunk
  • Drumstep
  • Intelligent drum and bass
  • Jump-Up
  • Liquid funk
  • Neurofunk
  • Sambass
  • Techstep

• Dub
  • Afro-dub
  • Dubstep
    • Brostep
  • Dubtech
  • Dubtronica

• Electro music
  • Crunk
  • Electroclash
  • Electro house

• Electroacoustic music
  • Acousmatic music
  • Electroacoustic improvisation
  • Musique concrète

• Electronica
  • Berlin school
  • Chillwave
  • Electronicore
  • Electronic dance music
  • Folktronica
  • Freestyle music
  • Laptronica
  • Skweee
  • Sound art
  • Synthpop

• Electronic rock
  • Alternative dance
  • Dance-punk
  • Dark Wave
    • Coldwave
  • Ethereal Wave
  • Indietronica
  • New rave
  • New Wave
  • Synthpop
  • Synthpunk
  • Trip rock

• Eurodance
  • Bubblegum dance
  • Italo dance

• Hardcore
  • 4-beat
  • Bouncy techno
  • Breakcore
  • Digital hardcore
    • Doomcore
    • Gabber
  • Happy hardcore
  • Hardcore breaks
  • Makina
  • Speedcore
  • UK Hardcore

[FONT=&quot]from List of electronic music genres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I had to delete most of the list because the editor can't handle more than 10000 characters !

Is this evidence of a new renaissance, or obsessive compulsive fixation on minute elements of 'style' ?

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[mycorrhiza]

[FONT=&quot]Is this evidence of a new renaissance, or obsessive compulsive fixation on minute elements of 'style' ?[/FONT]

I'd say that it's a little bit of both. While there is a lot of innovation in electronic music, it seems like every single change creates a new genre or sub-genre .

The experimentation we see in electronic music today is akin to the experimentation in the psychedelic and progressive music of the 70s.

 

[BSM1]

I think so, yes.

Also, the Indian raga system is so technically demanding that it relied on the guru-shiksha system. Usually this was father teaching son, beginning from earliest childhood, and involving at least more than 12 hours per day of practice until adulthood.

Despite his fame (and great skill), Ravi Shankar was panned by Indian musicians for pandering to the western ear and the equal tempered scale. Despite introducing raga to the west, he unfortunately also began the dumbing down from a musicological perspective.

When westerners hear a raga played with the srutis, they tend to think it is out of tune. In fact, it is in perfect tune, given that the sympathetic strings are tuned to resonate in a way exploiting the overtone series.

Fr

om one perspective, the equal tempered scale is always harmonically wrong, but in a way to which we have become accustomed. This is why the frets on a sitar are moveable, and also why the sarod is probably the supreme solo raga instrument, having a fretless fingerboard.

So that's why its so hard to hum a raga.

 

[Quintessence]

Huh. Well, this kind of explains why I've never liked pop music. It's boring to me. And now I know why.

 

[apophenia]

I'd say that it's a little bit of both. While there is a lot of innovation in electronic music, it seems like every single change creates a new genre or sub-genre .

I think the real innovation is done by the synth and FX designers.

The 'musicians' are mostly process workers who do what is expected and very predictable with those tools.

Like CGI in movie making. Whoever gets the latest and greatest CGI effect first seems to be an innovator. And the movies often totally suck, but the appeal is in the new effect.

 

[mycorrhiza]

I think the real innovation is done by the synth and FX designers.

The 'musicians' are mostly process workers who do what is expected and very predictable with those tools.

Both are responsible for the innovation. We could look at each new VSTi as a new instrument, the same way that banjos or electric guitars were created. The main innovation lies in the hands of the artists, though. Just like a banjo can be used in new ways (like the scruggs style), virtual instruments can be too. It's also often about how you combine the sounds of different instruments.

 

[Shuddhasattva]

Apophenia, have you listened to Younger Brother or Shpongle?

 

[Falvlun]

Huh. Well, this kind of explains why I've never liked pop music. It's boring to me. And now I know why.

Exactly! Homogenization was one of the main things I've been telling people about why I don't like current music, and they just look at me like I'm from another planet. It all sounds the same, there's not much to excite.

Although, I am a fan of current simple, stripped down music, like Jack Johnson or Mumford and Sons. I'd be interested to see if this is part of the trend, or if there is a musical complexity to their stuff that I'm ignorant of.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Look at KoRn (not the Path of Totality stuff) and Disturbed, you'll change your mind.

 

[Quintessence]

It's not just the repetitious use of the exact same instruments over and over with the same formulaic chords and limited pitch ranges, though. Lyrics are also... very rarely to my liking. Sometimes I might find a sound that I like, only for it to be ruined once the lead singer opens his or her mouth and starts on about nonsense I couldn't care less about.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It's not just the repetitious use of the exact same instruments over and over with the same formulaic chords and limited pitch ranges, though. Lyrics are also... very rarely to my liking. Sometimes I might find a sound that I like, only for it to be ruined once the lead singer opens his or her mouth and starts on about nonsense I couldn't care less about.

All so true. There are just far too many people who call themselves singers who should just never pick up a microphone, as they can quickly sour what could have been decent music, if not good.

 

[waitasec]

drummers were the 1st to experience this trend with the advent of the drum machines in the 70's (thanks steely dan)
then in the late 80's and 90's they got their jobs back
in the 2000's there was acceptance of mp3's which pretty much compresses the crap out of the mix in order to bring everything up...taking the beauty of a dynamic mix all for the purpose of the radio
and since then technology has turned everything to where it just sounds absolutely sterile as we beat detective the **** out of everything and slap on an auto tuner on every track
no longer are we interested in the subtleties that make something unique...we want everything to sound the same...really loud and in perfectly in tune...yuck!!!

 

[Secret Chief]

Yes; a perfect example of that is ZZ Top. The early albums are authentic bluesy idiosyncratic songs played by humans. Then they morphed into robotic sterile click track synthetic by the numbers 2D cartoons. Progress...

 

[Secret Chief]

Having said that, I don't put much store by this kind of scientific research. There's always been and continues to be, music of creative endeavour in all 'fields'. Money has always promoted the lowest common denominator. When I want to be moved I don't turn to the business interests of Simon Cowell.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

in the 2000's there was acceptance of mp3's which pretty much compresses the crap out of the mix in order to bring everything up...

Even before then, when digital formats became more common than analog. Vinyl may not be as portable as plastic, but so much of the sound quality is lost, especially when records that were originally recorded for analog formats are "remastered" (whoever came up with that term is obviously not a music fan) to a digital format.

When I want to be moved I don't turn to the business interests of Simon Cowell.

I find it to be very funny that hardly any winners of American Idol actually do make a career for themselves, yet more of the losers have went on to do more. It just goes to show that the average person isn't a very good judge in musical talent, and the more mainstream and homogenous the sound, the more they unfortunately like it.

Having said that, I don't put much store by this kind of scientific research

Considering music is a human concept, like any other form of art, I really don't see how a scientific inquiry, which makes use of empirical and objective observations, is suited at all for judging something that is based on opinion and highly subjective.
But then again my music tastes range from various parts of the 1800's, and from the 1940's to today. And while I do have many mainstream artists, that were at least mainstream during the height of their popularity, such as Mozart, Alice Cooper, AC/DC, Chuck Berry, and more, there are many mainstream artists that have been trend setters, such as Pantera, pre-Black Album Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, and even classical musical still holds influence for many rock and metal artists. But after thousands of years worth of our species existence, with music being very closely related to human culture for much of that time, there are bound to be some similarities, and more than just how alot of mainstream music of particular genres sound alike, but also how many people of any genre are influenced of sounds are very old, such as some Hip-hop artist using drum beats that are influenced by tribal African drumming. Or how many rock and metal artists are classically trained and draw on that training for their song writing. And then you have Weird Al, whose fame isn't in sounding different but sounding alike and making a comedy of it.
Reminds me of a conversation I had in regards to some band I don't remember who, but my friend was trying to get people turned onto them, and many people complained they sounded too generic. And while at the time of that conversation (sometime around '05 or '06) they did overall sound fairly generic, back in the early-mid 90's when they got their start their sound was not generic. Rather other bands had not yet attached themselves to that genre and sound and bleed it dry.

 

[Secret Chief]

Considering music is a human concept, like any other form of art, I really don't see how a scientific inquiry, which makes use of empirical and objective observations, is suited at all for judging something that is based on opinion and highly subjective.

Exactly.

The range of the audible acoustic spectrum remains constant, so only from that extreme position can it be said that there is nothing new under the sun. Similarly, as time goes on, and more and more music is made then perhaps the opportunities for "newness" may diminish. But personally I doubt that.

Regarding money, the exalted classical composers of the past were often paid by royalty and such like, so they weren't always in ivory towers.

I too have an eclectic taste and am always looking for interesting music; currently mining the Cuneiform Records website...