The end of musical innovation
 

Will we ever see the end of musical innovation? I feel like in the past 20 years or so there has been a slowdown of new things happening in music, as opposed to 20+ years ago (or how fast things were changing and how radically in the 60s and 70s).

No.

What makes you feel this way? Is it just a feeling, or are you actively searching out new music and finding it to be lacking in innovation?

I am seeking out new music but I feel like there isn't really anything very new happening. Compared to what was happening before. In terms of new, radically different musical genres. Electronic music started I believe in the 60s, dance and house music came in 70s and 80s. Metal, punk 70s 80s. Grunge 90s. What distinct musical genres have been created in the past 20 years? From what I understand, maybe rap is where the innovation is happening currently but I feel it's not really happening elsewhere, at least not to the point of new, distinct genres or subgenres of music.

Could be wrong, it's just my impression.

Your impression of your impression is right.







And so on.

The future.^

Experimentation in music is happening non stop. The hip hop genre has morphed into an entirely new beast over the last decade and while it might not be my cup of tea, it's certainly fascinating seeing where it goes.

You're also seeing more and more home studio output where one person is responsible for every bit of instrumentation which is leading to a lot of creative material because you don't have to satisfy the egos of other band members.

:thumb:

It's not just fertile, but the quality is like no other time.

https://i.imgur.com/oJplQ7T.jpg

I recently came across some AI generated music, which I assumed must be bubbling with musical innovation. Here are two samples of what's being posted on Youtube if anyone is curious:-




As far as I can tell, the process is more innovative than the product. So does AI music prove or refute addidass's suggestion? I'm not sure which.

So did Turing and Babbage.

Yeah, actually Lejaren Hiller created some of the first AI music back in the
mid- to late 50s with a work written for string quartet (“Illiac Suite”).
He’s best known on LP with a wonderful album he did with John Cage on Nonesuch.
Eno gets a lot of scratch in the various media because of
his “unusual” background and presentation, but much of what he’s
credited for usually had their roots earlier - sometimes much earlier.

Much of AI created music is not usually used in just its raw form, but, instead, it’s
used as a kind of springboard for new ideas that you can extrapolate further. I use it
and have created various scripts for creating it so as to jog the creative juices at times.

Yup. Pretty much. It's how creative (or clever) you are in extending what already exists.

There's some research indicating that popular music is becoming more homogenic.

Here's from a 2012 paper from Nature (we like Nature): https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00521

Again, this is popular music. Coming from biology and liking meme theory, the above comes as no surprise. I mean, it's a competition between songs where they compete for our attention. There are certain strategies that are just going to be unbeatable, like it's obviously important to have good hooks, harmonies, for songs not to be too long, etc. etc. Many of the things that make a song competitive are nearly timeless while some others only work against the backdrop of a certain time, like perhaps their lyrics are about a situation a lot of people care strongly about for a while.

In general, it might make sense that you would have a (cambrian) explosion in music expression with the rise of youth culture. Some of the traits of that music will be competitive while some will not be as competitive. Over time, popular music distills the most effective traits/strategies and music featuring the less competitive traits/strategies dies off or gets relegates to obscurity. It's much like evolution by natural selection. This would create a general trend where popular music would have more variety in expression earlier on and get more homogenized over time, also across genres. This mirrors how natural selection reduces genetic diversion in nature by weeding out the worse genes.

That's not to say innovation doesn't happen, but without going into all the reasons why, it does make sense that there also will be less innovation or that over time there will be fewer appealing things to do to music that hasn't already been done.

Yeah, music as social measurement using data sets.
Clueless, ugly, wonkism.

Well, tore's point is a score for adidasss' s position.

Meanwhile my mention of AI generared music turns out to be a red herring. I naively imagined it was new, so thank you, elph, Frown and rostasi for educating me on that point. I had no idea it was actually being produced as long ago as the "mid to late 50s". Of course, as in all technical innovations, the prediction comes before the actuality and collectively, your comments reminded me of this section from the book 1984. Although it's more about lyrics than music, here's George Orwell writing in 1948 and predicting what AI-generated output would sound like:-

There's a connection between tore's article and Orwell's music for the Proles: both are about making music as broadly accessible as possible. If innovation is going on in music, that is the last place to be looking for it, I imagine.

Because it's fractured into niches and the music industry doesn't have a monolithic hold on the culture anymore.

Here's a pretty good response to/debunking of that study and/or people basing opinions about modern music on it.
Don't let the facetiousness distract from the many good points.

I don't have time to watch the youtube, but I'll check that out later. I just wanted to quickly comment that while you haven't provided a source for your claim, what I usually find is that people tend to misconstrue what these types of studies say.

This is simply looking at chart music through the decades, then quantifying things like time signature, length, timbral palettes and whatnot into numbers in a data set and then running some statistics on that. They reach some conclusions based on the results from that methodology. So the scope of the study is limited. It just says that popular music is more homologous based on the criteria they defined and the metholdology they used.

The news sources covering it add their own understanding of those results. They usually wanna find a slightly bigger perspective so that it's more relevant to readers. Later, when people read such things, they tend to extrapolate further to their own understanding or experience with the world. I did this, mirroring it to evolution by natural selection (though I still try to be aware of the scope of studies). Many may find that they don't think it's a good model for explaining reality as they see it and so they might disagree.`. but they might also have extrapolated that study to encompass or explain more than the authors intended.

Obviously, the amount of various shapes of musical expression goes up over time. There are more expressions of music today than there was 20 years ago.

But is there more innovation? I think most could answer yes or no depending on their definition of innovation. Lets say prog music popularized odd time signatures for a while in the early 70s. Rapping became big in the 80s. If you make rap music to odd time signatures, is that innovation? If yes, is it very innovative or just a little bit? At the heart of the bigger question is quantification, after all. Is there more or less now than before?

Maybe watch the video before you reject it in favour of a study with flawed methodology.

There's more innovation right now because there's more music being released right now than at any point in history. There's also more generic music being released than ever before, but pointing to that doesn't "disprove" innovation unless you approach art like an accountant.

I'll check it out, but as far as the study is concerned and your comment.. The study is about pop music. It's about what's on charts, not all the music being released today.

It's not about the weird sounds your uncle makes in his basement.

And that's an extremy limited perspective that ignores shifts in the music world.

Yes, but it does say something about the shape of the music which we are generally exposed to when we don't actively choose ourselves what we listen to.

Sure, casual listeners aren't as edgy as when the Doobie Brothers were at the ready for em. Luckily, charting music no longer dominates what's available and can be circumvented pretty quickly for anyone interested enough to look.

I agree with this.

As a side note, the music that I find most innovative is often decades old. I readily admit it's because I'm becoming and old man who's always had the music tastes of an even older man.

Ignoring technicalities, music that sounds the most innovative to me is often music that sounds different in its time, like it may follow its own sense of aesthetics that sets it apart. It might seem like a new way of thinking which may make it hard to identify a likely influence. The influence might be there, of course, just that I don't know it and so it seems new to me.

To me, Hatfield and the North is a good example of such a band. Their debut seems clasically inspired, a touch of jazz, boys choir choral music (at least to me), but I can't pick out a single definite influence.

This is another example:

This is just my opinion, but it's not that bad. Here the american charts (Billboard magazine) from 1976:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billbo...ingles_of_1976

Of course later on, some of those New York bands would reach the mainstream and become part of popular music.

>Not that bad
>Wings #1

Hmm idunno about that.

*Kate Bush btw get your reductionist art pop goddesses right

Some more innovative new stuff

Yah but look at what happened from the late 50s to early 70s. We went from Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan to The Beatles to Led Zepelling to David Bowie to Pink Floyd. In about 15 years. Talking just chart toppers. I mean. We're really saying something like that is still happening?

Things have to evolve so it doesn't do so good to try to replicate art from the past imo. I'm assuming this conversation is talking more about guitar driven music, anyways.

From rock to rock to rock to rock and all the way on to rock? In only fifteen years? Incredible.

From wolfmother to greta van vleet dont tell me the 00s dont have innovation too

As I mentioned, there was something akin to a cambrian explosion in music culture. What I mean by that is a rapid diversification of musical expression. It was fueled in part by the rise of aforementioned youth culture and popularization of the idea that you (yes, you) can pick up a guitar or bassoon or whatever and make cool music, perhaps join a band.

Because the blueprints for how to do that weren't as established then as it is now, musical expression varied and evolved very rapidly, much like life in the cambrian explosion. There were unexplored musical niches, like the world of possibilities that became available when people started getting distorted sounds from their electric guitars. Or when people started using the moog or whatever.

Today, we have most of those expressions still around in addition to new innovations and while there may be a ****load of innovation going on also today due to the sheer volume of music being made, most of the big innovations in music (like distorted guitar) have already been made. Hence, I think it may feel like innovation is slowing down, similar to how it feels like advances in gaming graphics have slowed down compared to what it was like through the 90s. I'm sure there are so many people working on visual technology that the number of innovations in that field is actually quite big, but just looking at gaming in general, it feels like it was more innovative in the past.

Time also hasn't sifted the cream of the crop for us yet. The earth feels flat but a wider view shows that's not the case, this is similar.

Who the **** ever said you could pick up a bassoon and play cool music?

Why, Lindsay Cooper, of course.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...TheCortege.jpg

Ja, "the scene" is dead. Niches spread now without geographical care so you might have more people in total playing whatever genre variant, but the reliable audiences that come with a local scene are gone and you gotta put in more legwork to get noticed.

Always has been

That could be because pop musicians and the music industry is spending too much time still trying to milk this when it's pretty much run dry.

I know. I was sticking to chart toppers ;)

Agree.