Has all the Good Music Been Played/Copied/Completed?

[atyy]

It's not so much a question quality - there must be Mozarts, Beethovens and Tschaikovskies alive today - it's a question of what they are composing. They can't do what was done in the past, so what are they finding to do?

 

[sysprog]

I think that sometimes a new collaboration can help to keep a seasoned musician's 'latest thing' from being merely a rehash of the 'same old thing' $-$ when this came out it was an 'instant classic' (cool vid, too):

 

[Jarvis323]

Recently I read a quote/statement by a younger (20's) male member of a modern band: apprx: All the good music has already been created,played,copied, completed... I do not think he was referring to classical but I am assuming just about everything else: pop, blues ,jazz, motown, country western. ( And in my opinion that was accomplished about 1960 to 1966)
Now for me and I am sure many others he is preaching to the choir. But what did surprise me was this statement made by a young person in the music world. Agree/disagree ?

Music evolves slowly, because musicians are trained to play what already exists, and tend to imitate what they've already heard. And people define good music based on what they've listened to, learned, and grown to love, and don't appreciate what they don't understand. The space of good music only seems saturated because the music you know has already been played and you don't know what you don't know.

 

[morrobay]

Music evolves slowly, because musicians are trained to play what already exists, and tend to imitate what they've already heard. And people define good music based on what they've listened to, learned, and grown to love, and don't appreciate what they don't understand. The space of good music only seems saturated because the music you know has already been played and you don't know what you don't know.

Ok I suppose there are some permutations of all the technical musical variables.
But if this is all they have got now: I can sing this bad.

And while # 20 is not bad, i wonder where he got the idea?

 

[Algr]

You can look at this question in terms of law. How similar do two songs have to be before one can accuse the other of plagiarism? Given how often this happens, it is reasonable to suspect that we are running out of new ways to assemble notes together.

 

[Helios]

it is reasonable to suspect that we are running out of new ways to assemble notes together

How many ways are there to assemble notes together to show that it is reasonable to suspect that we are running out them?

 

[AndreasC]

You can look at this question in terms of law. How similar do two songs have to be before one can accuse the other of plagiarism? Given how often this happens, it is reasonable to suspect that we are running out of new ways to assemble notes together.

No this logic is fallacious. It's like saying that students copying each other (or at least coming up with similar essays because they used the same manual provided by the teacher) is proof we are running out of new ways to assemble words.

 

[AndreasC]

I guess many people on this thread get confused because they think the same set of the combinations of notes that are easy to the ears in a given culture and on a given period of time (or even for a given individual) persists through all cultures and all time. On any given period the most popular music will always sound similar, because musicians are either actively trying to imitate what is already popular, or they do it subconsciously because this is what they too like, since this is what they grew to like through living in that society. It's only a matter of time before that sound grows unfashionable. People used to say that all pop music sounds the same in the 90s and early 2000s as well. People still say it now. But the pop music of these time periods sounded almost nothing like the pop music of today, let alone the pop music of the 80s.

I usually tell people who fail to realize how what is considered compelling in music changes throughout cultures and time to go listen to gamelan music, which was and is considered important and popular in Indonesia. It sounds absolutely nothing like the vast majority of western music and yet you can see that it was considered compelling enough to have the significance it did. So clearly you can see that nothing is set in stone.

 

[BWV]

Bollywood film songs are typically based on Hindustani ragas. Ragas, simplified, consist of a scale plus certain characteristic phrases and emphasis notes. Khamaj, one of the more popular (there are dozens of widely used ragas and hundreds more lesser used) has over 2500 Bollywood film songs associated with it (in addition to all the legit classical performances of the raga).

khamaj essentially uses the diatonic major scale but with a flattened 7th on descending phrases, so a mixolydian flavor in western jargon, and emphasizes the 3rd and 7th scale degrees. Fairly limited, but a lot of music has been generated from it.https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/ragas-reloaded/

 

[BWV]

I guess many people on this thread get confused because they think the same set of the combinations of notes that are easy to the ears in a given culture and on a given period of time (or even for a given individual) persists through all cultures and all time. On any given period the most popular music will always sound similar, because musicians are either actively trying to imitate what is already popular, or they do it subconsciously because this is what they too like, since this is what they grew to like through living in that society. It's only a matter of time before that sound grows unfashionable. People used to say that all pop music sounds the same in the 90s and early 2000s as well. People still say it now. But the pop music of these time periods sounded almost nothing like the pop music of today, let alone the pop music of the 80s.

I usually tell people who fail to realize how what is considered compelling in music changes throughout cultures and time to go listen to gamelan music, which was and is considered important and popular in Indonesia. It sounds absolutely nothing like the vast majority of western music and yet you can see that it was considered compelling enough to have the significance it did. So clearly you can see that nothing is set in stone.

And how relevant is the concept of ‘unique new music’ within this tradition?

 

[AndreasC]

And how relevant is the concept of ‘unique new music’ within this tradition?

I'm not sure but it doesn't really matter. My point is that it is music like that has been highly influential and popular in a certain cultural setting, and that music is extremely far removed from anything "western music" (if that is even a thing) has conjured up in all its existence. The point being that what music people find compelling can be very broad and it doesn't have to do with something innate but with the cultural setting. So the reason a lot of popular music sounds similar isn't that we are running out of combinations, but because particular styles are what everyone is trying to imitate at that time in that particular society or subculture. Times change and then popular music moves to something different and when that happens the older generations predictably complain about the new music being bad.

 

[Algr]

How many ways are there to assemble notes together to show that it is reasonable to suspect that we are running out them?

144 ways.

I take this from Eddy Grant accusing Gorillaz of plagiarism with their song Stylo. It is the same drone, although there are more variations in the Eddy Grant version. But the Gorillaz version of the drone is simply three notes endlessly repeated. Since changing the drone's key would not count as an original composition, only the notes after the first count as variable. This means 12x12 or 144 possible drones exist.

No this logic is fallacious. It's like saying that students copying each other (or at least coming up with similar essays because they used the same manual provided by the teacher) is proof we are running out of new ways to assemble words.

It is more fallacious to assume that two artists could never independently arrive at the same rhythm. There are only 144 ways to string three notes together. Take that to seven notes, and you still have less than three million. There are far more than three million songs in existence.

"Mary had a little lamb" - That is seven notes. The Intel chime is four. If there is any combination of notes that has yet to be copyrighted, there will probably be a good sonic reason.

Edit: Oops, I just listened to Stylo again and there is actually a variant, so I guess it is six notes. (248,832 possible drones.). Ultimately what I am saying is that you can easily have a definition of "plagiarism" that is so broad as to make new music impossible.

 

[morrobay]

The point being that what music people find compelling can be very broad and it doesn't have to do with something innate but with the cultural setting. So the reason a lot of popular music sounds similar isn't that we are running out of combinations, but because particular styles are what everyone is trying to imitate at that time in that particular society or subculture. .

Discounting something innate is discounting an emotional and or physical resonance a person has with particular style of music. Have you ever listened to some original motown ?
Sure the cultural setting interacts with the music of the times. Unfortunately the times can be hijacked as in the case of that 2002 tv show American Idol. The show had life performances and a Brit, Simon Cowell led the judges into selecting , rewarding and promoting a half fast- half slow whining style of singing that became popular. They even called some of this slop soul and motown. I wonder how this oblivious audience would have reacted to some real motown.

 

[symbolipoint]

half fast-

The correct terminology is very likely, "half-assed". ( believe I am correct although I should check on this to be sure.)

 

[AndreasC]

Discounting something innate is discounting an emotional and or physical resonance a person has with particular style of music.

A person can have a "resonance" with a particular style. Only it's not innate, it's a matter of having grown up that way.

 

[AndreasC]

It is more fallacious to assume that two artists could never independently arrive at the same rhythm.

I allowed for that which is why I brought up the example of students coming up with similar essays after reading the same manual.

Also it is untrue that there is only 144 ways to string 3 notes together, it would only be true if you had only 12 notes to chose from, and no rhythmic variation. But even if it was, well, songs have more than 3 notes.

That you can have a broad enough definition of music such that it is very hard to make new music that is not copyrighted is a different matter from what is being discussed. Like yeah, you could copyright 4/4. You could copyright the major or minor scale. You could copyright every scale so far, and every time signature. That would definitely make things very hard. But it doesn't say anything about running out go actually new music. It's just legal abuses.

 

[Vanadium 50]

We can also limit the duration of a piece of music by, say 5 hours - if we include operas.

Erik Satie's Vexations is about 20 hours long. The last full performance I am aware of was in the 90's in New York, where tickets were $20 with one dollar refunded for every hour you lasted.

 

[Algr]

But it doesn't say anything about running out go actually new music. It's just legal abuses.

When having a discussion like this, we have to define our terms. How different do two audio streams have to be in order to be "Different Songs"? And more importantly, whose opinion matters? Consequently, there is nothing "just" about legal abuses. This could be what the person in the original post was complaining about.

One of the early posts in this thread suggests that a one bit difference in an audio file would constitute a "different" song. That is harmless because it is just a post on Physics Forums. Bun on the opposite extreme, look at what happened to Adam Neely. Warner Bros demonetized the video he made defending Warner bros based on the song they DIDN'T own.

Ultimately, the question this thread asks can only be answered in legal terms, and needs rigorous scientific analysis. If you can't write a song without risking lawsuits, then all the good music has indeed been played.

 

[AndreasC]

If you can't write a song without risking lawsuits, then all the good music has indeed been played.

I don't understand how that is supposed to follow from the premise. I guess some court could decide that all music utilising frequencies between 20 and 20000Hz is copyrighted, does that mean all good music has already been played, or rather that whomever decided that doesn't know what they're talking about?

The "all the good music has already been played" thing is just a personal opinion. What it means is that the particular person expressing that opinion isn't aware of different music or they just don't like it. The claim that all music that could conceivably be made has been played out is just patently false and is proven wrong every year. You could ban the major scale and all of its modes and it would take humans a few years to readjust, just look at Arabian music, or rembetiko which is widely popular in my home country. You could even ban most common time signatures used in western music and it would still only take a very short time to readjust, just look at Balkan dances, they're full of 7/8, 11/8, and other weird odd time signatures, and often feature time signature changes.

What people really mean when they say that all music has been played out is really that within a particular style, the choices which are popular within a given time period are somewhat limited so a lot of people may end up arriving at the same thing independently. Also that short patterns of notes or 4 chord loops can only produce so many variations. The point here being that it is absurd for courts to enforce copyright claims the way they do, not that we just exhausted all music for an eternity. I can easily come up with a short melody that I can absolutely guarantee you won't be able to find anywhere in, like, 15 minutes. Or even a short chord progression. The only issue being that it won't sound very nice. But something not sounding very nice is a matter of cultural context and personal taste, which changes. And that's how music keeps evolving to directions that can't be predicted. People have been saying that all good music has been played out for years. It was actually somewhat of a common complaint close to the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th century, and lots of musicians were scrambling to find where else you could go after the scope of classical music was seemingly exhausted. Can you imagine someone in the 1950s coming up with a trap song, or even conceiving what something like that could sound like? Let's take it further. Can you imagine a 19th century music lover conceiving something similar to a Death Grips song? I guess anyone could search through Death Grips' catalogue and find like 3 bars which contain a pattern which also occurred in x work of Giuseppe Verdi or whatever but if someone claimed that Death Grips basically just sound like Verdi then everyone would rightfully laugh at them, regardless of what some overzealous lawyer might say to convince a musically illiterate judge.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Is Wingy Manone's Tar Paper Stomp the same song or a different song than Joe Garland's In The Mood?

 

[Mark44]

My personal idiosyncratic taste is that almost nothing after 1970 is beautiful. The last of beauty was the Beatles.

Well you may have that opinion but it's not because artists no longer try to make something beautiful, it's just that you, personally, don't find what they make beautiful.

I for one don't find much beauty in music after about 1970 or so, but I also don't hold the Beatles as some kind of benchmark standard. Toward the end of their run, it seemed to me that they must have been thinking, "What's the lowest quality crap we can push out that our fans will still lap up?" For examples, I point to "Hey, Jude," and "Let It Be."
My personal opinion is that a lot of artists, not just musicians, don't strive to make something beautiful -- just to do something different. John Cage's piece of 4' and 33" of silence was certainly different, but it's not art of any kind in my book.

 

[cobalt124]

My first thought on this is the musician is wrong. If music is self expression then he is saying that there are not any new people! From that perspective I disagree.

 

[cobalt124]

A hummable melody will probably stay within an octave or so. 4 bars with quarter note melodies is 16 beats. 12 note chromatic scale plus 1 for the octave and 1 for a rest gives $16^{14}=72,057,594,037,927,936$ possible 4-bar quarter note melodies that stay within an octave. Surely there are a few good ones in there that haven't been discovered yet.

Edit: even if you stick to 2 bar melodies, there are still 4,398,046,511,104 possibilities. And that ignores every other musical possibility you could throw in there.

Agree, often thought that.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

I for one don't find much beauty in music after about 1970 or so, but I also don't hold the Beatles as some kind of benchmark standard.

Hi Mark:

It feels good to have someone share my feeling about the 1970 barrier.

Regarding the Beatles, I think a variation of an old saying applies.

Beauty is in the eye of he beholder.​

Of course regarding music this need a small modification.

Beauty is in the ear of he listener.​

Since you find the Beatles to not qualify as a final milestone for beautiful music, who would be your choice for this milestone?

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Mark44]

Since you find the Beatles to not qualify as a final milestone for beautiful music, who would be your choice for this milestone?

I don't think like this -- that a certain band was the ultimate paragon for some era. And although I liked a lot of the early Beatle songs, I was more a fan of the Rolling Stones back then (saw them play on their first tour of the US back in '64).

And there was some good stuff after the 70's, such as Dire Straits and Hot Tuna (with Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy of Jefferson Airplane fame). Earlier in this thread was a link to a video of Bob Seger doing "Night Moves," probably my most favorite of his tunes.

 

[symbolipoint]

This is the important idea:

I don't think like this -- that a certain band was the ultimate paragon for some era.

 

[AndreasC]

It feels good to have someone share my feeling about the 1970 barrier.

Not at all an uncommon thing. It was the music the boomer generation grew up with and as such people belonging to that generation tend to find it more appealing, especially since it played a more important role culturally than music in certain other decades. Boomers being the most abruptly populous generation, there is a lot of people who only like music up to that era. Researches show most people stop discovering new music after a certain age. My dad was of a similar opinion until I showed him a bunch of new music that he actually liked and aligned with what he was more accustomed to.

 

[Algr]

It feels good to have someone share my feeling about the 1970 barrier.

It could be that the barrier is "Whenever you turned 21." Personally I like a lot of 80's music, and find the endless guitar haze of the 90's to be a wasteland. Past that, there does not seem to be any real identity between music and years anymore. Does any song exist where you could listen to it and say "That couldn't have been done in the late '90s, it must be more recent?"

 

[Buzz Bloom]

It could be that the barrier is "Whenever you turned 21."

In 1970 I was in my mid-30s. And my impression about beauty in music involved both classical and popular having the same 1970 milestone.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[AndreasC]

Does any song exist where you could listen to it and say "That couldn't have been done in the late '90s, it must be more recent?"

This is an easy question. A harder question would be "are there any recent top 40 songs which sound like they could have been done in the late 90s?". Because I can't think of that many.

Let's look at the top 50 albums of 2019 according to Billboard (terrible list but it is a good list of what is popular): https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/news/list/8545657/best-albums-of-2019-top-50

At the top spot is Ariana Grande's Thank U, next. Listen to any of the singles of that album. Do they really sound like 90s songs to you? At the second spot is Billie Eilish's When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. Again listen to any of the top singles from the album. Especially this album I don't see how it could have come out in the 90s. The very quiet and dispassionate vocals aren't something you'd normally encounter in 90s pop. The dark trap influenced breaks and verses just don't exist in any 90s song whatsoever. 90s rapping was much different and limited than what it is like today, so you wouldn't see any highly popular songs fusing elements of more traditional pop with sing-rapping or (especially) trap style triplet flows (which originated during the 90s but wasn't even named yet and was extremely niche, and couldn't have crossoverered with top pop tracks).