This is the ninth of our instructor-led online discussions for Mu 101 (Fall 2019). Refer to the handout you received the first day of class (click on this highlighted text to go to that page our class website) which describes the amount and kinds of contributions you’re expected to make to these online discussions — they’re all the same parameters of good conversation that happens offline, too!
BEFORE WE BEGIN: A REMINDER ABOUT EFFECTIVE DISCUSSION FORUM PARTICIPATION
Most importantly for blog-style discussions, do not try to respond to every idea in this post. Focus on the ones that you have a strong reaction to, and learn from other people’s comments that address the other questions. Leave space for others to move the conversation along. There is no prize for trying to do it all yourself.
Limit each of your comments to addressing a single question or topic. By doing so, you make it easier for others to see your point quickly and easily, rather than letting your good idea get lost in the middle of a long, multi-topic post. If you have several different ideas you want to share, make several different comments. Let each idea speak for itself.
There are no questions at the end of this post to get the conversation going. Use your own critical thinking to make this conversation substantial: compare or contrast its ideas to your own experience or other things you’ve learned about, think about what surprises you, and think about what aspects resonate with or contradict your own experiences.
The approximate reading time of this post is 15 minutes, not counting any audio media. It covers how musicians borrow and adopt instruments or sounds from different individuals, from parts of the world, from different genres, and from different socio-economic identities, blurring the sense of what is “authentic” along the way.
Part I: Examples of migrating sounds
As consumers and audience members, it’s easy for us to take musical sounds for granted—it seems like those sounds emerge out of nowhere, just for us, in that moment when we listen. But sounds come from somewhere—even “new” or “original” musical ideas grow out of or build upon musical ideas that have come before. Just like we alluded to in our discussion on musicking, music travels across time, geography, and genre, and the range of things we consume as listeners affects our expectations of how music “should” sound.
Let’s start with some pop music, by way of a piece of classical music. Although Igor Stravinsky composed his ballet The Firebird in 1909, you’ve actually been listening to snippets of it most of your life.
Turtles all the way down
Modern pop music borrows a sound from pop music of the 1980s, and pop music of the 1980s was borrowing from classical music of the early 20th century. But as you know by now, Stravinsky isn’t the beginning of classical music, not by a long shot. The orchestra he used included winds, string, brass, and percussion—and in our discussion on instruments and voice types you noticed that not all of those instruments were used in the earliest symphonies. They all got there somehow.
Let’s take a closer look at percussion instruments as a case study. They add color, rhythm, volume, and power to the sound of an orchestra, and they’re now considered a standard part of that ensemble. But in the Classical era (when the ensemble we call an orchestra first emerged), the ensemble emphasized string instruments, along with a handful of woodwinds, but brass was quite rare and percussion was almost never heard—it wasn’t yet part of the “normal” sounds that European listeners expected from their music.
However, musicians from other parts of the world at that time were making much more use of percussion. In the Ottoman Empire, the Janissary bands that heralded the arrival of the Emperor used percussion and nasal-sounding wind instruments that were unfamiliar, frightening, and powerful-sounding for Europeans.
People living in Europe became familiar with these sounds during the Ottoman-Habsburg Wars (1526-1791), when Turkish armies made use of psychological warfare by having their Janissary bands perform outside the walls of a city under siege, psyching up their own troops and intimidating the citizens trapped inside. For European musicians like Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, these sounds were inspiring—a fresh set of orchestral colors to use and exploit.
In this slow movement from a symphony by Haydn, the percussion makes a grand, heavy entrance at around 1:37, a total contrast to the preceding piano, delicate, sweet sound of the strings and woodwinds (Symphony No. 100 “Military”, II. Allegretto, 1793).
What does it mean to “remix”?
One semester, a student told me that pop music was more creative and better than classical music because it had remixes—and not just that it had remixes but that it invented them! However, in classical music not every work is wholly original or pretends to be—an enormous swath of musical output is of the kind we can call a pastiche, a parody, or a remix.
One of my favorite remixed ear-worms comes in MC Solaar’s 1997 “Paradisiaque”:
It samples Diana Ross’s 1976 “Love Hangover,” and listening to it feels like MC Solaar was inspired to re-imagine the first song in a new way (more specifically, MC Solaar’s work adds a new vocal layer on top of and bass line under an edited, sped-up version snipped off the introduction from Ross’ hit).
Let’s define “remixing” as when a musician is inspired to do something new with a musical idea that’s already been created. By this definition, classical musicians remix all the time! Taking a melody and dressing it up in new musical clothes (new instrumentation, new harmony, new texture, new added countermelody, etc.) is the defining feature of nearly all classical music—musical form is just repetition, contrast, and variation. As we’ve seen in class, the most common form used by musicians from the 1750s to today, sonata form, relies on “remixing” for the entirety of its development section.
Remixes are also a call-back to our discussion on musicking—listening to remixed, sampled, or reworked pieces like this can be an even richer experience (i.e., one that has more layers and nuance) if you are familiar with the original version: it’s like you’re experiencing two pieces at once!
This is what happens to my sister’s mom, a sweet 70-something-year-old lady who becomes both confused and disappointed when this song comes on the radio (Mary J. Blige and Method Man, “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need”, 1995—and version is itself a remix of Method Man’s 1994 song, “All I Need”!)…
…because she starts experiencing this one in her head (Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “You’re All I Need to Get By,” 1968):
Sampling, remixing, or covers often arise out of admiration: enjoying another’s work in such a way that it inspires you to do something new with it. Or the sampled work is really catchy and the musician can’t get it out of their head when they sit down to compose or create something new.
The armed man
That’s the case with what may be the most-borrowed song you’ve probably never heard of, a pop song of the Renaissance era, L’homme armé (The armed man):
Text translation:
The armed man should be feared.
Everywhere it has been proclaimed
That each man shall arm himself
With a coat of iron mail.
The armed man should be feared.
Composers used this little ditty as the basis of dozens of other works, notably masses (the prayers of the Catholic Church). The melody would be sung in one of the voice parts, with new harmonies composed to sit on top of or underneath it. There are 40 surviving works from the 15th and 16th centuries that use L’homme armé as their starting point and then remix the original melody. Here is one from Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474):
Sometimes non-musicians didn’t even know they were listening to a popular song woven into their prayers, and this became a source of contention in the Catholic Church and was abolished during the Counter-Reformation (1545-63).
The birth of polyphony
Using an existing melody (often something popular, like a children’s song or drinking song) as the basis of a new piece of music was common outside of religious music, too. This was one of the avenues via which composers in the Renaissance experimented and discovered the art of writing pleasing polyphony: starting with an established melody that already works musically and adding something to it. A motet, for example, was a genre of song that often featured a borrowed melody with new melodies added on top (polyphony), usually with the new melodies sung in a different language!
Aucun vont / Amor qui cor / Kyrie (Anonymous) is an example of a motet in 3 languages: French (highest), Latin (middle), and Greek (lowest). Each one is about different levels of love: the French line is about those who are unfaithful in relationships; the middle line says that those who love ephemeral, worldly things have less room for God in their hearts; and the lowest line sings “Kyrie eleison” (Lord, have mercy)—devotional love. It’s a re-imagining of a common idea (the Kyrie, which we’ve heard an example of in class), dressed up in a totally new musical context.
Variations
Another kind of “remix” is the kind found in concert showpieces: opportunities for a performer to show off brilliant technique by adding variations to an existing melody. It was quite common in the 19th century for a traveling composer-performer to adapt the melodies of whatever opera was hot at the time into of a set of fantasy-variations. Audiences loved to hear melodies they already knew from the opera (much like we often love a good sample in hip-hop today), and they enjoyed being impressed with the performer’s virtuosity.
Composing a set of variations could also be a way for a composer to elevate a boring piece of music or flex their compositional chops. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, Op. 120 (1823) begin with an innocuous tune (composed by Anton Diabelli) and take it on a remarkable, virtuosic journey that ends up sounding very little like the original:
A composer might also write a set of variations on their own music—remixing themselves, in effect. Kanye is not the first musician to be inspired by his own work! For example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (1741) were written, as the story goes, to be played to lull an insomniac aristocrat to sleep, and they begin with a simple melody (an aria) written by Bach:
Finally, there’s a more abstract kind of remix that crops up all the time in the classical music world in the form of rehashing a trope or general idea which another artist has already explored: effectively remixing a familiar story in a new medium. Schubert’s Lied, Der Erlkonig, is a good example of this. Other works reinterpret a familiar character by placing them in a new context: Orpheus from Greek mythology and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust were and continue to be two extremely common topics of musical inspiration and re-imagining.
Most abstractly, composers create symphonies, string quartets, piano sonatas, and other genres that have been done thousands of times before, reusing forms and gestures—the framework they use to present their musical ideas isn’t original, but their surface-level musical ideas (melody, harmony, texture, instrumentation) can be: they remix the form. In doing so, they’re checking off all the boxes that broadly define “remix”: 1) being inspired by or admiring previous artists’ work, 2) creating a situation in which the listener can simultaneously experience past works that share some musical DNA, and 3) the work is a response or continuation of an ongoing discussion between artists.
Part II: Modern implications
Perfectionism, “authenticity,” and listener expectations
The thing about all these processes of borrowing, remixing, or using sounds from other regions of the world, other pieces, or other styles is that it shapes the new sense of what’s “normal”—music keeps evolving and sounds keep migrating. The “remixed” version becomes the new barometer of “normal” to be played with or built upon—the Stravinsky orchestra hit becomes the “normal” sound of pop music, with no connection to its classical origins; the percussion of the European orchestra becomes the “normal” instrumentation, with no connection to the Middle East. In particular, the way people make and consume music in the 21st century raises some interesting questions in terms of what is “real”—a topic touched upon in our most recent in-class discussion. The idea of “realness” or “authenticity” comes up when we think about the process of remixing or borrowing more abstract ideas (like style or accents) from other musicians, too.
The ascendancy and primacy of recorded music in the 20th century has changed how music is heard as well as how it is made. Improvements in microphones, mixers, and the advent of digital recording processes and editing software have all made it much easier to produce music that sounds excellent: rich, clear, enticing, and beautiful. Compare these two recordings of Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 (1826): the first was recorded by the Léner String Quartet in 1924—In addition to the omnipresent hiss of the recording technology itself, the sound is tinny, thin, and far-away, with very little audible dynamic or timbral contrast:
On the other hand, a live performance by the American String Quartet in 2013 is clear, conveys all the nuances and subtleties of the players, and has an overall rich or round sound quality:
The 1924 recording is more likely to be authentic—it took place closer to Beethoven’s lifetime, so the chances that one of the members of the string quartet knew someone who knew Beethoven aren’t impossible. That doesn’t mean it’s a better performance or that a listener would choose it over the 2013 recording.
The ubiquity of recorded music has two major effects on how we consume music and what we expect from it as listeners:
- Music should sound perfect; and
- Music should sound perfect all the time.
These expectations feed into how music gets made. When a classical musician makes an album (except for recordings of live performances), the goal is a product that is worth listening to multiple times, one without glaring flaws. The process is defined by obsessing over details: it is a painstaking marathon of recording every sound over and over again, sometimes playing the same 15 seconds of music (called a “take”) dozens of times to make sure that all aspects of the performance match with what the musician intended (timing, vibrato, intonation, coordination, tone quality). Then, the musician(s) will select the best takes, and the sound engineer will digitally stitch all these patchwork pieces of the performance together so that every single sound is as “perfect” as it can be.
For example, when I recorded a chamber music album in 2016, we took 55 takes of one 9-minute piece of music over the course of a single afternoon—this is quite a small number for a classical recording! A few weeks later, I listened all the takes and told the engineer that I wanted the first 3 notes from take 4, followed by two measures from take 15, then two beats from take 1, etc. all the way through the piece. All the takes are my playing, but I essentially created a Frankenstein performance of it, choosing the mini-performances in which I best executed my intentions. (The album is available here).
Perfectionism is all over the pop music industry, as well. In the past when physical CDs were the primary form of music distribution, the process of releasing music took much longer than it does now. After writing music, recording it in the studio, mixing, and editing, it would take around 6 weeks for the audio to be encoded onto CDs, CD jackets and booklets to be printed, and the product to be physically shipped to record stores. During this time, there would be a press tour to amp up excitement for the release, followed by a release party and scheduled date that consumers could purchase the album in stores. Audiences had to be patient, and artists couldn’t go back an alter their work once the marketing timeline had begun. However, most artists today rely much more heavily (or even exclusively) on digital releases of their work: uploading music to SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, or YouTube. This means that the lead time between finishing a recording and making it available to the public can be reduced to a few hours rather than weeks. It also means that artists don’t necessarily have to adhere to firm deadlines and can instead continue to alter their music as long as they like–if they push back the drop date by a few hours, a couple days, or a year, there isn’t an expensive pre-scheduled marketing campaign or tour that is thrown out of whack. An article by Joe Coscarelli in The New York Times (August 5, 2016) outlines the ways in which established and new artists use the Internet to release their music (and have the flexibility to continue to tweak their tracks to meet their perfectionist creative standards). He discusses primarily Frank Ocean but also Kanye West, Beyoncé, and independent artists: Coscarelli, the Sudden Digital Drop – The New York Times
So what does this perfectionism do to the live music experience? On the classical side, there is a general expectation that the live performance will be as flawless as the studio version. It’s an impossibly high standard! Some audiophiles (people who love recorded sound) find live performances frustrating because the sound is imperfect: musicians make mistakes in live performances, people in the audience cough or shuffle their papers, or the sound in the hall might not be as pure as it is on their home speaker system.
Because most audience members come into contact with pieces of music first through recordings (perfect recordings!), their ears are primed to expect that every time they hear a given piece it will sound just as perfect as their favorite recording. In turn, performers try to give the audience what they want: a flawless performance that matches a great recording. The problem with a flawless performance is that in order to play flawlessly, you must practice flawlessly–over and over and over again, until every sound comes out exactly the same way every single time and matches audience’s expectations. Performers are far less likely today to try something new or unprecedented on stage (or in an audition) than they were in the 19th century or first half of the 20th century.
The expectation that a live performance will match the crisp, coordinated, and sumptuous sound of a recorded album affects how many non-classical musicians perform, as well. Since the 1960s, the use of pre-recorded backing tracks for all or some of the sounds that comprise a “live” performance has become nearly ubiquitous (including vocals, backing vocals, instrumental tracks). There are many possible permutations of this, described here and here. To some degree this makes sense, since performers can’t dance and sing well simultaneously (think about what happens to your voice when you try to talk while jogging or doing jumping jacks). Sometimes “live” performances are completely fake, as with this list of examples from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beyoncé, Eminem, Nirvana, Milli Vanilli, Ashlee Simpson, and Jay-Z. And “Lip Sync Battle” was so popular on Jimmy Fallon that it’s now a well-rated spin-off show hosted by LL Cool J—it’s as if we love the energy and illusion of performance but not necessarily the music making.
Smoke and mirrors
Despite all the editing that goes on behind the scenes, when we talk about authenticity in music sometimes we’re referring to the heartfelt “self-expression” a singer exhibits—but what if the sentiments being expressed are really someone else’s creation, a manipulation of our expectations as listeners? So much happens behind the scenes in pop music that comprises an artist’s public identity or image: making them sound the way they do by writing lyrics and producing tracks, making them look the way they do through fashion and styling, making them have a particular persona through interview coaching, scheduling appearances at certain events, creating beefs with other artists, or selling photographs to tabloids. An “artist” is oftentimes actually an army of several dozen people working together, perhaps with input from focus groups, to create a coherent marketing product (that happens to include music).
For example, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, Kesha, Pink, Nicki Minaj, David Guetta, The Weeknd, Fifth Harmony, Maroon 5, Ace of Base, Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears are all pop artists who present distinctly different personas and musical identities to the public, but much of their music is all written by the same handful of song writers: Max Martin and Dr. Luke (whose work was featured in the video at the beginning of this post), often working together, or Karl Martin Sandberg. Max Martin’s writing credit discography ranges from Bon Jovi to Ariana Grande; Dr. Luke’s is similarly prolific, including Three 6 Mafia and Weezer. Other ubiquitous songwriters who have created the musical identities of headlining artists over the last 30 years include Babyface, Pharrell Williams, RedOne, Rick Rubin, and Sia.
The idea of authenticity is often front-and-center in hip-hop: staying true to oneself, not selling out, or remaining true to one’s home, origins, and community.
“Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?” —Eminem, “The Real Slim Shady” (2000)
“I rap and I’m real / I’m one of the few here.” —Jay-Z, “Real As It Gets” (2009)
“First things first, I’m the realest.” —Iggy Azalea, “Fancy” (2014)
But, Iggy Azalea is liar. She has never been in “da murder business,” and she adopts an accent that implies a different country, ethnic group, and socio-economic class than the reality of her life. Much of the frustration with Azalea’s posturing is that it’s an example of cultural appropriation: she wears the accent like a coat, taking it off whenever she wants, and doing so without having to bear any of the burden of the lived experiences that create that traditionally black sonic identity. When she takes it off, she gets to return to the relative privilege of being a white Australian woman.
But it’s also possible to view Azalea’s behavior as fundamentally the same as how other musicians approach music making and remixing—sound migration. Musicians use different sounds in different settings to fit audience expectations, and those expectations transcend the limitations of geography, time, and genre. Is the true measure authentic identity in hip-hop—or any of these genres—not to convey one’s lived reality, but simply to entertain?
Final thoughts
The more abstract or broad the definition of “remix” becomes, and the more we are aware of how sounds “migrate” from one place/time/genre to another, the less room there is for anything to be considered original at all. If, as James Baldwin (1965) argues, “history is literally present in all that we do” and that we are “unconsciously controlled” by history and the framework and systems we inherit, then we are not free to do absolutely anything we choose. We are not free to create out of the blue—everything is a reaction to something that has come before, whether we act in admiration or in rejection or even in ignorance, we have still reacted to what we inherit.
“Originality” as a synonym for creativity is often something that we say we value. But I would argue that we devalue creativity by lumping it together with originality—we are not creative because we are original, but rather we are creative despite the fact that we are unoriginal. It is the constraints of unoriginality that allow for creativity at all.
-Dr. J.
Dr. Jones' Music Classes 
To study music is to study history and how it helps us to create and build on the foundation that was already created for us. with today’s technology, sounds are much easier to compose and transfer.
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With today’s technology, there might not be any need to “study history” since we can just look it up if we want to, although we always get some kind of biased narrative, so it helps to check different sources to see if they are all telling the story from the same, or similar, perspectives.
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But looking up it the same history you going to find
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what do you think about history being easily accessible like that through technology? Do you think it’s better to have easy access to history like that rather than to study it?
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I think it’s a bit dangerous if the history is presented to mislead, misguide and keep people limited. The internet is basically a trashcan of information and knowledge. If that knowledge is used to be progressive and to learn from our wrongs, then I am I see easy access to knowledge as a good thing. But so far, it ain’t looking too good. But maybe because we are in the early stages of the digital era.
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I would have to agree with this. It’s like a game of telephone but online. The information is not passed on the right way or interpreted the wrong way. Not only that technology has made us lazy.
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I agree, the convenience of technology has made us lazy, but do you think theres a chance the information that is published in textbooks could be interpreted the wrong way? Or the information be biased? Just as the information online.
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The fact that a book has to be re-read by a number of people, published, copyrighted, and such there is a slim chance. Online you can just post things up. For example, Wikipedia there has been a number of times wrong information was posted and it wasn’t caught till someone in that trained field corrected it. Posting on the internet can be very dangerous for that reason. I was actually joking with my mother the other day about this scenario because WebMD makes everyone a doctor. Plus I feel there is more pride in printing books. The amount of hard work and studies that go into that book.
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I disagree that technology makes us lazy. I believe that it’s the opposite, we choose to learn what we want. How many times have we sat in history classes reading hundreds of pages just to get the to the important part? With technology it’s easier to focus your search and read about what you want to learn about. Look at what Texas wanted to do this year, they wanted to ban woman like Helen Keller and Hilary Clinton from textbooks. Textbooks can be biased too and we can be fed just a minimum amount of information when there’s a whole world of history we have yet to learn. The internet gives us access to that.
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I agree and sometimes the information being posted on the internet is not accurate, and you are right it is making us lazy because we have become dependent on it to function.
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Agree. I’ve witnessed far too many people digitally tear each other to shreds over information that could easily be debunked in .2 seconds with a quick accurate search. Ie. the “Vaccines cause autism” debate.
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@antonella , you asked a great question about accessing history easily and I think it’s a great idea although sometimes when I search online I can’t even find exactly what I need and it’s right there . I think we need to be able to search accurately And to do this we need to have a better understanding of how we research . If we have time we can go to the research 101 class offered at this college .
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Researching isn’t all that difficult. You can use scholar.google.com for research papers, and you can also use different search engines if you are suspicious/skeptical so you get different results, as some search engines can be biased. Google, for example, came under fire at one point for making Donald Trump appear in their image search results when you googled the word “Idiot”. I think it was fixed now though. Google also blocks certain things like 8chan from their search results.
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I think history being easily accessible, makes it better for us to do research about history and the different ways music was played. Without it, it might be harder for us to understand and kmow.
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*know (sorry error)
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I agree that history being so easy to access makes our lives much easier when it comes to research. We then don’t have to read for hours and hours to find something and then understand why it happened this way. Without it, our knowledge wouldn’t be as expanded because, people tend to look things straight up rather than reading about it.
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Yes I totally agree, thanks to the internet I have found so many women that have done amazing things throughout history that I would have never learned in school through textbooks. If I wanted to know most famous women in history I can literally google it and it would give me not all the information I asked for but it will also give me related topics that might interest me too!
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In my honest opinion people have different opinions on music. I feel our generation of music is different and original. Let take producers. In today’s music everything is autotuned or what not. People who value their generations (prior to our generation) music that may not view our music as being good shows that we are original. We created something that is not agreed upon by others.
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Yeah. There’s no need for autotune if your singing is already good. I too don’t like a lot of today’s songs.
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I so agree with what you are saying on people having their own opinion on music based on their generation. especially older generations not liking modern day music.
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I am from the older generation and I like a lot of music. I can relate to some old music and music now. Back in the 70’s and 80’s was some great music.
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What are you guys thoughts on the music that was made back then and now?
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Music has drastically changed from back then to now. I feel that nowadays there’s a lot more variety with so many artists or musicians out right now. So many people are making music and I feel that the number of musicians back then compared to now would be a huge difference.
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I think the music back in the days were much better, we could feel it. But now a days that’s not the case. It’s about showing off. I mean that what everyone wants to hear.
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music back in the days had more feel to it then the music that are made now.
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music back in the days had more feel to it.
But the music today is not about that.
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I like the music that are made today, but if I am am tired go on a drive, I definitely listen to old music. That got some feels to it. But modern day music doesn’t have that.
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I agree in a way. I feel there is more to music than just history. Yes history does play a huge role in studying music in order for us as musicologist to get a gist of where music is coming from or how it originated, but me taking this music course we study music based off various factors.
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With the evolution of technology, it definitely allows older music to still be heard but of course with some enhancements.
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Having read the discussion topic, I realized that we as modern musicians are nothing but big loads of recycling machines. Generations after generations we had been reintroducing previously created sounds and lyrics. Where does it ends, or is it even possible to be original? From what I understand, the mind sets out to create something new, but the neurons bring out old and already created works of the past. Are we programed at birth? or are we influenced by the ghost of old sounds? Now there is one more question added to my music analysis list. [Who had used this sound before this current piece of music?]
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I think it’s because you can only be so creative for so long, until you run out of original stuff.
We may be programmed at birth to follow the crowd and do whatever is working, so if someone is creating something that works, we might naturally want to emulate that instead of being original.
We may also be influenced by the ghost of old sounds since you can’t create new ideas without knowing what the old ideas are.
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Music is definitely recycled. I recently heard an interview with an artist that just dropped his debut album in October and he explained all the songs were finished six months ago, it’s just a long process getting songs cleared of copyright. Just to ensure what he publishes will be original.
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this is so true
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I think remix music putting cap on our imagination of making original music because creating remix music is easier than coming up with something original. What is pushing us to make remix instead of original? I guess it’s all about quantity now days.
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I agree that sometimes creating remix music is much easier than composing an original piece but I also think that it is due to the public influence that more remixes are released rather than originals. I feel like artists are sometimes scared of stepping out of the box because they fear of how the audience will react and receive said music piece. Specially in the entertainment industry it is all about competition; in order to be successful or make a living out of it, you have to focus on beating the competition by pleasing the audience more.
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Maybe we should look at it as the artist trying to produce something better than the original.
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Or may be artist is not being creative enough to come up with his own original concept. Seems like remix is easy way out.
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@ny5abi Why do you think a remix is a easy way out?
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To be fair, sometimes remixes turn out to be better than their originals. Remixes usually happen when someone likes the original but knows it can be so much better. A lot of songs, especially video game soundtracks, might be in 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit since they were created decades ago, and people may want to re-create those songs under 64-bit or 128-bit audio with more modern technology that they didn’t have back then.
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Why not create something original in 128 bit audio insted to making remix? For example people like gold but if you mix other metals in gold its not pure gold anymore. Orignals are the same thing. it looses its value when you remix them. I hope i am able to explain my point.
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I feel like remix version is used only to make money because when new music is created it requires good amount of time and luck in order to make that music famous and people already know the old famous songs and artists has been using those songs to make remixes and sell music to public at least risk.
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there is no more original ideas. good music is good sampling. to me , all producers are fake these days. They are all waiting from the next hit song to sample from. No one wants to pick up an instrument and learn how to play it. Kanye west made his living from sampling other’s work.
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And the artists who (from my opinion at least) are really putting their all into their crafts are mainly unknown and unsigned to major labels.
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There is also the fact that Youtube is extremely biased towards musicians with more subscribers, so the ones with less subscribers get mostly ignored and forgotten, even though they might have some great songs.
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The once that are forgotten, are actual musicians speaking out real words. But today’s generation is all about showing off.
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The once that are forgotten, are actual musicians speaking out real words, that has feel to the music.
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Reading about the way music is built upon itself reminds me of my other class, history, where we are talking about early civilizations and how each early city that came after took a law, or a set of principals from an earlier city. This is how we got many of the customs that we have today such as; we adopted democracy from the early ages of Greek culture, and we adopted math from the ancient Babylonians. Its because of these kinds of adaptations in music and in history that the knowing the history of these ideas is important. The saying “history repeats itself” is true to an extent. More like, If we do not have access to history then we are bound to make the same mistakes over again.
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Who is “we”? Not all cultures are covered throughly in most history classes. There are many inaccurate purposeful narratives in history. Your perception of “we” appears generalized. Most cultures will write the history to appear a certain way. According to The Mathematics Department of
The State University of New York at Buffalo, the oldest mathematical object was found in Eswatini, formally known as Swaziland, a small state (I prefer Africa as a country) that borders South Africa. African civilizations are amongst the oldest civilizations in world history. And with the burning of the Library of Alexandria, we shouldn’t entirely rely on modern popular historians interpretation of history. Besides, no one really knows.
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People should at least learn different sides of a story and then make their own judgement. A lot of people only learn history from a single perspective instead of hearing what other sides have to say.
There was this episode of Avatar The Last Airbender where Aang (the protagonist) comes across 2 groups, both of which hate each other for something that happened in the past, but each have their own interpretations of that past event. Aang is forced to step in and clear up the confusion.
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it is so true. i believe that is the same for Music, and fashion. what was then is now it. It will be gone only to come back again.
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That’s because the concept of originality lost its merit so eventually we start to regurgitate our past (right and wrong)
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I completely agree I feel as if trying something original is feared because of the reaction the artist will get if unknown. If you keep doing the same great thing you can expect the same reaction.
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Or maybe some people find it better to do what is already working rather than be original, but then again, people then would not know if being original would have proved to be better. Being original requires that you give up consistency, and take risk. Some people may not be comfortable with that.
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I LOVE this topic. Also, our professor always concludes the ‘final thoughts’ section with a GOOD word that many of us can use to become better people, better thinkers and writers.
Reading about variation, remixing, sampling, interpolating when it comes to sound migration was a good learning experience. I believe that I’ll approach my music productions a bit differently now. Mixing pre-recorded sounds to construct a product isn’t originality. Now that I have sense of originality, creativity and how they feed into an act of deception will guide me to carefully create.
Perhaps our distorted approach to originality is an extension of a centuries old biased male dominated system. Because we are so quick to give men high praise for the bare minimum.
Sidebar: I just love the Method Man and Mary J. Blige song “All I Need to Get By.” It’s such a hip-hop classic. Probably the first thug love collaboration with a rapper and singer.
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Not everyone agrees on what exactly originality is. For some people, mixing a few pre-recorded stuff to make something is original.
Sadly, in real life, you don’t become successful by being original. You become successful by offering something of great value to others. That may or may not involve being original. In other words, it’s not that original people tend to be successful. It’s that successful people tend to be original.
For many people, it’s easier to do what works, with or without being original.
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In my opinion every form of artistic expression lately is built from pieces of an already existing idea. Just like it was mentioned in the blog, many artists borrow fragments from other pieces and put in a personal touch, adding new melodies, instruments and so on because they already know that the public has already welcomed said borrowed idea and gotten good feedback. I think that the problem with artists now days (I’m not saying everyone) is that they focus on pleasing the audience and becoming “famous” more than actually having passion for music and enjoy creating music. You could say that they want to become “trendy” rather than exploring and taking a risk. If you were an artist, would you rather add your own touch to an already existing piece or gamble on something “new”?
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If I was an artist , just answering a question, I would rather make a “fresh” hit and if it doesn’t get the “forward” I’m looking for I would try again to put new things out there in a “catchy” way and If that improves it then I would continue doing my uniqueness hoping one day I would become famous .
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Art whether it be music, drawing, poems, etc. is put out for the intent of inspiration. I love to draw and I started drawing because I was into Stan Lee’s artwork with his Marvel Characters. If an artist with an open mind see his work being remixed, he/she should be flattered. On the other side of the coin, they can also be a little distrust because if the “remix” gets bad criticism it can be viewed as “they messed up my piece”. In my opinion before a remix is done or put out there should be a solid understanding of the basics then a dope “remix” piece can be presented. But, who knows maybe a “bad remix” can inspire a dope piece to be put out after.
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Well, remix can sometimes be as good as the original released or even better than it. For example the new Tayler Swift “Lover” is a remixed the original one. It still sounds good and did not deviate from the original. I think it sounds better for one specific reason. Now it has a male point of view and love takes two happen.
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I do think we are way too obsessed in society with preserving and cherishing the past, especially with art. It leads to a defeatist mentality, like “What’s the point of visiting new art shows? They’ll never be Van Gogh” I think we really underestimate the power we can have, especially with all the technological developments we’ve had so far. Humanity as a whole had the potential to be way more powerful than it is now.
Remember when kids watched the jetsons in the 1950s? Apparently that future was supposed to be the 2000s, and really all we got was crocs and snuggies. Kinda disappointing to know we may never truly thrive in this lifetime, especially since art careers are looked down upon nowadays. We need to go back into the eras where art and music and creativity was priority.
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LOL, i though the year 2000 was going to be the end of time as we know it. We’re still living, LOL. when is the future really coming? what year is it going to be? How are we going to listen to music. Cassettes, vinyls, CD’s, I-pad are all gone. Now digital storage is the thing. how are going to sample in the future? after digital storage is gone, what’s next? i can’t wait to wake up from death and found that out. LOL.
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I saw a question asking if we were programmed at birth or were we influenced by the ghost of sound and it had me thinking “wow I’ve never thought of this”
Since a fetus is able to hear from the uterus I think that sound traveling could be programmed or it could just be influenced. But I would really love to hear what others think about this question.
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This is an interesting question, but I think it’s both because at birth we are programmed to certain things as well as being influenced by other thing. It depend on the environment and what that individual is expose to. Take for example a mother is talking to her infant, that child is being programmed to recognized it’s mother voice while other strange sounds can influence the child to make him laugh or cry.
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Art is art. No matter what we do whatever we think of derives from something in the past whether it’s our music writing and fashion. In this generation, I believe that sometimes musicians base their art a little too much on others because of the risk of not being on the “wave”. Being different and having a different sound to me is way better than joining in on the same type of sound everyone else is creating.
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As days go by everyone takes in information and sounds differently , remix’s were made to express the different ways others hear the music they listen to daily. Listening to music from the 90’s is like listening to everyone recreating their own version of a song that another artists did. But then there is artists that use similar instrumentals from a song that was heard before just with their own lyrics.
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I believe originality comes from ones own sound. So it is true that you can argue certain sound lack originality because all sound comes from previous sounds. However its taking that sound and contorting it or recreating it in an abstract way that better suits your taste, style, and ideals. It’s like when Bruce Lee took the teachings of Wing Chun and created Jeet Kun Do. Both are original forms of martial arts but both were inspired by previous forms of arts.
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Do you guys think that classical music is still relevant to this day?
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There is an audience for all types of music. The same way most millennials go crazy for hiphop, there are people that go crazy for classical music.
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Why not?
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I believe technology only helps us when it comes to history, we can learn anything because all of the information we want is at our fingertips. Now I can sit at home, open safari on my phone and just google any song, the history and the origin. In regards to Iggy comments about taking an accent and faking a life just to monetize reminds me of the recent beef drake had with Pusha T. He claimed the same thing, that Pusha was middle class and never had it rough or sold drugs, and it was all a facade. I feel like they want to make music that relates to the public that will make them rich. People know the truth and still support it, maybe they like what is being said without it mattering if it really happened or not.
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With so many musicians that have made music and songs for decades passed, is it possible to create music that has no similarities to music already made?
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I am amaze by how far back in history some of these popular sound we hear in music came from, for example the connection between Stravinsky to Bruno Mars with the orchestra Hit. I would never have guest that sound was made in the 1900’s.
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Do anyone think the reason why originality in art may be a think of the past because most musicians are in it for the money and fame, but not for the passion or love of it?
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There is not originality probably because the generation after the original imitates the “original generation” (I don’t know how the type it better). After the original there is just creativity, but there might be some variant that will create original things. Now, “seeking money and fame” is hard to say to most of the artists because I don’t know the artists in person or their personality. However, some musicians can be clearly identified to seek money and fame, those are the one who sing money and fame.
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i Totally agree with you. All they talk about is money and cars, in there music.
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i Totally agree with you.
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I believe originality is harder to come by these days but at the same time, it’s all about the artist, if an artist is not so focused on fame and money, but more focused on making music they love and are passionate about then originality is possible, does anyone think there is an artist in this day in age that marches to the beat of his/her own drum and truly makes music for the love of music? Not just money and fame or what the record label tells them to put out?
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I think reusing music with technology is not so different from what was always done, it’s just used a different way. Musicians have always been borrowing musical ideas from each other and building with them for as long as music has existed. Is it such a surprise that we would start to use technology to do a similar thing once it became available to us?
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The bit about musicians not wanting to take risks because they cannot achieve the same level of perfection that a recording can made me kind of sad. Are we sacrificing an important aspect of music just because we can’t tolerate imperfection anymore?
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The answer is YES.
Some of the artists are not confident in themselves so they rely on technologies, but others use it probably to make their life easier. Moreover, artists use it to keep “face” to their fan, so that their fans can belief that the artist is impeccable.
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Being creative is more than being original. On the internet definition, creativity was the use of imagination and original ideas, so therefore, those words can’t really be the same. Creativity use Originality.
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Question: Will the remix of a remix be classified as the remix of the original song?
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Music is something where artist express themselves. If we study the music history, we will see that, musicians expressed themselves by there music. Musicians today studied the history, and made a lots of changes to the music as the technology advanced. And that’s How music Around are changed. But music today is mostly about showing off, couple of years ago it was more authentic. I really like the old music because I can relate to them. Not today’s music is completely different from the past.
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