Innovation and originality?

Stompbox

I think this may be a question that's more applicable to the musicians out there but it's one that been troubling me for a while now. Will we ever reach a point where we have completely exhausted our musical innovation and due to a prolific music base that any song written cannot be deemed original. It's something I've noticed especially when writing songs on guitar, its extremely difficult to write something on a single instrument that isn't familiar. Any thoughts?

studiorat

Sweet wrote: »

I think this may be a question that's more applicable to the musicians out there but it's one that been troubling me for a while now. Will we ever reach a point where we have completely exhausted our musical innovation and due to a prolific music base that any song written cannot be deemed original. It's something I've noticed especially when writing songs on guitar, its extremely difficult to write something on a single instrument that isn't familiar. Any thoughts?

There's too many variables for any two pieces to be the same. Even when a player plays the same piece each performance is unique. Unless of course they are using a computer.

Sandwich

studiorat wrote: »

There's too many variables for any two pieces to be the same. Even when a player plays the same piece each performance is unique. Unless of course they are using a computer.

I guess Sweet is asking for a bit more variety than that. If we followed your answer there would only be one piece of music since the dawn of time and we would all play it in our own unique performance.

I think for us common mortals it might just seem like its too hard to write something really different. It takes real genius(or luck!) to come up with something new. But then man has always been doing that and new musical genres and styles arise. But must of us cannot see over that 'horizon' to the new music and so play with 'variations on a theme' (often very good variations tho) rather than a quantum leap to a new idiom. Tastes and sensibilities evolve. Music always will too.

studiorat

There's plenty of songs out there with the same chord progressions, same titles etc regardless of any specific gendre. That's not to say they are the same though.

I think you have misunderstood me. My first argument was meant to illustrate this at the simplest level, the emotion in the music is what differs each. If you think about the story of the monkeys with typewriters, one of them might eventually write a Shakespear sonnet, but the question is did he actually mean to do that?

Also it's not that unusual for a composer (I use the term loosely) to use a motif etc. from something that has gone before, and create something new.

I think for 12 notes we are doing quite well...

Rigsby

studiorat wrote: »

Also it's not that unusual for a composer (I use the term loosely) to use a motif etc. from something that has gone before, and create something new.

I agree 100%. That's how jazz has been evolving. Everyone thought it had all been said after bee bop was in it's hey day. The result was it's antithesis - cool jazz, and look how far we have come since then.

Most musicians/song writers are inspired by some one or some piece of music they have heard.

studiorat

Was is Frank Zappa who said "Something old, Something new, Something Borrowed and something Blue":D

slipss

I don't think any completely orignal song/piece of music has ever been written, it's all just people using the ideas and techniques of others and tweaking them and chopping and changing them to give thier own piece a unique feel. But dig deep enough and everyone is just copying everyone else. One of them said it didn't he "the secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources". For every song you have ever heard and thought "wow i've never heard anything like that before" well maybe you haven't heard anything like that before but the person that wrote the song certainly has.

Jay P

This could be a philosophy question, similar to an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters, eventually they will reproduce the works of shakespeare, but I know that's not exactlt what you're getting at. While I agree it does get very hard to start writing without "borrowing" but I think it is well within someone's capabailities to change it sufficiently to make it their own, ie taking a riff and putting it in a different key, octave, or switching around the notes a bit.

stovelid

It's pointless to expect something as codified and derivative (not an insult) as rock to be completely clean of traces of the past.

It's only heavily mediated genres like rock that place a premium on 'innovation' and 'originality'.

Ditto the mythology of rock. The same themes of drug-taking, transgression, and rebellion are on their third or fourth cultural lap by now.

That said - perhaps the key is generational. The 'originality' of rock probably lies in the new subcultural experience. I remember being taken with the Stone Roses, and really resenting the it's-just-the-same-byrds-pysch-60's-youth-insurrection-thing-again comments from older people, even I understand it now.

cornbb

I think innovation and originality are key to what makes a piece of music good, enjoyable, interesting, etc. Although it can be difficult to look into the future and try to speculate where we can go from here, its important to remember that musical ideas have been evolving and expanding since the beginning of time.

Our brains are tuned by tradition/society to enjoy certain pitches, rhythms, totalites and instruments. Even within those well-established boundaries which determine the musical tastes of the masses (and which cover just about every genre of western music - rock, jazz, folk, classical etc) there will always be huge scope for innovation. But its likely that these boundaries will continue to change, slowly but surely. Some music which is considered radical and unlistenable now will inevitably catch on over time - this has always been the case. The well-established 12 note chromatic scale will probably evolve sometime in the distant future as it has done in the past. Computers and technology have added tools to the arsenal of composers/musicians that are more broad and radical than ever before. So as long as creative individuals are born, musical horizons will continue to expand.