lemur68 wrote:I bet no one's farted into a pickup and flanged it yet.

Taxed.

Wait, you mean a guitar pickup or a transducer mic?

there is only so much good music coming out these days that you could really expect "the masses" to collectively enjoy.

I think 90% of the problem lies in the approach people take to it. there seems this desperation, in this decade, especially, to be new. different for no other reason other than being different. when really they just consolidate themselves with all the other mediocre junk. I see it no different than a person trying too hard in any other aspect of life. I don't think great bands have ever gone in with the intention of that.

It seems like rock bands are consistently having success regurgitating the sounds of about two decades prior. Or, just reaching back into the past, finding a band or style and copying it. I saw a band not too long ago that was supposed to be a 'No Wave' band. The wailing singer, the choppy guitar, the terrible alto sax, 'bass' player...It was ridiculous. I looked them up and they are a pitchfork darling. wowie..

givemenoughrope wrote:Did everyone read geiginni's post. I love this guy/person. Totally informed, insightful and positive. Forget music, this guy should manage my life.

Ty, tell us about this book. I read the first paragraph of this entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxiety_of_Influence

It's kind of like, you have to learn how to play music and how it's constructed from other music and then not ape that music when making your own. It's kind of impossible by definition. As cliche as it sounds, the best you can do is steal(learn) and make it your own. I guess.

The Wikipedia entry is actually a decent brief introduction to it. The book is very specific to poetry, but there are some important thoughts that can be applied to creating any art. It's pretty heavily laden with theoretical terminology and isn't exactly a light read. But it's thought-provoking and Bloom's intellect is formidable.

For those artists who have created an original voice, the key, according to Bloom, has been fighting and struggling through 6 stages of creative interpretation and revision. Eventually, the original voice is found by coming full circle not to the homage, but to a voice that is so powerful, yet openly influenced, that it seems to have been a precursor to the precursor, the influence's influence.

The best illustration of this is Shakespeare taking on Marlowe's flair for rounded, layered characterization, something Shakespeare agonized over copying and not living up to. He gradually transformed it into his own unprecedented and paradigm-establishing mode of the first fully realized psychological character; characters who have psyches and lives of the mind beyond the stage. We take these kinds of characters for granted now.

I'm not a musician, so I'm not going to pretend to write some prescription for how this is done in composition. But writing music and writing literature, in a fundamental, creative sense, aren't that dissimilar, I think.

Maybe the key is not being afraid of using antecedent sounds or arrangements or modes, but open embracing not only those components but where they came from and how they were originally used and juxtaposing them in a creative way. The first thing that springs to mind is The Pogues and traditional Irish music.

sack of smashed assholes wrote:I think 90% of the problem lies in the approach people take to it. there seems this desperation, in this decade, especially, to be new. different for no other reason other than being different. when really they just consolidate themselves with all the other mediocre junk. I see it no different than a person trying too hard in any other aspect of life. I don't think great bands have ever gone in with the intention of that.

That's spot-on, that is.

wow. thanks, ty.

yes, that was very good. becoming the influence of an influence kind blew my mind a bit, but it makes sense, instead of dabbing into your influences become theirs. that's bold, and kinda nuts!

95% of all mankind's greatest music will never be recorded. A large fraction of the recorded greats will never be known to the general public.