Hearing Things
When I play new song ideas for people they say they've heard it before but they don't know where.
One of the goals of artists and musicians is to make something completely new, at the same time making it listenable, or the polar opposite, completely unlistenable, in which case the art is a pure philosophical entity.
These days, the irony is that if you make something listenable you risk being sued. Paradoxically, in order to make commercial music, it has to sound like something we've heard before. And algorithms give it even more resonance.
We hate ear worms, but they constitute the "encyclopedia of similarity" that we use to make comparisons. How often is our first response to something new "It reminds me of..."
Somehow I got infected by an ear worm of Turning Japanese by The Vapors the other day out of nowhere. Then later on there was a song playing in a store that sounded just like it.
One of the goals of artists and musicians is to make something completely new, at the same time making it listenable, or the polar opposite, completely unlistenable, in which case the art is a pure philosophical entity.
These days, the irony is that if you make something listenable you risk being sued. Paradoxically, in order to make commercial music, it has to sound like something we've heard before. And algorithms give it even more resonance.
We hate ear worms, but they constitute the "encyclopedia of similarity" that we use to make comparisons. How often is our first response to something new "It reminds me of..."
Somehow I got infected by an ear worm of Turning Japanese by The Vapors the other day out of nowhere. Then later on there was a song playing in a store that sounded just like it.
