Too Much Evolution

 

 
My definition of evolution in music is that which uses the past to the point where core elements are used and are reconfigured in some way. That way the initial essences are present, although they might not be recognizable. It's a manifestation of the Ship of Theseus paradox where a reconstruction may or may not have the original essences and had completely evolved into a new entity, and if that gets rebuilt again it is another one, and so on.

An example in architecture is to leave just enough traditional elements so it's something we recognize as having some connection to the past, and is considered to have elegance, rather than something that is riding on the idea of having to evolve as a requirement. In music, keeping the melody and changing everything around it, tempo, harmony, rhythms, and timbre makes it seem entirely new but has evolved just enough to keep it moored to its past. Sometimes I'll isolate just the piano part in a song and record other parts against it and it's a new entity, moving from a pop song to an ambient piece.

Can there be too much evolution? I think there can be, especially in creativity where you mess around with things too much and you lose the primary essences. This is when happy accidents are useful, but they take all the wind out of the initial ideas, which may have had potential, but we reflexively feel we have to flock towards The New.

If we simply allow ourselves just to be in the flow of creativity (or life for that matter) we don't have to intervene at all. But what happens to our integrity (or the integrity inherent in ideas) if we just go with the flow and never revisit older frameworks of creativity? (also called "neo-something"--neo-classicism, neo-expressionism, etc.) We'll always have memories of the way it used to operate in the past, and for many they are good memories because it created satisfying results and didn't need to evolve or move on to something else. The process evolves but never at the expense of the entire form, and will retain its integrity.