Design Thinking In Music

 

To determine a set of characteristics you want to construct some kind of axis, where there is less and more of something. For example, the axis could be "Tradition" with a range 0 to 100. In order for something to be truly new, we'd want to set that fairly low.

Music that doesn't use traditional melody, harmony, or rhythm would have a low tradition setting. Music that uses simple chords in a purely electronic framework is higher on the axis. A "75" setting could be something written on a piano and uses an electronic production. 100 is all generated by machines with no adherence to melody, harmony and rhythm and would be considered really new, even though the technology is over 50 years old.

Jazz was (and is) a futuristic music, and when electronics started to be used, even more so. It's an example of an art form which is fairly centered on the tradition axis and gets moved left and right to achieve different degrees of newness.

Using axes is a way to use design thinking in music, which is interesting and useful.

 

3/17/2022