Evolution of music by public choice.

[Zulu Romeo]

Thinking about the concept in the OP even further, it's added to my appreciation of musical remixes, sampling, and the whole mashup movement of the 2000s (something of a special interest of mine). In this case, disparate musical motifs and memes from various sources are brought together in an artificial and meaningful attempt to produce a brand new memetic unit that celebrates the melodic and harmonic similarities and differences between the parent units, while only the more popular offspring mixes that strike a chord (npi) with the general public go on to thrive and inspire others.

Eventually, the most popular musical memes do follow a set pattern, for example the so-called Four Chords. The successful meme might even be a popular sample altered to the demands of the offspring mix, such as the Amen Break or the Funky Drummer. Yet, ultimately, they become so commonplace that it requires something truly unique and creative to break the mould, create a new popular musical meme to challenge and inspire the people, and continue the process with newer material.

When compared to the scope of the project described in the OP, this analogy only covers a tiny scale as it involves just a handful of generations. Then comes the whole thing about copyright law, which is a different matter and where the analogy starts to break down. Oh well: I may not know much about music (and even less about how genetics works) but this is how I see things anyway.

 

[thestrangequark]

^It would be very interesting to go through the history of music within the framework of memetics. Unfortunately, I'm familiar with little beyond Western music, but just thinking over it, one can definitely see the memes developing and changing, and forming standard structures within music (codas, bridges, etc).

On a side note, the mash up of Jay Z with the Verv's "Bittersweet Symphony" is awesome!

 

[trekkiedane]

Then comes the whole thing about copyright law, /.../

Oooh, interesting; if your input (the first generation parent-loops) are samples from existing (copyrighted) pieces, how many generations does it take for them to be (legally) significant enough to not be violations?

 

[Zulu Romeo]

On a side note, the mash up of Jay Z with the Verv's "Bittersweet Symphony" is awesome!

I haven't heard that one, but I think I've found it on the Tube of You:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guh06NPgNmQ

Interestingly, "Bittersweet Symphony" by the Verve itself is an example of a sample undergoing memetic change and reuse: the backing orchestra track is taken from an orchestral version of "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones. It also led to the Verve song becoming wholly credited to Jagger & Richards following a court case.

Personally, I prefer the Verve's song.

EDIT 20/6/12: And I've also realised that even the Verve song underwent its own memetic alteration by the dance act Rest Assured in 1998, with their minor hit "Treat Infamy" - again sampling the orchestral backing track but drawing its lyrical inspiration primarily from the Verve track, and also name-checking the Stones briefly (possibly a nod to the Verve song's origins).

Then comes the whole thing about copyright law, /.../

Oooh, interesting; if your input (the first generation parent-loops) are samples from existing (copyrighted) pieces, how many generations does it take for them to be (legally) significant enough to not be violations?

I have no idea, to be honest. There have been other examples of samples being used either subconsciously or deliberately with no royalties or credit changing hands and leading to legal action in many cases.

 

[thestrangequark]

Then comes the whole thing about copyright law, /.../

Oooh, interesting; if your input (the first generation parent-loops) are samples from existing (copyrighted) pieces, how many generations does it take for them to be (legally) significant enough to not be violations?

This is a fantastic sci-fi short story (the whole thing is available online), that discusses this question. The premis is that in the near future, the government is about to pass a law that would extend copyrights indefinitely. There is one hold-out on the committee who has not yet officially backed the law, and a woman is sent to disuade him of doing so. In the process of their debate they question whether or not there is an end to human creativity...how many notes are there that are perceived as music? How many combinations of those notes can there be that will? And the same for visual art, stories, and so on. It's a fascinating, if somewhat depressing read. And it's not too long.

Melancholy Elephants by Spyder Robinson

 

[thestrangequark]

On a side note, the mash up of Jay Z with the Verv's "Bittersweet Symphony" is awesome!

I haven't heard that one, but I think I've found it on the Tube of You:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guh06NPgNmQ

That's the one!

Interestingly, "Bittersweet Symphony" by the Verve itself is an example of a sample undergoing memetic change and reuse: the backing orchestra track is taken from an orchestral version of "The Last Time" by the Rolling Stones. It also led to the Verve song becoming wholly credited to Jagger & Richards following a court case.

Personally, I prefer the Verve's song.

Yeah, I totally remember that. Totally shit move on part of the Stones (or their lawyers, whoever was responsible). Not only is that a sample of an orchestral version, it is reversed!

This all becomes far more relavent as technology allows for such sampling, as well as the ease of copying, altering, and distributing information.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Then comes the whole thing about copyright law, /.../

Oooh, interesting; if your input (the first generation parent-loops) are samples from existing (copyrighted) pieces, how many generations does it take for them to be (legally) significant enough to not be violations?

There is no fine line on this, as far as the law goes. As Zion said, you don't even have to have deliberately copied something in order to be considered infringing. These things are basically handled case-by-case, and I suspect those with the deepest pockets tend to win.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

^It would be very interesting to go through the history of music within the framework of memetics. Unfortunately, I'm familiar with little beyond Western music, but just thinking over it, one can definitely see the memes developing and changing, and forming standard structures within music (codas, bridges, etc).

Taking a broad look at the development of Western classical music would be a good start to see how European classical music developed, from the birth of sonata form to the evolution of the symphony orchestra, through to its influence on non-European composers and the borrowing of musical styles from outside Europe in the later years, right up to present-day avant-garde and modern takes on classical music (ever heard Gabriel Prokofiev's "Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra"? It's cool. ).

Beethoven's work is a great example of the evolution of an entire genre within an artist's lifetime - it's no coincidence that many music scholars regard him as the key composer straddling the Classical and Romantic eras of classical music, and much of the innovation was his own doing, as seen in his symphonies (personally I prefer the odd-numbered ones ).

I agree, it would be a great challenge to piece together the various memetic signatures and see where they all began and how they developed in classical and other music.

 

[thestrangequark]

^Agreed, though I have a soft spot for 8.

This makes me wish I not only knew more about memetics, but also about music! I'm not completely ignorant in either of those fields, but man, there's so much to learn!

 

[trekkiedane]

This is a fantastic sci-fi short story (the whole thing is available online), that discusses this question.
/.../
Melancholy Elephants by Spyder Robinson

Now I know what to read tonight when I go to bed

Back in the (late seventies or) early eighties I read an article to the point that all the possible combinations our music (scales and harmonics and whatnot) allows for would be used up before the year 2000...

And then the 'art of sampling' (regurgitating what musicians had made before you were even born) became mainstream pop-music... Could it be that we, simply put, have run out of music?

 

[thestrangequark]

^I'm wary of such proclamations...they remind me of the head of the patent office who declared there was nothing left to invent back in the lat 1800s! I don't think we've run out yet...but maybe we have. Then again, maybe, if and as our species continues to evolve, there will be new forms of creativity the likes of which we cannot even imagine in our present forms.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Thinking further, even the Beatles. Listen to their compilation album "The Beatles 1" and witness pop and rock music transform before your ears. "Love Me Do" harks from a time when their influences included Buddy Holly and Lonnie Donegan, and since then they discovered memes used in Eastern music, avant garde, psychedelia, rediscovered music hall and blues, and (via "Helter Skelter") even provided a possible blueprint for heavy metal, all the while becoming a hugely infectious and influential meme themselves and inspiring the next generation to either adopt, adapt and improve the established style, or come up with their own unique sound and hope for the best.

And then the 'art of sampling' (regurgitating what musicians had made before you were even born) became mainstream pop-music... Could it be that we, simply put, have run out of music?

I hope that we've yet to encounter the next big cultural mutation. Who knows what's around the corner?

If the experiment in your OP is anything to go by, in another 200 years pop and rock music would either have died out or become slowly replaced by something we cannot contemplate even with the best of reasoning, perhaps through the process of musical reinvention and new sparks of creativity interacting together.

Having said that, there's always the "Oldies."

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE[/yt]

 

[trekkiedane]

^I'm wary of such proclamations...they remind me of the head of the patent office who declared there was nothing left to invent back in the lat 1800s!

Yes, but with music you can (I can't!) put the number of notes, chords and such into an equation and get a rather hard number of possible combinations as a result. It's a bit different with inventions.*

I hope that we've yet to encounter the next big cultural mutation. Who knows what's around the corner?

+1 and indeed.*+#





______________
*)A famous Dane is said to have said: "It's very difficult to predict! -Especially about the future."

Spoiler: Who said that?

Niels Bohr

#)I've found the songs of the Aka very fine examples of what we have yet to encounter since first hearing it in Until the End of the World.

 

[thestrangequark]

^I'm wary of such proclamations...they remind me of the head of the patent office who declared there was nothing left to invent back in the lat 1800s!

Yes, but with music you can (I can't!) put the number of notes, chords and such into an equation and get a rather hard number of possible combinations as a result. It's a bit different with inventions.*

A famous Dane is said to have said: "It's very difficult to predict! -Especially about the future."

Spoiler: Who said that?

Niels Bohr

True...we could come up with a concrete number of how many possible combinations of notes there are, but what if music evolves into something beyond what we comprehend as music today. We already have some examples, like the incorporation of sounds other than traditional notes. So maybe there's hope, if not of extending human creativity into the definite, but at least of prolonging its life.

And, is it different from inventions? I'm not sure that it is. (Not sure that it isn't, either, but hey, that's the nature of such philosophical questions).

 

[trekkiedane]

^Edited my post above yours, but here's the video I wanted to edit in:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIJ9A8eV5QE[/yt]​

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Taking the virus analogy again, one thing I have noticed is that very popular music these days uses memes, melodies, and instrumentation from older generations of music derived from the same cultural lineage - be it rock and roll, soul, punk, direct use of older and unaltered samples etc. - which had either been discarded or forgotten, and which might seem lost on today's Four Chords-numb generation when taken out of context but when introduced at the right time and in the right context causes a huge cultural impact - much the same way that a long-forgotten viral strain to which the current generation has limited immunity resurfaces and creates a massive pandemic and kills everyone. But anyway...

Maybe it is the novelty factor of the old, or a return to nostalgic aesthetics, that proves popular among people today. Or a combination of both. I don't know, really.

 

[thestrangequark]

^That was a bitchin' analogy. Bitchin'!

trekkiedane, thanks for sharing, that was awesome! Prior to that I'd heard only the Deep Forest music, which incorporates those chants and songs with new-agey melodic stuff...it was really popular in the early 90s.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

^That was a bitchin' analogy. Bitchin'!

I have to admit, the concept is rather...
[pulls sunglasses]
... Influenzal.


(sorry)

 

[trekkiedane]

And, is it different from inventions? I'm not sure that it is. (Not sure that it isn't, either, but hey, that's the nature of such philosophical questions).

Right, but it was said before semiconductivity, buckyballs, carbon nanotubes and, dare I say it: Higgs-bosons were discovered!

It might just be my feeling but I don' think there are any more tones in our scale, that we just haven't discovered yet...

 

[thestrangequark]

^You should be sorry!