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As someone who makes music from the bottom up. I find its not really a black as white as bottom up vs top down. Sometimes I go into a composition with an idea o

As someone who makes music from the bottom up. I find its not really a black as white as bottom up vs top down. Sometimes I go into a composition with an idea of what I want to do and the sound I want to create. However, I find in the execution small nuances and details present themselves somehow completely alter the creative direction. In short, unlike building a physical building music is fluid enough to react to the the chaos and randomness of creativity very elegantly.

thirteenfingers 9y ago
Fellow composer here - I completely agree, and I suspect the great classical composers often felt as much, that their own musical ideas led them in a totally different direction than they originally intended. My personal feeling about Eno's approach is that it almost deserves a different label than "composing" - maybe "incubating" (you know, like a startup incubator). For me, and I suspect for a great many music lovers, "composing" implies a process that may be evolutionary to some degree but is still overseen and directed from beginning to end by a particular artist. Contrast that with the case of traditional music from $REGIONAL_CULTURE where the process is more truly evolutionary as songs are passed from one generation of bards to another. (I don't mean to say that Eno's approach to making music is somehow less legitimate than any other. It just seems better described by some other word.)
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  Coincidentally I was pulling apart a generative music app when I saw this post. I think you make a very good point - which is that in the bigger picture, music is inherently evolutionary in a way that generative music isn't. Having some experience with generative apps, I know that they absolutely do not make music spontaneously. You have to invent them, build them, and tune them - all by hand/ear. It's more like building an instrument - i.e. a machine - and tuning/debugging it than cultivating a garden. Music as a whole is much more free. When it's loose in a culture, it can evolve in weird, unexpected directions that no individual composer would ever be able to imagine, and no app today would come close to copying.
  - fenomas 9y ago
    What were you pulling apart? I'm a couple of years into playing with generative music, and one of my big problems is finding prior art to imitate...
  - nnd 9y ago
    It was my impression that generative music uses some sort of evolutionary algorithms, no?
beat 9y ago
It's worth mentioning the recording process as well. I feel recording has taken over some of that "this is what this is" role from the rigid structures of classical composition. One can improvise and develop the music "on tape", and often does, but in the end, you cut a master and send it out into the world. I also feel this has given listeners a narrow and unrealistic view of what music actually is. For example, complaining if the lead guitarist in concert doesn't play the guitar solo from the record note-for-note, even though that player improvised the studio solo and might have real difficulty replicating it - not to mention little interest in doing so. This also leads to the phenomenon of "cover bands" that simply do live note-for-note versions of someone else's record. As a musician, the idea of doing that seems utterly bizarre to me, but it's obviously popular!
- S_A_P 9y ago
  Agreed re: note for note covers. I have covered other songs, and while I strive to play the original composition mostly note for note, it may be in a different key or have some other approach taken. Often the drums are changed, because a) recording drums in my music room is time consuming b) I'm a barely serviceable drummer and c) I can't always make that much noise for as long as it would take to get right without upsetting the wife and kids. Also to your first point, DAW software is now akin to a canvas and recording can also be part of the creative process. I used to try to record in stages, write, rehearse, record, produce, master. Now I find that I'm kind of doing it all at once and the results don't end up any worse except for one thing. The compositions are usually less complicated without having the time to think about it and practice it.
drzaiusapelord 9y ago
To be fair, you inherited Eno's world. This is a recent article but it reflects his thoughts from the 1970s and if you look at music and the charts back then you'd see a lot of very structured 'top-down' approaches and that's how I imagine music was taught back then. Even 'freewheeling' folk, rock, and psychedelic music followed pretty simple patterns. The problem is when guys like Eno talk, we dismiss it as a little obvious and perhaps a little old fashioned, only because we're so much past that and largely due to guys like him. A bit like reading about what computer geeks were excited about in the 80s and chuckling a little how simplistic or ordinary it seems now. Back then, it was cutting edge thinking.

thirteenfingers 9y ago

Fellow composer here - I completely agree, and I suspect the great classical composers often felt as much, that their own musical ideas led them in a totally different direction than they originally intended. My personal feeling about Eno's approach is that it almost deserves a different label than "composing" - maybe "incubating" (you know, like a startup incubator). For me, and I suspect for a great many music lovers, "composing" implies a process that may be evolutionary to some degree but is still overseen and directed from beginning to end by a particular artist. Contrast that with the case of traditional music from $REGIONAL_CULTURE where the process is more truly evolutionary as songs are passed from one generation of bards to another. (I don't mean to say that Eno's approach to making music is somehow less legitimate than any other. It just seems better described by some other word.)

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
Coincidentally I was pulling apart a generative music app when I saw this post. I think you make a very good point - which is that in the bigger picture, music is inherently evolutionary in a way that generative music isn't. Having some experience with generative apps, I know that they absolutely do not make music spontaneously. You have to invent them, build them, and tune them - all by hand/ear. It's more like building an instrument - i.e. a machine - and tuning/debugging it than cultivating a garden. Music as a whole is much more free. When it's loose in a culture, it can evolve in weird, unexpected directions that no individual composer would ever be able to imagine, and no app today would come close to copying.
- fenomas 9y ago
  What were you pulling apart? I'm a couple of years into playing with generative music, and one of my big problems is finding prior art to imitate...
- nnd 9y ago
  It was my impression that generative music uses some sort of evolutionary algorithms, no?

beat 9y ago

It's worth mentioning the recording process as well. I feel recording has taken over some of that "this is what this is" role from the rigid structures of classical composition. One can improvise and develop the music "on tape", and often does, but in the end, you cut a master and send it out into the world. I also feel this has given listeners a narrow and unrealistic view of what music actually is. For example, complaining if the lead guitarist in concert doesn't play the guitar solo from the record note-for-note, even though that player improvised the studio solo and might have real difficulty replicating it - not to mention little interest in doing so. This also leads to the phenomenon of "cover bands" that simply do live note-for-note versions of someone else's record. As a musician, the idea of doing that seems utterly bizarre to me, but it's obviously popular!

S_A_P 9y ago
Agreed re: note for note covers. I have covered other songs, and while I strive to play the original composition mostly note for note, it may be in a different key or have some other approach taken. Often the drums are changed, because a) recording drums in my music room is time consuming b) I'm a barely serviceable drummer and c) I can't always make that much noise for as long as it would take to get right without upsetting the wife and kids. Also to your first point, DAW software is now akin to a canvas and recording can also be part of the creative process. I used to try to record in stages, write, rehearse, record, produce, master. Now I find that I'm kind of doing it all at once and the results don't end up any worse except for one thing. The compositions are usually less complicated without having the time to think about it and practice it.

drzaiusapelord 9y ago

To be fair, you inherited Eno's world. This is a recent article but it reflects his thoughts from the 1970s and if you look at music and the charts back then you'd see a lot of very structured 'top-down' approaches and that's how I imagine music was taught back then. Even 'freewheeling' folk, rock, and psychedelic music followed pretty simple patterns. The problem is when guys like Eno talk, we dismiss it as a little obvious and perhaps a little old fashioned, only because we're so much past that and largely due to guys like him. A bit like reading about what computer geeks were excited about in the 80s and chuckling a little how simplistic or ordinary it seems now. Back then, it was cutting edge thinking.