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Random 2 cents: A lot of what makes music (at least the kind that most people like to consume) pleasant is repetition and self-similarity. Consider the "sometim

Random 2 cents: A lot of what makes music (at least the kind that most people like to consume) pleasant is repetition and self-similarity. Consider the "sometimes behave so strangely" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech-to-song_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech-to-song_illusion) for a fascinating illustration of this. For many genres, you fundamentally have repetitions at every power of two interval. For example, the hi-hat repeats every eigth. Kick drum every quarter. Snare every second quarter. Maybe an effect every bar, a rhythmic variation every second bar, phrasing covering four bars. Cadence repeats every eight bars. Melody maybe 16 bars. Verse or chorus 32 bars. ABAB song structure. It's repetitions all the way down. As with all "rules" in music you can ignore them to whatever degree you like. But ignore too many and it just sounds like a mess. On a related note (no pun intended), I am starting to notice that, for me, getting tired of a song coincides with "hearing" the repetition of material (e.g. chorus) at larger and larger intervals. Of course you know that the chorus repeats, but here I specifically mean that it sounds like an echo of the chorus a minute ago.

ratww 6y ago
Yep, I was thinking along the same lines. The music we hear in day-to-day is often very simple. Besides structure, chords are often the same. Most of the time it's I-IV-V, sometimes I-IV-V-vi... I even saw a video today mentioning how the I-ii-IV-V of Cure's "Just Like Heaven" is an uncommon progression. For soundtracks it's often just two chords vamping. Melody notes also rarely stray from whats sounds consonant with the current chord. Dissonance is only for passing notes. In the strong beats it's certainly something consonant. Sometimes it's all just a pentatonic. You also gotta emphasise that tonic everywhere. Melodies also need structure: you gotta have that AABA (or something like that) in your verse/theme/phrase, almost like a fractal. Broken rules only happen once or twice per song, or not at all. The more good music I dissect the more impressed I am with how simple it is.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Not all but too much of that description applies only to western popular music. Indian classical music (probably among the most melodically advanced in the world) doesn't use anything like the song structures you're referring to (it also doesn't use harmony). The ease of certain kinds of music production has led to us to living in a decade (or two) of huge amounts of what I can only call "audio candy for ears trained on western popular music". There's nothing wrong with this music, but it's like eating cookies all the time, not realizing there are other delicious kinds of food out there.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Indian classical music can be understood (admittedly in very broad terms) as being based on melodic elaboration of what in Western music would be the bass line (aka basso continuo or thoroughbass). The way this elaboration works is very similar to what one finds in the Western musical tradition (as clarified e.g. by Schenker), it's just applied in a very different way in terms of structure (indeed there's no equivalent to the 'lead' melody, to which diminution would be applied in Western music!), and obviously with a strong focus on a single monophonic 'line'.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      I feel as if you just said "A is a lot like B, or rather A is made of the same stuff as B but built totally differently". From my admittedly not deep knowledge about Carnatic music, it would be a serious mistake to think of it as "being based on melodic elaboration of what in Western music would be the bass line". That's not how its composers and practitioners think of it, and critically, it misses out entirely on the whole concept of a raga, which defines not just a set of notes (the way a western scale does), but also their ordering when ascending and descending, and comes with a large amount of cultural attribution (evening ragas, seasonal ragas, emotional ragas and so on). What is played is not an elaboration of a line, but an exploration of the raga. If you were going to draw comparisons to western musical practice, I would think that Schoenberg's 12 tone/serial experiments have at least as much in common.
  - ratww 6y ago
    Of course, I never claimed it was a universal description. My point was not that we should create only simple music, but rather that we should understand how simple music is created, before jumping into anything more complex than that, or even into a general solution like so many people into procedural generation seem to jump into. You need to understand the craft itself other than just understanding the theory. Musical styles are not unconstrained. If you want it to produce procedural Carnatic Music, you can replace my description of western music with the equivalent for it, like zozbot234 started doing. Then you'll have a starting point.
mturmon 6y ago
I'm not sure if you've seen it already, but here's an essay-length elaboration of some of these ideas: https://aeon.co/essays/why-repetition-can-turn-almost-anything-into-music https://aeon.co/essays/why-repetition-can-turn-almost-anythi... It references the same speech-to-song illusion you have described. I found this essay, and its ideas, to be really helpful in understanding in why my brain likes certain types of music -- some compositions really trigger this particular part of my perception.
stagas 6y ago
Repetition legitimizes. Repetition legitimizes.[0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MzKx0fKg5o&feature=youtu.be&t=143 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MzKx0fKg5o&feature=youtu.be...
itronitron 6y ago
Interesting, the speech to song illusion reminds me of a related visual effect ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_tower_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_tower_illusion

ratww 6y ago

Yep, I was thinking along the same lines. The music we hear in day-to-day is often very simple. Besides structure, chords are often the same. Most of the time it's I-IV-V, sometimes I-IV-V-vi... I even saw a video today mentioning how the I-ii-IV-V of Cure's "Just Like Heaven" is an uncommon progression. For soundtracks it's often just two chords vamping. Melody notes also rarely stray from whats sounds consonant with the current chord. Dissonance is only for passing notes. In the strong beats it's certainly something consonant. Sometimes it's all just a pentatonic. You also gotta emphasise that tonic everywhere. Melodies also need structure: you gotta have that AABA (or something like that) in your verse/theme/phrase, almost like a fractal. Broken rules only happen once or twice per song, or not at all. The more good music I dissect the more impressed I am with how simple it is.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Not all but too much of that description applies only to western popular music. Indian classical music (probably among the most melodically advanced in the world) doesn't use anything like the song structures you're referring to (it also doesn't use harmony). The ease of certain kinds of music production has led to us to living in a decade (or two) of huge amounts of what I can only call "audio candy for ears trained on western popular music". There's nothing wrong with this music, but it's like eating cookies all the time, not realizing there are other delicious kinds of food out there.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Indian classical music can be understood (admittedly in very broad terms) as being based on melodic elaboration of what in Western music would be the bass line (aka basso continuo or thoroughbass). The way this elaboration works is very similar to what one finds in the Western musical tradition (as clarified e.g. by Schenker), it's just applied in a very different way in terms of structure (indeed there's no equivalent to the 'lead' melody, to which diminution would be applied in Western music!), and obviously with a strong focus on a single monophonic 'line'.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I feel as if you just said "A is a lot like B, or rather A is made of the same stuff as B but built totally differently". From my admittedly not deep knowledge about Carnatic music, it would be a serious mistake to think of it as "being based on melodic elaboration of what in Western music would be the bass line". That's not how its composers and practitioners think of it, and critically, it misses out entirely on the whole concept of a raga, which defines not just a set of notes (the way a western scale does), but also their ordering when ascending and descending, and comes with a large amount of cultural attribution (evening ragas, seasonal ragas, emotional ragas and so on). What is played is not an elaboration of a line, but an exploration of the raga. If you were going to draw comparisons to western musical practice, I would think that Schoenberg's 12 tone/serial experiments have at least as much in common.
- ratww 6y ago
  Of course, I never claimed it was a universal description. My point was not that we should create only simple music, but rather that we should understand how simple music is created, before jumping into anything more complex than that, or even into a general solution like so many people into procedural generation seem to jump into. You need to understand the craft itself other than just understanding the theory. Musical styles are not unconstrained. If you want it to produce procedural Carnatic Music, you can replace my description of western music with the equivalent for it, like zozbot234 started doing. Then you'll have a starting point.

mturmon 6y ago

I'm not sure if you've seen it already, but here's an essay-length elaboration of some of these ideas: https://aeon.co/essays/why-repetition-can-turn-almost-anything-into-music https://aeon.co/essays/why-repetition-can-turn-almost-anythi... It references the same speech-to-song illusion you have described. I found this essay, and its ideas, to be really helpful in understanding in why my brain likes certain types of music -- some compositions really trigger this particular part of my perception.

stagas 6y ago

Repetition legitimizes. Repetition legitimizes.[0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MzKx0fKg5o&feature=youtu.be&t=143 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MzKx0fKg5o&feature=youtu.be...

itronitron 6y ago

Interesting, the speech to song illusion reminds me of a related visual effect ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_tower_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_tower_illusion