7 ms·

Everything Is Interpolated: Music’s Nostalgia-Industrial Complex

88 points by herbertl 4y ago

generationP 4y ago
The article seems to be quite a bit disingenuous in mixing hip-hop (where samples and beats are supposed to get recycled and the focus is on the lyrics) with the rest of commercial music (which lives and dies by its melody). A rapper stealing a 5-second sample from a metal band is not the same as a ripped-off (whether legally or not) rock song.
- jtode 4y ago
  You're still treating it like it's art. It's just Content now. You might as well be contrasting a Dubble Bubble wrapper to a Bazooka wrapper and talking about the importance of the colour blue to Bazooka's dominance in the Age 3-7 market.
  - generationP 4y ago
    Maybe, but a dozen examples from hip-hop won't convince me.
- rchaud 4y ago
  Hip-hop is commercial music. It's the number 1 genre in pretty much every country today. Less commercial hiphop such a a Tribe Called Quest aren't remotely as popular, despite eschewing samples in favour of live instrumentation. Things are changing. Remember when you could read every newspaper in the world online without a paywall? Dr. Dre wouldn't have made a cent from The Chronic today, half of the songs feature melodies lifted directly from '60s and '70s soul and funk.
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    Tribe sampled lots of music. Maybe you’re thinking of The Roots?
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Parent does say it's not, and this is not what his argument based on anyway. He says they shouldn't mix it "with OTHER commercial music" not as in "because hip hop is not commercial music", but because hip-hop, while still commercial music, has its own rules regarding copying or sampling parts of songs.
asjfka 4y ago
Georges Brassens is an iconic French singer. In 1953, he composed the music for "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux". Then he reused the exact same melody for "La prière". Why not? Ideas get recycled and remixed all the time. Melodies and beats are ideas.
- atoav 4y ago
  And a as a musician I can't tell you how many times I played a melody or a line that I really liked only to realize later that it is from another song I have heard years ago. It even happened that I played the same melody from a song I had created myself without realizing it. That is not the issue and it is unavoidable. Musical youtube however is full of "Use these three chords to create great music" recipes. There is just so much stuff that doesn't even try to do anything interesting.
  - visarga 4y ago
    > Musical youtube however is full of "Use these three chords to create great music" recipes Sounds awfully familiar, like the discussion about synthetic art and generative text. They threaten the professionals with lower barrier to entry, but only take the new comers so far.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    To many people, me included, "more chords" doesn't mean more interesting. Better melody, lyrics, rhythm, playing, etc. does. You can do wonders with 3 or 4 chords, some of the best music is written that way and doesn't need modulation or other things musos care about to be great. Heck, you can wonders with one chord and a drone note.
    - atoav 4y ago
      I agree. However I am more of a tone person anyway. I am all for few chords, but at least try to find your own way of playing them.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
I remember reading an interview with Keith Richards in which he said something on the order of that after many years of making music it seemed that basically one only had very few ideas that kept mixing and matching together to make what seemed like new songs but were just expressions of the same basic ideas.
- lkschubert8 4y ago
  Reminds me of the Jean Renoir quote "A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again."
- nemo44x 4y ago
  That’s what “style” is. A great musician develops and cultivates a new style and then mixes and mashes it along to make new songs within that style. Each song is an expression of their unique style. It’s why a lot of artists can’t continue to make great music. They’ve exhausted their unique style and are unable to progress it further or cultivate a coherent successor style.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >It’s why a lot of artists can’t continue to make great music. They’ve exhausted their unique style and are unable to progress it further or cultivate a coherent successor style. I'm not sure it's that they "exhausted their style", as often even after a band stars making duds, other bands can continue to make great new music in the same style. And for many bands the style wasn't really "theirs" or unique to begin with (e.g. it was typical rockabilly or garage rock stuff or techno or whatever), but those bands did made some good tunes before they started to making duds. It's more about the ability to write good or bad songs, than about the style still having "unexmplored" corners. People can write good new song in the most established styles and manners - including good new traditional-sounding folk, blues, gospel, etc. I think for bands that stop making good music, it's more that they exhausted their own inspiration, rather than exhausting the potential of their (unique or not) style. And usually also that other stuff, like addiction, animosity between members, boredom, middle age concerns, despiriting lack of money/success (or too much money/success to focus on music), came into play.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Ai is going to nuke all of this.
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  By doing 100x as much of it? I suppose that counts.
  - thuuuomas 4y ago
    What happens when there’s 100x the content, often indistinguishable from alike content, but demand remains the same?
    - throwaway8689 4y ago
      For the listener I don't think much would change. There is already more music released than any one person has time to listen to. Edit: or maybe I would be disappointed if I liked an 'artist' but it was an ai so live events would be weird.
      - CatWChainsaw 4y ago
        Japan has been hosting Hatsune Miku "concerts" for years, so there would be a demand, I suppose.
e67f70028a46fba 4y ago
these fragments i have shored against my ruins…
rchaud 4y ago
It's interesting that the Maroon 5 reps approached Primary Wave pre-emptively as they knew the melody was too close to a Bob Marley classic. A band that might have really benefited from this approach would be The Verve in the UK. "Bittersweet Symphony" in 1997 was a worldwide hit, but they made £0 from it as the majority of royalties had to be paid to the Rolling Stones' label as the iconic melody was a rework of 1965's "The Last Time". In 2019, Jagger and Richards gave the publishing royalty rights back the Verve -- 11 years after the band broke up.
- hellbanTHIS 4y ago
  Bittersweet Symphony was a little different because it was a straight sample, they looped a recording of a Stones song. This Primary Wave company is buying up publishing rights and because of some IMO bad court decisions can claim to own the melodies themselves, not just the recordings. The problem with that is every melody ever sung sounds like some other melody, somewhere.
  - marstall 4y ago
    Thanks for the Wikipedia rabbit hole you sent me down. I'm emerging with a fact check: the strings in Bittersweet Symphony were in point of fact a heavily reworked sample of a hook contained in an obscure 1960's symphonic version of "The Last Time". The hook and its melody does not appear anywhere in the Stones' original version. Everyone eventually agreed The Verve got shafted and Jagger/Richards in the end showed magnanimity and moved to grant The Verve rights to the song.
- notahacker 4y ago
  The Verve did preemptively approach the rights holders for The Last Time, but having cleared the sample they were then accused of lifting elements of the vocal melody and gave up the rights to get the song released. Ironically there's barely any audible similarity to the original Stones recording, which the Stones freely acknowledge borrowed heavily from an earlier gospel song
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
goblinux 4y ago
I guess that’s why they call it window pain
hn_throawlles 4y ago
the real art being applied is that of commerce and trade (of rights to sounds) these people are on to something, but it's not music in the 'art through sound' sense. nonetheless they do express out real novelties and make money while at it
diydsp 4y ago
This is a great example of the corporate-controlled matrix we live in: >In 2016, they presented a skeptical Smokey Robinson with the idea of a national holiday centered around the Temptations’ 1964 classic “My Girl,” which Robinson co-wrote. “He looked at us like we were crazy,” Lowenberg remembers. “We just asked him, ‘Do you like the idea? Because if you do, challenge accepted.’” Robinson announced the first-ever “Father-Daughter Day” on October 8, 2017, along with lullaby renditions of “My Girl.” Yet when you look at the origin on Wikipedia, it claims: > The U.S. holiday was originally conceived by Smokey Robinson to honor his relationship with his only daughter. [1] And the reference used points directly back to PrimaryWave's press release. The claim that Smokey conceived the holiday was originally made unattributed. But later the attribution was added to point to the press release. Yet the press release doesn't even support Smokey conceiving it, just announcing it. How much other stuff do we "celebrate" [2] just because some corporations wanted to leverage intellectual property? yet if I argue this, it sounds like I'm against father-dather relationships... brilliant! BTW, i'm trying to update the wikipedia article but can't remember my login details... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%E2%80%93Daughter_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%E2%80%93Daughter_Day [2] This "national holiday" is not federally recognized.
- newswasboring 4y ago
  > yet if I argue this, it sounds like I'm against father-dather relationships... brilliant! I think this isn't true in 2023. I would encourage you to start talking about this, I bet most people will agree with you.
  - diydsp 4y ago
    thanks for responding though I don't quite understand. if you have a moment would you spell it out a little more for me? In the meantime, I think my exploration is more about our inability to organize meaningful events without corporate power. And when I drove to the supermarket and back, I remembered a former co-worker who would look into the national holidays. In fact there are many, many of them. It doesn't take anything except a performative utterance[1] . In fact, today is about 10-20 national holidays[2]!!! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance [2] https://nationaltoday.com/april-holidays/#apr-30 https://nationaltoday.com/april-holidays/#apr-30
skybrian 4y ago
Reviving old music seems like it's just one of those 10,000 things: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ And it doesn't have to be the original recording either. Consider how jazz works. There's money in promoting it because people don't necessarily find new music to listen to on their own. If the music is too familiar to you, find some other music that's new to you. The catalog is vast and we're never going to run out.

88 points by herbertl 4y ago

The article seems to be quite a bit disingenuous in mixing hip-hop (where samples and beats are supposed to get recycled and the focus is on the lyrics) with the rest of commercial music (which lives and dies by its melody). A rapper stealing a 5-second sample from a metal band is not the same as a ripped-off (whether legally or not) rock song.

jtode 4y ago
You're still treating it like it's art. It's just Content now. You might as well be contrasting a Dubble Bubble wrapper to a Bazooka wrapper and talking about the importance of the colour blue to Bazooka's dominance in the Age 3-7 market.
- generationP 4y ago
  Maybe, but a dozen examples from hip-hop won't convince me.
rchaud 4y ago
Hip-hop is commercial music. It's the number 1 genre in pretty much every country today. Less commercial hiphop such a a Tribe Called Quest aren't remotely as popular, despite eschewing samples in favour of live instrumentation. Things are changing. Remember when you could read every newspaper in the world online without a paywall? Dr. Dre wouldn't have made a cent from The Chronic today, half of the songs feature melodies lifted directly from '60s and '70s soul and funk.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  Tribe sampled lots of music. Maybe you’re thinking of The Roots?
- coldtea 4y ago
  Parent does say it's not, and this is not what his argument based on anyway. He says they shouldn't mix it "with OTHER commercial music" not as in "because hip hop is not commercial music", but because hip-hop, while still commercial music, has its own rules regarding copying or sampling parts of songs.

asjfka 4y ago

Georges Brassens is an iconic French singer. In 1953, he composed the music for "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux". Then he reused the exact same melody for "La prière". Why not? Ideas get recycled and remixed all the time. Melodies and beats are ideas.

atoav 4y ago
And a as a musician I can't tell you how many times I played a melody or a line that I really liked only to realize later that it is from another song I have heard years ago. It even happened that I played the same melody from a song I had created myself without realizing it. That is not the issue and it is unavoidable. Musical youtube however is full of "Use these three chords to create great music" recipes. There is just so much stuff that doesn't even try to do anything interesting.
- visarga 4y ago
  > Musical youtube however is full of "Use these three chords to create great music" recipes Sounds awfully familiar, like the discussion about synthetic art and generative text. They threaten the professionals with lower barrier to entry, but only take the new comers so far.
- coldtea 4y ago
  To many people, me included, "more chords" doesn't mean more interesting. Better melody, lyrics, rhythm, playing, etc. does. You can do wonders with 3 or 4 chords, some of the best music is written that way and doesn't need modulation or other things musos care about to be great. Heck, you can wonders with one chord and a drone note.
  - atoav 4y ago
    I agree. However I am more of a tone person anyway. I am all for few chords, but at least try to find your own way of playing them.
tsimionescu 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

I remember reading an interview with Keith Richards in which he said something on the order of that after many years of making music it seemed that basically one only had very few ideas that kept mixing and matching together to make what seemed like new songs but were just expressions of the same basic ideas.

lkschubert8 4y ago
Reminds me of the Jean Renoir quote "A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it up and makes it again."
nemo44x 4y ago
That’s what “style” is. A great musician develops and cultivates a new style and then mixes and mashes it along to make new songs within that style. Each song is an expression of their unique style. It’s why a lot of artists can’t continue to make great music. They’ve exhausted their unique style and are unable to progress it further or cultivate a coherent successor style.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >It’s why a lot of artists can’t continue to make great music. They’ve exhausted their unique style and are unable to progress it further or cultivate a coherent successor style. I'm not sure it's that they "exhausted their style", as often even after a band stars making duds, other bands can continue to make great new music in the same style. And for many bands the style wasn't really "theirs" or unique to begin with (e.g. it was typical rockabilly or garage rock stuff or techno or whatever), but those bands did made some good tunes before they started to making duds. It's more about the ability to write good or bad songs, than about the style still having "unexmplored" corners. People can write good new song in the most established styles and manners - including good new traditional-sounding folk, blues, gospel, etc. I think for bands that stop making good music, it's more that they exhausted their own inspiration, rather than exhausting the potential of their (unique or not) style. And usually also that other stuff, like addiction, animosity between members, boredom, middle age concerns, despiriting lack of money/success (or too much money/success to focus on music), came into play.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

Ai is going to nuke all of this.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
By doing 100x as much of it? I suppose that counts.
- thuuuomas 4y ago
  What happens when there’s 100x the content, often indistinguishable from alike content, but demand remains the same?
  - throwaway8689 4y ago
    For the listener I don't think much would change. There is already more music released than any one person has time to listen to. Edit: or maybe I would be disappointed if I liked an 'artist' but it was an ai so live events would be weird.
    - CatWChainsaw 4y ago
      Japan has been hosting Hatsune Miku "concerts" for years, so there would be a demand, I suppose.

e67f70028a46fba 4y ago

these fragments i have shored against my ruins…

rchaud 4y ago

It's interesting that the Maroon 5 reps approached Primary Wave pre-emptively as they knew the melody was too close to a Bob Marley classic. A band that might have really benefited from this approach would be The Verve in the UK. "Bittersweet Symphony" in 1997 was a worldwide hit, but they made £0 from it as the majority of royalties had to be paid to the Rolling Stones' label as the iconic melody was a rework of 1965's "The Last Time". In 2019, Jagger and Richards gave the publishing royalty rights back the Verve -- 11 years after the band broke up.

hellbanTHIS 4y ago
Bittersweet Symphony was a little different because it was a straight sample, they looped a recording of a Stones song. This Primary Wave company is buying up publishing rights and because of some IMO bad court decisions can claim to own the melodies themselves, not just the recordings. The problem with that is every melody ever sung sounds like some other melody, somewhere.
- marstall 4y ago
  Thanks for the Wikipedia rabbit hole you sent me down. I'm emerging with a fact check: the strings in Bittersweet Symphony were in point of fact a heavily reworked sample of a hook contained in an obscure 1960's symphonic version of "The Last Time". The hook and its melody does not appear anywhere in the Stones' original version. Everyone eventually agreed The Verve got shafted and Jagger/Richards in the end showed magnanimity and moved to grant The Verve rights to the song.
notahacker 4y ago
The Verve did preemptively approach the rights holders for The Last Time, but having cleared the sample they were then accused of lifting elements of the vocal melody and gave up the rights to get the song released. Ironically there's barely any audible similarity to the original Stones recording, which the Stones freely acknowledge borrowed heavily from an earlier gospel song
bryanrasmussen 4y ago

goblinux 4y ago

I guess that’s why they call it window pain

hn_throawlles 4y ago

the real art being applied is that of commerce and trade (of rights to sounds) these people are on to something, but it's not music in the 'art through sound' sense. nonetheless they do express out real novelties and make money while at it

diydsp 4y ago

This is a great example of the corporate-controlled matrix we live in: >In 2016, they presented a skeptical Smokey Robinson with the idea of a national holiday centered around the Temptations’ 1964 classic “My Girl,” which Robinson co-wrote. “He looked at us like we were crazy,” Lowenberg remembers. “We just asked him, ‘Do you like the idea? Because if you do, challenge accepted.’” Robinson announced the first-ever “Father-Daughter Day” on October 8, 2017, along with lullaby renditions of “My Girl.” Yet when you look at the origin on Wikipedia, it claims: > The U.S. holiday was originally conceived by Smokey Robinson to honor his relationship with his only daughter. [1] And the reference used points directly back to PrimaryWave's press release. The claim that Smokey conceived the holiday was originally made unattributed. But later the attribution was added to point to the press release. Yet the press release doesn't even support Smokey conceiving it, just announcing it. How much other stuff do we "celebrate" [2] just because some corporations wanted to leverage intellectual property? yet if I argue this, it sounds like I'm against father-dather relationships... brilliant! BTW, i'm trying to update the wikipedia article but can't remember my login details... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%E2%80%93Daughter_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%E2%80%93Daughter_Day [2] This "national holiday" is not federally recognized.

newswasboring 4y ago
> yet if I argue this, it sounds like I'm against father-dather relationships... brilliant! I think this isn't true in 2023. I would encourage you to start talking about this, I bet most people will agree with you.
- diydsp 4y ago
  thanks for responding though I don't quite understand. if you have a moment would you spell it out a little more for me? In the meantime, I think my exploration is more about our inability to organize meaningful events without corporate power. And when I drove to the supermarket and back, I remembered a former co-worker who would look into the national holidays. In fact there are many, many of them. It doesn't take anything except a performative utterance[1] . In fact, today is about 10-20 national holidays[2]!!! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performative_utterance [2] https://nationaltoday.com/april-holidays/#apr-30 https://nationaltoday.com/april-holidays/#apr-30

skybrian 4y ago

Reviving old music seems like it's just one of those 10,000 things: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ And it doesn't have to be the original recording either. Consider how jazz works. There's money in promoting it because people don't necessarily find new music to listen to on their own. If the music is too familiar to you, find some other music that's new to you. The catalog is vast and we're never going to run out.