As I’ve been clearing out my computer ready for an eventual upgrade, I’ve come across some older tunes I’d made and completely forgotten about. I think I’ll share a few of them over the next few weeks.
It was kind of refreshing to hear these old tunes. Compared to what I make now, they’re quite stripped back. I made many of them at a time I was cooking and baking often, and I think they work well as a background to gentle kitchen activities. Perhaps Healed is a more recent version of this vibe.
Okay, so: no, everything has not been done (you lazy ****).
Around certain corners of independent music,1 one encounters the pervasive feeling that everything has been done. Genres are stagnant, especially popular genres.2
I think much of this moaning is due to music’s loss of cultural relevancy. Yes, music is ubiquitous: it’s (unfortunately) inescapable in cafes, bars, movies, whatever. But it doesn’t hold the cultural gravitas it did when it defined entire subcultural identities. If you visit a new city, people eagerly recommend restaurants for you to try, rarely venues.3
Part of the malaise is perhaps also because genre development in the 20th century was so driven by technology. In the canonical history, electrification and amplification led to rock’n’roll and metal, sampling and synthesis to techno and hip-hop. Nowadays, all that formerly cutting-edge technology is available on a laptop, and the feeling of forward momentum has slowed.
There are a few things to say here. First, one way or another, there will be new technology. Large language models (LLMs) look like they’ll transform creative production. Even if you don’t use them, you might respond to them. They’re part of the reason I started this blog. If one day you’ll be able to make the music I make at the touch of a button, then the person behind it matters more. The little world I build matters because it’s mine, not because you can generate a facsimile of it using advanced technology. (Get your own rants.)
Second, technology always exists in a social context. Yes, I think it was basically inevitable that once drum machines were invented, someone was gonna start making techno. Think of Charanjit Singh’s ‘disco ragas,’ which he made in Mumbai in 1982. They sound an awful lot like Acid House, which Wikipedia says emerged in 1985. He was far away from Detroit or Manchester. Independent discoveries are fascinating. Sometimes the world is simply ready for an idea.
But culture is a lot more than technology. It has been possible for fairly normal musicians to make a simple version of the dubstep wobble bass since the 60s (attach an LFO to a filter cutoff), and the more complex contemporary versions since at least the popularization of wavetable and FM synthesis in the 80s. For whatever reason, artists and fans didn’t find it a desirable sound until the noughties.
Third, there are many ways to create new things, and technology is just one route.4 For example, most popular electronic music today is quite harmonically ‘straight’, much simpler in those terms than even popular music from the 60s and 70s. You rarely hear a passing chord, substitution, or even a key change.
That’s not a bad thing: the predictable harmonic structure allows for more hypnotic patterns and styles to develop, and timbre has become far more varied. Simplicity by another name is parsimony, perhaps even beauty. Still, that’s one obvious path to making new stuff: dive into harmonic conventions from previous eras.
Digital technology also means it’s easier than ever to compose in scales other than 12-TET. Admittedly, the computer grid makes composing fluid rhythms a little difficult, but there are still ways. Artists like Chris Korda have even written their own software with which to create complex polymeter, some of which is fantastic.
Old technology is also a source of inspiration. The past couple of decades have seen modular synths become incredibly popular. These are expensive, unwieldy pieces of equipment that look like the synths of the 60s. They are not efficient sound generators. But their users often say those limitations are a source of creativity.
But perhaps the malaise is mostly born from the weight of the old ideology. How and what you think matters. Your spirit matters. I’ve learned much from the work of critics like Simon Reynolds and Philip Sherburne, but they and others like them often seem wedded to the idea of historical progression, to periodization, to the shock of the new. Maybe they just like the idea that they’re the ones who get to coin new genre names. Whatever it is, that version of rapid genre development is a heavy burden to place on new generations.
And I’m not sure it was ever true. Genre names can be helpful but they’re a lot like music theory: descriptive of what has passed. Mark Twain said,
There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.
And he’s both entirely right and entirely wrong. In the same way that every person is the same and every person is unique. Looking at something from both sides is part of the fun of creation. The particular and the universal. The microcosm and the macrocosm.5
Release the weight of the 20th century’s particular cultural periodization.6 Let the old ideology pass. If you do come across something that seems wholly new, start digging deeper — you might find antecedents in unlikely places. You might not. Supposedly, John Lennon once said, “I’m an artist. You give me a fucking tuba, I’ll get you something out of it.” That’s the spirit.
Perhaps culture in general.
Then dare to make some interesting but unpopular music, you plebs. I’m halfway there, at least…
Food doesn’t transmit as well over the internet as music, for one thing.
Perhaps technology’s near hegemony over the development of musical genres in the 20th century means people forget that.
Love this idea.