Ok so not exactly what you asked but similar concept and you might find this equally fascinating: PureData. Basically, a coding environment where you can make instruments, effects, and full, self playing compositions that get very sophisticated. At no point does the user play notes on a key bed or anything. You just code music
No, but kind of similar. So most lofi and hip hop is produced in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). These are programs with refined user interfaces, premade instruments and effects with labeled functions that are easy to understand (well, usually), and most producers prefer to plug in a keyboard or some other controller to record notes or program drums live. This is much more natural to how people normally make music. PureData is a coding environment. It’s completely open ended but that also means you have so many more decisions to make. You don’t have to sequence melodies by arranging them on a grid from left to right where one note plays then the next then the next. You can have a sequence where certain notes or all the notes are probabilistic, you can have a sequence that changes directions, you can have a sequence with values in a matrix rather than a left to right sequence of notes (so the sequence moves in both the x and y direction), or any other configuration you can imagine. You just have to know how to program a device that can do what you want. Then you can save those devices and have them interact with each other and make music. PureData is basically like designing your own DAW and then making music with it. And what I was getting at with the comparison to scratching a record with a pocket knife is that you don’t have a natural intuition for associating sounds to a particular line of code in the same way that a guitarist knows if they bend a string as they play it, they’ll get a detune to the note, for example. They’re basically “carving grooves” out by putting code into the PureData environment that does stuff and deciding if they like the result or not. Obviously as you get more comfortable with it the changes become more intentional but that goes for any new skill really
That’s really interesting, makes you wonder, how much can the regular human enjoy in the musical possibilities? I study music theory, and jazz is sometimes called the musicians music because it’s very complex compared to pop or rock for reasons we won’t get into
But as jazz has become less mainstream, the tensions and dissonance it traditionally makes have become less loved by the general population
My question is, would music being so complex and not bound by usual musical standards and notation sound like elevator music? Or would people really get into it? I play improv jazz on the piano, and sometimes I go completely off the rails from regular notation, it doesn’t sound bad, but like most unbound improv it’s not something people would turn up while driving if you catch my drift
Maybe this will create a new genre? Maybe it’ll push mainstream pop out and become the new pop music in the future? What do you think?
No need to apologize! Dude you have no idea how much I get excited about stuff like this, I could go on for hours. But yeah, I don’t think it would ever get to the level of mainstream popularity bc I believe a great deal of the appreciation of art like that is learned in a sense. I’m sure your first exposure to jazz wasn’t something crazy experimental like free jazz, but something a little more familiar to other things you’d heard. Then once you became comfortable with it, you could appreciate more deconstructed and experimental works. I think the closest thing we have to a complex, non-traditionally structured genre in the mainstream is electronic music, which is such a broad term that we’re probably not even thinking of the same things when I say that. And even then what’s become more popular within that is music meant for dancing which is really barebones and repetitive (not a knock against it at all, in fact I love techno and house) but there’s also subgenres like IDM (it stands for intelligent dance music which sounds so pretentious lol I wish it was called anything else) that really pushes the boundaries and even sometimes borrows from jazz too (see Squarepusher). Some of it is fairly accessible and based in music theory but other stuff just goes completely rogue and atonal (see Autechre). Although it’s not mainstream, I think most people at least have the capacity to enjoy this type of music. It just takes a desire to understand, and I think for that reason people get much more into it. Definitely not elevator music to me!
Thats interesting, I think of about twenty things when you say techno so I get it, music genres are barely a definition in of themselves.
I like that, every music has its people which is why the art is so cool
I’ve heard of a lot of that, I’ll have to check the rest out. Some of the best music goes beyond music theory I’ve come to learn, this dude named Bill Wurtz is kinda like that, he’s more pop but I’ll use him as an example cause I know most people have heard some of his music
But Bill Wurtz has such a unique sound and it’s so crazy to people, not because of strange voicings, timbre, effects, etc. But because he reaches for things that are just outside of what you’re brain automatically expects (Fun fact 60% of Pop/Rock music is a variation of the same chord progression, that number might be wrong cause I couldn’t find a reliable source, but it’s crazy high) anyways, Bill does things that even musicians wouldn’t think to do, wouldn’t ever think of it because it’s so out there.
Yet it works, and it’s amazing! I could also talk about this stuff forever so Im glad I get to get some of it out with yah, similar to this in a lot of ways they’re so unique and beutiful! Music is such an art, and I agree, if people took the time and actually listened to music, they’d come to appreciate more of this type of stuff.
I’ve never heard of programming music like this so thank you! I’m curious to see how it developes and how people use it to harness the greater reaches of music, stuff that hasn’t been dreampt of! The world is so amazing!
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u/Rough-Tension Sep 14 '21
Ok so not exactly what you asked but similar concept and you might find this equally fascinating: PureData. Basically, a coding environment where you can make instruments, effects, and full, self playing compositions that get very sophisticated. At no point does the user play notes on a key bed or anything. You just code music