I think that the discussion that we had on Wednesday was the best we’ve had in a while. We were just into it, and some interesting points were thrown out there. I was think about it after, and just wanted to add a thought of my own. I agree with what Jackson was saying – how many (a majority of) people only want to hear what’s familiar, only want to hear the things that they already know, sampled over and over again. The more widely circulated and more often heard the song, the bigger the cheer it gets in concert. And yeah, I agree that being closed-minded and hostile to new music isn’t a good thing… But I was thinking about that very point while I was running, listening to a favorite song from years ago, and I found that there is another spin off of this point. Although there may not that much debate about what I’m about to say, I just wanted to put it out there. As I was running, I just had a playlist going, because who wants to be searching for songs to listen to while exercising, and it was on shuffle, so I didn’t know what song was coming up next… And as it switched, I knew right away what it was. Despite the freezing cold I started to smile, and to run faster. It was Shed a Little Light, by James Taylor, an uplifting tune that I’ve been hearing probably since before I was born. It’s one of my Mom’s favorites. As the song progressed, I fell completely into step with it, and it allowed me to run faster for longer, and by the way enjoy it. So after the song ended, I was thinking about what caused my burst of energy, and here’s the conclusion that I came to: It’s about a relationship with the song. To me, music is not just a sonic experience. It can be, but generally I’m looking for some sort of emotional response, or some sort of story as well. Because of the versatility and wide scope of music, I don’t think that we can just write people off for never wanting to listen to new things – maybe they are hearing new things, in each story, and in each circumstance that they first hear a song. And if all they want to hear is familiar music and familiar themes (which seems to be the case), it is perhaps not because they don’t want to hear new things, but just because they have already built a relationship with the songs that they already know and so things outside of strictly the sonic experience give them a greater experience on the whole – emotions, memories, vivid stories, etc. I’m not saying that I don’t love hearing new things, but when an old favorite comes on, it carries a lot of baggage (usually not a bad thing), and it can get a bigger emotional response, regardless of the complexity of the music. Yeah.
For this blog I just wanted to comment on the discussion we had on Wednesday.
Among the several things that called my attention, there were to points that particularly interested me. First was the idea of creativity as something new or as a recycling of old ideas. Then was the matter about music recordings and how they improve (or not) our experiences as listener and/or composers.
We discussed how we saw the recycling of old music styles, and how it can be argued than now nothing is actually creative or new, as it is all based on something done before. Then someone said something I thought was interesting in this context. It was raised that access to music recordings can improve composition, as we can re-listen to cool spots and therefore easily start pointing out to what we like and think could improve a particular composition. But doesn’t this activity of repeated listening feeds the recycling of music? If we listen a piece we like again and again (assuming that we don’t get sick of it) wouldn’t we be more vulnerable to end up copying particularities of that piece ⎯hence recycling it?
So, although I don’t think that recycling happens more now than it did in the past. I do think that recorded music does help with it. If we only had the chance to listen to something a couple of times, we would have to fill the blanks in cool spots ourselves ergo pushing our own creativity.
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