The Future of Music - A Discussion

[Necrosis18]

The Melvins correctly and famously predicted the rise of slow, heavy music. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana loved them, even trying out for a spot in the band. He too thought they were going to be one of the major forces behind a new movement. Today we can see just how spot on they were, Doom has seen an explosion becoming bloated with genres, niches and sub-genres. But with it's rise in popularity it has seen little and seemingly decreasing mainstream attraction. It has become more or less a musicians genre.

I believe mainstream music plays a large role in this as well as the emotional response of a society to it's environment in combination with effects of the drugs that society is taking. Today's biggest performers are entertainers, actors on a stage, dancing and singing to music with little emphasis on creating it. This is great for the listener who has no care to understand it, swayed only by it's perceived popularity. But those of us who spend their lives studying the great composers and compositions of the past can't find relevance in today's most popular music. It's missing all the pieces we strive to create. Taking a short cut strait to the pockets of consumers and adding to the bleak perception of the world that influences so many artists.

Never has information been so widely available, the answers of today's problems so obtainable. Yet so far from being realized. Anyone with the inclination to do so can pick a problem of it's society and find out how it came to be and it's solution in a single day. But is still helpless to change it with out fighting the society that has created it. This gap in perception creates a lot of complex emotions that require expression. Some choose to speak out, argue and protest. Others Hold it in until the reach a breaking point leading to demonstration and violence.

Music is the direct expression of emotion and self. No experience can be prevented from becoming an influence and few are as obvious and direct as drugs. Amphetamines, opiates, psychedelics, literally every type of drug has had it's own unique and distinct effect on music. It's no surprise that with the increase in pot acceptance there has been a rise in music influenced and characterized by it's effects. A large number of states in america are progressing towards legalization and there is heightened pressure upon it's federal government for marijuana reform, I can only imagine that it's influential growth has just begun.

TLDR; Looking back at what/how music has changed over the years where do you think the future of music is?

[backwardsvoyager]

Wow, great points for discussion there!

I've always felt really conflicted about this.
Mainstream music seems to have limited focus on music itself but rather a combination of different stimuli to provide entertainment (lyrics to sing along to and relate to, music videos and dancers/theatrics for visual entertainment) and when musical concepts are manipulated they are done so to reinforce such stimuli. It also doesn't help that it is very much a monetary business and mainstream artists operate more like commodities than individual creative identities.
To me this goes against what I believe music is (as you said- direct expression of emotion and self).

Things like drugs are most certainly influences that will manifest in music, whether directly identifiable or not. I'm definitely not opposed to drug use altogether but there seems to be a growing idea that to write or play certain music you need to be 'under the influence' and I'm not sure if this becoming more and more socially acceptable is a positive turn for the future of music creation. Personally I find myself able to have somewhat 'spiritual' experiences through music without the outside influence of drugs, and deliberately using them as a direct influence could just be another 'short cut'.

In terms of the future, I think there will always be some kind of separation between the mainstream and what the more 'enlightened' of us are creating and listening to. I'm not yet sure if that gap is expanding or the evolution of different musical styles is just creating the illusion of that.
(I use these terms loosely, who knows- I may be wrong and Justin Bieber is really the Brian Eno of our generation )
However I think the beauty in this is that things will always change, and rather than try to predict the future I'm more than happy to just immerse myself in new things as they emerge.
There will always be people creating music purely as a medium of self-expression, and with the emergence of new concepts and technologies i'm sure there are many exciting things to come

[D.o.S.]

-I think calling The Melvins a "major force" is a reach.

-I would say that there's a stratification of taste that is directly attributable to the speed and ease of information sharing that we enjoy now, and that this newfound ability to narrow in on what the listener wants to listen to is unprecedented in modern history.

-I think that drugs have been an constant in human history, so they can hardly be considered a new phenomenon.

[rustywire]

More and more this is looking like the future of popular music:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYArjS-Ee0[/youtube]
























But it aint all bad-

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAPEpDrNdRo[/youtube]

Dat bass.

[Necrosis18]

-I think calling The Melvins a "major force" is a reach.

Yeah that was just my opinion of Kurt Cobains perception of The Melvins back when he first started getting into them.
My opinion is that no band was necessary to create the rise in popularity of Doom and other heavy genres because there were greater environmental factor at play.

-I think that drugs have been an constant in human history, so they can hardly be considered a new phenomenon.

Different drugs have seen popularity at different times and this has always had a profound effect on it's music. With the rise of marijuana we have seen a huge boom in Stoner/Psych/Doom but the other drugs still exist and are influencing music in the people that take them. I was only pointing this out and raising the question "how far can/will this go?".

[D.o.S.]

I think the stoner/pysch/doom thing has more to do with copycat bands, uninspired songwriting, and the fact that instruments have become more and more affordable and accessible with each passing day.

You know, since marijuana was popular with jazz and blues musicians in the early 20th century as well. And, you know, every style of music in between.

To put it another way... Do you attribute a huge boom in Grunge music to the rise in popularity of heroin?

[Achtane]

In the future, everything will be run through sidechain compression.
EVERYTHING
LITERALLY ALL THE MUSIC

[D.o.S.]

In the future, everything will be run through sidechain compression.
EVERYTHING
LITERALLY ALL THE MUSIC

[Chankgeez]

"... If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn ..."

[Necrosis18]

I think the stoner/pysch/doom thing has more to do with copycat bands, uninspired songwriting, and the fact that instruments have become more and more affordable and accessible with each passing day.

Doom in general does feel a bit watered down but that comes with it's size. It doesn't mean there aren't incredibly inspired individuals working within the genre. There are so many new sub genres in this area that it doesn't take long to find something new, interesting and unique.

To put it another way... Do you attribute a huge boom in Grunge music to the rise in popularity of heroin?

I wouldn't know anything about that but I'm sure heroin inspired grunge exactly to the extent of the amount of grunge musicians taking heroin.

[Iommic Pope]

I'd argue that the heroin trend had more to do with the popularity of the artists taking it, but that's understating an argument with far too many variables for any one person to weigh in on. What happens in the "black market" regarding trends in drugs probably has more to do with what is in abundance and what has a degree of "kitsch" attached to it (ie: right now a middle class kid looking to get ballsed up wouldn't necessarily go for the meth, as that's a little too downmarket for them, but cocaine, that's cool right?) I make large unsubstantiated calls there, but I think that the illicit substance economy (the biggest in the world mind you, so much so it dictates not only the "legitimate" economy but the politics that run our day to day lives) has its own market trends and variables that your average economist would shudder to account for.
So clearly that is going to have an influence on culture.
I think the future of music is going to be a lot more homogeneity and same same until the music industry dies and dies properly. Its in its final days now and I really dont see how it can compete with people accessing so many alternatives so freely. It was built for a closed market and to dictate culture and advertising to kids. It will probably persist in doing so, but eventually it will eat itself.
Personally, I see more people switching on to doom and its associated styles because we are living in shitty times. Shit is about to hit the fan, heavy music generally reflects the sense of foreboding and loss (and in the case of the Melvins, the stupidity/folly of man) that we are going to put ourselves and this planet through if we don't remove craniums from rectums. Fast.

Yeah, I've got a zombie action plan...

[AngryGoldfish]

Music flows through many stages of growth and evolution, but there are two main classes to distinguish: digital and analogue. Digital music was made popular in the 80's, with drum machines, synthesizers, keyboards, auto-tune, and DAWs. That dipped slightly in the 90's, but eventually returned in the late 21st Century. It is now a fully-fledged class of its own again, with auto-tune and computers doing much of the work. Is Dub-Step a fad as so many are saying? I don't think so. Maybe that very specific sound is, but not the impact it's had on the industry. It's something that will be implemented and teased in for many years to come. Folks might take a break and relive the 'glory' days of the 60's, 70's and 90's, but like three-piece suits, it'll come back in time.

What do I think the future of music is? Digital. As industries are spending billions on technology, processors are becoming more and more commonplace and more and more powerful. I don't think it'll ever fully replace a simple piano and orchestra or an electric guitar into a loud tube amp, but the current generation and their offspring will care less about it. They'll focus on digital technology because that is what they will have grown up with. It's only natural that they follow such a route. How that digital technology will affect music is not something I can predict, but who knows, maybe it'll simply be The Beatles without the Vox amps or Led Zeppelin without the Gibson Les Paul. Or maybe everyone who cared about such oldies will be dead and forgotten and the legacy will be disappear.

[Necrosis18]

I can always tell when I'm listening to digitally synthesized sounds in music, sometimes even digital pedals/studio effects. I don't really have a problem with it accept when I've become aware of it, like I just realized I'm watching a movie or something. Whenever it's a prominent part of a song and especially if it's the entire song I'm always left with a "oh, it wasn't hard to do that" feeling.

[andtheLiquidmen]

I can always tell when I'm listening to digitally synthesized sounds in music, sometimes even digital pedals/studio effects.

With all due respect, I have to say this: Bullshit.

Like anything, there's an art to making things "work." Like any well-trained ear, you may be able to tell 80% of the time, or even 90% of the time. Much like someone can tell if they're listening to a tube amp or a solid state amp. I've fooled most of my musical cohorts into believing that what they're hearing is what they think they're hearing, I've fooled surf snobs into thinking that my Amplitube set-up is actually my Fender Reverb tank into my Twin Reverb, and I've been fooled countless times into thinking what I'm hearing is real or synthesized.

My point (other than playing devil's advocate) is this: ultimately it doesn't matter if you can tell or not. If it works, it works. I was raised on sci-fi from the 1950s through the 1970s, so I have a particular fondness for practical effects, and I believe that they are just as effective as CGI. That being said, I LOVE to be fooled by CGI. I WANT to not be sure how a certain effect was made. Of course it's easy to spot 90% of CGI in movies. It's the 10% that counts - just like in practical effects and traditional photochemical processing.

This doubles for music. I want to have absolutely no idea how a sound is created. Sure, I can tell most of the time what pedals people are using, what techniques, whatever. In the hands of the right person, it doesn't matter. I love listening to a mix and having absolutely no idea how it sounds THAT DAMNED GOOD. If I can "see the strings on the flying saucer," it can be disappointing, but ultimately it doesn't matter if whatever effect, sound, etc serves the song and works.

Lumping music into "BEFORE" and "AFTER" is a particular annoyance to me. There was no BEFORE, and we aren't the AFTER. Music has always been about the same things. Yes, digital technology is now fueling popular music. Yes, pop stars aren't writing their own music.

Guess what folks, POP STARS WEREN'T WRITING THEIR MUSIC OVER 50 YEARS AGO. That doesn't discount their talent.
If digital recording, processing, and manipulation were available in the 1960s, you bet your ass everyone's favorite sweethearts of BEFORE, The Beatles, would have been using them. If auto-tune were there to perfect some of those cute little vocal harmonies, it would have been all over their most-loved hits of the day. Production is, and has always been about doing things in the most cost effective way.


In reference to the future of music, I am terrified by one thing above anything else: pretending we're in the past. The internet has supplied an all-too-endless look back to recent history, and with that has brought a sense of nostalgia for things that pre-date most of the people that feel it. Vinyl, cassettes, retro-blues-whatever...the list goes on and on. Stagnation terrifies me, and I'm constantly looking for artists that throw everything out the window, or find new and interesting ways to combine the familiar to create something unfamiliar.

Many great composers of the past felt the same exact way that you describe. Just imagine this!
The time: Whenever
The place: Wherever
The person: Mozart! Bach! Beethoven! It doesn't matter.
He creates the most atonal, brilliant, forward-thinking composition in what might have been since the dawn of man!
Who cares: NO ONE! No one wants to hear that crap - give us something we can understand says the public.
The composer, needing to feed his belly and whatever recreational drug habit of the time, writes the equivalent of the pop song.

Anyway, tl;dr, I know.

[Necrosis18]

I can always tell when I'm listening to digitally synthesized sounds in music

With all due respect, I have to say this: Bullshit.

Yeah I guess I can't be sure