Nothing New
Is it still possible to be original with music? I saw a film festival documentary on The Ramones on Saturday night, and it threw up some questions.
For those not in the know (I had no idea until I saw the film), The Ramones were the creators of Punk. Everyone was playing ‘nice,’ melodic music in the mid-70s when these guys came along with their average playing, loud guitars, and wall-of-noise approach and revolutionised popular music.
One of the questions it threw out there was: is it still possible to be truly original with music? The Ramones are so important because they invented a whole new way of playing, and a whole new style of music—every budding rockstar’s dream. But is there anything left, or has it all been done before?
The only truly new stuff I can think of from the last wee while would be the Radiohead or Muse kind of stuff—the idea of actually ‘composing’ rock music, and coming up with stuff that is really quite epic. But even that is really just “Ramones + Beethoven� in its basic approach. (I guess you could argue that electronic music—and industrial where electronic and ‘real’ are combined—are also pretty new.)
What do people think? Is there anything new?
Comment by Angus • Mon 26 Jul 04, 9:17 pm #
Do you mean “new with our current instruments” or what? I admit that with the guitar+bass+drums combo there’s probably not a lot of room for a highly original sound movement.
However, with some decent software, there’s probably quite a bit of room left in electronic music, especially once electronic artists stop trying to be weird and edgy (example: Aphex Twin) and set out to make good popular music that doesn’t sound like electronica at all.
Ironically, as I write this, Winamp has decided to play some Apocalyptica. Metal with cellos. See, there’s something a little new…ish.
Comment by Nato • Tue 27 Jul 04, 11:55 am #
Isn’t everything simply a recombination of what has been done in the past? If you’ve learnt your instruments off someone, you won’t play it in a strictly original way. I guess even if you are a singer, you still learn from the songs you listen to.
We have all had past musical experiences, and in some way this is going to affect us, whether we like it or not.
I would see Originality as not being independent of previous influences, but rather doing stuff other people haven’t done. I would think there are potentially limitless options for being original, because music can be thought of as information and information can always get more complex.
Comment by Julz • Tue 27 Jul 04, 1:41 pm #
I think that there needs to be a link between orginal and good, and hence the word good needs to be understood. wow This a “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintaince” moment if ever there was one.
i could come up with “original” stuff, but it probably would not be acknowledged in some small way as the greatest work ever produce in the history of the planet, like i think it is.
that is all