garyb wrote:Ken, i basically agree with what you are saying. actually, if you look at all the hit music from 1969, it's a dizzying variety of styles and textures.
what sampling has done(and i certainly use sampling), it to make things easier, but at the same time, more standardized. since people who don't really have an idea or skill can use ready-made components, everything has become quite inbred. actually, by using other people's successful components, sound and vibration has both become more effective, and dull, boring, and predictable at the same time.
I see your train of thought. More like standardized ingredients, standardized tools (=standardized or similar methodology) result in a common playfield, everyone playing a similar game. Especially when speaking strictly about sampling and other sample manipulation, there's only so much you can do before it just becomes mangling and destruction. Then you get to the whole fsu thing (in search for something more 'different', an identity). I guess on a wider scale though, the jungle era and big beat era did establish a sort of standard "vocabulary" for beat mangling and also chord based/melodic slicing of hiphop and to a degree, house, that has now become a part of every modern producer's toolset. I see it as an era that has passed, and left behind a lot of useful parts (as in can be used repetitively, with known results) in the collective musical culture.. pretty good I think.
But again, I think it's one of those things that has more or less concluded. It doesn't need to happen again in the exact same way, and I'm not sure if it's a valid argument to have to shape copyright structures to secure the second coming of the beat mangling era.
Speaking to Hubird's point about trance.. I think trance suffers under a similar paradigm of being technologically bound. Similar constituent parts, similar equipment (and even revival of old equipment), emphasis on using established tools (onboard sequencers, etc), that level the playfield. A quick comparison between many genres and styles that have become established and have become formulaic show similar signs. They are all very standardized in timbre, structure, and musical parts. Which limits the width, but also standardizes and defines character. But I think there lies an important set of ingredients.. 1. Clear definition of what you can or can't do 2. Tools to produce results are easy to come by, or reproduce by alternate means 3. The rules are easy enough for many people to reproduce. Obviously, if all 3 aren't met, the style is niche, or particular to a specific scene, or person, and therefor will not proliferate.
So it's interesting to note that the method of proliferation and dissemination seem to directly contradict with originality or exclusivity of a particular style. If trance, or any genre for that matter, required a minimum of $20 million worth of equipment, and a girl vocalist who had the looks, could sing really well, and was also an astrophysicist, and was a olympic gold medalist, then trance would not have been mainstream. This is an important distinction when compared to jazz musicians, who I think are great musicians, but have also signed up for the circus / olympic game.. That race is only for the selected... and that exclusivity and refined definition of character also means that no one can follow nor help proliferate the style. It's pursuit of something true has also sealed its (marketing) doom.
Anyway, just throwing more ideas into the mix. I think it's all an interesting conversation to have. Styles and formulas come and go, but having seen a handful of these come and go, I think it's worthwhile to discuss what's really important about these cycles. (truly sounds like and old far thing to say)
