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Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

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Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#71

Post by jdietrich »

mrob wrote: post #45
cturner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western tonality has some rules. Composers can operate outside of that if they want. With computers, a single composer could make up a new set of rules for every piece. You can turn a drum beat into a note by accelerating the wave form, invent your own scales. It is interesting that even electronic artists tend to operate within the constraints of the western tradition. It is probably a struggle to find an audience o…

Western tonality is a consequence of the biology of human hearing combined with the physics of common Western instruments. The ear converts sound to the frequency domain. If peaks in that spectrum are close together, they're perceived as a single beating sound. If they're far apart, they're perceived as separate sounds. But if they are of intermediate distance, they are perceived as a dissonant noise. Plomp and Level…

Just intonation is far more mathematically accurate than equal temperament, but it often sounds badly out of tune to listeners who are acculturated to the latter. 12-TET is a convenient fudge, but it isn't optimal. We have become deeply accustomed to a fairly arbitrary approximation of a somewhat arbitrary set of subdivisions.

To complicate matters further, pianos deviate substantially from equal temperament at the extremes of their range. A piano sounds more in tune if the bass notes are tuned slightly flat and the treble notes are tuned slightly sharp, to accommodate for the natural inharmonicity of the strings.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#72

Post by Joeboy »

jimnotgym wrote: post #52
billsix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It's the kind of thing teenagers everywhere find in their second month of guitar mastery. E major, G# major, A major, A minor The song is in E major, yet G# major and A minor ar…

> The song is in E major, yet G# major and A minor are not chords in that scale. Guitarists learning scales? I mean like the names of the notes rather than the shapes they make on the neck? I am suggesting that knowledge of musical theory had no part in this at all. You need to think in the terms of an indie guitarist of average ability like Thom Yorke. Open, the fret after the one with the dot on, the next fret with…

> Guitarists learning scales? I mean like the names of the notes rather than the shapes they make on the neck?

I'm probably not supposed to say this sort of thing here, but you're surely trolling.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#73

Post by jsgo »

I get that everyone is talking chord progressions, but honestly, to me in Del Rey vs Radiohead: it is the vocals of the opening part of Get Free. Because that's the part where I'm thinking "hey, this sounds like Creep" (not a musician).

The Hollies and Radiohead, though, yeah, that's very similar accompanying music.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#74

Post by cousin_it »

d13 wrote: post #28
jimnotgym wrote: post #7

For anyone who doesn't play the guitar, 'Creep' and the Hollies track is is derived from come feature a rather obvious chord progression. Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It's the kind of thing teenagers everywhe…

But of all the millions of random experiments you can make while a learning an instrument, only a few of them sound "nice" - and I would argue they sound nice because they sound like something you've already heard. There's a vast universe of truly original music waiting to be discovered - the future of music - for adventurous musician brave enough to embrace truly ugly sounds.

That's not the future, that's the past. Check out atonal music, almost a century ago. Turns out no one wants to listen to it even after repeated exposure.

The future of music is stuff that sounds good but not because you've already heard it. To create it you need a vivid musical imagination, not randomly messing around with an instrument. Read about Michael Jackson's creative process. He would imagine a song fully in his head and then sing each note of each part to his band: "here's the first chord, first note, second note, third note. Here's the second chord..."

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#75

Post by [deleted] »

hashkb wrote: post #67
jimnotgym wrote: post #7

For anyone who doesn't play the guitar, 'Creep' and the Hollies track is is derived from come feature a rather obvious chord progression. Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It's the kind of thing teenagers everywhe…

What's really awesome is that when you become "good" at guitar you realize the mind melting shredding you hear is also super obvious. Your fingers just do it because you're on a guitar. All lawsuits involving guitar should be settled on stage. Every other instrument knows guitarists are cheaters.

[deleted]

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#76

Post by tr0ut »

ebbv wrote: post #10
tr0ut wrote: post #5

I think this is just the nature of music. It requires a rather rigid system which does not offer enough diversity to be completely unique. All musical genres need to at least share the same root elements for association. https://youtu.be/Co9mW_9hH2g

This is not true. There is nothing rigid about music. You can do whatever you want. Unless you care about being popular. Then what you run up against is what people enjoy.

You can certainly do what ever you want. But there are distinct rigid structures to all forms of music. If I make a close approximation to B.B. King's "3'o'clock Blues". It is most certainly Blues and not a Polka song or Reggae. Even Avant-garde Jazz has a common theme. Music is formulaic.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#77

Post by walterstucco »

cJ0th wrote: post #4

As a hobby music producer I just can't wrap my head around the logic behind copyright infringement. It's so arbitrary. It's illegal to steal a melody but sophisticated chord progressions are fine. It's illegal to copy the text of even the simplest verse but reverse engineering some complex synthesizer sounds is fine. Although I personally strive for it, I don't think originality is a point worth discussing. Music is…

Radiohead have copied creep from the Hollies they can't seriously sue someone else for ripping it from them

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#78

Post by walterstucco »

tejohnso wrote: post #29
onion2k wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music is about expression first and foremost. That may be, but the music industry is much more about industry than music. Artists like Radiohead only want to "protect their art" when there's a chance of getting a worthwhile check in to the bargain.

How do you know that a worthwhile check has anything to do with Radiohead's motives? What other artists are you implying belong to this group?

Because Radiohead's Creep is itself not original and copied by another band from the 70s

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#79

Post by Applejinx »

bfsg wrote: post #59

There is no such thing as creating an original. Everyone and everything is inspired in some or many ways. You consciously or unconsciously select your source(s) of inspiration. The guitarist of Radiohead is not playing some never played before stuff, it's the basic guitar thing millions of guitarists play. Everybody is copying everybody, changing only slight bits. The whole music industry is stolen. And the worse par…

There's another twist. I'm a guitar player: I can play a guitar note literally fifty different ways (on a single guitar/amp combination, no effects), if 'different' means 'every one can be ABX tested against every other one using a typical normal person as listener'.

Anybody who's ever been into blues in any form knows it's how you play it. Folks who have been into blues have been some of the most successful musicians ever (see: Fleetwood Mac, pre Buckingham Nicks)

If you say 'love' or 'hate' in sincerity, does it matter that you've not come up with an innovative way to spell it? It's part of an expression of your intention.

Copyright seems a way to try and protect these intangible things by tying them to a more abstracted 'key', and there's the problem.

I've recently listened to the Pixies' 'Brick Is Red', off Surfer Rosa. If you defined their vocal melodies in terms of Hz rather than quantizing them to nearest chromatic note and sixteenth-note timing, you'd find the vocalizations were really REALLY distinct (and next to impossible to reproduce!)

Hanson are on record as saying that their hit 'Mmmbop' is never covered properly. They're absolutely right. The chorus words go into a really fast triplet feel that's not a straight subdivision of the beat, a triplet feel that's not doubled by other instruments, and to screw up that timing means you're screwing up something very fundamental to the hit quality of the song.

One of the basic problems here is boiling stuff down to abstractions that serve as 'keys'. 'Mmmbop' in sixteenth notes is not 'Mmmbop'. 'Brick Is Red' in MIDI is not 'Brick Is Red'.

Re: Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and the Difficulty of Making Original Music

#80

Post by billsix »

jimnotgym wrote: post #52
billsix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physically it is the result of sliding an open E chord down the neck to produce higher notes then, la piece de resistance, taking a finger off. Radiohead added a killer feature of turning the gain up on the amplifier for the chorus, genius. It's the kind of thing teenagers everywhere find in their second month of guitar mastery. E major, G# major, A major, A minor The song is in E major, yet G# major and A minor ar…

> The song is in E major, yet G# major and A minor are not chords in that scale. Guitarists learning scales? I mean like the names of the notes rather than the shapes they make on the neck? I am suggesting that knowledge of musical theory had no part in this at all. You need to think in the terms of an indie guitarist of average ability like Thom Yorke. Open, the fret after the one with the dot on, the next fret with…

Try not to judge a musician's talent and knowledge based off of their popular hits. John Mayer is a phenomenal guitarist whose commercially successful songs require few of his actual abilities.

I find that Radiohead creates quite interesting music from a theory perspective. Learn to play songs like "no surprises" and "paranoid Android" from Ok Computer. They venture outside of normal key in various ways.

Being able to learn an existing song via memorization without understanding does not imply that the creator didn't have a clue.

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