The End of Music?
So, I was at a pub today (which is not the most unusual thing to happen). They opted to play the classic rock best-of playlist or something from Spotify at first (I remember the Stones, Kansas, etc.), but eventually the music changed. And I noticed the first, maybe second, song which followed a new pattern: AAA. In some sense, it cannot be called a song: the most basic idea of song form is what we would describe as ABA. A song, you might say, is based on the idea of a difference , a contradiction , within itself (ah, good old dialectics!). But there was no difference in this song: it was four chords. A single pattern, repeated ad nauseum. (In music theory we would say that the harmonic rhythm of the music never changes.) This song, you could say, describes , but it does not narrate . It does not tell a story . It just stays in a place; it doesn’t take us anywhere. And it certainly doesn’t take us anywhere and then back . This may be the incarnation of what some YouTube personaliti...