Browsing through sound presets in soft synthesizers reminds us that sound designers
do not necessarily create sounds that are musical. (Are they musicians?)
Our ears relish relations and meaningful patterns in the music
more than (merely) attractive sounds.
It’s as if the busy hi hat patterns in contemporary hip hop are (desperately) trying to get free from the unchanging beats.
The predictive failure of Spotify’s “Related Artists” algorithm is to due to the fact that it relies on the supposed relevance of what others are listening to
as a way of categorizing music.
But our tastes don’t work this way.
The goal of editing music on a computer is the same as editing text:
you want to make what you have c l e a r e r.
Remember: the beat in beat-heavy music is making a statement
to guide how you’re supposed to interact with it.
Noise in music has clear points of diminishing returns,
beyond which the noise obliterates saying something.
