| The End of Music |
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| Written by Roger Born | |||||||
Page 4 of 5
THE END OF MUSIC And people bowed and prayed To the neon God they'd made And the sand flashed it's warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, `the words of the prophets Are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls And whisper in the sounds of silence' SOUNDS OF SILENCE Simon & Garfunkle The time, the style, and the cultural background of music does not matter anymore. Convergence no longer matters. We are reaching a Critical Mass within all of music everywhere. Just too many people in the world who are living, making music, and getting connected on the Web. (In fact all other Trends are beginning to converge in the same fashion such as Art, Literature, Economics, Technology, Ideologies, Cultures, etc.) Someone once wrote that when all the notes are played in all their possible styles and combinations, whatever comes after is no longer new. Perhaps this is why your music is beginning to sound all the same. Imagine not being able to write a lyric or the words to a song without violating someones copyrighted piece! What will happen when there are no new sounds, or melodies, or styles to play? Is this why much of the music today is so degrading? Artists, and Publishers of music are growing aware of this phenomenon. The continually are searching far and wide for something new, but they are finding less and less that is fresh, interesting or musical. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Web will only accelerate this process. To the masses of people who are never without a background score playing, there already is no music left. It has all been played. In fact, it has been played and played over and over ad nauseam. People runnin' everywhere Don't know the way to go Don't know where I am Can't see past the next step Don't have to think past the last mile Have no time to look around Just run around, run around and think why Does anybody really know what time it is Does anybody really care If so I can't imagine why We've all got time enough to cry DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS Chicago No one wants to hear it anymore. People more and more are seeking solitude. When they go somewhere, their music does not follow. (Yeah, it does follow them, because it is in everything around us, from the elevator to the street to the office to the restaurant. Good luck getting away from it all. Bring ear plugs. We are like the Emperor Mozart performed his music for. Mazart's music was sublime, and perfect. Yet to ear of the busy and distracted Emperor, there were "too many notes!" So you see, it won't be Napster that ends the music of the world, as some people fear. Nor will it be the paranoid Record Industry. This little turf war is just a blip on the surface of history. When it is over, it will not matter who won or lost. Which format survives will not matter. In a few decades there will be no more new music. Wow! What will happen to the world when there is no more new music to be played? Why, the world will end, of course. The world as we know it will quickly and violently crumble, a very long dark ages will ensue, new civilizations will rise and technology will advance, and then it will happen all over again! - or not. It is all up to you. Are you going to be the one who finds a new path to a shining future for all of us? Will there be anything new to find? Read on. IT IS ALL ABOUT CONVERGENCE Let's bring it all together now. It is all about convergence. I am simply stating the facts. Music, like anything else in life, is a very large but finite thing. The shortening of the length of the music, the cost of the media, and the cost of a song are all parts of an historical trend, a convergence. Once all of its perameters have been filled, they are filled. If you know something about statistics, this is not a bell curve we are seeing here, but rather a climbing curve, where it climbs gradually for a long time, and then suddenly goes straight up. We are living at the far right side of this curve just where it is beginning to climb vertically. Never before has any culture had so much music to choose from. Now every culture is being crowded out with its own music and everyone else's. Our world shrinks, cultures clash, merge, cross over; each bringing its excess baggage of Music, Art, Literature, and everything else, with it. Convergence has a lot to do with population. Previous centuries had their Da Vinci and Mozart. Problem is, half the people who ever lived are alive today. We now have hundreds of new Da Vincis and Mozarts among us, as well as many new Einsteins, Jeffersons, Picassos, Hemingways, etc. We are all being flooded with their excellent work in Art, in Music, in Literature, etc. The Web only hastens this effect. How many really good musical artists with all their music can you find at Napster and other music sites today? There are thousands. We do not have enough years in our lives to listen to them all. More of them are pouring in every day. Much of their work is very good, -innovative even. Yet how much of their music is the same? How many of their lyrics? This is the convergence I am talking about. In essence we are drowning in the multitude of style, technique and form of the Music, the Art, and the Literature spiraling around us. I did not set out to write a negative article, but I honestly left it open-ended because I do not have the answers. Others might read this and supply a number of solutions. I hope they do. Convergence is scary, I know. But you don't want to water it down. Critical thought sometimes leads us down these paths. Once a resolving of the crisis occurs, there is release. Therfore, this is good news for us all. It means that rather than only facing the end of Music, we are on the cusp of something completely new! Convergence also implies that Music as we know it will be radically different somehow in the near future. It will begin a new curve. This is how mathematical convergence curves work. This is also how History works. The same will hopefully be true for Art, Literature, Technology, Philosophy, Economics, and all else, for they are all on parallel curves and face the same convergencies, which are beginning in this generation to happen all around us. Business people call this living in Chaos. They teach Chaos Management, and they have it wrong. We do not live in Chaos, What we live in is both definable and converging. Think about it. This means we will not only likely survive, we will witness a whole new world as it forms around us. The death of Music means the rebirth of Music in some form or fashion we do not yet see. So it will go with the death of Art, of Literature, and anything else on the curve of convergence. Life goes on. |
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