They said back then the synthesizer was the sound of the future, what about now? Is there a rythm of the future rather than a sound? A music genre?
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I feel like polka is making a big comeback.
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Like the Beer Barrel Polka song?
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See also this thread :
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it’s called polkawave
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Yeah, just like that. But maybe more synths, so it is ready for the future.
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That is the future.
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my response traveled back in time.
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Share a track please
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The track is in the future, we haven’t invented it yet.
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Neat thanks!
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I have a story about making predictions.
When I was a kid I had one of those rare moments of awareness. When I noticed that music is hard to appreciate across generations, I made a bet with myself about the future sound. Noise.
I didn’t realize at the time that every generation thinks of the next generation’s sound as “noise” to some extent, but I had something more specific in mind… it would be about bringing out the musical aspects of actual noise, or arranging noise in musical ways, or generally communicating music through noise in new ways.
Part of this was the belief that we would cross a singularity and come out the other end, like when a chaotic system starts showing new modes of order:
Reasoning was: we’ve already got synthesizers, innovation doesn’t stop, but the tech is almost entirely in the refinement phase now. We’re hooked on novel sounds not just novel rhythms, harmonies and melodies.
Since then, things progressed in surprisingly unsurprising ways. The noise came in every way I vaguely imagined and more. (Or not more, because I knew it was something past imagining.) The Downward Spiral did stuff with noise I hadn’t thought possible. Lots of other stuff worth calling out, but the noise in this changed my life on the spot. It’s possible some example pre-dates TDS, but keep in mind NIN is a pop band. (I think the fact that people call it industrial supports my point, the noise became pop.)
And now we’re in that trans-singular space where the hyper-clean sounds are popular too. Dubstep and nu-stuff and whatever. Genres I can’t even name. Not a particularly striking example, but KMFDMDFMK could never figure out where they wanted to land on this spectrum. Probably didn’t care, and that’s cool too.
All this is to say it helps to make predictions in context. For music trends, generational context is quite huge, and lately technology is a big driver. I have no idea how kid-me clued into this. He was not that smart, and definitely not good at that kind of perspective.
No idea where we’re going from here. We’re deep into the chaotic region, so more insight is needed. Radical freedom? I doubt it. But one thing I’ll say is I don’t think you can pick the sound. What happened with hip hop escaped my predictions, for example, and it was quite relevant to the time frame, but mostly parallel. The population is getting bigger while the world is contracting thanks to improved communications. This means support for a greater number of strong trends.
That’s all I got. Have fun.
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when I saw you responding for 20 minutes I knew this was going to be good.
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I don’t care what the future sound is along as it bids farewell to those trap high hats.
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I prefer catch and release high hats, you trap one it doesn’t stop the rest from breeding.
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Granular synthesis and, uh, stereo sampling?
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