"Back in the 1970's nobody would have been able to predict rap music."

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"I think we're very poor predictors of musical futures. I've often felt that one problem with the 12-tone system lies in the fact that there is a logic in the progression from Beethoven to Wagner to Schoenberg. Back in the 1970's nobody would have been able to predict rap music."

-- from an interview with computer music pioneer, Paul Lansky.

Lansky appears to be saying that music is more interesting when it doesn't seem like the logical progression of something else. Is this true? Is there music that can really be predicted? If so, could it make a difference in what we listen to?

― dleone (dleone), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 20:21 (twenty-three years ago)

This may be one of the things that made me lose interest in much of the avant-garde wing of the arts: it often seem very focused on what the next "breakthrough" should logically be. Okay, we've knocked out all the walls and the ceiling has collapsed; so now we'll blow up the floor.

― Rockist Scientist, Wednesday, 4 December 2002 20:25 (twenty-three years ago)

"...Back in the 1970's nobody would have been able to predict rap music."

He's out of touch. Rap music was happening in the 1970s, he just didn't know about it.

― hstencil, Wednesday, 4 December 2002 20:26 (twenty-three years ago)

If it could be predicted, it would be done right then & there. What's the difference between prediction and invention, with respect to music?

― dave225 (Dave225), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 20:28 (twenty-three years ago)

nothing wonderful was invented on purpose. they're all accidents put to good use

― JasonD (JasonD), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 20:32 (twenty-three years ago)

J.D., you read like a discontinued Heineken commercial. ;)

(that will be the first and last time I use emoticons on ILM.)

― hstencil, Wednesday, 4 December 2002 20:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Dave - there's plenty difference. A musical style is only invented when more than one person starts doing it, otherwise it's just prescience.

― Jacob (Jacob), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 20:47 (twenty-three years ago)

I think this thread deserves more response.

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 5 December 2002 00:22 (twenty-three years ago)

It's possible to predict music that is technically impossible to make at the time with available technology. Ex: Thus Sun Ra could "predict" in the 40s that music in the future would all be made of machines and electricity, even though he didn't have the resources at his disposal at that time to make such music.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 5 December 2002 00:26 (twenty-three years ago)

There's something very amusing about him in Analog Days, that new history of the moog. It says that he was given some particular model of the moog, but after he got his hands on it he did something to alter it, so that it was now making sounds it wasn't "supposed to" produce.

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 5 December 2002 00:35 (twenty-three years ago)

Isn't Jamaican toasting considered a direct progenitor (I think that's the word I want) of rap? Maybe the quote should be "Back in the nobody would have been able to predict toasting."

― nickn (nickn), Thursday, 5 December 2002 01:26 (twenty-three years ago)

The Last Poets (esp. Lightning Rod and his "Hustler's Convention" lp), Gil Scot-Heron, Dolemite, Blowfly and many other rap progenitors were all active in the 70s. And the first big rap hip - Rapper's Delight - came out in the 70s as well (not sure what year exactly - '78?)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 5 December 2002 01:33 (twenty-three years ago)

The actual date doesn't matter too much. The interesting question (to meanyway) is whether these things can be predicted, and whether music which takes a leap tends to be more interesting. (Can one of you smart folks work in a connection to the concept of trivial and complex systems?)

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 5 December 2002 02:04 (twenty-three years ago)

I've often made the same observation when I hear people's handwringing about the hopeless state of music and its supposedly bleak future. The rise of rap before our very eyes is the most obvious example, but the same could be said of countless other styles of music: techno, punk, disco, 60s British invasion, 50s rock & roll. Nobody saw them coming, and nobody knows what's around the corner today. But you can be sure something unexpected will come along and knock everybody out. Of course, it doesn't stop people from speculating as though they should be taken seriously.

― Curt (cgould), Thursday, 5 December 2002 03:14 (twenty-three years ago)

I can predict that in 20 years, whatever is happening now will have a "revival."

Post-grunge revival? *shudder*

― David Allen, Thursday, 5 December 2002 15:53 (twenty-three years ago)

He's out of touch. Rap music was happening in the 1970s, he just didn't know about it.

I'm not sure this matters - it could be any dat and and any type of music that was invented after that date. Back in the 60s, would anyone have been able to predict drum'n'bass? Back in the 40s, would anyone have been able to predict Revolver?

I think he's right - I haven't really got a clue what pop music will sound like in 2030, except in my mind some or indeed a lot of it will sound futuristic. Even so, that's based on my contemporary idea of what 'futuristic' sounds like, which is almost certainly a completely different thing.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Thursday, 5 December 2002 16:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Isn't that the whole point?

This seems to be fairly obvious and redundant. It's like saying nobody could predict Avril Lavigne in 1993.

― Emmet Matheson, Thursday, 5 December 2002 16:55 (twenty-three years ago)

This reminds me of a Buck Rogers episode where, in the future, everybody still listened and danced to bad 1970s disco.

― hstencil, Thursday, 5 December 2002 17:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Heh heh heh. That would be the 'Andromeda' episode with Jerry Orbach as the evil manager...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 5 December 2002 17:44 (twenty-three years ago)

No idea, I saw it so long ago (maybe when I was 7 or 8), alls I remember is that the dancefloor set looked basically the same as the dancefloor set from Saturday Night Fever, that Buck wore flares, and that the chick wearing the fur thing was HOT!!!

― hstencil, Thursday, 5 December 2002 17:48 (twenty-three years ago)

have we ever done a thread on the past's idea of what the present's music would be? (eg i always really liked the band in the bar in star wars)

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 5 December 2002 17:53 (twenty-three years ago)

There are whole bands doing that thread, mark (see Stereolab).

― dleone (dleone), Thursday, 5 December 2002 17:54 (twenty-three years ago)

I want to predict some musical stylings right now:

Vocals will be sung backwards -or recorded & mixed backwards.

Some new kind of percussive instrument will play the lead melody.

White noise will be used... to tickle the eardrums of the performers so that they play a quarter step above the music as it's written.

..Save this thread. Someday, these things will happen. (If they've happened already, ... well, who would have guessed, eh?)

― dave225 (Dave225), Thursday, 5 December 2002 17:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Back when I used to listen to lots of (pre-rave) electronic music, my mom once sadly said something like, "This is what music is going to be in the future, isn't it--all electronic?" I said, no, it's never that simple. Things don't move in a straight line. Culture doesn't work that way. Etc. But in some ways I think she may have been more right than wrong. Wrong to make it so sweeping, but right that electronics would dominate.

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 5 December 2002 18:01 (twenty-three years ago)

How about popular music based more on drones? Plain chant hip-hop?

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 5 December 2002 18:06 (twenty-three years ago)

I liked David Lynch's depiction of future design in Dune - irrational, highly impractical, overly ornamental. Any prediction of future pop music needs to include bizarre fetishes that none of us can appreciate now. Like somebody in the 70s foreseeing scratched-CD glitch showing up in chart R&B.

― Curt (cgould), Thursday, 5 December 2002 18:40 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm still unpacking the past. (I like how that sounds.)

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 5 December 2002 18:49 (twenty-three years ago)

not to come down too hard on you RockSci, but "I'm still unpacking the past" sounds like something from a Michelle Branch/tori amos/Jewel/Joni Mitchell-wannabe

― Emmet Matheson, Thursday, 5 December 2002 19:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Emmet, it's kind of bad, but I like saying it. It's bad, but I like it. Maybe I should take up guitar.

― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 5 December 2002 19:15 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't begrudge yr right to say it, but it just smacks of that unintentional arrogance latent within precocious sing/songers who are on the road to self-discovery.
I used to like saying "Emmet vs. the Elements, only one will win" well, singing really, as I walked the shoulder of the highway in flash rainstorm near Moose Jaw.
Yrs might be bad, but mine's just dumb.

― emmet matheson, Thursday, 5 December 2002 19:39 (twenty-three years ago)

God, I hope not.

― David Allen, Thursday, 5 December 2002 20:12 (twenty-three years ago)

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