I just noticed this video: about Why Modern Music Is Awful.
I found it an interesting watch (we knew it already of course). But it motivates me to work on creating more harmonically complex tracks with more deeper levels of composing (chord progressions, transpositions, etc.). To create something that keeps feeling good and is not boring or in the wrong way repetitive.
When I started watching this, I expected invective not about current popular music, but modern classical (or art) music, so I was prepared to rise up in defense. But as for modern popular music, I might grant the video's case (loudness wars, timbral variety, etc.), but with plenty of exceptions.
When I listen to process pieces like Piano Phase, YouTube commenters get passionate about how awful "modernist" music is, while I sit there in amazement at how novel rhythms evolve within this specific series of note classes. Certainly Piano Phase can be done with a sequencer (
), but the musicianship required to perform it as a human (duet, but
especially solo) is inspiring. And but also, forget the fact that calling 50-year-old classical music "modernist" says a lot about how stagnant
that scene might still be.
There's certainly great music being written today. I don't think I need to go any further than Phillip Glass's Piano Concerto #3 (2017). It's not on YouTube, nor any other streaming service that I could find, so you'll probably have to buy it. But it's just beautiful, and worth purchasing. The third movement might be one of my favorite pieces of music, period.
Sequencers provide valid tools for serious composition, I think. Repetition is a thing that the brain likes, but only when the thing being repeated has enough going on. Thus, I find the eight-step sequencer inadequate, except as a tool for switching things. A common modular technique is "sequencing the sequencer," and you can get anything between nice complexity and incomprehensible chaos. I don't know if these kinds of techniques can be done within a single Cirklon, but it's a good way to break the perception of rigidity that modern ("popular") music may have picked up.