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http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/

That's an interesting, well-produced 4-part series.

The creator, Kirby Ferguson, has a Kickstarter up for a new project called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.

Just sharin'.

Interesting. Love me some Zepplin. This is all very cool because right now I am kind of addicted to Avicii - Levels and the Skrillex remix of it.

Awesome 4 part series. Watched them all! The comparisons to where movies obtained their ideas from was amazing!

Kind of depressing how limited we are as humans. Cool video series, nonetheless.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Kind of depressing how limited we are as humans.

I disagree. He nails it with the definition of "creativity":

"Copy, transform and combine. It’s who we are, it’s how we live, and of course, it’s how we create. Our new ideas evolve from the old ones."

derFunkenstein wrote:

Kind of depressing how limited we are as humans. Cool video series, nonetheless.

Not really, it just acknowledges that our knowledge and ideas are built on the efforts of our predecessors. The concept of memes is as old as civilization itself.

Genuine "creativity" isn't common or extraordinary rare. It just sometimes took a person to look outside of the box.

Yeah, I wouldn't call it "depressing" either; in fact, I'd say the opposite: the "everything is connected" angle is pretty cool. Just goes to show that society really is more than the sum of its parts; most of the creative works people produce are, at their core, a collective effort. The series does an excellent job of driving home the point that the style of militant copyright/patent/etc. enforcement that is becoming the norm is detrimental to society.

Yeah, I don't think it's depressing. If anything it's a rather beautiful idea — that all our ideas are interwoven in a big complex chain of cause-and-effect.

I liked the Henry Ford quote at the end of the third episode:

Henry Ford wrote:

I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.

Just an elaborate version of the age-old "we stand on the shoulders of giants" metaphor.

What I mean is, we can never truly create something original again. Our minds are stuck in a mode that sees only a small fraction of all possibilities. We might *think* we have all of the base components covered, but we can't, right? There has to be more than this. The phrase "there is nothing new under the sun" might have been the last time there was an utterance of a completely original thought. I'm pretty sure I'm not saying anything that someone didn't already say.

Maybe this is the cause of my own self-imposed writer's block. Very rarely do I ever write down a musical phrase and a chord progression, because I play it and sing it and think to myself "boy that sounds an awful lot like X".

@derFunk -

Maybe you should use a random number generator to create your chord progressions. The result may not make for pleasant listening, but at least it'll be original!

@axeman -

Zep was in the right place at the right time. People were ready for their particular spin on things, and the attitude they brought to the music. The fact that the music was derivative is (mostly) irrelevant.

The Beatles were hugely over-rated (and quite derivative, especially in their earlier years) too.

true.

I think part of my problem is that I've been listening to and playing an awful lot of popular-styled music, which is very iterative itself. I really and truly live the four chords right now.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Maybe this is the cause of my own self-imposed writer's block. Very rarely do I ever write down a musical phrase and a chord progression, because I play it and sing it and think to myself "boy that sounds an awful lot like X".

-As this question depends on how long the song is, I have written a rule at the bottom in which given the number of seconds measuring the duration of the song it is possible to calculate how many songs are possible in that period of time. (The following numbers I work with are also theoretical but will give you a reasonable answer based on the human processing capabilities).

The human hearing range is 20Hz to 20000Hz. Therefore range is 19980 (humans can't detect 10ths of hertz). Humans can hear from 0.00 to 250.00(any greater and you're deaf) decibels.

So that's 25,000 (for the loudness distinguishing). 25000 * 19980 = 499500000

Planck's time (smallest unit of time) is about 3.3 x 10-44 sec. So that would be about (1.64835 * 10^53)*seconds of duration = number of possible songs.

For 2 seconds there are a possible 329,670,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 songs possible, theoretically of course...

Read more: Will we ever run out of combinations of musical notes, so that no more new songs can be written? | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/35088#ixzz1nDMbgeyw

derFunkenstein wrote:

What I mean is, we can never truly create something original again. Our minds are stuck in a mode that sees only a small fraction of all possibilities. We might *think* we have all of the base components covered, but we can't, right? There has to be more than this. The phrase "there is nothing new under the sun" might have been the last time there was an utterance of a completely original thought. I'm pretty sure I'm not saying anything that someone didn't already say.

We can. And we will. Scientists are colliding atoms that one day might lead into something new. There are billions of spices waiting to be mixed and experimented on that might cure a disease. One day the common cold will be cured... one day there will be no more cancer... one day there WILL be completely NEW discoveries! Be patient!

The assumptions underlying that statistical analysis are totally whacked, from both a physics and human perception standpoint. And it ignores chord progressions and rhythm entirely (only focuses on a single sequence of notes)!

There's nothing wrong with a well-done four-chord pop/rock song. Huey Lewis did an album of covers a number of years back called "Four Chords and Several Years Ago".

But I do find some of the more "out there" stuff to be more interesting...

You're kind of excitable today, gleek. BTW, your number implies that everything will sound totally unique but that's not true, necessarily. By core components I really meant music/movies/literature. No new and interesting themes. No compelling, original archetypes (which is an oxymoron if I've ever written one). A complete lack of new tonalities, rhythms, etc. Now we're just playing with Lego.

Yeah, the vast majority of those would just seem like random noise to us.

... but some people seem to like that...

derFunkenstein wrote:

You're kind of excitable today, gleek. BTW, your number implies that everything will sound totally unique but that's not true, necessarily.

None of that was "my" numbers. I gave reference to where I pulled it from, so don't blame me for any discrepancies.

derFunkenstein wrote:

By core components I really meant music/movies/literature. No new and interesting themes. No compelling, original archetypes (which is an oxymoron if I've ever written one). A complete lack of new tonalities, rhythms, etc. Now we're just playing with Lego.

Lego's rule!

thegleek wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

You're kind of excitable today, gleek. BTW, your number implies that everything will sound totally unique but that's not true, necessarily.

None of that was "my" numbers. I gave reference to where I pulled it from, so don't blame me for any discrepancies.

So you're saying it's just a case of GIGO?

(The 10th of a Hz quantization is silly since perception of frequency is logarithmic; if you're going to quantize the frequency steps it needs to be in fractions of a semitone. The Planck time thing makes no sense, since you can't perceive a frequency if there's only a fraction of a cycle present. And those are just two of the really glaring issues...)

I just meant it was yours because you provided it. Citing your references is good, but it's still your reference.

k well at any rate, I'm donating $20 towards that "This is Not a Conspiracy Theory" kickstarter project. Well worth the investment.