In Defense Of Music Against AlgoRhythms
words by Scarlet Moseula, art by Claire Wei
Sometimes I wonder if it’s possible to regain the childlike wonder I had before. As a kid, one of the many things I was enamored with was fractals. Despite being unable to grasp the concept of infinity, I would stare at everything from Mandelbrot sets to Sierpiński carpets trying to figure out what was so special about them. They looked like someone played a game of connect-the-dots with constellations, or a temple’s inscriptions telling of an ancient prophecy.
I now know that they can be simplified into mathematical formulas, whether or not I fully understand them. Mandelbrot sets are just a recursive equation set on a two-dimensional plane. Sierpiński carpets are shapes subdivided into smaller shapes ad infinitum. While it did take the magic away from fractals, it does call into question what other things I considered “magical” were just math in disguise, and one particular passion of mine started to seem suspect when I asked myself…
“Is music one misstep away from being completely reduced to a formula?”
I’m not referring to the basic ways music consists of pitches that can be measured or abides by tempos or patterns dictated by time signatures. Contemporary songs get flack for being indistinguishable from one another, and it’s hard to defend when a lot of pop songs use similar four chord progression. If you’ve listened to a song for the first time but find yourself feeling like you can predict the next measure, it’s likely because it uses the same structure that the Axis of Awesome made fun of. It would be tolerable if it were just similar chord progressions. After all, there are only so many chords musicians can use, and people can still add unique flourishes to these progressions. Ironically, the aforementioned Axis of Awesome parody proves this since a lot of the examples they use were cherrypicked. Looking at the original songs, they still have their own identity with snowflake branches and swirling spirals differentiating them from one another.
Unfortunately, this equation has much more variables than it seems. Machines like the K-Pop industry are infamous for homogenizing the culture around the listening experience. Every group has to have the same archetypes, every song has to have a carefully calculated “killing part” made to stick in your mind, and every album and tour has to follow the same marketing recipe. Of course, we haven’t gone over the computer-generated elephant in the room. Artificial intelligence models dedicated to generating entire songs from prompts have been on the rise, and while they do raise countless legal and ethical questions, I can’t deny that their output is impressive on a technological level. AI is also influencing how music is consumed, as seen in the “daylists” Spotify generates for you. Even if you remove artificial intelligence from the equation, algorithmic composition has existed for centuries and utilizes everything from live coding to fractals themselves.
I can’t pinpoint why exactly people want to break music down into a formula. Maybe it’s for easy money, maybe they think it’s making songwriting more accessible, or maybe it’s something else. It just seems to me that these formulas are in place now, and the habit loops will repeatedly improve them until we get close to perfection and rid any trace of humanity.
A world of music generated, advertised, and consumed through mere formulas sounds terrifying…
…but I don’t think it’s a world we’ll see in the future. I don’t think we’re even living in that world right now. Despite relying on synthesized voicebanks, songs utilizing Vocaloid and Utau software such as Hatsune Miku and Kasane Teto provide a good case study on how math and music can coexist in the modern day. Sure, there might not be humans on the surface, but everyone from the songwriters and graphic artists to audiences cheering with their glowsticks as one are 100% humanity at its best. These aren’t just artists and songs–they’re communities with their own culture, lifting each other up through iterating on each other’s work using their individual talents. We are all adding wrinkles to what we listen to and share, much like how slightly changing the parameters of a fractal creates a new and beautiful image.
We cannot completely separate music from these formulas, but we also don’t have to use them as much as we could. The euphoria from live music is something algorithms won’t replicate for centuries, if ever. From large concerts to indie house shows, support the artists around you any way you can. Most importantly, if you have ever had the longing to write songs (or create any art), let yourself be flawed and don’t fall into the temptation of relying on formulas to pick up the slack. Don’t lose your humanity, because that’s what makes art worth experiencing.
