Forum - Week 2 - Originality

"I am the originator." — Little Richard


In this forum we had a discussion on the originality of music. Stephen Whittington led the discussion, which was an interesting two hours, full of music of vast varieties. Two of Stephen’s quotes which seem to have popped up a few times now, are “I want to be like everyone else”, and “If you steal from one its plagiarism, if you steal from many its research.”

We were then played several pieces of music, some of which were pieces made out of pre-existing music, but chopped up, and others which were ‘original’. We were posed the question of which of the pieces were original. I personally believe that they were all original, even the pieces which were created using other peoples music, because even though they did not write the music, they put a different creative aspect on it, henceforth making it original. But then there is the philosophical question of originality, are any of us actual original? By typing originality into the almighty Wikipedia, I got the following: “Originality is the aspect of created or invented works as being new or novel, and thus can be distinguished from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or derivative works. An original work is one not received from others nor one copied based on the work of others. The term "originality" is often applied as a compliment to the creativity of artists, writers, and thinkers.”1 Although this meaning does support my belief about whether work is original or not, there is still that great philosophical question looming all around us. I could go into a debate about whether anything in life is original, but that would be more of a discussion for a philosophy 101 blog than a music tech blog.

Back to originality in music, although I believe most of the music played to us is original, I do not believe that the majority of music is original, because how can one be truly original when you must follow the rules of counterpoint or jazz. The reality is that so many songs simply use the 14736251 progression, or derivatives of it. To be truly ‘original’ in music, one must throw off the shackles of theory and embrace doing what feels right to them, not what they feel is ‘meant’ to be the right way.

I can think of several prime examples of people who have created good original music without the fetters of theory, two of which are Brian Eno, in his ambience works, and Malefic of Xasthur.
Anyway as you can see from this I really don’t understand the point of knowing theory when some of the best and most original music is created by people who break the ‘rules’.

If anyone wants to have a discussion on originality in music with me, feel free, as I would be interested to hear your views.

Until next time.

En Taro Adun

1. Originality, Accessed 14/03/07, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originality