UnfinishedMusic

ThoughtStorms Wiki

BrianEno once said that in the future, music would be unfinished. Not something self-sufficient and complete in itself.

That prediction is certainly true of RemixCulture. A good popular song is one which is a tool-kit of components for re-use in a variety of alternative contexts :

vocal, to be pulled off and used over other sounds

theme to be arranged on different instruments

characteristic leitmotifs (sounds, effects, melodies) which can be re-used in different contexts

interchangable rhythms. (Though in some cultures eg. RaggaRiddims, it's the rhythm which gets interchangable vocalists)

In a sense, this is related to MusicalAbstraction. RemixCulture is a culture of discovering new things to abstract from music for re-appropriation in other contexts.

Examples :

EguinhaPocoto (See BrazilianPopulistMusics)

Missy Elliott's "GetYourFreakOn"

Presumably if we have a Noise thesis from JacquesAttali then this unfinishedness might herald a broader change in society. Although maybe it also echoes the outsourcing and specialization of industrial culture over the 20th centuary.

Maybe it's an example of a SystemEvolvingTowardsMoreSmallerSpecialistComponents

According to BillSeitz SethGodin's latest ebooks are "incomplete" : http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2005-09-08-GodinIncompleteBooks