Clouds Across the Moon

Clouds Across the Moon (Extended 12' Mix)

Happy Go Lucky - Don't Bother

I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

The Music You Need

April in Paris

Prelude to a Kiss

It's Not For Me To Say

There is a huge space of possible songs, but the space of good songs is much more constrained. For a song to be good, it must match human psychology in certain ways. It must have sound patterns that humans find appealing. It may have lyrics that humans find meaningful. And it must be somewhat original.

What if most of the good songs have already been sung?

Creativity seems like magic, but it isn’t. Creativity is a search process. There is a space of possible songs that is defined by human psychology and our ability to make sounds. The artist is an explorer who searches through that space looking for good songs. I’m not saying that creativity is just a matter of searching. It requires good taste to select a good point in the space. It requires technical skill to manifest that point in a work of art. But the biggest challenge is simply searching through the space of possibilities. That’s what makes it seem like magic.

Somehow the creator finds a good point in a vast space of bad ones, like finding a needle in a haystack. A good search strategy helps, and so does luck. But the most important factor is the existence of good points to discover. If most of the good points have already been discovered, finding a new one is hard.

The information revolution has given us information abundance, including an abundance of art. Over the past few decades, it has become much easier to produce and distribute music. I don’t have hard data to support this conjecture, but I would guess that the majority of all music ever created was produced in the last two decades. People have been doing a lot of searching in song-space, and they don’t seem to be finding much. We could be running out of good songs that haven’t already been discovered.

Shakatak / Night Birds

Children of Odile

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