Recursive remixes

Here’s a strange and interesting thing that happened to me. The assignment for Disquiet Junto project 233 was to remix three tracks. The assignment for Junto project 234 was to metaremix one of the remixes from project 233. One of the people whose remix I metaremixed was listening to my track and accidentally had it playing in two different browser tabs simultaneously. He liked how it sounded, so he did a metametaremix with two copies of my metaremix offset by a few beats. It came out amazing!

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In praise of copying

We conventionally place a high value on originality in music. But it’s been my experience that the desire for originality gets in the way of making music that’s actually good. The closer you are to your influences, the more definite and truthful your work is. The key to quality music is to blend together an interesting set of influences that you understand inside and out.

Music evolves in much the same way life does. DNA gets copied when cells divide and replicate. Music gets copied from mind to mind when people hear it and want to reproduce it. All musical learning begins with imitation of other musicians. I’d go so far as to say that all learning boils down to imitation. Primates and other smarter animals learn by imitation too.

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