Even lovers of serious music have certain favorite recordings that they listen to repeatedly, even though those pieces have been recorded by dozens of others.
Pop music is repetitive and predictable, yet, ... well, enough said there.
Pop music is repetitive and predictable, yet, ... well, enough said there.
Just because we can transcribe an audio recording into 12 tones, and 16 divisions of a bar, doesn't mean that's all the information it contains. There's a whole lot more.
There's little variations in pitch, tone, dynamics, etc. All the stuff that separates a great recording from a lifeless snooze.
My theory is that pleasing music falls half way been the predictable, and the unpredictable. So if the beat is too predictable, the artist can always compensate by using an unusual melody... etc. But many of the ways an artist can add unpredictability can't be expressed with traditional notation.
I'm a "lover of serious music" and I do have some favorite albums that I come back to every now and then. But I don't listen to the same song in a constant loop on repeat. That would be dreadfully boring.
Similarly, most people would not enjoy a song consisting solely of a single measure repeated verbatim over and over again. Even the most repetitive music has some variation.
I seem to recall I read somewhere that (part of?) the album was painstakingly made using Supercollider [1], but can't find a proper reference.
On a more serious note -- yes, but even this would become boring quickly despite the variations. This problem has been solved by:
- using different themes for different sections, or
- intertwining two or more such themes for contrast within the same section.
Prime examples of this approach are Beethoven piano sonatas.
Indeed, even subtle variation can be enough to turn something "musical".
I play music, which requires listening to yourself practice the same things over and over again. Sometimes just a couple of bars. I like it.
Even if you get bored, that is not the same thing as the music suddenly sounding "bad". It sounds exactly the same.
But when you are practicing, you rarely play it exactly the same each time. Otherwise, what's the point of practicing? Hopefully, it sounds a bit better every time you go through it.