What do you think the future of music will be like?

A missing element: music and it’s evolution is inextricably tied to dancing. The rhythms have been honed through millennia to make us move and sing. Not just listen.

I never regret clicking on the videos of this channel.

Most people think that the internet has allowed us to make a huge modern change in how we experience and share music. But it's really moving us closer back to how music was all along. The "weird" period in musical history are the last several decades of commercialized music. So great to see this author sharing bigger ideas about music and humanity!

As another commenter pointed out, music is linked with dancing, which further corroborates with the notion that music is an activity, rather than an object. However, just as music became objectified with the advent and progression of modernity, the element of dance has seen diminishing prominence. Music has become more isolated and solidified. And this parallels the development of human societies, from nomadic people to permanent establishments. In my perspective, modernity was the culmination of the quest for man for claim permanence over everything. But the modernist project failed, and we’ve been living in postmodern times. And an era of experimentation and technological developments released music from a static shell towards a dynamic intercourse of sounds.

"There is no such thing as old music.....there is only good music and the other kind." - Duke Ellington

Music can make my 83 yr old mother with dementia/alzheimers go from completely unresponsive with her head down to dancing, playing air guitar ,and even singing word for word if its certain songs.its unbelievable. She needs assistance to stand and walk but she can do the twist without anyone holding her hand for atleast 30 seconds before her legs get tired lol.. music is medicine.

I ❤️ the new style of BIG THINK! The editing and backgrounds. Thank you!

I would disagree that music notation turns music into a mechanical process. I'm not a professional violinist, only played in high school and had an extremely good orchestra director. And engaging in classical music as a listener, being able to appreciate it more with my experience with the violin, there is a solid argument to be made that there are litanies of interpretation available for the musician, as well as the listener. Maybe I didn't understand his argument but I think music notation has been a great advancement. It's extremely intimate: to be able to materially and audibly produce what was only in the mind of, say, a deaf composer hundreds of years ago is deeply fascinating to me and I don't think should be discarded or downplayed in the slightest. Thought provoking video as always, BT

This was commentary from someone who seems to actually hate written music. Sort of like saying the invention of the alphabet was just a mechanism of control as opposed to a brilliant means to share and preserve ideas.

Remember, budding music students - and the professor is touching on this,the notation is the script that the actor must breathe life into. Notation is the map,but the sound is the actual territory. Musicians who can move hearts have a superpower that few other activities can match,the power to unify us.

I love this episode! - The musical alphabet was expanded as a result of the dissolution of the arts and the emancipation of noise by the Futurists (Russolo), and the objectification of sound and noise, as established by musique concrète (Schaeffer), made such wonderful phenomena as sound-art possible in the first place. It's fine the way it is. Music is also movement and characterized by doing, but not rigidly and caught in a time before technology. On the contrary, technology can extract it from space-time. It moves with the times, even if some of our professors want to avoid admitting it.

That's a rather cynical view on music notation. As other pointed out, notation existed way before the middle ages. Scales were a subject of study for the Pythagoreans Greek, and rhytmic notations existed in ancient Egypt. Secondly, they were not invented as a tool for curch control (again, a very cynical view of history) but as a solution for a common problem - if I have some sweet music in mind, how do I teach other how to play it without having to show them directly. This can be very useful when trying to teach a large group of players, and before amps, having a large group of musical performers was the best way to play louder.

I want a whole course like this. Interesting content!

I have news for this guy: hunter-gatherers were just as mentally fixed on the "circle of the seasons" as farmers were.

Hunter-gatherer societies have more leisure time than in industrialized societies. It was often spent sitting around, talking, singing, dancing, etc. Many indigenous dance and music routines are performed by skilled performers and enjoyed by crowds. I think it is inaccurate to map the evolution of music with the advent of concerts coming about in industrialized societies with social hierarchies as prerequisites.

Beautiful post, I loved it, thank you :)

facinating, this parallel of the huge changes brought by written music, parallelling those of the written word.

What a fantastic presentation - thank you!

So interesting, especially about the invention of notation. Great guest speaker.

Wow, one of the best eight minutes I've ever spent watching YT

7:09 Michael, you say "Music isn't an object. It's an activity". I'd be inclined to think music is both an an activity and an object. It's both a process and a result, just as is art or design.

Wonderful information. Thank you.

I think I see what he means when he speaks about notation being a mean of control I'm a self taught musician and honestly I'm happy I never had music notation forced upon me, cause a lot of classically trained musicians can't improvise. So in a sense they've lost the ability to channel their own creativity and end up having to imitate another's. I do enjoy classical music though and I'm hapoy It's around, but i definitely feel that music is meant to be felt and not just read. I'm happy I can play with my eyes closed, as it takes me into a trance like state. That doesn't mean I don't understand musical theory or apply it, it's actually something I love learning about , and it helps tremendously in understanding where to go and how to get there when I'm playing.

Utterly fascinating! Well done.

Brilliantly presented. Many thanks.

Great video, it tough me so much in so little time. Music is part of our everyday day lives and so wonderful to understand its history and where it will go.

Fascinating video. Thank you.

Outstanding video, thank you!

Great presentation! 💯

I wonder what the presenter’s comments would be about reading and writing in general. Has the ‘notation’ of the spoken word been a negative development for humanity? It has been fashionable for some time to dismiss music notation as something negative that hinders the creative process. Instead I propose that reading and writing has allowed humans to communicate much more complex ideas than without. It is no coincidence that music in Europe took off after the invention of notation. The last thousand years of music has seen a rapid increase in complexity that just would not be possible without a system to organise huge amounts of information. It is only in the modern era that music notation has come to be taught in a very dry way that is disconnected from sound and practice. This has given rise to a culture even among music academics to see their own greatest tool as something that is beyond the average person. Today it is expected that every child should learn to read and write. This gives autonomy and the chance to work with complex ideas. Personally I wish that musicians and teachers would take music notation, and the ways in which we teach it, more seriously. In my view, we need to start with challenging the idea that notation is in conflict with an aural approach. The two are actually complementary and should be developed together. Reading can be developed more easily once the aural skills are in place rather than trying to teach the aural from notation as is so often done. Let’s not forget too that history is only possible with notation/writing.

I don't know about the future of music (we need to sort out today's music first!) but I want to thank you for this video. I'm a 'musician' - that is to say I studied violin for four years as a child then some years later began teaching myself guitar. I have learned to read music 4 separate times, and forgotten each time. Academically I am 'not good enough' to learn music to an accepted professional level and I have known this all my life but always felt sort of 'lesser' for it, excluded if you like. My own attitude has always been that music should not even be such a strict and almost regimented device, that pure expression should be the aim - what's going on right now in this moment? is the question music should be asking. So when I take my guitar out onto the street and perform hit songs written by legendary artists, I am singing their song without drastically altering it, but I still play it my way. Sometimes I have people ask me why I don't play the guitar the same way as the original and I always say it's because I'm playing the song now, not the guy who you know played it, and often I see a kind of bewilderment wash over at this lack of understanding of music! My thanks to you are centered around the fact that as a Professor of Music, you have explained the role and the notion of music in a way that I always felt myself, even though I felt I was alone in that. I was always going to continue on my own path anyway, but somehow you have added a support beam for the ever fluctuating state of my confidence levels!

Excellent and surprising documentary about the history and future of music!

Beautiful video. I need to read that book

Very interesting; another win for BigThink

I think notation has done a great deal of good. Just as writing language has.

adrian berengeur red dress in the opening is fantastic!

Excellent. I learned a lot. Thank you.

every artist or aspiring ones should listen to this

Professor, you are too good🙌🏼

It's very interesting, although he does make certain conceptual leaps which I hope are better explained in his book. For instance, the idea that the purpose of the invention of music notation was that it be used to exert control seems a bit of a stretch. It's essentially a recording medium, invented before the existence of audio recording technology, in which sound is encoded into visual symbols. If others didn't also learn to read and write this symbolic language it would have been much more difficult for people to share musical ideas across distance, culture and time.

This is an excellent video.

Thank you for this video

Great Video:) whats the song of the chants starting at 5:20?

That was very good! Thank you 😀

Music is everything it will reach your soul

I loved this!!

Damn this is actually very interesting. It makes me see music from a different perspective that I've never even considered nor cared of.

This was most enjoyable. I'd welcome more episodes with him. 🦋

The music at the end of the video is Song: Voyage Album: Beyond Artist: ANBR - Adrián Berenguer

Beautifully exlained. 👏

The simplification of the evolution of music from essentially the early medieval period to the classical period in this video makes it seem like the development of music notation and the roles of a composer or performer are somehow a bad thing. Plato would have happy with the classical sense of music. To suggest that the intellectual development of music is somehow a bad thing is an incredibly close-minded take. It's sort of like saying that the developments in western philosophy or science over 1000+ years Were actually a bad thing and actually made science and philosophy worse today. Besides that this video oversimplified the actual history of music in favor of filling its run time with useless rhetoric about "the future of music" that argues that 'technology' is the solution to our "problems" or the hindrances of historical music practice and technique.

This just blew my mind. I am so grateful, and honored, to live in this era. One of my favorite videos Big Think!

5:23 I will go with Saint Yared of Ethiopia (25 April 505 - 20 May 571), more than 1500 yrs ago, to be the first composer who came up with musical notation. Saw them and they're simply beautiful. Not boring at all. Lol You should have checked.

Interesting talk, thank you.

Well done, Sir.

I jus came back from kribi Cameroon yesterday 1 of the most beautiful beach places I’ve ever seen in Africa

That was wonderful.

loved.

Any idea of the religious piece of music playing from 5:30?

This man has in his concise and erudite summed up exactly what I think about music (also 'art).

I think musik in the future will further help to "align" people. I mean it in a good way. For me its heavily underestimated what good medium it is to transfer ideas, feelings... I think music has an important role in the future to bring us together which is so important in this time when everything feels divided.

What's the music in the beginning of the video at 0:11 ? It's beautiful!

Not completely new to me, but quite interesting, still. Note: There's a mistake concerning the site where the first flute was found - it is called "Vogelherdhöhle" and not "Hohle Fels" as written in the captions (this is simply wrong and doesn't mean a thing in German, they were aiming for Felsenhöhle which would translate rock cave but not specify which one!

*english sub* *turns sub off* *english sub is still on* Repeat x11 What a nice video

Wants to emphasize that composers aren't all there is to music history Classical music is playing in the background

I’d like to hear more about that in depth

I think its up to the musician/s to read the staff sheet music interpret it and bring it back to life. there are many who succeed and we can enjoy lovely moving music to this day 😊

What a beautiful video

I kindly want to sample this for my report at some point.❤

i enjoy listening to music, almost all kinds of music, but i have zero musical ability. Making me very glad that most other people can produce it.

Humans have created music for pleasure and sadness; your channel shooting incredible interesting videos.

What is the name of the chant played when Michael was talking about churt music?

Love this video

Thank you.

Is not the heart the first musical instrument, the first beat. And love the snippet of Blossoms - There's A Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls).

Bro casually skipped over 12TET

Fantastic!

5:30 can anyone link me the recording of the monk that is playing?

Some argue that our bodily connection to music and the universal occurrence of it can be explained with rhythmic entrainment, which is a physics principle that makes metronomes align their movements. The rhythmic pulses in our brain align to the pulses from our outer world, creating a timeframe (or affordance) for movement. 120 bpm is popular for dance music and it is similar to a quick walking pace, coincidence? I think not

I love that Tupac Shakur’s photo was included

Always assumed the first instrument was a tree leaf. Humans noticed that the wind blowing through a tree made a sound. And we tried to replicate that by blowing on it.

What a wonderful video

Our notions of ''discordance'' have also contracted! Hayden might not have liked Ornette Coleman- but I surely do. Interesting that many jazz players of Coleman's generation thought it was ''out of tune'' or noise. But I'd heard Hendrix for a good decade before encountering Coleman, and took to his music like a ''duck to water''. On the sad side, the loss of, say- Aztec culture (and music) is heartbreaking. I LOVED the way in Close Encounters, humans and extraterrestrials first communicated through music. Yes, music can be seen as ''mathematical'', but I like to think the ''space travelers'' just dug the sound! Maybe they'd have come sooner, if SETI was blasting Stevie Wonder's, Superstitious, or Pachelbel's Cannon! I wonder how many light years out, the sound of Elvis has gone? Imagine if the mother ship ignores D.C., London, or the Giza Plateau, and lands in the front yard of Graceland! 😊

The great geniuses & the life of music in the human race are interactions & complimentary. This is not Big Think. It is Small Think.

environment determines change, in all things. so interesting

Brilliant!

5:50 Love greogiran chanting

Thank you ~

Sometimes I wonder how many wooden instruments are completely lost due to degredation. Bone lasts, some metals can last for a bit, but wood is not likely to last 10,000 years unless it’s in a bog.

Widespread musical notation was more good than bad. For one thing, it would have been much harder for the Beethovens and Mozarts of the world to learn from previous generations of musicians because all of those works could very easily have been lost to time. As the author himself pointed out, most people only saw one or two symphonies in their lives. Without easily available sheet music, they would likely have never been able to hear or play for themselves the great works of others. His point about musical notation being an element of control is interesting, but it's trivial compared to the levers of military, economic, and religious power. All of the injustices of history would still have happened without the widespread existence of written music.

Honestly, i don't get the negativity towards staff notation. In my (maybe a bit naive) opinion, it may even be a good thing, that music became more static and objectified. Or at the very least, it's not entirely bad; i could imagine that staff notation and music becoming more static allowed music to reach new levels of harmonic and melodic complexity, as every note and every chord could be precisely planned out to fit just right. Also, I don't mind the increased differentiation between the composer and the listener, because it gives the composer (who has more musical knowledge than the listener) more freedom and control to realize his/her vision.

Amazing video

He missed the enormous influence of Indonesian folk music mentioned in the Spinal Tap documentary fully explained by the glorious Nigel Tufnel.

Guys can I ask if what music in the background in the beginning of this vid?

Hunter gatherers also depended on the "circle of the seasons" - that was not just invented by farming. For a book on this topic, look at Graeber and Wengrow's recent "The Dawn of Everything". Hunter-gatherers and even some 'sedentary' peoples changed places depending on the seasons. So what we think of as farming communities may have sometimes been hunter-gatherers, and hunter-gatherers may have moved depending on the seasons. This video makes it seem like 'music for leisure' is directly the outcome of farming. But hunter-gatherers also played (and play!) music for leisure. For instance, in some societies, songs were (and are!) played when people return from a hunt. Some hunter-gatherers societies in Central Africa, for instance. In discussing music in relation to 'power', the speaker makes it sound like such power necessarily means songs for 'the king'. But a lot of traditional music around the world - perhaps most - was sacred music, where music was a means of communicating/exchanging with divine powers (gods, demons) and spirits (such as deceased ancestors). These also had power. In some societies, such as in Southeast Asian and South Asian communities, the 'king' might have actually been considered a kind of divine figure. And some indigenous communities also have played music for spirits who have some kind of power over them. So his evolutionary schema really does not make sense. It's also not true that concerts for 'leisure' were only performed for the upper classes. To take one random example, Tamil plantations laborers in Malaysia in the early twentieth century were allowed to enjoy films from mobile trucks and staged plays that included music outside of work hours. I'm sure the examples could have been multiplied. All throughout South and Southeast Asian history, epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana were performed in villages for average people. And this was leisure, even when or if it sometimes had a ritual component. The largest historical transition in conceptualizing music, I contend, had more to do with how it is viewed in relation to 'work'. Music became viewed not as a job you're born into (like a caste) or something that is mundane labor performed functionally in daily activities; it became redefined as something 'after work', as 'blowing off steam'. He's also wrong in saying that in previous times there was no distinction between people who perform music and people who listen to it. In many societies, particularly throughout South Asia, drummers were often parts of the lower castes or outcastes (such as in South India) and performed at funerals and other religious events for the upper castes. This is not the only place where musician was a stigmatized profession that performed for upper castes. In Korea, for example, traditionally the lower castes performed for the upper castes. And the upper castes would not typically play that kind of music. He's right that the modern idea of a composer is new. I'm sorry for being a snob, and I did enjoy the video, there is value in it, particularly in the latter half. But I do have a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and have taught this topic for almost twenty years, so I believe my statements are not coming out of thin air.

Musical notation, like writing down language or creating physical art structures (paintings, buildings, etc.) allows increased complexity but usually results in (not necessarily entirely eliminated but) greatly reduced spontaneity. Complexity -- for example, complex thoughts spread across our planet in the form of books, orchestras of 100 musicians playing intricate works with razor precision; and spontaneity -- the mood of the moment as reflected in almost every musical occurrence EXCEPT what little has been written down, so including traditionally-played Indian classical music, American Jazz, Japanese shakuhachi, Javanese gamelan, Spanish flamenco, West-African Kora and on and on and on, around and around and around the world. Both styles have a lot to offer us. The issue is that spontaneity, like Michael Spitzer points out, is impossible to capture and keep alive; so it's hard to can it and make money from it. In a world where we all have access to music but mostly in the form of recorded, for-sale units on portable electronic devices, spontaneous music is being pushed to the side. I think that the future of music, like our interaction and experience in the metaverse, is going through a highly-artificial period at the moment, which, besides offering us many new experiences and abilities, will lead to a strong desire to return to "the real thing" -- real-life outdoor adventures, increased popularity of acoustic music and spontaneous (improvised) music of all types.

But where exactly does the music come from in the first place? Why was it invented? Is it because people tried to imitate birds, for example? Or is it because we are surrounded by rythm and music sort of naturally emerged from this? Any book/article on this topic?

I need more cow bell

Very informative!....Would love to hear your view on how 40,000 yr old bone flutes are necessarily connected to Europe/Germany; when evidence prove that the modern European were still evolving through migration from Africa/Asia at this stage? This almost infers that Polyphony / Complexity in music had its existence in Europe; and that ancient music only conformed to simple monophonic rituals, without real development; until Modern Europeans blossomed?