Less Pink, more Floyd

After a long drought of 20 years, I watched Roger Waters in concert again, last week. It was satisfying. I gained two major insights from the trip in addition to the music. First, good music does transcend generations – as the age of the audience was bimodal and many families attended together. And, second, we are close to ending an era in which music had meaning.

Pink Floyd defined music for an entire generation – an experience that is unlikely to be replicated ever again. It was a true innovation with significant leaps in many different dimensions – technology, thematic rock & roll and story telling. It defied the status-quo and it attempted to lift mediocre men and women above what was visible and audible. It described the futility of war and the boredom of peace. It exposed the predictability of the rich and the powerful and the inevitability of pain and death. It went further in thought and imagination than anything before it and encapsulated the entire experience in clear and consistent melody. It was music, for sure.

Recent research (1) describes the process of natural selection in music. Natural selection, however, does not guarantee optimal outcomes nor does it promote innovation. Natural selection, by definition, is a process that promotes the status-quo and kills anything that does not fit the present. In essence, it is a process that drives toward average and mediocre outcomes. In a world fueled by natural selection, we are unlikely to see another Pink Floyd, again.

(1) On the origin of music by means of natural selection. Published: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 23:31 in Mathematics & Economics 

Listen to Dr Bob MacCallum explaining the evolution of evolution of musical loops created by DarwinTunes, accompanied by a selection of loops from the website (mp3 download): https://icseclzt.cc.ic.ac.uk/pickup.php?claimID=84iHGVvekb442b2m&claimPasscode=tPtY3t77PuwENq2S&emailAddr=s.levey%40imperial.ac.uk

Source: Imperial College London