M Ward - Transistor Radio

I once wrote an essay on the theme of musical derivation. that is that all modern music is derived from 50's and 60's music, and all 50's and 60's from the 1800's and so on an so forth. The general idea being to state that no music made today is original, it has all been done before, and everyone who writes music today is just stealing from Mozart or Stravinsky, or Duke Ellington or John Lennon... Even taking into account that music has evolved over the years, and new genres and style have been created that move away from normallity on such random tangents that they appear to have no connection to standard musical scales, they fact is music is made up of rythym and melody and these are standard elements. these are elements that can be gauged. There are only a certain amount of notes than can be heard by the human ear, there are only a certain amount of times that a beat can be played within a minute. This is mathematics. So surely if the creation of music is limted to a combination of a number of definable elements, repetition, whether purposeful of not, is going to occur, and the more likely occur in popular music as this seems to be the type of music that is most created... Anyway, i got a C for that essay. it was a load of crap. As i do here, i finished an extraordinary amount of sentences with a question, leading most of my university teaches to wonder why i bothered writing essays when i never had answers, just more questions. But then again University is a load of crap. Why do i need to show in 2000 words what i could happily describe to you in a 5 minute conversation? Why does writing down on paper prove that i understand a concept? why the F*&^ should it matter if i forget to underline or italicise in a bibliography? and why can't i ask more questions than i have answers to? that's what life is about.