Repetition in music: does it bother you?

I like house, so no, it doesn’t bother me unless it’s done poorly.

The trick is to do it well.

I am glad that someone has finally recognized the song repitition, other than myself.

I have asked similar questions on Fluther and Answerbag. honestly, i believe songwriters have just come to the end of the road, when it comes to writing new song lyrics. to clarify, i do not consider rap to be music. they are just words repeated by a person that cannot sing.

Most of the music you hear today are just remakes of the older, better songs of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Good question and i totally agree with you. john

Think of Vivaldi. he used many of the same phrases over and over again. I find him endlessly fascinating.

@marinelife True, and it shows up all over the place even now.

Yes, but even more so repetition in popular music. Bad music stays bad music not matter how long the band has been around.

As the song goes:
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want

Deeply.

I like it! I like it!

Atonal and dissonant music is generally not what people want to hear. Sure, I like some atonal music (Shostakovich comes to mind, although he has a tendency to switch in and out of atonality). So no, it doesn’t really bother me. I am constantly finding new songs and pieces of music I like. No two songs are the same. Similar, maybe, but that doesn’t seem to bother me.

There are way too many different genres and artists out there to sum up modern music as a ghost of older hits. Sure a lot of it is recycled, but music is ancient man, who’s to say that older, ’‘original’’ songs ultimately don’t emulate something even older? People have to expand their minds and look away from the mainstream. The mainstream hardly defines the entirety of the music world, and like The Beatles were credited for incorporating violins and trumpets in pop music, ’‘Les Cowboys Fringants’’ enjoy making folkmusic but based on the technicalities of Iron Maiden’s work. I don’t see the problem.

If I read @john65pennington‘s post, he says that ’‘most’’ of the music today is remakes from older hits.

Hardly. I apologize for being totally rude and butting in, but this kinda thing shows to me an extremely narrow mind. Music is constantly evolving and changing, and there are plenty of original ideas out there. Just because it’s not from your generation, it doesn’t mean it’s rubbish. Just because you don’t like rap, it doesn’t mean it’s ’‘not music’’. I find it quite humorous that people who say they never listen to rap claim to know everything there is to know about it.
I bloody detest country and gospel, but you don’t see me saying it isn’t music.

As for the act of repetition, it’s normal isn’t it? People feel inspired, and they have sources, favourite artists or pieces they’re influenced by. Isn’t that what art is all about?
Besides, music has to evolve from somewhere…the metal genre for example, believe it or not, stems from classical music and classic orchestral pieces like Carmina Burana.
I give this as an example of music’s evolution. I mean Cradle of Filth is hardly Carmina Burana, but you can’t say that the violonists and pianists that worked for some of the songs have no talent, or just copy something.
Sure there’s a lot of crap out there, but to define the entirety of music on supposed emulation disguised as fact through technical issues like chords and riffs is not right, as there’s a lot of innovative stuff out there. It’s like paper and pencils. You need that to draw, right?

Avantgarde seeks to play around with new sounds, mixing styles and all, and a lot of it is something indeed. There’s plenty of examples, you just have to look around on your own instead of letting the radio tell you that whoever was the last person to remake The Wall or You Spin Me Round is the greatest musical genius ever.

The problem I think is opiniated conviction rather than any kinda fact, or the failure to realize that music, like any artistic medium, all owe their roots to something else or another. Of course a lot of it is gonna sound similar, or borrow from other places…it’s to be expected am I right?
We gotta expand our horizons man, there’s a lot of good shit out there, new and old, original or seen before.

It’s like horror movies kind of…they’re all the same, but what I enjoy in horror is what the genre is defined by, so I expect some of the same. Different styles, angles, attempts and whatnot with music…I don’t see the problem. Music is much too vast for it to be a problem.

It seems that most popular music over the last 150 years, has been based either on the 12-bar blues or an 8— or 16-bar A-A-B-A form, or some variation or combination. What adds the variety, in addition to major/minor tonality, is chord substitution. There is enough variation in the repetition that there is always room for originality.

@dominicx, there was a court case some time ago concerning John Fogarty. When he was writing for Credence Clearwater Revival, he sold the rights to those songs to Atlantic Records. Some years later, Atlantic sued him for writing songs that sounded like the older songs. In other words, he was sued for writing songs that sounded like songs he wrote earlier.