How do you measure innovation?

HackettFan wrote: DDPascalDD wrote: I'd say experimental is more of an attitude where one aims for being innovative. As for time sigs... Coming back to Jacob Collier again! https://youtu.be/b78NoobJNEo?t=10m58s (especially at 15:10) If you thought time signatures were milked out and were done inventing... They're not, watch. I agree. Experimental is more of an attitude. And maybe whether one actually produces a genuine innovation is just trivia; it's the attitude that matters.

^Centimeters or inches?

HackettFan wrote: Can unusual time signatures still be innovative? They've been done before. Nevertheless, there are a lot of metrical combinations one can do within any given signature, given the wide palette of accents, rests, note durations, orchestrations, and mix of notes and percussive techniques (e.g. strumming muted strings and such). Surely all such combinations have not been exhausted. Does any difference remain between the experimentalism of 11/8 and 4/4? Is using a wider palette in and of itself more experimental or more innovative? Come to think of it as I write, is there a difference between being experimental and being innovative?

Hmm. On one hand it's probably very difficult these days to do something really new and innovative in this respect. On the other hand, while 11/8 and 13/8 and whatever have been done many times already, still the vast majority of music (or at least the vast majority of what people listen to) is 4/4 or perhaps 3/4. There may be a problem with focusing too much on innovation. I think there is a space opened by many ideas of the last, say, 120 or so years (which is a time span of which I think the concepts of originality and innovation became far more important in art and music) that is by far not explored enough. For a long time almost all music was made in a pretty restricted framework, either of accepted rules or of "habits" that had been used for generations. When originality and innovation became more central in the appreciation of art and music, it became less attractive to go somewhere where somebody else had been before, despite the fact that new ideas had opened spaces in which lots of things could be done, probably not to be branded "innovative" anymore and surely not as innovative as opening the space itself, but still with a potential to create very worthwhile new music that enriches the listeners. For this, musicians are needed who are not after innovation in the first place; there is far more than being either truly innovative or just following the pack.

So I'm very keen on musicians who for example take unusual (but not anymore really original) time signatures and explore the space opened by them, just because there's potential - only I don't think that "innovation" is the right header for this. ("Experimental" may or may not fit; I think experimentation is an attitude that is surely helpful, but may not necessarily produce innovation.)

Small somewhat misplaced illustration: I think that King Crimson's Discipline was a stunningly original and innovative album (of course potentially not knowing all influences that went into it), and Beat is pretty much their lowest rated album on PA - but I think Beat is great at exploring more of the space opened by Discipline, despite it surely not being as innovative and original as Discipline itself. For which some people put it down, I think (although of course some simply don't like it, innovative or not).

Can unusual time signatures still be innovative? They've been done before. Nevertheless, there are a lot of metrical combinations one can do within any given signature, given the wide palette of accents, rests, note durations, orchestrations, and mix of notes and percussive techniques (e.g. strumming muted strings and such). Surely all such combinations have not been exhausted. Does any difference remain between the experimentalism of 11/8 and 4/4? Is using a wider palette in and of itself more experimental or more innovative?

Come to think of it as I write, is there a difference between being experimental and being innovative?

Frankh wrote: mlkpad14 wrote: I don't have much to actually contribute to this thread, but this contains some very interesting material. I really enjoyed reading through it. Agree. However I would add this, and these are words already seen sprinkled liberally throughout this thread, and all over the site as a whole. Long ago decided what I wanted, want out of music is anything. Anything but the same old thing. The same old thing, the bane of my existence.

rogerthat wrote: HackettFan wrote:  I think this is true, but do innovations on a micro level then lose the value of their coin? Hard to tell.  Depends on the context.  For a guitarist, a micro innovation in guitar playing in an album may be very important but others may not attach the same importance to it.  Even stylistic changes are contextual.  As rock has grown older, every new stylistic change is arguably harder to attain because a lot of ground has been covered.

That makes sense. We never really expect the value of things to be uniform. It's like not expecting to get a better deal for your comic book collection at a comic book convention as opposed to a pawn shop. Harder to innovate over time? Maybe so. I'd like to mull that over. Mmm...how do you measure difficulty of innovation? Difficult question.

Edited by moshkito - October 05 2017 at 09:58

progaardvark wrote: Lewian wrote: It may also depend on the individual example. Let's say Band Y does something that strikes me as innovative and later I find out that Band X had done the same thing earlier. It may however be that had I listened to Band X first, it wouldn't have impressed me just because Band Y did in in a way that did it for me whereas Band X would've left me cold. The achievement of impact for me is then still with Band Y although I may acknowledge that Band X may have impacted Band Y. Or I may jump ship and say that now that I know of Band X, what Band Y did doesn't impress me much anymore and it's really Band X's innovation. Up to me! Austrian writer Karl Kraus once wrote (in German): "It's not important who has an idea first, it's important who has it better." The first may be the best or not.   I can agree with this.   A variation on this: Another possibility is that of an innovation developed independently by two or more artists at the same time, or an artist developing an innovation without prior knowledge that it had been done before. Sometimes it's the one that gets the innovation out into the open first, rather than the one that actually does it first. Obscurity of the artist can be a disadvantage.   I can't actually think of a real life example in music, but the invention of the telephone comes to mind.

I think one example would be two handed tapping. Steve Hackett invented it (mindful that there were variations on it that he did not, but I consider those variations simply different). For a long time, especially in the 80s, Eddie Van Halen got credit for it. It was always a prime example of the short shrift that Prog always got in the press. I recall one angry letter to the editor in a Guitar Player magazine in the 80s objecting to an assertion from someone that anyone doing two handed tapping was copying Eddie Van Halen. Nevertheless, it seems to be likely true that the technique was made popular by Eddie Van Halen. I don't see how that makes his contribution to that technique more innovative than Hackett's (more influential, yes). The acknowledgement of credit for it has now moved to Hackett. Will that make what Hackett did more innovative now or in the future than it was before? It just seems too post hoc to me, and here's maybe where the subjectivity of innovation that I've so far been leaning toward seems like a problem. The technique has been so tainted by how ubiquitous it is. Nearly every teen who walks into a guitar store knows how to do it. It does viscerally feel like even Hackett is being derivative when actually he's only copying himself, and I often have to clue people in about that when watching Hackett on video with friends.

I don't have much to actually contribute to this thread, but this contains some very interesting material. I really enjoyed reading through it.

BaldJean wrote: you don't measure innovation at all. the new is by definition the unmeasured

Uh oh, spoiler alert. Read this post last.

rogerthat wrote: I think when people categorically declare one genre as innovative and one as not so innovative, they are referring purely to innovation in style. As in when stylistic norms of how a genre can and cannot be presented get rigid, the music from that genre may become same-sounding. 'Micro' innovation in aspects of playing are unlikely to abate as long as there are new compositions in that genre because the very fact that the compositions of some musicians sound at least nominally different from those of bands preceding them suggests that something different is going on, even if what that is may not be obvious to listeners.

I think this is true, but do innovations on a micro level then lose the value of their coin?

moshkito wrote: Mixing two styles is not innovative. It merely brings up the interpretations to the modern times. You might not see this in rock music as much, in the Western World, but if you listen to all the smaller countries that few people listen to, you can see the fusion of things, and as an example, in Spain in the late 1970's and early 1980's there were a lot of bands inspired by YES and SUPERTRAMP, and many of them also incorporated the Spanish Classical Guitar. It did not exactly make them "innovative", but it told you very quickly how well the old styles could work with rock music. Basically, you learn quickly how everything can mix ... regardless of how.

This is interesting. What did it tell Spanish Classical Guitar? Perhaps nothing? I had been thinking about how some fusion movements are not equally accepted by both parent styles. In Prog, the incorporation of Classical and Jazz has been an accepted innovation. I don't think it's true in the reverse. And one style may indeed gain more than the other. What does Jazz benefit from Jazz-Rock Fusion beyond more exuberant drumming and amplified guitar (Miles' formula)? Well, maybe that is pretty major for someone zooming out to a broad view of innovation, but, zooming in on a micro level of innovation, there is very little musically that Rock brought to the table, as far as I know (...or anyone correct me if I'm wrong).

moshkito wrote: During my time, most new stuff has been defined by new instruments, and the synthesizer was originaly one of these, HOWEVER, that stopped being the case when the synthesizer became just a WORKSTATION, and stopped being about the creation of sounds that colored the landscape of the music. Nowadays, it's just a replacement for an orchestra (or its elements), and it's use is in most bands pathetic, and only used in pop/rock ideas ... like a quick theme to introduce a song, and that's the end of the synth ... that is horrible composition, and it will get you a D in college! And not a chance at Grad school!

I'm with you on this one. Synthesizers really excited me too back when you were assured that musicians were programming their own patches (or plugging in their own patch cables). Then they started coming with factory presets and patches were prefab, no longer part of an artist's creation.

progaardvark wrote: As to actually measuring how innovative an artist is? That's not easy as very few artists openly document all the details of every recording they make. And I readily admit that my knowledge of recording, playing techniques, etc. only barely scratches the surface. And there are multiple ways of measuring this: from how many innovations they made to the impact the innovations have had on music.

Two very interesting things. I agree I always find out a lot of interesting things whenever I see or hear an interview or behind the scenes look, and that often affects how I regard it afterward. It makes me wonder about what I don't know about the process of creation - process of innovation - in other cases. On the second part, I'm not sure how much I'm on board (I've only said that I'm not sure). Is the impact of an innovation relevant to the degree of innovativeness of a given work? Hmm...Lewian's answer:

Lewian wrote: I think "new and original" is not quite enough for being innovative; innovative also means "having an impact". This may mean that some other people use the innovative idea, or it may mean that something has a significant impact on the listener's feeling, thinking, mindset.

Hmm...I can see some of the justification, but there are a lot of reasons something may fail to have an impact, and I still lean toward the idea of innovation as a point of comparison with what came before, not after. Nevertheless, this idea is speaking toward the value of an innovation.

Lewian wrote: It may also depend on the individual example. Let's say Band Y does something that strikes me as innovative and later I find out that Band X had done the same thing earlier. It may however be that had I listened to Band X first, it wouldn't have impressed me just because Band Y did in in a way that did it for me whereas Band X would've left me cold. The achievement of impact for me is then still with Band Y although I may acknowledge that Band X may have impacted Band Y. Or I may jump ship and say that now that I know of Band X, what Band Y did doesn't impress me much anymore and it's really Band X's innovation. Up to me!

This is definitely a subjective view of innovation, and the same sort of thing that I've experienced, and part of what motivated me to open this thread.

Lewian wrote: Austrian writer Karl Kraus once wrote (in German): "It's not important who has an idea first, it's important who has it better."

Then, the irony of acknowledging a prior thinker is not lost on me.




Edited by HackettFan - October 03 2017 at 15:52