This reading reiterates various concepts that we have discussed in class over the past few weeks. Most of the ideas were touched upon in one way or another, and a point that I, as well as anyone else I assume, resonate with is that as we listen to music, “we wait for something more, for change, uncertainty, the unpredictable”. Once any of these are encountered, the song or music would become more interesting or less boring. The change could be anything from introducing new instruments, breaking a cycle, speeding up the sounds, or adding a beat drop, which we have also discussed in class as we are always anticipating anything of this sort. The unpredictability, aspect is often a hit or miss I feel. Considering live coding, for example, if we would have been put on the spot to perform using tidal cycles with no prior background in what different audios or samples sound like and go into an unpredictable track, there is a chance it might be too noisy. However, there is still always a chance that it could also lead to a happy accident.


The “noise” I am bringing up is not the same as what the author mentions when she suggests the introduction of noise to make it sound more interesting. She discusses it in the same way that uncertainty would result in more engaging sounds, maybe by incorporating random corruption. This is a point that Aaron has made several times in class, adding ‘?’ or ‘degradeBy’ to drop random notes. This adds some spice to the music that we’re creating, avoiding repetition and possible boredom for the listener. From making these changes live together in class and when I was testing out and experimenting for the live performance earlier this week, I would definitely agree that these small changes actual have a significant impact on the sound. However, this leads to the same question that the author poses, is it more musical?