...and proved my point about originality
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มี.ค. 2024
- Stealing like an artist is one thing....but the internet often feels very different. Where is the line between inspiration and trend chasing?
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After 30 years in advertising, I learned that two bright minds coming to the same conclusion for a similar creative problem is not STEALING. It's logic.
I love bands who sound like Black Sabbath more than i ever loved Black Sabbath
08:46 in comms and narratology we have the post-structuralist notion of intertextuality, where any text (that can be any form of organized utterance, from a poem to a photograph to a film to a piece of music) only exists in relation to all other texts that have existed before it - it will always be a reinterpretation of things experienced before, either by affirmation, negation, subversion, parody, quotation, etc.
When you're composing a piece of music you're tapping into your internal library of musical references and deciding what it will be like and what it won't be like.
The interesting thought here is that understanding art in this context expands the meaning, enriches the semantic universe any piece lives in. When you take a Bach piece and substitute all the notes, besides having meaning itself, it also has meaning when positioned alongside Bach, and the contrast between them, the choices made, tell yet another story.
So, even the act of "taking inspiration" is, in itself, a creative act.
"Unique instead of original!" Love it.
Jameson's way of explaining ideas and the background music are soothing and informative at same time .. Much luv frorm Syria
Not sure why magnum lute opus made me laugh so much.
I'm not hung up on trying to be original at all. All I care about is that I create music that I would like to hear as a consumer. As it turns out, what I like to hear as a consumer isn't very popular for the most part. And that's fine. That's why I don't bother publishing my music. That's why I don't have a YT channel. That's not to say no-one else listens to my music; my daughters listen to it and they will critique it! What I'm hung up on is that I'm not talented enough to make the music I would like to hear. Sad but true.
“Good composers borrow, Great ones steal!” Igor Stravinsky
I think if you can bring your own voice to a trend, then that can be interesting...
Eg. David Bowie jumped from the earlier folk-rock to glam rock to ambient/electronic, new wave, to funk in the 80s, then did drum n bass in the 90s...
That way he was able to stay relevant, and he worked within the trends of the time, but he brought his own spin/twist/take on those trends.
Same with other artists like Prince, the Beatles, etc.
That's true for artist you mentioned, but most artist never developed their own voice, which leads to the emptiness JNJ was talking about.
To consider the ability to create far more valuable than the creations themselves … that sure is something that deserves the time to let it sink in.
Thinking about it, that has a lot in common with 'giving a fish vs. teaching fishing'. Which makes sense, I guess. At least to me it does. 😊
Thanks for this video - and for the previous ones as well!
Sometimes you accidently write songs that partially already exist. It happens. That's my thought I want to share before the vid starts.
Well said, Mr. Jones. Thank you for always sharing quality thoughts and artistry. You forever inspire me.
So who stole the video on originality?
Great topic. I once asked someone, does it not bother you that you keep creating music and other people just steal what you create? He said "it hasn't stopped Nike from continuing to make sneakers!". That's all I needed to think differently about a lot of things.
I hope a lot of people will see this video !
because of M O N E Y every single time, it's all about... M O N E Y
Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.
Before we were born, we were copying.
Good kings (and queens) of which there actually were quite a few, despite how few clicks they get, would frequently go to the market, and elsewhere, just in disguise.
In 1984 when Cubase was still a twinkle in Steinberg's eye, Pro24 running on an Atari 1040 ST( 1 meg of ram), was as close as a mere mortal could get to a Digital audio workstation, a sampler with 10 seconds of stereo was king. The birth of "House" a genre that has stuck like glue, with adherants from at least two generations and these days steeped in nostalgia. It was churned out by the yard, the major record labels wouldn't even consider a tape if it didn't say "House" on it. If it weren't for Indie, the crushing boredom of this invention would have done me in. Pop has always eaten itself and what survives the cannibalism usually has worth.
I just wanted to make songs, based on my experience. Forty years on, that's still where I'm at. My options are much broader in terms of technologies at my disposal and there are people with knowledge and the creative power to put it to work who can show me how to exploit these technologies to good purpose. My music will not exhibit the intelligence that yours does most if not all will never be heard and that doesn't bother me because my reward is in the making.
Am I having a Deja vu moment or is this a reposting of a previous video? I feel like you said this before. Or maybe we’re just dreamers.
"unique, not original" yes!! that!! look back at early rhythm & blues, & the rock n' roll that sprung up outa that movement. there are LOADS of songs that are cut from the EXACT same mold. yet the majority of them... okay a whole lot of them have a uniqueness to them that make each song listenable & memorable & so on.
Every creation is an expression of where we are at the moment of creation. I heard a phrase that helps me: 'get out of your own way'. Thanks for the thought-provoking video. You have been a great influence on me for the past 10 mins and I have commented/expressed myself three times during the course of your video, and I hardly comment (on videos) at all.
Very interesting video Jameson - you took something that is hard to convey and conveyed it without too much criticism and helping us shift our perspective as well. Pressure is no good for an artist. Thank you for your relentless honesty and (aware) optimism. Cheers!
Thanks for the video. Recently a channel was made that took the name of my channel and put "the" in front of it and has uploaded similar content. It's really interfered with my creativity. I try very hard to create unique work and have struggled to develop it. Having an AI or some random person just put "the" in front of my project name and upload work that isn't compelling at all is like getting punched in the stomach. I agree that the concept of theft doesn't make sense when applied to art, but at what point does it become outright false impersonation?
I was reading Schoenberg on form this morning. Many painters paint similar forms, what distinguishes them is how they are uniquely able to conjure up that form. And in order to do that you need to understand how things work and why they work. Just inserting the form into your own piece doesn't learn you anything about why it works. And then there is the contrast between forms.
"I think the ability to create, is far more valuable than the creations you make themselves" I might even steal (sample) this xD
I really like the sentiment here, I have also always had the perspective of "I can always make more". I do think there was an opportunity here that was missed. There is a limit and presenting that would have been good even though that limit has changed over time. It still exists and confines people, incentivizing them to push themselves away from the lazy copy and paste.
whenever you reference your comp professor, i immediately channel to "wax on, wax off"
I hate watch the crap out of those MIDI Chord Pack ads.
So the question becomes how short can your attention become? And how intensive can those short impressions be made?
And once you have a quantum computer implanted in your brain and the number of RMS optimized pleasure impulses delivered per second to all your brain’s pleasure receptors has been finally optimized for all possible cases.. what then?
People will still need authentic meaning. Which they started out needing. Where will they find that? Big question.
When I wrote my master's thesis, I read a huge pile of papers. Then I started to think about what I could do and how I would solve my problem. After a lot of back and forth, thinking and trying, I was convinced that I had come up with a good theory and started writing. Somewhere in the middle of the process, I re-read all of the papers on the subject only to discover that I had unconsciously copied the method of one of the papers I had read initially (but didn't understand back then). I really had thought it was my creative idea but it seems that while I didn't even understand the contents of the paper initially, I had somehow processed it into the same idea during the process of thinking about my own idea.
After a short time of nervous-breakdown-like coping with the situation, I came up with a simpler idea that really no one seemed to have done before, programmed a simulation and got a good result. But it showed me that even plagiarism must not be conscious. And all we do is based on all we read or saw before. Even if the other stuff is just providing us with the boundaries of what has already been done before.
If we want to be creative and do something no one else has done before, even then we are influenced and restricted by what's already there. So we still base our work on others' by finding white spaces on that map and filling them with our things. But we require the filled places to determine where our white space is that we could fill.
I like your ponderings!
Awesome video J! Nice approach. All part of the great interconnected, influential power we all inspire.
You are just a good soul coach. Always enjoy hearing what you have to say. Thanks bro.
Just what i needed to hear today. It is easy to loose sight of the main reasons we make things. To learn to make more things and enjoy the process.
This was an insightful video and what a great statement from your mentor that Art doesn’t pander…. Thank you for sharing !!
Great video and insights. As a creator I definitely get the part about trying to jump on trends.
On marketing and Mr Beast thumbnails, it's a real shame to be honest. If I could tick a box on TH-cam that says "Do not show me intellectually devoid, sensationalist, mind-numbing content"
then I would. However, as you say, and as with much of the Internet today, TH-cam panders to the lowest common denominator.
For television, it's fortunate that networks such as HBO still exist. But they certainly don't make as much money as Disney's "300 milks of Star Wars" platform.
For TH-cam, I don't know what the solution is, but I really hope that we find one.
the funny thing is you can click "do not recommend this channel" on content that pops up in your feed...but that just assists the algorithm in one way or another. if i was a conspiracy theorist, i'd even say that youtube wants you to watch certain things and if you told it no, it would just find other similar content structured slightly differently and continually recommend it to you until you cave or fall for it. tell youtube that you don't like it...youtube keeps finding ways to repackage & deceive you. it all goes into a profile of sorts. content & channels are all networked and tied into one another if they're similar i.e. like 80% of people reading this comment guaranteed get fed the same content as one another. i don't tell youtube what i like, what i don't like. i don't upvote or downvote videos. i don't flag comments. i don't look up the same things on the same accounts or devices. and yet still i could be watching a documentary on medieval castles...and everything in the sidebar is related to medieval times...and there's the one obscure industrial techno song on an unknown channel with 366 views that i haven't listened to lately, but was thinking about for some reason the other day...and it's right there in the sidebar...begging me to listen to it. the algorithm figures out what you like and don't like one way or another, i also believe it can be downright "spiteful" at times, or given that it's not a human being, let's just say the concept of "brute force" because that's more inline with computer & programming terminology and will continually expose you to things you have no interest in, regardless of how much you express it.
Thank you for your sale! I bought both classes today. I want this year to be about learning to use what I have, as opposed to acquiring more stuff.
Good video mate. Definitely gets the creative juices flowing. Also love the outro - Make some stuff. I feel that. Cheers brother.
Side note….i spent half the video watching your sequencer behind you jump indicating cuts. I thought you had a LOT of cuts. Then I realized your sequencer was resetting after 13 steps.
Return of the MIDI chord pack :D
Beautiful thoughts and beautiful music - the track playing throughout the end was truly a beautiful work.
I so deeply appreciate your dedication to making TH-cam and the Internet that much better because of your work. By adding things of real value, thought, and growth, you put a little bit of light in something that can seem overwhelmingly full of murky darkness. I don't want to be tio sanctimonious about it all, but I do find that endeavor has real value - and you do very well at it. Thank you!
brice!!!!
@@emilyharpist Emily! Hello! Fancy seeing you here ☺️
Just wanted to agree with the comment below. Quality thoughts and artistry. Top man.
This video coincides with Momus putting a new album together & basically vlogging his process on youtube. He touches on similar issues of art/commerce, technology, social media, etc. Highly recommend (if you're into Momus 😅)
I am guilty of a bit of gossip curiosity over here. I wanna know who is this giant youtuber that may have "borrowed" mr. jones's idea for a video essay.
Can you imagine how shallow the process of art creation would be if all you were concerned with is "what's currently trending on TH-cam"? You're totally right, it feels super icky to get on youtube and see 8,000 videos on the same topic because people are trying to appease the algorithm. I guess my unwillingness to participate in that is a large contributing factor as to why my channel remains tiny 🤗
if you constantly consider this bc you want to avoid even the general direction its ok. it´s like thinking all time how everything you say could offend somebody. unless you think about that bc you try TO offend them and get them all in one shot. do people that think "popular=quality" still exist?
I forget who said it but: The way to deal with the theft of your ideas is have new ideas. Lots of new ideas. Miles did bebop until he thought that oversaturated, then he invented cool jazz and when white musicians dominated that, he looked at what the Grateful Dead was getting paid, he hired a bunch of rock musicians and invented fusion. He was working a jazz-hiphip fusion when he died. "All artists are thieves." Jean Genet said that.
Coming from the visual arts, not music, I find this conversation interesting. Not that we've figured out out, but we have appropriation as a possible approach. I e. Richard Prince. Had that not yet happened in music?
I’ve long argued that lauding David Bowie as original is a misunderstanding of what he accomplished. His stylistic changes were actually driven by changes in the musical culture at large, but he made them 100% his own. Every time.
And I loved every last minute of it.
Amen! 🎹
tbh most art isn't even art anymore, but some weird post-modern bastardization of an individual's self-expression being conflated for art
Art never panders (cough) *licensing!* Leave It In! 😂
But being inside an environment shapes your thinking about it. If you remain outside an environment, your view and therefore your thinking about it and in relation to it are different. TH-cam is TH-cam is youtube. Talking about the YT environment from inside it is different to talking it about from outside it. We always/never have a choice about where we are in relation to anything. An artist creates. An artist's originality as measured by our view of that originality depends on the environment that both the artist and the audience/consumer/observer inhabit. Or, an artist's originality is expressed through the medium of personality as a function of how much they can crystallise their vision even while acknowledging their influence. For example, I like Steve Vai and can appreciate his artistry even while acknowledging the huge influence of Zappa on him and his work. To paraphrase John McLaughlin from something I read 30 years ago; "as an artist I suffer immense anguish. But so what? It is the salt of existence".
If nobody built new art and techniques from the old, we'd still be banging logs in caves.
So I think it is time to gather all I have done and am still doing and throw it out into the world, not to compete or take revenue. I dint even know what I would need to do aside from put up a paypal address.
tend to agree with all of this. It's interesting that you distinguish between being original and being unique. They are different of course, but one thing I always held to was that it was still possible to be original in the way you channel your influences - or create something original by combining your influences in a new way. You say this would be unique rather than original. Sure. But it's semantics really.
Also this issue of "pandering". I've always been set on following my own path - making the music I want to make regardless of whether people get it. But I extended this to other areas - I don't like making videos or doing promotion, so I do these things in my way. The thing is that I've noticed that you don't get any traction because you're not putting out the kinds of things people are expecting. You're not promoting yourself like everyone else, your video doesn't look like everyone else's, so they think you aren't someone to take seriously. And just recently I've noticed that this affects simple things like getting gigs. Promoters also know what they're looking for and how it should be packaged and if you don't give it to them, they don't want you. Following a recent rejection I considered doing things a little differently. But now I think I won't.
Following on from that, I had an interesting conversation with a rapper, who listened to all of my hip-hop tracks and understood what I was doing/trying to do. He was absolutely right in surmising that I was making hip-hop with a rock sensibility - not that it sounded like rock, but rock is my foundation, it's what I know how to do, so I tended to approach my hip-hop tracks in the same way. He told me that if I wanted hip-hop heads to get what I was doing, I would have to give them what they were expecting to hear. And that meant applying EQ to bass and drums in certain ways, recording my vocals a line at a time instead of attempting to capture a performance - all good ideas. And I've gone some way towards doing this. But when you get down to it, all this is pandering. What I was originally doing with hip-hop was my intent, but I've started moving away from that. It makes me think, maybe I won't care what the hip-hop heads think. I listen to rock and hip-hop, and a lot of people did and probably still do. Sure, I'm probably limiting my potential audience by intending my music for people that like both, but also maybe I shouldn't care about that.
Anyway, lots to think about. I haven't gone that far over to the dark side yet, so I could just keep on how I am.
TH-cam is eating itself.
Is this a re-upload, or am I just having the world's biggest moment of Déjà-vu?
every content creator on youtube make the same videos
It's a reference to a video I made about a year ago.
@@JamesonNathanJones
Who made the video that you mentioned as You had to watch it, so do I.
@@JamesonNathanJones Yeah, I get that. That's not what I mean. I could have sworn that I've watched this exact video of yours weeks ago discussing another person making a very similar video to yours. I mean, I remember even some of the jokes you make here. So not just a snippet of Déjà-vu but the whole thing.
If this isn't a re-upload, I guess we've established that I'm slowly descending into madness. :D So weird.
@@Andysmusicaljourney If you're on my newsletter, some of those topics become videos later. So maybe not total madness lol
you could happen to the world or the world could happen to you
Chomsky talks of the development of a i as the biggest act of plagiarism ever.
Nothing new in the west.
People are desperately looking for approval and money. Few bother to create or share knowledge. In short, we get what we deserve, a society that is a reflection of ourselves.
That’s why output from ChatGPT (the fanciest database reporting program) is a function of the power fantasy tenor of our times. Which is actually the tenor of all times not just ours. See “nothing new under the sun”
no one stole your idea, its common sense that someone else made a vid about , your just paranoid IMO
But being inside an environment shapes your thinking about it. If you remain outside an environment, your view and therefore your thinking about it and in relation to it are different. TH-cam is TH-cam is youtube. Talking about the YT environment from inside it is different to talking it about from outside it. We always/never have a choice about where we are in relation to anything. An artist creates. An artist's originality as measured by our view of that originality depends on the environment that both the artist and the audience/consumer/observer inhabit. Or, an artist's originality is expressed through the medium of personality as a function of how much they can crystallise their vision even while acknowledging their influence. For example, I like Steve Vai and can appreciate his artistry even while acknowledging the huge influence of Zappa on him and his work. To paraphrase John McLaughlin from something I read 30 years ago; "as an artist I suffer immense anguish. But so what? It is the salt of existence".