I visited Pluto for the atmosphere, but stayed for the music. Pluto Radio is one of those crazy new twenty first century high-technology music stations. Beyond terrestrial. Beyond satellite. They use the tubes of the internet to broadcast a fantastically unique and eclectic mixation of independent music. Not Indie® music. Not Alternative® music. But true, honest to goodness independent music.
So what is independent music? Well independent music is what Alternative® music and Indie® music once was before being sucked into the vacuous void of popular culture forever. Independent music is just that, not dependent. Not dependent on turning a profit. Not dependent on pretty packaging. Not dependent on pleasing the masses. Sometimes not dependent on pleasing anyone, not even the pontificator of the music itself. Now that is independent. Pure creativity.
So if you feel the need to explore commercial-free music of the highest quality and caliber, head over to plutoradio.com and have a listen. You might even hear a little Bernie on there some day.
I got sucked into a thread about music theory recently and was prepared to just end my participation by stating: "To each their own, so who cares how people use or don't use music theory as long as their song sounds good?" But instead, I crafted a post that finally articulated my feelings regarding art and science, which ended with the statement: "Yep, art is science." So yep, I think art is science. Here's the post…
In music, the key helps set the mood, the melodic space, of the song and the phrasing defines the structure, which further defines the mood.
In painting, the color pallet helps set the mood and the brush strokes define the structure of the image, which further defines the mood.
So a finished song or image is made up of an unique combination of pallet and form.
In nature, there are certain visual and aural pallets that generally reflect certain psychological states (i.e. mood). Using the color red for stop signs was not an arbitrary choice.
Over time, humans have identified those pallets, those naturally coherent groupings of tones or colors and have given names to those groupings (e.g. Major, Minor, Earth Tones, Pastels, etc) so that we don't have to reinvent them each time we want to create a form to express a particular mood.
So the theories that define musical and visual arts are not rules that were invented by humans. Instead, they are simply naturally coherent groupings of tones or colors humans have given names to, which map to particular moods due to the psychopathology of the human brain.
Yep, art is science. How's that for controversial?
So, how's that for controversial?