key changes
July 28, 2024
My kids have been turning on the radio and flicking through stations lately. I do not aim to propogate a sense of "good" and "bad" music for them so I try not to interfere with their navigation choices. Its really refreshing to hear (mostly what I would consider "bad") music that happens to be on the radio through their perspective.
One thing I find to be a turnoff is when I can predict what comes next in a song. When the experience resembles a markov chain, it no longer feels meaningful. Its so cool how my kids don't have that probability model baked in to their ears yet.
A key change is an excellent compositional tool to incite the human listener out of their lizard brain. The most vanilla of key changes are certainly well traversed in the markov chain, but there so many roads less travelled with wonderfully preserved impact.
There is a sweet spot of balance to find here: Unlikely, yet palletable. Likelihood can be managed mathematically. Pallete can be shaped over time. This gives me hope for the music of the future.