Off-topic: Fragility, you drive me nuts.

I speaketh only the truth

this topic suddenly got really really weird...

I think all music a band creates has influences from other music. One thing I've read in a few band interviews is that when they get older a lot of bands feel they get better at creating music that sounds more like "them" rather than just a combination of their various influences, which I thought was kind of interesting.

I think the biggest problem in this question is the definition of music. The first music very well might have been unrecognizable to us now. Our current definition is an evolved one; it requires that basic concepts be known. However, those basic concepts have to have come from somewhere, and that somewhere was probably experimentation. Experimentation based on accidental discoveries. In the very beginning, there were no influences other than natural sounds and thought. So, as has been said before, these influences support the idea of the impossibility of music without influence; but that's just another definition problem.

In short, sounds happen.

There's a topic on here somewhere where Devin list's a whole bunch
of albums that he likes. Some of them you think "Oh I can see that."
Others you might think "I'll be damned, that's interesting." At least I do.
So while I think the influence question has a pretty obvious answer, I tend
to think that the best artists have a very broad base of influences to draw
from. Devin is just one example, but if you've read much about his music
tastes, especially his early days, it goes from Def Leppard to Messugah to
Jesus Christ Superstar to Enya.

Pretty diverse.

And no, I don't think you can make music without influence.

The more the better.

goes from Def Leppard to Messugah to
Jesus Christ Superstar to Enya.

I hear all of those in his music. I think in Devin's case he blends such diverse ideas and then arrangements them in his own unique way so they're distorted beyond immediate recognition until they're sort of pointed out to you.

Exactly, and what I always like to think is the case is that subconsious influnces are important too. That every piece of music we make is influenced not only by the music we like, but by everything we've ever been exposed to, and may come out in something you make.

lets think statistics here:

theres a finite number of neurons in your brain. Therefore, there's a finite (even if huge) number of "strings" of though you can make.

Nah. Number of neurons has nothing to do with thoughts. Thoughts are formed through language, which is symbolic, not biological. Brain is a tool, like hammer. How deep the nail goes doesn't depend on the hammer but how hard you swing it. And strings of thought are infinite simply because no two thoughts are the same. If I think "sex" and you think "sex" we as sure as hell are not thinking the same thing, because we are two different subjects.

And if indeed you have N houses, and N+1 pidgeons, and you had to get them all into a house, shoot two and you get an empty house. (Meaning I don't understand the point of the example.)

most people who want to make music that was absolutely uninfluenced by anything tend to make crap, so there

Word. But their enterprise is not making musical music but precisely a stripped down unbearably plain form of music. No pathological contents, just bare structure. And that is not entertainment, that is ethics.

i totally get your point, especially cause i know you have a psychology background
but the fact is: if you don't consider anything but physical "wirings", even if there is a HUGE and HUMONGOUS number of possible thoughts, they're still finite. If you add spirit and other non-physical forms of forming consciousness (and unconsciousness, obviously, which probably even comes more in play here), then you're completely free to expand it to an infinite number, BUT, getting purely physical here,it's a finite number.

i get it stripped down to this "simple" point cause hell, i'm a computer sciences student and i'm used to seeing things that seem infinite actually being finite, when you stop to think about it

the pigeon-house thing was related to that: even if you put together ALL the possible ideas one after the other, if you wanted to add a little one more, you'd fall on one idea that was already been used.

Obviously, if you think about it on a human perspective, it's "infinite". But on a overall analysing perspective, it's finite.

and i won't fuck off cause i don't want to leave scoon alone here

So are you saying then that if we want more thoughts we just need a bigger brain?So one with infinite thought would also have a brain just as physically infinite total time space mass thought equation type of thing?

not all functions work both ways
i mean
x = y means y = x
but for example

derivative (x) = y doesn't mean derivative (y) = x.
Ya know where i'm getting here?

it doesn't mean that because you can theorize that the number of possible combinations in your brain is finite that you can "upgrade" it with more neurons to make different sequences. And it's just a simple "model". You can't really expand it much, the max you can say is the vague "they're finite, so the number of thoughts you can produce is finite, if you think phisically".

i obviously could be completely and terribly wrong, but at least it makes a ton of sense to me

Interesting

As obvious as it may sound. I wonder if a brain is even nessesary to create thought after a certain point?

As obvious as it may sound. I wonder if a brain is even nessesary to create thought after a certain point?

if you believe in some sort of concept of "spirit" and "spiritual thought" the brain is actually a setback, EXACTLY because it limits us to "hardware"

that's what oriental philosophies and pursuing the nirvana and stuff like that are all about, getting rid of your physical limitations and making your mind and spirit become one with the universe.

Guys, all that is crap. Brain is tool, no brain no thoughts. But as for the quality and quantity of thoughts, brain has nothing to do with it. So Yanko, number of thoughts can not be finite, because you can't limit yourself to "thinking physically." If you do that, you are doing a mental exercise which can render no truth value regarding it's subject: thoughts. Thinking physically should explain how number of thoughts is subject to physical. Which it can't. Number of thoughts is subject to language, which is a structural symbolic form, empty of any contents. In language there is only difference (all meaning is arbitrary) and to any thought there can be a different thought ad infuckenfinitum. No finity, only infinity. And how you can speak against infinity on HDR forums is beyond me. What kind of fan are you anyway?

you're talking software, i'm talking hardware, that's my point

My point is hardware has nothing to do with this issue. Hardware is irrelevant. The brain=hardware analogy doesn't hold. It is a bad exercise in thoughts.

My point is hardware has nothing to do with this issue. Hardware is irrelevant. The brain=hardware analogy doesn't hold. It is a bad exercise in thoughts.

so you say neurology has no place whatsoever in a psychology discussion?