Experimental Mainstream

The hook-line is one is that which tends to stick in the mind – almost to the point of annoyance in some cases. Popular music, especially that with heavy radio rotation, tends to emphasise a strong hook-line, along with other features such as structure and length. It is a truism that applies to song-writing and production, that the effort is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration; perhaps its another instance of the Pareto principle. But it begs the questions, and one that is asked by those aspiring to make a smash hit, what makes for a killer hook? What is the formula for chart success?

Since adolescence, I’ve spent a significant portion of my time listening, analysing, deconstructing, decomposing, and now disassembling popular tunes so as to give me a clue how to write and produce my own material. That contemporary popular musical genres are memetic phenomena is fairly obvious to me for quite some time, as is the population ecology susceptible to a particular earworm. But the principles of cliology and memetic engineering, in their deliberate and systematic attempt to design novel and hyper-virulent cultural items, adds a new twist to the effort of making music. What was once purely the minstrel’s craft, becomes augmented by science. Not only is the production given to music technology, but also the very creative process of penning the words and music.

I’ve shifted position from the self-indulgence of expressing my angst, towards a more commercial objective. Selling-out? Maybe, but this is a pretext to apply cliology and memetics in a way that exploits a rigorous appreciation of what cultural traits go together to make for the perfect pop. Its a quest for the philosopher’s stone, an alchemic formula that summons the muse. Its a clinical trial in the laboratory of culture – a pursuit that I call experimental mainstream. The call is to apply Campbell’s ideas, variation and selective retention in a very directed way. A memetic algorithm that not only generates a hook, but rather a dragnet of barbed-wire.

The notion is proving to be quite promising so far; no matter whether the productions are “good” or not, they are sticky. This methodology itself is evolving. Often there comes a realisation, framed in memetic terms, of something that I have been doing for years. But with that anchored understanding of my own workings, I can now apply the method systematically and with intention. I appear to be becoming more adept at doing so, and dream of an endless string of chart-topping success. But the underlying principle of Experimental Mainstream is in the understanding and application of the more general principles of cliology. Can those algorithms for musical inspiration be cast upon culture in a wide sense? This understanding comes in waves, hence this blog category, but it will serve to remind this studio rat why I’m sat for hours with my DAW trying to get that perfect snare variation.