Again, again, AGAIN, again? Again!

I wrote on a previous blog entry how there was nothing, so to speak, that was completely new.

On a similar note, it often seems as if people seem to come up with the same sort of thing, over and over again. It's this recurring trend, that seems to pop up all over the place. For example, in the world of music, there's what is known as the 'Four Chords' sequence, made popular by the Axis of Awesome in the '4 Chords Song'. For those not familiar with it, I suggest you have a quick look. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpB_40hYjXU

However, if you can't be bothered clicking on that, I shall give a short explanation. The basic idea is that a lot of songs use this 'Four Chords' sequence, which uses chords I, V, vi, IV. That translates to C G Am F, for example, if the song was in C. That's basically it. (There's also various permutations etc on that, but then it gets a bit more long-winded.) The Axis of Awesome basically play these chords continuously, and then sing the lyrics from many different songs over the top. I think there was just over 30 songs in that particular performance in the link above. That probably doesn't sound like too many, for those of you who have hundreds of songs on your iPod.

I did my own version of the song, using other songs that I had heard that used those same chords. I got up to 100 songs, and then stopped because it was getting close to 15 minutes each time I played it. I think, honestly, that if I had included every song that I knew that used those chords, I'd be able to get to 200. Puts things into a bit of perspective, perhaps.

Of course, you can see trends in other places than just music. You see it often in movies as well, when Hollywood gives the same storylines again and again with just different details. You can probably see trends like these in most things.

But does this mean that it makes them bad, just because they're using a certain chord sequence, or storyline, or method that's been used so many times before? Not necessarily. It all depends on how you use it, how you highlight the differences. As a small example, in the title of this blog, the word again is written five times, but each time is written differently. Even within repetition, there can be variation - which can sometimes make the repetition almost unrecognisable. Once, on a CD, there were two songs right next to each other that both used the four chord sequence, one of them almost the whole way through. But chances are, you wouldn't notice it unless you were either looking for it, or good with recognising chords and such.

I suppose my point is simply this: there's nothing wrong with using a tried and tested method. Just make something a bit different, change it up a bit. Sometimes it helps, starting with something that you know works, and works well.

Addendum: Next Monday, I will be away, and in a place with no internet. Hence, next Monday's post will be done beforehand, now that I've figured out how to do that. So hopefully that works, and you'll still see a post up next Monday, even though I'll be gone from this Friday until the next one.