So, it's been said that if you can't explain something to a layman, you don't actually understand it. This is obviously true, but sometimes this must be done through example or analogy. Since I'm now starting on my way to science, and I'm actually getting it, I will attempt to write essays about some of the topics from other perspectives in order to explain them.
The first one I will do (which will follow in the next post) is explaining evolution through the lens of music. It's restating an idea in another specialty, but it's a language I'm familiar with (and I will try and put the musical perspective in layman's terms, or define in layman's terms for clarity), and therefore a step towards putting it into plain music.
I think this an important exercise because I've always believed in evolution, but evolution isn't an article of belief. Science deals with evidence, not faith. I no longer believe in evolution, I accept it as an accurate explanation of the diversity and unity of life, based on well attested evidence.
If considered sufficiently sound, I'll post these elsewhere.
Modern Western music can essentially be traced back to African American spirituals and European American music fusing together. In the late 19th century you had the beginnings of the Blues and Gospel music, with the former being analogous to the secular version of the later (hence selling your soul to be a Bluesman). From there, you get offshoots. Country Blues, Mississippi Delta Blues, Chicago Blues, Jazz. Then you get Rhythm and Blues, Country Music, Rock and Roll, and early Heavy Metal, while Blues, Jazz and Gospel continue to exist and go off onto other tangents. Then you get Motown, Pop, Hard Rock, Soft Rock, Disco, Speed Metal, Thrash Metal, and Punk. Then there's Hip Hop, Techno, Darkwave, Goth, Death Metal, etc.
Well, at this point, things are looking pretty different from each other in less than a century, considering that they all have a common root. What happened?
All of these completely different genres had to compete for audience, and a good portion of that audience was looking for novelty. Kids don't want to listen to the same music as their parents, and not all children have the same tastes. Music, of course, in order to progress into something new, must build on the old. But each musical group will take a different direction. Some directions aren't terribly appealing, and very few people listen to them. Others have very broad appeal and many listen to them. Others find some sort of middle ground where they develop a moderate but dedicated fan base. Either way, those fan bases will produce future musicians who will be inspired by their influences and put their own stamp on it, and thrive or fail depending on how appealing their own music is. If they fail to get fans, they will fail to inspire the next generation of musicians. If they thrive, they will inspire many musicians who themselves will attempt to take off in different directions.
This is exactly how biological evolution occurs. Some species (bands) will succeed in competing for resources (audience) which will increase their chances of successfully reproducing (inspiring future musicians) who will then go off and attempt to reproduce (inspire on their own). Those successive generations of musicians won't sound exactly like the previous ones. After a while, they will sound completely different from each other, just as Carcass doesn't sound at all like Britney Spears (they're completely different animals at that point). But they can trace their initial roots back to a point of common ancestry. Indeed, both DNA and Western music have something in common- a code of bases. With DNA, it's base 4. With Western music, it's base 12 (4 nucleotides, 12 notes in the chromatic scale- A, A sharp/B flat, B, C, C sharp/D flat etc). DNA can be considered a very long 4 chord song, all with a common root genre. Carcass and Britney Spears, while wildly different, have a common and universal genetic code (the Western chromatic scale).
But let us consider that modern popular music in all of its forms is a specific Kingdom. You can take it back even further, through Renaissance music, which produced both what we would now consider the folk varieties that contributed to the Blues, and its other offshoot, Classical music, which went off into Baroque, etc. Even further back to Gregorian chant, which still exists, but is the earliest written basis for that chromatic code (it existed even in ancient times but the medieval Catholic church was the first to give the basis for modern musical notation). So, Catholic monks chanting in Latin is a clear, but distant, root for Hip Hop, Punk Rock, Trance, even Satanic Black Metal. They're way different, in much the same way that E. coli or H. Pylori is different from a dog, but they all come from the same place, and all because of competition for audience creating selective pressures (Natural Selection).
Consider that, the next time you listen to Johnny Cash, or Lady Gaga.
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
Big hole in your analogy. Dick Clark didn't come along and guide evolution by only allowing certain organisms to be seen or heard, based on whether or not they adhered to an artificial formula. People don't choose music based on their likes and dislikes, they choose what they are TOLD to choose.
So music would be a better analogy for intelligent design.
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on September 23, 2013, 09:10:59 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
Big hole in your analogy. Dick Clark didn't come along and guide evolution by only allowing certain organisms to be seen or heard, based on whether or not they adhered to an artificial formula. People don't choose music based on their likes and dislikes, they choose what they are TOLD to choose.
So music would be a better analogy for intelligent design.
Fair point, but would not Dick Clark himself be a selective pressure? One that other genres managed to survive?
Actually that, creates a funny image of a God trying to guide evolution, and new organisms that didn't adhere to his design popping up regardless.
I don't doubt the hole you point out, but, wasn't Dick Clark the one who couldn't wrap his head around "Moosh Pits"?
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 11:01:29 PM
I don't doubt the hole you point out, but, wasn't Dick Clark the one who couldn't wrap his head around "Moosh Pits"?
Well, yes, but that was when he was like 300 years old. In his day, he OWNED THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY.
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on September 23, 2013, 09:10:59 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
Big hole in your analogy. Dick Clark didn't come along and guide evolution by only allowing certain organisms to be seen or heard, based on whether or not they adhered to an artificial formula. People don't choose music based on their likes and dislikes, they choose what they are TOLD to choose.
So music would be a better analogy for intelligent design.
Actually, i think a man choosing to guide and control the development of music over time would be a closer fit to selective breeding. Someone sees something that can be of benefit to him, controls which traits are allowed to perpetuate, and he winds up with something far tamer and easier to domesticate than the original animal.
Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on September 24, 2013, 12:13:37 AM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on September 23, 2013, 09:10:59 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
Big hole in your analogy. Dick Clark didn't come along and guide evolution by only allowing certain organisms to be seen or heard, based on whether or not they adhered to an artificial formula. People don't choose music based on their likes and dislikes, they choose what they are TOLD to choose.
So music would be a better analogy for intelligent design.
Actually, i think a man choosing to guide and control the development of music over time would be a closer fit to selective breeding. Someone sees something that can be of benefit to him, controls which traits are allowed to perpetuate, and he winds up with something far tamer and easier to domesticate than the original animal.
Oooh.
Wolves to dogs.
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on September 23, 2013, 11:37:08 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 11:01:29 PM
I don't doubt the hole you point out, but, wasn't Dick Clark the one who couldn't wrap his head around "Moosh Pits"?
Well, yes, but that was when he was like 300 years old. In his day, he OWNED THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY.
This is absolutely true.
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 08:41:36 PM
Modern Western music can essentially be traced back to African American spirituals and European American music fusing together. In the late 19th century you had the beginnings of the Blues and Gospel music, with the former being analogous to the secular version of the later (hence selling your soul to be a Bluesman). From there, you get offshoots. Country Blues, Mississippi Delta Blues, Chicago Blues, Jazz. Then you get Rhythm and Blues, Country Music, Rock and Roll, and early Heavy Metal, while Blues, Jazz and Gospel continue to exist and go off onto other tangents. Then you get Motown, Pop, Hard Rock, Soft Rock, Disco, Speed Metal, Thrash Metal, and Punk. Then there's Hip Hop, Techno, Darkwave, Goth, Death Metal, etc.
Well, at this point, things are looking pretty different from each other in less than a century, considering that they all have a common root. What happened?
All of these completely different genres had to compete for audience, and a good portion of that audience was looking for novelty. Kids don't want to listen to the same music as their parents, and not all children have the same tastes. Music, of course, in order to progress into something new, must build on the old. But each musical group will take a different direction. Some directions aren't terribly appealing, and very few people listen to them. Others have very broad appeal and many listen to them. Others find some sort of middle ground where they develop a moderate but dedicated fan base. Either way, those fan bases will produce future musicians who will be inspired by their influences and put their own stamp on it, and thrive or fail depending on how appealing their own music is. If they fail to get fans, they will fail to inspire the next generation of musicians. If they thrive, they will inspire many musicians who themselves will attempt to take off in different directions.
This is exactly how biological evolution occurs. Some species (bands) will succeed in competing for resources (audience) which will increase their chances of successfully reproducing (inspiring future musicians) who will then go off and attempt to reproduce (inspire on their own). Those successive generations of musicians won't sound exactly like the previous ones. After a while, they will sound completely different from each other, just as Carcass doesn't sound at all like Britney Spears (they're completely different animals at that point). But they can trace their initial roots back to a point of common ancestry. Indeed, both DNA and Western music have something in common- a code of bases. With DNA, it's base 4. With Western music, it's base 12 (4 nucleotides, 12 notes in the chromatic scale- A, A sharp/B flat, B, C, C sharp/D flat etc). DNA can be considered a very long 4 chord song, all with a common root genre. Carcass and Britney Spears, while wildly different, have a common and universal genetic code (the Western chromatic scale).
But let us consider that modern popular music in all of its forms is a specific Kingdom. You can take it back even further, through Renaissance music, which produced both what we would now consider the folk varieties that contributed to the Blues, and its other offshoot, Classical music, which went off into Baroque, etc. Even further back to Gregorian chant, which still exists, but is the earliest written basis for that chromatic code (it existed even in ancient times but the medieval Catholic church was the first to give the basis for modern musical notation). So, Catholic monks chanting in Latin is a clear, but distant, root for Hip Hop, Punk Rock, Trance, even Satanic Black Metal. They're way different, in much the same way that E. coli or H. Pylori is different from a dog, but they all come from the same place, and all because of competition for audience creating selective pressures (Natural Selection).
Consider that, the next time you listen to Johnny Cash, or Lady Gaga.
Really, any phenomenon with variation upon which differential selection is applied will change over time. But I think using metaphors to understand evolution is a bad idea, because so many of these metaphors are progressive or guided. Biological evolution is not progressive, there is no end state that Nature is seeking. The motto is "whatever works". The other problem that I see with your explanation is that selection occurs at the individual level, not on this nebulous thing we call species. And it's a negative, not positive, action. Selection is elimination. It's taken for granted that variation exists and that individuals will reproduce. And finally, there is a great deal of Lamarck style change in music by individuals, something that in nature is rare (see Epigenetics).
The concept for this thread reminds me of Yudkowsky essay: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/
Thanks Kai, I'll chew on that for a bit.
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music. As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.
All metaphors are flawed. That's the nature of metaphor.
The trick is to find a metaphor that leads a person to a deeper truth about the object.
Quote from: Pergamos on September 24, 2013, 07:06:52 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music. As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.
Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on September 24, 2013, 07:10:23 PM
All metaphors are flawed. That's the nature of metaphor.
The trick is to find a metaphor that leads a person to a deeper truth about the object.
Very much this.
As such i very much liked the metaphor.
Well done, Twid!
Keep trying twid. I want to hear more.
Quote from: Pergamos on September 24, 2013, 07:06:52 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music. As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.
That's why I specified Western music- as it was rattling around in my head I realized I had to be culture specific to avoid getting into microtones and such.
Quote from: Kai on September 24, 2013, 07:12:19 PM
Quote from: Pergamos on September 24, 2013, 07:06:52 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music. As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.
Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]
They also both have mitochondria and don't photosynthesize (sorry if that's what Opsthokonta means)
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on September 24, 2013, 07:10:23 PM
All metaphors are flawed. That's the nature of metaphor.
The trick is to find a metaphor that leads a person to a deeper truth about the object.
That's kinda what I'm fishing around for. One of the problems with something like evolution is that the process is fairly slow from our perspective. I'm trying to think of an immediately graspable metaphor to counteract ideas like "natural selection occurs but can't lead to different species."
Quote from: :regret: on September 24, 2013, 11:41:37 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on September 24, 2013, 07:10:23 PM
All metaphors are flawed. That's the nature of metaphor.
The trick is to find a metaphor that leads a person to a deeper truth about the object.
Very much this.
As such i very much liked the metaphor.
Well done, Twid!
Quote from: Reverend What's His Bear on September 25, 2013, 02:02:34 AM
Keep trying twid. I want to hear more.
Thanks guys- I might try my hand at explaining evolution again with something a little more on the head.
Dick Clark is like Monsanto
Quote from: Twigel on September 25, 2013, 02:07:32 AM
Quote from: Kai on September 24, 2013, 07:12:19 PM
Quote from: Pergamos on September 24, 2013, 07:06:52 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music. As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.
Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]
They also both have mitochondria and don't photosynthesize (sorry if that's what Opsthokonta means)
No, Opisthokonta refers to those clades where the motile cells have a single, posterior facing flagellum. It's suspected to be a group with a single common ancestor, and includes the Fungi, Metazoa, and a couple other groups of single celled Eukaryotes. Think sperm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont
Quote from: Kai on September 26, 2013, 02:12:57 AM
Quote from: Twigel on September 25, 2013, 02:07:32 AM
Quote from: Kai on September 24, 2013, 07:12:19 PM
Quote from: Pergamos on September 24, 2013, 07:06:52 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music. As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.
Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]
They also both have mitochondria and don't photosynthesize (sorry if that's what Opsthokonta means)
No, Opisthokonta refers to those clades where the motile cells have a single, posterior facing flagellum. It's suspected to be a group with a single common ancestor, and includes the Fungi, Metazoa, and a couple other groups of single celled Eukaryotes. Think sperm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont
I suspect you and I will be talking a lot more from this point on. Not that I wouldn't like that for its own sake, but, making the switch that I did, having you as a friend is going to make understanding this a whole lot easier.
So, actually, Kai, I have somewhat of a question for you, and somewhat of figuring out where your stance is on it-
We have 3 domains now, Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota.
With Eukaryota, we have at least 3 distinct kingdoms and a 4th sort of kingdom-
Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, and Protista which are basically, as far as I can tell, categorized by how they create their energy.
Fungi absorb, Animalia ingest, Plantae photosynthesize, and Protista has a weird sort of in between kingdom and domain status since they have aspects similar to the previous three, and it seems like we currently don't know what to do with Protista, based on both energy production and genes. What are your thoughts on that?
With Bacteria, it seems like we're thinking of categorizing them along the lines of separate kingdoms but don't know what those kingdoms are yet.
Same with Archaea.
I find it interesting because I remember in grammar school, the thought was, there are 5 kingdoms (and no domains), Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, Protista, and Bacteria, but wait a minute, archaean bacteria are interesting enough that they might make a 6th kingdom. Turns out we just made another level of taxonomy as a result. Thoughts on that as well (the kingdoms within domain Archaea and Bacteria).
Quote from: Twigel on September 26, 2013, 02:51:45 AM
So, actually, Kai, I have somewhat of a question for you, and somewhat of figuring out where your stance is on it-
We have 3 domains now, Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota.
With Eukaryota, we have at least 3 distinct kingdoms and a 4th sort of kingdom-
Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, and Protista which are basically, as far as I can tell, categorized by how they create their energy.
Fungi absorb, Animalia ingest, Plantae photosynthesize, and Protista has a weird sort of in between kingdom and domain status since they have aspects similar to the previous three, and it seems like we currently don't know what to do with Protista, based on both energy production and genes. What are your thoughts on that?
With Bacteria, it seems like we're thinking of categorizing them along the lines of separate kingdoms but don't know what those kingdoms are yet.
Same with Archaea.
I find it interesting because I remember in grammar school, the thought was, there are 5 kingdoms (and no domains), Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, Protista, and Bacteria, but wait a minute, archaean bacteria are interesting enough that they might make a 6th kingdom. Turns out we just made another level of taxonomy as a result. Thoughts on that as well (the kingdoms within domain Archaea and Bacteria).
The Margulis "5 Kingdoms" system doesn't work very well when you look at multiple lines of evidence. Animalia is roughly equivalent to Metazoa, which is multicellular animals. Fungi is roughly the same, except there are some traditional Fungi that are not included. Plantae is Viridiplantae, the green plants, and includes green algae, and the whole grade up to land plants. The remaining "Protista" is a myriad of unrelated unicellular lifeforms, and does not exist as a natural group. This, even more than the other kingdoms, is the reason the 5 kingdom model utterly fails to represent the history of life. You can still talk about protists as an ecological grouping, just like fish or reptiles, but it is not a group that contains a common ancestor and all of it's descendents (called monophyletic). Therefore, there is no Protista.
So yes, three domains. Bacteria, which is as it was traditionally, Eukaryota, which is also the same, and Archaea, which are a separate kind of life entirely. They look different, they have different structures, they live in interesting places, and genetically they are completely distinct from Eukaryota and Bacteria. The three Domains are thought to have arisen from a single common ancestor, the ancestor of all life. There may be a 4th domain; quite a bit of ocean water sampling is going on right now, bioprospecting, "stalking the 4th domain" of life.
Back to eukaryotes. There's quite a bit of disagreement, but things seem to be falling out into these things I've started calling "superkingdoms".
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Eukaryota_tree.svg/800px-Eukaryota_tree.svg.png)
People who work on protists have separated Eukaryota into roughly 6 or 7 groups above kingdom and below domain. I call them superkingdoms, some people call them supergroups, it's not really important since the names are unregulated by the codes of nomenclature.
There's the
Opisthokonta, which includes Fungi, Metazoa, and some protist groups;
the
Amoebozoa, which includes the classic amoebas and slime molds;
Archaeplastida, which is Viridiplantae plus the rhodophytes (red algae);
Chromalveolata, which there is great controversy about, but in the past has been put together based on a hypothesis of secondary endosymbiosis with a red alga, includes such things as diatoms, kelp, yellow algae, and other photosynthetic and nonphotosynthetic organisms (some people split this up into the Heterokonta (stramenopiles) and Aveolata);
The
Rhizaria, which includes several groups of organisms that have filament like cytoplasmic streaming, like Foraminifera;
and the
Excavata, motile organisms with mouth like depressions like
Euglena and
Paramecium.
Again, there is controversy in this arrangement, Especially with the stramenopiles-aveolates-rhizarians (sometimes called the SAR clade). But it makes a heck of a lot more sense from total evidence than the Margulis system.
In summary, organizing eukaryotes by trophic or "what it eats" centered groups oversimplifies the relationships. Photosynthetic organisms are scattered all over; Archaeplastida is of course photosynthetic, but even there you can find examples of trophic reversals (e.g. parasitic plants that lack chloroplasts). And the algae are scattered throughout, because endosymbiosis took place multiple times over the Earth's history. In some cases you get examples of /tertiary/ endosymbiosis (a bluegreen bacteria is eaten by what becomes a red alga, is eaten by what becomes a yellow alga, is eaten by a dinoflagellate). Many of these "algae" groups have a large number of members which aren't photosynthetic at all, they eat other microbes for a living. And Fungi do all sorts of things, from decomposers to pathogens to parasites. We're moving past the 5 kingdoms which is a rather naive view of life into something that more clearly represents the diversity and relationships of life.
Wow. That's going to take some processing. Thanks Kai.
Quote from: Kai on September 24, 2013, 07:12:19 PM
Quote from: Pergamos on September 24, 2013, 07:06:52 PM
Quote from: Twigel on September 23, 2013, 09:04:54 PM
Thoughts?
Dead on? Rewrite?
The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music. As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.
Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]
Right, and Eastern and Western music aren't all that different, they both include rhythms and melodies that are recognizable as such by people raised listening to the other tradition. As opposed, say, to Inuit throat singing.
Reattempt at explaining evolution from music.
One day you pick up your guitar, and you just start fucking around. You come up with an idea. The idea can go a bunch of different ways. You write the idea down.
You riff on those ideas, some of them go off in different directions, and become completely different songs. We're not thinking about those different branches right now though. We're thinking about the formation of a specific song and trying to see how we got to there. Because, we all know it starts off with a simple riff, and the final product is never the original riff, unless it works.
Maybe that riff is entirely intact at the end of the line. Maybe you end up coming up with a theme album with a leit motif, kinda like NIN's Downward Spiral, where every song has some riff that is a variation on some other riff found in some other song on the album (if you don't believe me, listen to both the riff at the end of Closer and the weird sample at the beginning of Ruiner. That sample, if you play it, even in your head, slower and/or backwards, is found all over the album- the mechanical camera sound on Reptile at the minute mark onward, or the people on the rollercoaster sound on The Becoming after about 22 seconds).
You can build a lot off of a riff. You can build whole albums, whole careers. None of the songs may end up sounding like each other, but they all stem from this one idea that worked.
That's the whole. Let's get back to the specific. You have this one specific riff, based off of the general pattern that you go with, and you really like this riff. You think this might be your hit song. You keep playing the hook. The hook is good, but sometimes you screw it up, and sometimes you go, man, that sucked. I'll try not to slip up like that again. Then, sometimes you'll screw up the hook, and the hook will sound better. Then you'll stop, and figure out what you did right, and you'll keep playing it until you make sure that you won't forget it. Maybe you won't forget the previous iterations of the riff. Maybe you'll change it up here and there, almost the same riff, but each one with its own zazz, just to keep the song interesting.
How does that work for an analogy?
Quote from: Doktor Blight on November 30, 2013, 05:10:53 AM
Reattempt at explaining evolution from music.
One day you pick up your guitar, and you just start fucking around. You come up with an idea. The idea can go a bunch of different ways. You write the idea down.
You riff on those ideas, some of them go off in different directions, and become completely different songs. We're not thinking about those different branches right now though. We're thinking about the formation of a specific song and trying to see how we got to there. Because, we all know it starts off with a simple riff, and the final product is never the original riff, unless it works.
Maybe that riff is entirely intact at the end of the line. Maybe you end up coming up with a theme album with a leit motif, kinda like NIN's Downward Spiral, where every song has some riff that is a variation on some other riff found in some other song on the album (if you don't believe me, listen to both the riff at the end of Closer and the weird sample at the beginning of Ruiner. That sample, if you play it, even in your head, slower and/or backwards, is found all over the album- the mechanical camera sound on Reptile at the minute mark onward, or the people on the rollercoaster sound on The Becoming after about 22 seconds).
You can build a lot off of a riff. You can build whole albums, whole careers. None of the songs may end up sounding like each other, but they all stem from this one idea that worked.
That's the whole. Let's get back to the specific. You have this one specific riff, based off of the general pattern that you go with, and you really like this riff. You think this might be your hit song. You keep playing the hook. The hook is good, but sometimes you screw it up, and sometimes you go, man, that sucked. I'll try not to slip up like that again. Then, sometimes you'll screw up the hook, and the hook will sound better. Then you'll stop, and figure out what you did right, and you'll keep playing it until you make sure that you won't forget it. Maybe you won't forget the previous iterations of the riff. Maybe you'll change it up here and there, almost the same riff, but each one with its own zazz, just to keep the song interesting.
How does that work for an analogy?
I tihnk my limited experience with music is keeping me from completely understanding this, but it sounds like it conveys the right idea.
not trying to be a dick, but it kind of sounds like intelligent design to me.
I would think a metaphor for evolution needs an external, random-ish influence.
I would disagree, sure the traits an organism is born with are variable, but the process of natural selection is pretty nonrandom. How likely your genes are to being reproduced is directly related to how those genes help you survive and mate. in this metaphor, the improvisational riffing is the variable gene element, whether or not the resulting sound is pleasing as music determines whether or not the riff gets reproduced in later attempts.
Exactly. Deanthropomorphize the musician in the metaphor. Hes not who you should be paying attention to but rather the process where variations arise either perpetuate or not. If anything the musician represents reproduction.