I think so, yes.

Back in college, an Anthropology professor told our class "a culture is a set of ready-made solutions to common problems". It's one of the best definitions of anything I've ever heard.

In music, I think genre is the same thing. If you sit down try to make "music", you are faced with just an astronomical number of choices to make before you get to a finished compositions. What instrumentation? Acoustic or electric? How many? What effects? Arrangement? Melody? Harmony? Lyrics or not? If so, sung or rapped? What language? What about? Are there drums? Acoustic or electronic? Sampled?

If you come at it with a total blank slate where you're equally open to creating avant garde free jazz or electric disco zydeco, you'll get so overwhelmed by the number of choices to make that you'll never finish.

So what most musicians do is pick a genre. Sure, they might stray out of it, but it at least gives them default answers for most of the high level structural questions. If you pick techno, you can start assuming there will be drums, 4/4 time, around 120-140 BPM, synths, etc.

The genre defaults for electronic music are particularly visible because they're mechanical since DJs need them for continuous mixes, but every other genre is equally formulaic in its way. Other genres with more prestige like to pretend each of their songs is a unique magical snowflake, but it's not the case. Otherwise, people wouldn't have freaked out when Bob Dylan played electric.

And, definitely, yes, when it comes to lyrics, you can absolutely pound them out. Writing is a skill like any other and it's incredibly amenable to discipline and practice. There's a reason so many successful authors have very rigid writing routines.

I was listening to Pink Floyd's Momentary Lapse of Reason just a moment ago and my son asks, "Is that some kind of cheap knockoff of The Wall?" and I said "It's the same band!"

It is very interesting but sometimes sad to see bands constrained by the limits of their own creativity as well as the expectations of their fans. People still pay to hear Stevie Nicks sell Fleetwood Mac songs out of tune, Elton John has been on his last farewell turn I don't know how many times now, but one thing they all have in common is that the fans will boo, tear down the stadium, and leave if they play anything new.

Isn't Momentary lapse the release after the split with Waters... perceptive maybe

I believe Momentary began as a Gilmour solo album. They may have had a toxic relationship, but Waters and Gilmour undoubtedly made their best music working together.

A lot of times artists only have so many original, interesting ideas, and they usually use them early in their career and become known for them. Their new songs just aren't as good.

That's a wonderful definition, I'm still turning it over in my mind a day later. I like how it provides a "why" for culture, with a pretty grounded reason. I tried to locate the origin of it, but just found a bunch of paraphrasings without attribution. Any idea where it originated?

I don't. I have no idea where my teacher got it from but, man, is it a good definition.

(author here)

I’m not a song writer but I do have a fair amount of background in jazz and some metal, and while jazz requires a lot of practice to internalize music theory, and both being music with « real » instruments require a significant amount of practice, the writing felt pretty similar. I’d collect riffs, melody fragments, sit down and experiment with chord progressions (very very nerdy and brainy), and then I’d assemble them and see if they fit or not.

The concepts I experiment with when making techno are on a similar level of braininess / research. I will have « theories » that I pursue over many bleeps bloops until I feel I have exhausted the subject. They don’t have words / story per se, but there is definitely a lot of concept and evolution to it.

The « four on the floor » and repetition part of techno can be deceiving. There is definitely some extremely formulaic techno out there, but for many songs, there might not even be a kick, and for sure there never is a loop that is the same as the previous one, as sounds will continuously evolve.

I’m pretty lacking in terms of musical talent, I ultimately left jazz and metal and real instruments behind because I just didn’t « get it ». Techno has taken me 15 years of on/off attention to finally « find myself ». (for what it’s worth, I would personally file four tet and floating points under jazz, not techno, save maybe for a few tracks :).

Genres are so very odd: I feel I can now take a 909 backbeat and a stupid 303 and have some real techno, but doing the same 10 years ago would have sounded… off.

I hope my comment didn't come off as an attack and certainly admire what you've accomplished!

So long as the medium of techno allows you to embed your own creative characteristics, then I think that's a great form of expression (as opposed to churning out formulaic techno... though there's really nothing wrong with that, either).

In fact, setting constraints on yourself is a great way to inspire creativity and nuance (e.g. there's a lot you can do with a single note - rhythmically, harmonically, effects, dynamics, etc).

I also agree that after a certain point, genres become too simplistic of a model to describe music. I'm happy that you've put so much thought into this.

Don’t worry I didn’t and now I hope my answer didn’t come off as defensive! I just love talking about constraints and what makes a genre, because it’s so hard to pinpoint.

A friend of mine just won the award for best independent album in NZ and he absolutely works by the chore philosophy and has for years. Some people do, some don’t, but if you do the chore thing for long enough it’s undeniable that your aptitude will consistently improve along with the establishment of your practice.