where do you see music going?

[Dinkleberry]

Ah, this discussion. I've honestly had discussions with people who felt that 12-tone serialism would be mainstream someday. My feeling is that, while atonality has potential and is finding very small "ins" in on the outskirts of prog, tonality will never be abandoned. 12-tone serialism is an arbitary constraint that has no perceptual merit beyond the fact that a specific sequence of interval classes is explored. That there are 12 non-repeating tones from the equally tempered chromatic scale doesn't mean a thing. Unlike CrazyHarj, I don't think that 12-tone equal temperment is likely to be threatened any time soon. Not that I don't enjoy excursions into different just intonation schemes or historic tuning systems; I just don't see much interest in the mainstream.

I quite agree. The only place I can see serialism coming into it is on the gimmicky intro to a music video where Gwen Stefani wakes up with a bad hair day or something.

I tend not to think about the future of music, as there's already enough out here. Stop the factory for 10 years for people to get back up to speed with what's available now (even if it does require a longer trek through the HMV shop). There's a backlog of a thousand years that's worth checking out. Probably longer.