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From: Matthias Grob <matthias@grob.org> > 8< 8< 8< 8< ... > maybe repetition is needed to reduce fear? Thank you for an interesting post! Here is another theory: Maybe the public as well as many musicians hang on to A-B-A-C-A structured music simply because our main culture is so heavily based on GRATIFICATION? People tend to adore great achievements by others, measurable achievements. There is a tendency to value art by "how much work was put into it" (Oh, the Composer was working on it for thirty years, jeeeze.... must be brilliant then!). Just think about how often people say "I'm so impressed..." instead of the simple "I like your music". As we all know musicians are very sensitive to when others do not like or understand their work. This may trick some musicians into creating music in the A-B-A-C-A context, only because this will make their work measurable for more people. Formally structured music can impress more listeners; even those not paying attention are capable of recognizing the A-B-A-C-A patterns and gratify the musician. But we should not forget that some people really like Repetition. But mostly as the complement to Variation. Even though I personally love non repeating music in a free flow, I do like good pop or extremely minimalistic music. And when it comes to Repetition with Variation I tend to like it better the more subtile the variations are. Listening to, or making, such music reminds me of the joy you get from performing the painting exercise of dotting three color spots, blue, red and yellow, equally distributed around a circle. In step two you try to mix new colors that match in exactly between two neighboring color dots. Then you keep on like that, going into more subtile color schemes as the minutes pass by. Try it - it's fun! Greetings from Sweden Per Boysen www.looproom.com (international) www.boysen.se (Swedish) ---> iTunes Music Store (digital) www.cdbaby.com/perboysen