Artificial Intelligence Writes a Piece in the Style of Bach: Can You Tell the Difference Between JS Bach and AI Bach?

in Music, Technology | January 24th, 2018

This week, the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty Bot­nik pub­lished a 2018 Coachel­la Line­up poster com­posed entire­ly of per­former names gen­er­at­ed by neur­al net­works. It does get one won­der­ing what the music of “Lil Hack,” “House of the Gavins,” or “Paper Cop” might sound like — or, giv­en the direc­tion of tech­nol­o­gy these days, how long it will take before anoth­er neur­al net­work can actu­al­ly com­pose it. But why use AI to cre­ate yet anoth­er mil­len­ni­al-mind­ed Coachel­la act, you might ask, when it could cre­ate anoth­er Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach?

“One form of music that Bach excelled in was a type of poly­phon­ic hymn known as a chorale can­ta­ta,” says the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review. “The com­pos­er starts with a well-known tune which is sung by the sopra­no and then com­pos­es three har­monies sung by the alto, tenor, and bass voic­es.” Such com­po­si­tions “have attract­ed com­put­er sci­en­tists because the process of pro­duc­ing them is step-like and algo­rith­mic. But doing this well is also hard because of the del­i­cate inter­play between har­mo­ny and melody.” Hence the fas­ci­na­tion of the ques­tion of whether a com­put­er could ever com­pose a tru­ly Bach-like chorale.

The video at the top of the post offers a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence that points toward an answer. The minute-long piece you hear, and whose score you see, comes not from Bach him­self, nor from any human Bach imi­ta­tor, but from a neur­al net­work called Deep­Bach, a sys­tem devel­oped by Gae­tan Had­jeres and Fran­cois Pachet at the Sony Com­put­er Sci­ence Lab­o­ra­to­ries in Paris.

Like any such deep learn­ing sys­tem, the more exist­ing mate­r­i­al it has to “learn” from, the more con­vinc­ing a prod­uct it can pro­duce on its own: just as Bot­nik’s net­work could learn from all the band names fea­tured on Coachel­la posters since 1999, Deep­Bach could learn from the more than 300 short chorale com­po­si­tions the real Bach wrote in his life­time.

“About half the time,” says the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review, “these com­po­si­tions fool human experts into think­ing they were actu­al­ly writ­ten by Bach.” But of course, this sort of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has a greater and more diverse poten­tial than trick­ing its lis­ten­ers, as oth­er exper­i­ments at Sony CSL-Paris sug­gest: the AI-com­posed “Bea­t­les” song “Dad­dy’s Car,” for instance, or the “Flow Machine” that re-inter­prets Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in the style of the Bea­t­les, Take 6, and even elec­tron­ic lounge music. But we won’t know the tech­nol­o­gy has matured until the day we find our­selves book­ing tick­ets for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-com­posed music fes­ti­vals.

via  MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ativ­i­ty Machine Learns to Play Beethoven in the Style of The Bea­t­les’ “Pen­ny Lane”

Hear What Music Sounds Like When It’s Cre­at­ed by Syn­the­siz­ers Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Google Launch­es Free Course on Deep Learn­ing: The Sci­ence of Teach­ing Com­put­ers How to Teach Them­selves

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing: A Free Online Course

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A YouTube Channel Completely Devoted to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gregorian Chant, Byzantine Chant & More

in Music, Religion | January 22nd, 2018

The artists of medieval Europe, at least accord­ing to the impres­sion we get in his­to­ry class, gave far less con­sid­er­a­tion to the world around them than the world above. His­to­ri­ans argue about how much that gen­er­al atti­tude hin­dered the improve­ment of the human lot dur­ing those ten cen­turies or so, but even we denizens of the 21st cen­tu­ry can feel that the imag­i­na­tions of the Mid­dle Ages did tap into some­thing res­o­nant — and in the domain of music quite lit­er­al­ly res­o­nant, since the sacred songs of that time still cre­ate a prop­er­ly oth­er­world­ly son­ic atmos­phere when they echo through cathe­drals.

If you don’t hap­pen to live near a cathe­dral, you can expe­ri­ence some­thing of that atmos­phere through your head­phones any­where you hap­pen to be with Cal­lix­tus, a chan­nel on the not nor­mal­ly sacred space of Youtube. “Per­haps named in hon­or of either Pope Cal­lis­tus or Xan­oth­opou­los Cal­lis­tus, Patri­arch of Con­stan­tino­ple,” writes Catholic web site Aleteia’s Daniel Esparza, it offers “an impres­sive col­lec­tion of sacred music, most­ly medieval, includ­ing choral works belong­ing to both West­ern Chris­tian­i­ty and the East­ern tra­di­tion.”

Cal­lix­tus’ playlist includes such endur­ing “hits” of these tra­di­tions as the Gre­go­ri­an chant “Invi­ta­to­ri­um: Deum Verum,” the Byzan­tine chant “Δεύτε λαοί” (“Come Ye Peo­ples”), and the mul­ti-part Medieval Chant of the Tem­plars.

How did this still-haunt­ing style of music come about? Accord­ing to for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne, who laid out these ideas in a pop­u­lar TED Talk, it evolved along­side the hous­es of wor­ship them­selves, the archi­tec­ture shap­ing the music and the music shap­ing the archi­tec­ture: “In a goth­ic cathe­dral, this kind of music is per­fect,” says Byrne. “It does­n’t change key, the notes are long, there’s almost no rhythm what­so­ev­er, and the room flat­ters the music. It actu­al­ly improves it.” So famil­iar­ize your­self with all this sacred music through Cal­lix­tus, but as soon as you get the chance, hie thee to a goth­ic cathe­dral: no mat­ter your reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ties, it will cer­tain­ly enrich your aes­thet­ic ones.

via Aleteia and @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

The His­to­ry of Clas­si­cal Music in 1200 Tracks: From Gre­go­ri­an Chant to Górec­ki (100 Hours of Audio)

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch David Byrne Lead a Massive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

in Music | January 18th, 2018

Through­out the years, we’ve fea­tured per­for­mances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large ama­teur choir from Toron­to that meets week­ly and sings their hearts out. You’ve seen them sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Soundgar­den’s “Black Hole Sun” (to hon­or Chris Cor­nell) and Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah.”

If you dig through their Youtube archive, you can also revis­it per­for­mances of two Talk­ing Heads classics–“Psycho Killer” and “Burn­ing Down the House.” (Both below.) Which brings us to the videos above. Accord­ing to Con­se­quence of Sound, Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne has long been a big fan of Choir!Choir!Choir!. He writes on his web site:

I’ve sat mes­mer­ized watch­ing online videos of the Cana­di­an group Choir! Choir! Choir! They some­how man­age to get hun­dreds of strangers to sing beau­ti­ful­ly together—in tune and full-voiced—with rich har­monies and detailed arrange­ments. With almost no rehearsal—how do they do it??

They man­age to achieve lift off—that feel­ing of sur­ren­der when groups sing together—when we all become part of some­thing larg­er than our­selves.

And last Sat­ur­day, Byrne got to expe­ri­ence some of that lift off first­hand. Hear him sing a mov­ing ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Heroes” with Choir!Choir!Choir!, and a snip­pet of Madon­na’s “Bor­der­line.” Enjoy.

Psy­cho Killer

Burn­ing Down the House

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This Is What It Sounds Like When 1999 Peo­ple Sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry”

Large Choir Sings “Black Hole Sun”: A Mov­ing Trib­ute to Chris Cor­nell

Rufus Wain­wright and 1,500 Singers Sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

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Western Music Moves in Three and Even Four (!) Dimensional Spaces: How the Pioneering Research of Princeton Theorist Dmitri Tymoczko Helps Us Visualize Music in Radical, New Ways

in Math, Music, Physics, Science | January 18th, 2018

Every musi­cian has some basic sense of how math and music relate con­cep­tu­al­ly through geom­e­try, in the cir­cu­lar and tri­adic shapes formed by clus­ters of notes when grouped togeth­er in chords and scales. The con­nec­tions date back to the work of Pythago­ras, and com­posers who explore and exploit those con­nec­tions hap­pen upon pro­found, some­times mys­ti­cal, insights. For exam­ple, the two-dimen­sion­al geom­e­try of music finds near-reli­gious expres­sion in the com­po­si­tion­al strate­gies of John Coltrane, who left behind dia­grams of his chro­mat­ic mod­u­la­tion that the­o­rists still puz­zle over and find inspir­ing. It will be inter­est­ing to see what imag­i­na­tive com­posers do with a the­o­ry that extends the geom­e­try of music into three—and even four (!)—dimen­sions.

Pio­neer­ing Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty music the­o­rist and com­pos­er Dmitri Tymoczko has made dis­cov­er­ies that allow us to visu­al­ize music in entire­ly new ways. He began with the insight that two-note chords on the piano could form a Möbius strip, as Prince­ton Alum­ni Week­ly report­ed in 2011, a two-dimen­sion­al sur­face extend­ed into three-dimen­sion­al space. (See one such Möbius strip dia­gram above.) “Music is not just some­thing that can be heard, he real­ized. It has a shape.”

He soon saw that he could trans­form more com­plex chords the same way. Three-note chords occu­py a twist­ed three-dimen­sion­al space, and four-note chords live in a cor­re­spond­ing but impos­si­ble-to-visu­al­ize four-dimen­sion­al space. In fact, it worked for any num­ber of notes — each chord inhab­it­ed a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al space that twist­ed back on itself in unusu­al ways — a non-Euclid­ean space that does not adhere to the clas­si­cal rules of geom­e­try. 

Tymoczko dis­cov­ered that musi­cal geom­e­try (as Coltrane—and Ein­stein—had ear­li­er intu­it­ed) has a close rela­tion­ship to physics, when a physi­cist friend told him the mul­ti­di­men­sion­al spaces he was explor­ing were called “orb­ifolds,” which had found some appli­ca­tion “in arcane areas of string the­o­ry.” These dis­cov­er­ies have “phys­i­cal­ized” music, pro­vid­ing a way to “con­vert melodies and har­monies into move­ments in high­er dimen­sion­al spaces.”

This work has caused “quite a buzz in Anglo-Amer­i­can music-the­o­ry cir­cles,” says Prince­ton music his­to­ri­an Scott Burn­ham. As Tymoczko puts it in his short report “The Geom­e­try of Musi­cal Chords,” the “orb­ifold” the­o­ry seems to answer a ques­tion that occu­pied music the­o­rists for cen­turies: “how is it that West­ern music can sat­is­fy har­mon­ic and con­tra­pun­tal con­straints at once?” On his web­site, he out­lines his the­o­ry of “macro­har­mon­ic con­sis­ten­cy,” the com­po­si­tion­al con­straints that make music sound “good.” He also intro­duces a soft­ware appli­ca­tion, Chord­Ge­ome­tries 1.1, that cre­ates com­plex visu­al­iza­tions of musi­cal “orb­ifolds” like that you see above of Chopin sup­pos­ed­ly mov­ing through four-dimen­sions.

The the­o­rist first pub­lished his work in a 2006 issue of Sci­ence, then fol­lowed up two years lat­er with a paper co-writ­ten with Clifton Cal­len­dar and Ian Quinn called “Gen­er­al­ized Voice-Lead­ing Spaces” (read a three-page sum­ma­ry here). Final­ly, he turned his work into a book, A Geom­e­try of Music: Har­mo­ny and Coun­ter­point in the Extend­ed Com­mon Prac­tice, which explores the geo­met­ric con­nec­tions between clas­si­cal and mod­ernist com­po­si­tion, jazz, and rock. Those con­nec­tions have nev­er been sole­ly con­cep­tu­al for Tymoczko. A long­time fan of Coltrane, as well as Talk­ing Heads, Bri­an Eno, and Stravin­sky, he has put his the­o­ry into prac­tice in a num­ber of strange­ly mov­ing com­po­si­tions of his own, such as The Agony of Mod­ern Music (hear move­ment one above) and Straw­ber­ry Field The­o­ry (move­ment one below). His com­po­si­tion­al work is as nov­el-sound­ing as his the­o­ret­i­cal work is bril­liant: his two Sci­ence pub­li­ca­tions were the first on music the­o­ry in the magazine’s 129-year his­to­ry. It’s well worth pay­ing close atten­tion to where his work, and that of those inspired by it, goes next.

via Prince­ton Alum­ni Week­ly/@dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Dolores O’Riordan’s Beautifully-Pained Vocals in the Unplugged Version of The Cranberries’ 1994 Hit “Zombie”

in Music | January 16th, 2018

Yes­ter­day, amidst the many trib­utes and inevitable dis­sention over the lega­cy of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., a sad piece of news seemed to get buried: the death of Cran­ber­ries singer Dolores O’Riordan, at the far-too-young age of 46. The Irish vocal­ist not only “defined the sound of The Cran­ber­ries,” as her NPR obit­u­ary notes, she defined the sound of the 90s. Any­one who remem­bers the decade remem­bers spend­ing a sub­stan­tial part of it with Cran­ber­ries’ hits “Linger,” “Dreams,” and “Zom­bie” loop­ing in their heads.

Just 18 when she audi­tioned for them in 1989, O’Riordan took the band from what might have been rather for­mu­la­ic mopey, jan­g­ly dream­pop and gave it “a smoky hue in full cry” as well as “a sweet, del­i­cate tone that evoked cen­turies of Gael­ic folk tra­di­tion.”

Like anoth­er recent, trag­ic loss from the Gen X heyday—Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell—she ful­ly embod­ied pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty with a voice that was an arrest­ing force. Whether you were a fan or not, you sim­ply had to pay atten­tion.

Lis­ten, for exam­ple, to the band’s 1994 protest song “Zom­bie,” which memo­ri­al­izes two boys killed the pre­vi­ous year in an IRA bomb­ing. It’s a track that “sounds wild­ly anom­alous,” writes Rob Harvil­la at The Ringer, “giv­en the oth­er songs that made her famous.” While the “plod­ding rum­ble” and “crush­ing dis­tor­tion” evoke any num­ber of angsty qui­et-loud anthems of the time, O’Riordan’s “was the last voice you expect­ed to hear howl­ing over it.” The con­trast is haunt­ing, yet the song works just as well with­out fuzzed-out gui­tars and thun­der­ous drums, as in the orches­tral MTV Unplugged ver­sion above.

The “Zom­bie” video offers a clas­sic col­lec­tion of 90s styl­is­tic quirks, from Derek Jar­man-inspired set­pieces to the use of black and white and earnest polit­i­cal mes­sag­ing. For us old folks, it’s an almost pure hit of nos­tal­gia, and for the young, a near­ly per­fect spec­i­men of the decade’s rock aes­thet­ics, which includ­ed a refresh­ing num­ber of famous female solo artists and front­women just as like­ly as the men to dom­i­nate rock radio and tele­vi­sion. Indeed, it seems like the 90s may have pro­duced more promi­nent female-front­ed bands than any oth­er decade before or since. Or maybe I just remem­ber it that way. In any case, cen­tral to that mem­o­ry is Dolores O’Riordan’s “sta­di­um-size hit about dead­ly vio­lence in North­ern Ire­land,” and its beau­ti­ful­ly pained laments and point­ed­ly unsub­tle yelps and wails—a stun­ning expres­sion of mourn­ing that rever­ber­ates still some 25 years lat­er as we mourn its singer’s untime­ly pass­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Soundgarden’s Chris Cor­nell Sings Haunt­ing Acoustic Cov­ers of Prince’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

David Bowie: The Last Five Years Is Now Airing/Streaming on HBO

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Stream Big Playlists of Music from Haruki Murakami’s Personal Vinyl Collection and His Strange Literary Worlds

in Books, Literature, Music | January 12th, 2018

Haru­ki Muraka­mi read­ers, or even those of us who’ve just read about his nov­els, know to expect cer­tain things from his books: cats, ears, wells, strange par­al­lel real­i­ties, and above all music. And not just any music, but high­ly delib­er­ate selec­tions from the West­ern clas­si­cal, pop, and jazz canons, all no doubt pulled straight from the shelves of the writer’s vast per­son­al record library. That per­son­al library may well have grown a few records vaster today, giv­en that it’s Murakami’s 69th birth­day. To mark the occa­sion, we’ve round­ed up a few hit playlists of music from the Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, and 1Q84 author’s work as well as his life.

At the top of the post we have a Youtube playlist of songs from the artists fea­tured in Murakami’s non-fic­tion Por­trait in Jazz books, still, like most of his essay­is­tic writ­ing, untrans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. We orig­i­nal­ly high­light­ed it in a post on his for­mi­da­ble love of that most Amer­i­can of all musi­cal tra­di­tions, which got him run­ning a jazz bar in Tokyo years before he became a nov­el­ist. Just above, you’ll find a 96-song Spo­ti­fy playlist of the songs fea­tured in his nov­els, fea­tur­ing jazz record­ings by the likes of Miles Davis, Duke Elling­ton, and Thelo­nious Monk, the clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn, and pop num­bers from the Beach Boys, Elvis Pres­ley, Hall and Oates, and Michael Jack­son.

Final­ly, you can close out this musi­cal Muraka­mi birth­day with the Spo­ti­fy playlist above of music from his own vinyl col­lec­tion — though at 3,350 songs in total, it will prob­a­bly extend the cel­e­bra­tion beyond a day. Even that lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence sure­ly rep­re­sents only a frac­tion of what Muraka­mi keeps on his shelves, all of it offer­ing poten­tial mate­r­i­al for his next inex­plic­a­bly grip­ping sto­ry. And though the Eng­lish-speak­ing world still awaits its trans­la­tion of Murakami’s lat­est nov­el Killing Com­menda­tore, which came out in Japan last year, you can hear the music it name-checks in the Youtube playlist below. Some­thing about the mix — Richard Strauss, Sheryl Crow, the Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet, Duran Duran — sug­gests we’re in for anoth­er Murakami­an read­ing expe­ri­ence indeed:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

Read Online Haru­ki Murakami’s New Essay on How a Base­ball Game Launched His Writ­ing Career

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Brief History of Making Deals with the Devil: Niccolò Paganini, Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page & More

in Literature, Music, Religion | January 11th, 2018

When the term “witch hunt” gets thrown around in cas­es of pow­er­ful men accused of harass­ment and abuse, his­to­ri­ans every­where bang their heads against their desks. The his­to­ry of per­se­cut­ing witches—as every school­boy and girl knows from the famous Salem Trials—involves accu­sa­tions mov­ing decid­ed­ly in the oth­er direc­tion.

But we’re very famil­iar with men sup­pos­ed­ly sell­ing out to Satan, dealing—or just dueling—with the dev­il. They weren’t called witch­es for doing so, or burned at the stake. They were blues pio­neers, vir­tu­oso fid­dlers, and gui­tar gods. From the dev­il­ish­ly dash­ing Nic­colò Pagani­ni, to Robert John­son at the Cross­roads, to Jim­my Page’s black mag­ic, to “The Dev­il Went Down to Geor­gia,” to the omnipres­ence of Satan in met­al…. The dev­il “seems to have quite the inter­est in music,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Before musi­cians came to terms with the dark lord, pow­er-hun­gry schol­ars used demonolo­gy to sum­mon Lucifer­ian emis­saries like Mephistophe­les. The leg­end of Faust dates back to the late 16th cen­tu­ry and a his­tor­i­cal alchemist named Johann Georg Faust, who inspired many dra­mat­ic works, like Christo­pher Marlowe’s The Trag­i­cal His­to­ry of Doc­tor Faus­tus, Johann Goethe’s Faust, Thomas Mann’s Doc­tor Faus­tus, Mikhail Bugakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, and F.W. Murnau’s 1926 silent film.

The Faust leg­end may be the stur­di­est of such sto­ries, but it is not by any means the ori­gin of the idea. Medieval Catholic saints feared the dev­il’s entice­ments con­stant­ly. Medieval occultists often saw things dif­fer­ent­ly. If we can trace the notion of women con­sort­ing with the dev­il to the Bib­li­cal Eve in the Gar­den, we find male ana­logues in the New Testament—Christ’s temp­ta­tions in the desert, Judas’s thir­ty pieces of sil­ver, the pos­sessed vagrant who sends his demons into a herd of pigs. But we might even say that God made the first deal with the dev­il, in the open­ing wager of the book of Job.

In most examples—Charlie Daniels’ tri­umphal folk tale aside—the deal usu­al­ly goes down bad­ly for the mor­tal par­ty involved, as it did for Robert John­son when the dev­il came for his due, and con­vened the mor­bid­ly fas­ci­nat­ing 27 Club. Goethe impos­es a redemp­tive hap­py end­ing onto Faust that seems to wild­ly over­com­pen­sate for the typ­i­cal fate of souls in hell’s pawn shop. Kierkegaard took the idea seri­ous­ly as a cul­tur­al myth, and wrote in Either/Or that “every notable his­tor­i­cal era will have its own Faust.”

Mod­ern-day Fausts in the pop­u­lar genre of the day, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, are famous enter­tain­ers, as you can see in the unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous super­cut above from a YouTube chan­nel called “End­TimeChris­t­ian.” As it hap­pens in these kinds of nar­ra­tives, the cul­tur­al trope gets tak­en far too lit­er­al­ly as a real event. The Faust leg­end shows us that mak­ing deals with the dev­il has been a lit­er­ary device for hun­dreds of years, pass­ing into pop­u­lar cul­ture, then the blues—a genre haunt­ed by hell hounds and infer­nal crossroads—and its prog­e­ny in rock and roll and hip hop.

Those who talk of sell­ing their souls might real­ly believe it, but they inher­it­ed the lan­guage from cen­turies of West­ern cul­tur­al and reli­gious tra­di­tion. Sell­ing one’s soul is a com­mon metaphor for liv­ing a car­nal life, or get­ting into bed with shady char­ac­ters for world­ly suc­cess. But it’s also a play­ful notion. (A mis­un­der­stood aspect of so much met­al is its com­ic Satan­ic overkill.) John­son him­self turned the sto­ry of sell­ing his soul into an icon­ic boast, in “Cross­roads” and “Me and the Dev­il Blues.” “Hel­lo Satan,” he says in the lat­ter tune, “I believe it’s time to go.”

Chill­ing in hind­sight, the line is the bluesman’s grim­ly casu­al acknowl­edg­ment of how life on the edge would catch up to him. But it was worth it, he also sug­gests, to become a leg­end in his own time. In the short, ani­mat­ed video above from Music Mat­ters, John­son meets the horned one, a slick oper­a­tor in a suit: “Sud­den­ly, no one could touch him.” Often when we talk these days about peo­ple sell­ing their souls, they might even­tu­al­ly end up singing, but they don’t make beau­ti­ful music. In any case, the moral of almost every ver­sion of the sto­ry is per­fect­ly clear: no mat­ter how good the deal seems, the dev­il nev­er fails to col­lect on a debt.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

Watch Häx­an, the Clas­sic Cin­e­mat­ic Study of Witch­craft Nar­rat­ed by William S. Bur­roughs (1922)

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The “True” Story Of How Brian Eno Invented Ambient Music

in Music, Random | January 10th, 2018

Or maybe it did­n’t actu­al­ly hap­pen that way…

To learn more about Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies, see our archived post: Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Vel­vet Under­ground as Peanuts Char­ac­ters: Snoopy Morphs Into Lou Reed, Char­lie Brown Into Andy Warhol

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

Umber­to Eco Explains the Poet­ic Pow­er of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

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