The world is becoming an increasingly complex place to live. This is a basic fact about how the universe, life and culture are evolving. As composers of music and of our lives, given all the resources we have at our disposal we still have to ask "how are we to proceed"?

Looking for materials and techniques for the making of art, there seem to be an infinite number of styles, forms and languages to choose from and anyone can create anything short of crossing the laws of physics. Generalized laws are good for telling you what you can't do, not what you can. But when you look at the history of music (as well as other human systems), you can make distinctions and identify emergent trends to serve as models.

The history of Western music itself can serve as a model for a composition. The macrostructure would start out with a very amorphous first section as this is our pre-history where all that remains of record is writings about music and some fragments of scales. The second section would start with single line melodies, chants, eventually evolving into two lines singing in parallel, growing in complexity until there are multiple interweaving voices singing in model polyphony and the system is unsustainable and we've reached a turning point. The third section would sound like a fresh start, where a new tonal language started taking shape, harmony would tend to be more vertical as opposed to horizontal and forward motion was achieved through a persistent pulse. This section would reach a new harmonic complexity, but the language would not reach a crisis point, instead trading in the mathematical complexity of tonal relationships in favor of larger chords, ensembles, textures, tempi and densities. It is this crisis that would bring the piece to section four. The fourth movement of our historic symphony would create a new layer of complexity, a sort of evolutionary leap, in that instead of one evolving language, the music breaks into two separate strands. One strand will try to keep using the language of section three, yet it will also slowing change, incorporating divergent voices within itself. The other strand begins stretching all the parameters of music in order to make a revolutionary break. While section four is still going on, a new strand begins section five. This new voice, attempts to clear the air, asserting a paired down systems music that incorporates something from the other musics but do so with a holistic philosophy. It's really up to us whether this piece should keep on going and where it should lead.

Such a piece need not embrace the metaphysic of Hegel or the Heavenly endpoint of Marxist communism. I would hope that it also wouldn't end at environmental catastrophe, nuclear holocaust or the Rapture.

The history of the universe would serve as another large scale model. Starting with a Big Bang, a piece would evolve from a singularity into clouds of particles, into atoms which make up stars, breaking up into planets, creating environments for cells to evolve, into living systems, into virtual systems and at your discretion end the piece with a cooling off into entropy.

The composer doesn't so much 'create' music as organize sound. Just as existence precedes essence, and sensing precedes thinking, the composer has soaked up numerous sound experiences from nature and culture. These influences suggest models and materials with which to work. Composing is a problem solving activity, as I said - "how do we proceed"? We are collecting examples from our environment, experimenting to find our voice and really, returning to our environment the product of our efforts, a new organization of sound waves as a memetic snapshot of abstract thinking. Once let loose a piece of music becomes a sound environment for an audience (an organism at one level is an environment at another). A successful piece of music is a replicater of abstract ideas. Text from a vocal piece may transmit one idea but instrumental music transmits another. And the meme that it communicates is that of a model. A model for other pieces. A model for social organization. A model that reflects natural models.

Music can't exist outside of nature, it is the pushing of soundwaves from mind to ear to air to ear to mind (all of which has emerged from nature). But being self-aware beings, we can decide on a model that reflects the kind of world we want to live in.

The first Western music theorist, Pythagorus is said to have discovered the physics of music empirically, hearing a relationship of pitches hammered out by some metal workers (modern Indonesian Gamelans are still tuned in this way). After doing a series of tests himself, he discovered these tones are mathematically related by simple ratios. For centuries, musicians used the Pythagorean scales of stacked fifths, and Astronomy was heavily intertwined with Astronomy and Numerology (the mysticism of numbers which influenced Plato) claiming that those same rations also rang out in the revolutions of the planets and sun (the Music of the Spheres).

What is interesting is not the metaphysics of numbers, nor the cosmological system, but 1) his 'creation story' is a model for emergence, 2) the idea that you can show relations between not only pitches but also other parameters of music and 3) since sound is a natural phenomenon, there are correlations between music and other aspects of the cosmos.

Pythagoras' creation story is that first there was '1' and that splits off into '2', then into '3' and so on up to '10' (and so on, but 10 is an important number). While we would have to remind Pythagoras that there were billions of years of the universe evolving before numbers ever emerged out of the ancient civilizations, it is interesting how with each number he shows the complex relationships between them increase, serving as a model for complexity and growth.

Time is not an absolute entity but instead a ruler by which we measure the relationship between objects. On this relational scale, stars revolve around super massive black holes within a Galaxy in light years, planets revolve around stars in years, human activity cycles on days, sound is measured in cycles per second (Hertz) and light as Terahertz. So as Henry Cowell has pointed out , you can write a piece of music where rhythmic ratios and pitch ratios are themselves in a relationship (for example where one player is playing a scale of stacked fourths in the time of four against another player playing stacked fifths in five and their lines could be a major third apart (an interval whose harmonic ratio is 5/4)). And multi-media pieces could also be synced by number relations between dance/movement, music, light and film (in frames per second).

Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone system also takes into account Einstein's relativism, doing away with a total center in the same way that moral relativism does away with a moral absolute with which to measure values. The serial composers after Schoenberg serialized the other parameters of music such as rhythm and dynamics and thus correlated the parameters of music together in a different way from Cowell. Serialists who took the rule to 'repeat no note until all 12 have been played' as dogma created a new absolutism. This rule against repetition also goes for larger units of music (phrases, sections) and so constant change at all levels creates an overall impression of stasis, which implies a closed or dead system. While the Complexity composers that follow create music that reflects the increasingly complex world, the lack of discernable overall emergent patterns, makes this model a less successful transmitter of ideas. The system that reflects an unsustainable amount of complication strikes most listeners as unstructured chaos and so not understandable. The music fails to explain itself.

The complexity composers of this period who don't fall into this trap such as Ligeti and Xenakis, do use some degree of evolutionary or even stochastic technique, where the listener can hear patterns emerging, the music travels from one place to another, and natural phenomenon such as spider webs or cloud formations are evoked. Xenakis is probably the most scientific composer to date. His use of high mathematics to calculate the projection of notes (particles) or glissandi (waves) across time-space is an analog to the scientific rationalism of the period as well as the it's flip side, the seemingly non-deterministic nature of quantum physics, not to mention pointing the way to the coming Chaos theory. Many listeners would probably lump Xenakis into the same category as the same seemingly cold blooded reductionist scientists and hear the extreme dissonances as a system on the edge of catastrophe, yet the tools outlined in his book "Formalized Music" could be used in more harmonious contexts by composers with differing aesthetics.

At the extreme edges of the universe, that is at the beginning and end, at the quantum level and within black holes, there is scientific uncertainty. Because the behavior of the very building blocks of matter are only probabilistic and because living systems are so complex, human behavior itself also seems to be probabilistic. Some philosophers and artists have seen this as good news for free will and artistic creativity.

The ancient Greek Skeptics worked out a system of refutation aimed at attacking any certainty with the goal that living in a state of contingency would bring peace of mind. The ancient Indian Carvakas philosophers did the same against the Vedas. David Hume's empiricism serves a similar aim, as do modern day Deconstructionalists in attacking Foundationalism. These philosophies serve a noble purpose in doing away with the absolutism of Platonism, Totalitarianism and Fundamentalism. But systems of denying and not asserting leave us with the question, "how are we to live"?

The analogous political system with skepticism is anarchism and it's spiritual cousin is Zen Buddhism. Anarchism attempts to neutralize all institutions of power (whether it be church, state or corporation) as a way to make space for people to come together in mutual association. Likewise Zen negates the existence of everything for the sake of bliss. John Cage, influenced by Zen, aimed to also neutralize human will so as to contemplate sound as sound and not as human emotion or striving. While offering a vast array of strategies for music to occur, there are many paradoxes with such methods. As he notes his indeterminate music was for many listeners indistinguishable from serialists (radical determinists). Further more, attempting to wean musicians off of 'willing' music requires at times tougher measures (trying to force musicians to be free!). And Indeterminacy doesn't allow for free will; we couldn't make sense of our (sound) environments, our (musical) decisions would be random and any (sounding) action we take wouldn't seem to have any predictable effect. But most of all, one has to ask, if the sounds of nature or the cityscape are preferable to music, why make music at all? Cage, of course, has said that his concerns were more social than musical. And this is evidence that for him, music making is a form of demonstrating a philosophy for living though the transmission of sound.

Whereas most skeptics hold all knowledge in doubt, the Greek Skeptic Carneades proposed a more pragmatic system. That is one that allows for human decision making, science and artistic inquiry. His arguments for free will are 1) though the world is deterministic, the will is a cause of itself, 2) since preceding events don't necessarily cause events that follow, events proceeding a person's choices don't cause his choices and 3) we cannot predict with certainty that proceeding events caused events following. And there are three levels by which to judge the degree of truth: 1) a single experience has low probability for truth, 2) an experience confirmed by further experiences has a greater probability and 3) an experience confirmed by other experiences plus a detailed investigation or testing of the data has the greatest truth value. This can be a scientific model: 1) single fact gives cause for questioning, 2) additional facts leads one to a hypothesis and 3) testing leads to a temporary theory. Or a hierarchy for valuing music: 1) isolated sound data have little value, 2) repeated sound data make for pattern recognition and 3) patterns transforming over time make for a new sonic entity.

The truest world view system of the ancient Western world is that of the Democritean-Epicurean-Lucrecian line. Democritus posited the existence of one element that all matter was made of, the Atom. Fragments of his works also hint as to his support for the Athenian democratic system. Epicurus took up the Democritean physical system and added the idea of the 'serve' of the atom which allowed for free will just as quantum uncertainty does for philosophers of our time. Epicurus also added an ethical system, making a virtue of moderation and enjoying life which inspired Jefferson to add the lines "pursuit of happiness" to the Declaration of Independence. This Democritean/Epicurean world view is outlined in Lucrecius' epic poem "On The Nature of the Universe" to my mind the greatest book of antiquity. If we took Ockham's razor to the errors in some of the details (as Jefferson did to the Gospels), and added Carneades' system for judging truth, we'd have an excellent world view. It is naturalistic, non-theistic, moderate, probabilistic and allows for free will, science and pleasure. It looks for rational reasons and evidence for things, claiming that humans are part of nature, evolving from nature.

But it is the Platonic philosophy married to Christian theology that was to dominate, with it's dualism that valued soul over body, heaven over earth, God over man. Aristotole's influence came later with it emphasis on empiricism and God reduced to the role of Prime Mover of a universe that once set in motion ran itself. Democritus, Epicurus and Lucrecius' influence would have to wait until the Enlightenment. The progression of Plato to Aristotle to Democritus roughly correlates to the stumbling progression from Monarchy to Aristocracy to Democracy.

During the Enlightenment the universe was thought to be predetermined. Whether set in motion by Aristotle's Unmoved Mover as the Deists believed or running by itself as the hard materialists believed, the universe ran like a well oiled machine. The music of the period reflected this. Every piece had a strong tonal center reminiscent of the absolutes of Time and Space in Newton's astronomy. This feeling of inevitability is achieved with the insistence of the Dominant Cadence. Inevitability is to the 18th Century what Probability is to our time. The search for a perfect mathematical system such as attempted by Leibniz had as it's musical analog Bach's codifying of the tonal system. Absolute programs are ultimately bound to fail. Self contained mathematical system no matter how beautiful, if they ignore the natural world, have no use and explain nothing. The apparent perfection of the tonal system traded in one compromise for another. Pythagorean tuning used perfect ratios for scales but created howling dissonances between instruments and when transposed into other keys. Bach substituted this for the equal tempered system where the intervals between tones are equal and can be transposed into any key, but the ratios are no longer perfect. Classical Cosmology and Musicology were superior to anything before it. But because there were gaps in their understanding, in light of new information, we can appreciate these systems, but not adopt them as our own.

One source of new information comes from other great cultures outside of the Western World. Equally valid music systems have evolved out of Africa, Asia, India, Indonesia and elsewhere. Indonesian Gamelan has influenced Debussy to McPhee to Harrison to the Minimalists. When Debussy heard it at the World's Fair, it showed him that there are alternatives to the Western tonal system. The Romantics had already stretched tonality to it's breaking point; Gamelan inspired Debussy to make that break. Gamelan is structured by the colotomic system. This structure evolved naturally into a model for fractal music. The sarons play a melody which serves as the spine for the whole piece. The lower instruments play the only key notes had half or quarter speed and the higher instruments play elaborations of the melody, at twice the speed, improvising by adding notes between the melody notes. It serves as a model for a natural growth system, with the Gong outlining the fundamental structure and each higher instrument playing at twice the speed like layers of wave or wind currents, or trees growing towards sunlight. At the end of each cycle the group repeats the system or the drum signals to move on. As a group, the Gamelan will speed up or slow down, as if breathing in and out. All players are encouraged to learn the different instruments and so are free to move up through the hierarchy.

While in Gamelan each higher pitched instrument is playing a twice the rate of the one below it and so still conforming to a basic pulse, in African music, the instruments are often moving at more complex ratios to each other, thus creating polyrhythm's. One drum or bell will hold the central pulse while other instruments play syncopated rhythms around it in some combination of relations of 2 to 3 to 4 to 6 to 8 to 9 to 12. To hold it all together each player must play in strict time and only the master drummer can elaborate or signal for change.

Whereas Gamelan colony and African polyrhythm express themselves more in vertical relations, Indian music does so in horizontal motion. The tal are rhythmic units that are both played and spoken, and like language assembled into larger and larger groups, like words into phrases into sentences into paragraphs and chapters, etc. A small number of tal are assembled into phrases that are strung together in an additive process to produce variations such as (A + B + A1 + B1) + ((C + A1 + A + A1) + (C1 + A2 + A1 + B1)) + ((D + A1 + A + A1) + (D1 + A2 + A1 + B1)), etc. Like Gamelan, Indian music will start out slowly, then speed up and lock into a steady pulse. But whereas Gamelan will often accelerate or decelerate into other sections, Indian music will often suddenly shift gears into double time or half time, or more complex ratios of time such as 5, 7 or 9 times the original speed. With both Indian music and Gamelan there is a sense of moving between dimensions of time.

A Theory Of All Music (TOAM) would have to take into account all audible sound intended as music from all time periods from all regions of the world.

Such a theory should be used not only to analyze existing music but also used for constructing future music at the atomic level, for showing how to replicate it through time and for showing how meaning emerges from the resultant patterns.

Just as Quantum theory has it's complimentary yet contrasting wave and particle theories, the 20th Century has two dueling music theories: Total Serialism and Totalism.

Serialism is concerned with sequential values derived from a gamut of tones that are usually thought to be equally spaced. It comes from Georg Cantor's set theory and relates to Chomsky's work in language and to 20th Structuralism. Set or group theory relates to how we psychologically categorize parts of music as groups within groups within groups, how we track it changing through time, how the parts relate to the whole and how we judge sameness and difference. Sets of notes or sequences are not only found in Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Babbitt, Boulez and Stockhausen, but also in common practice music, as well as in the additive processes of Indian music and Philip Glass, and in the numerical sequences in Gamelan and John Cage's square-root form. It can be applied to any equal-tempered (or approximately equal-tempered such as Indonesian pelog scales) music, to rhythms as well as pitches and to simultaneities as well as sequences.

Kyle Gann has called a recent generation of composers Totalists who are open to all styles of the world and tend to use fractions in music. Fractions or ratios can describe the relationships between sound objects such as the partials from a single instrumental timbre seen in Fourier analysis, the pitch relations in Pythagorean, Chinese or Just Intonation tuning systems, the tempo relations between parts in Indian or Gamelan music, the polyrhythmic relations between players in African music, the phase music of Steve Reich and the music theory of Henry Cowell. What you might call Wave theory describes the relations between unequal sound objects.

Serialism (describing equal-tempered groups) and Totalism (describing the relations between unequal units) can be integrated by composing with groups of ratios and ratios of groups. Sets are just groups of whole numbers and ratios are just fractions, so together they make up the entire set of integers.

This describes the "what" of music at the atomic level, but what about the "how"? The content by itself is meaningless without context. The sequencing of groups within groups is how most music is put together. To achieve a sense of continuity though the music needs to evolve slowly. The Serialists wanted to convey revolutionary change though discontinuity. By slowing down time and stretching it out, the Minimalists made musical processes audible and so conveyed evolutionary change. Inspired by the additive processes of Indian music, the polyrhythm's of African music and the self-similarities of Gamelan music, the Minimalists gave us a new start. A piece of music can communicate it's process, it's structure, it's philosophy without the need of vocalized or supplemental text. One could say that early classic Minimalism has such a slow rate of change that it reaches the same point of stasis that constantly changing serialism reaches and so communicates a dead system. But really, this was just the beginning. Since then composers have taken these techniques into new territories.

The evolutionary techniques of Minimalism include note additions, note subtractions, note substitutions, common tone chord modulations, and phasing. But techniques such as inversion, retrograde, retrograde-inversion used by serialists and transposition and sequences used by traditional composers, can also be used, the only qualification be that it is gradualist. One way to break down the barrier between Serialist and Minimalist technique is, for example, to cycle through a tone row. Repeat notes 1, 2 & 3 of the row, then repeat notes 2, 3 & 4 of the row, then 3, 4 & 5, etc until you complete the cycle at which point you can move on to another process. The listener can actually perceive the note set, hear the process and get a sense of progression. According to what notes are chosen for the set and how the composer chooses to repeat them, the sense of tonal center or lack of it is in their control. By speeding up and varying the cycles, the music can display the evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium.

This is music at its atomic and genetic levels. The next level is the meaning of the piece which is derived from the interaction of its many parts. The interaction between small parts, between the small scale and large scale parts, between movements or sections, between performers, between composer and performers, and between performers and audience all give the piece its social meaning. This is the memetic value of music.

Pop music is usually created with one form, song form, alternating verse and chorus. It usually doesn't communicate through its form but through its text. Since the foreground of pop music is its lyrics vocalized, pop music is about whatever the singer says it's about.

Song form could be written as ABCBA (where A is the verse, B is the chorus, not necessarily alternating in this way), interrupted only by the bridge C, which serves as a tiny development section, such as an 8 bar guitar solo. Classical sonata form could be written the same way, where A is the 1st theme and B is the 2nd theme and C is the development section. But in classical music the development section is expanded; it's the development section where the artist shows their skill, using compositional methods for modulating and transforming the themes. Most jazz music uses a similar form, Head-Solos-Head, where the Solo section is where each player improvises on the theme for the development.

While such forms might tell us something about the times in which they were first formulated (18th century Europe, 20th Century America), for a new musician to use a pre-given form will say nothing new formally.

The relations between parts and between performers provides a model for relations between members of society, and between society and the cosmos. John Cage's criticism of a Glenn Branca piece was not that it was poorly written or ugly but that he 'wouldn't want to live in such a society'. Stravinsky's remark that music is unable to express anything but itself can be taken to mean that music cannot communicate feelings. But perhaps it can communicate itself; the meme expressed may not express the same thing to everyone, or express it with the same amount of import, but it is expressing itself as an abstract idea.

What is the philosophy of a piece of music where every tiny detail was determined by the composer and handed to performers to execute as in the case of the total serialists? How about where a composer sets out strict guidelines about how to contravene traditional music rules and hands these to performers as in the case of Cage? How about where free improvisers get together and play without any preconceptions other than to listen? Aren't there still unspoken rules to not play in a traditional manner?

Musical anarchism has had the same paradox to deal with as political anarchism. It will only work if all members agree to abide by the rules. Each member must be responsible and listen to the other members. Each member must never try to overpower anyone else. Everyone must remain equal in their non-conformity. The moment someone expresses their freedom by overpowering the group, the bond of mutual association is broken.

John Cage has had to deal with a similar problem where he was basically trying to force some orchestra musicians to be free. The musicians, claiming to be acting in the rebellious spirit of Cage, broke the rules he set down during a piece. Their noise was not in harmony with the noise of Cage's piece.

High level rules should be set down to guarantee freedom at local level in the matter of a Constitution where the rules are for restricting abuse of power and encouraging cooperation. Game theory is used to construct an ethics in the music of Christian Wolf, Iannis Xenakis, Maurizio Kagel and John Zorn.

Of the many game pieces John Zorn has written, "Cobra" is the one that has been adopted by groups all over the world. It models a society where musicians elect a change in texture and the conductor (or Prompter) is really just a traffic cop who tells the group when that new texture happens. All musicians are equal in that they can propose new calls to change the texture and they are free to interpret the calls within a given range of acceptability. All manner of styles of sound is permissible as long as you follow the guidelines of the flash card shown by the Prompter. Threats to this egalitarian democracy come in the form of guerillas who either play outside of the rules as individual non-conformists or groups of three who (within the rules of the game) hijack the election system and impose their own will of the few over the many.

Though there are officially no "winners" in Cobra, this category of game piece models competition. It shows the cycling of societies between an egalitarian one and challenges to it both through the manner of elections and guerilla action, but also in how musicians choose to play musical phrases that compliment each other or ones that clash.

Terry Riley's "In C" models a more harmonious collaborative society. There is less freedom of content than "Cobra" – "Cobra" has no written score, "In C" is all written out. The most militant rule in Cobra though to "only play when the prompter says to" is the one freedom a musician has in "In C". Though the musician should play the written fragments in order, they can decide when to play and when not to play and also make some decisions as to how to play the phrase. In this sense "Cobra" and "In C" are mirror opposites of each other. "Cobra" is maximalist and discontinuous with many rules but no given music; "In C" is minimalist and continuous with few rules but a pre-given score. Composers have a wide range of worlds to explore between these two models.

So a Theory Of All Music should show how music is constructed from the Atomic level (Ma), replicates itself at the Genetic level (Mg) through compositional process into larger related groupings, and generates meaning at the Memetic level (Mm ) through it's interplay of content and form.

Free Improvisers model a society of mutual association, intuition and empiricism, free from written music and composers. Cage, Brown, Tudor, Wolfe and Feldman offer a similar model but instead free from improvisation, habits, pre-conceptions and conscious will. The serialists advocated a labyrinth of complex scores to free us from our traditions. The Minimalists advocate simplicity to free us from the cultural noise of modern life. Eclectics like John Zorn and Frank Zappa bask in the cultural noise and multicultural collages of globalization.

Traditional composers show us where we've been. We can already hear that though from listening to composers of the past. Realist composers show us where we are. Advocate composers show us where we should go. Where should we go?

Consciousness emerged from the complexities of the evolved brain. Human brains produce musical soundscapes from whose patterns emerge memetic models for new philosophies and new societies which feedback into newer soundscapes. From the evolving complexities of technology emerges a global culture. We can choose to contribute to it and shape it or watch as it evolves into something we abhor.

Just as there needs to be a democratized United Nations, an empowered World Court and enforcement of the Declaration of Human Rights, there needs to be global art music. Or perhaps I should say, there will be those things, and we should decide how those things should act and sound.

To find a common ground between musics of the world we are going to have to simplify. Most music of the world is played in duple or triple time. Complexities come from higher prime numbers such as 5, 7, 11, 13, etc. which are compounds of 2 + 3. Drummers of the world have no problem playing with each other; rhythm is a more fundamental parameter of music than is pitch - harmonic pitches can all be expressed as very fast periodic rhythm but not all rhythms can be classified as pitched (as in non-periodic noise).

A harder problem is getting musicians from different cultures to speak to each other in the same tuning. Most cultures use 5 or 7 note scales. Most cultures agree on the most basic ratio of the octave 2:1. Many cultures tune with the second most common ratios the fifth 3:2 and the forth 4:3. But the more complex the ratio, the less agreement there is (3rd's and 6th's, 2nd's and 7th's), the less chance that musicians are going to adhere to that tuning or even agree on how many notes per octave. The widest gulf is perhaps between the Western equal temperament compromise of 12 equal spaced tones with imperfect ratios and other tunings that prefer different divisions of the octave and more harmonious ratios, sacrificing farther ranging modulations. The choice is between irrational but equal or rational but unequal. Perhaps Just Intonation would be a valid compromise. Perhaps an equal tempered 24 note microtonal scale would bridge many of the notes of East and West.

Certainly all possible tunings should continue to perpetuate themselves, but there must be a common tuning that would allow musicians all over the world to play together. The only way to resolve these differences is the same way systems evolve in the first place: for musicians to get together and play. Simpler scales, tunings, ratios and rhythms will form the basis for agreement and from there complexity can again build up.

One way for musicians to resolve these differences is by playing by game rules instead of by scores. Content and meaning can emerge out of a rules based piece still achieving an integrated whole but not bound by specific tunings or traditional conceptions of playing. Musical ethics evolve.

We need a coming together of the intuitive improvisational and the rational compositional. A composer who writes constructively, from the bottom up, can supply ideas for improvisers without dictating the shape of every single note. Improvisers can play by agreed upon rules or notated fragments for achieving a greater unity.

We need orchestras with strings, woodwinds, brass, koto's, kora's, sitars, Gamelan, and percussion of all manner. We need new instruments that can shift between multiple tunings. New electronic instruments that respond to intuitive motions and gestures.

Every major culture seems to have it's flavor of pop song. And every major culture has it's brand of techno music. Perhaps art musics of the world are slower to come together because the complexities are deeper. It's going to take a voluntary simplicity from evolutionary methods to create a truly global soundscape. But already there is a giant nonstop global work going on as the sum total of all musicians playing all over the world; not a moment goes by when someone isn't keeping the piece going.

If music is a living system, then it must propagate itself genetically. Minimalist and Serialist methods of transformation were mentioned. Other techniques are recursive algorithms using the Fibonacci series and fractal math. In fact, Fibonacci discovered his famous number series analyzing the breeding habits of rabbits. Like Pythagoras' creation myth of numbers, an endless string of numbers can be generated by adding two Fibonacci numbers together, then adding the 2nd and 3rd numbers together, then the 3rd and 4th, etc. - (the standard series being (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…)). Bartok is said to have used the series in writing "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta". Debussy may have used it. John Chowning and Joseph Schillinger have.

Putting contiguous Fibonacci numbers together in a set of ratios (1/2, 2/3, 3/5, 5/8…) yields fractions that approach the Golden Ratio, Phi - 1.61803399… used in art to mirror patterns and proportions found in nature from pineapples to spiral galaxies. Recursive functions used to generate fractals also mirror natural growth systems and can also be used to generate music.

But irrational numbers like the Phi and infinite sets like the Fibonacci series and unending fractal functions quickly lead to unsustainable growth. So while they are useful generating self-similar replicating music systems, composers must come to terms with techniques that puts an ending on cycles, recycling material, cycling through loops for more gradual growth and emphasizing the more simple ratios (the first few ratios produced from the Fibonacci series are the same as those for perfect harmonic intervals, but not ratios later in the set). Growth is an attribute of life, but exponential growth can lead to a crisis of survival.

Overly complex music will fail to propagate; it needs supplementary texts to explain itself. Complexity at one level should be balanced with simplicity at another level. Complexity at all levels leads to incoherence. Pop music will always be more mimetically successful than art music, but for both types there are few winners. Just as most art pieces fail to connect with an audience, most pop songs also fail to be popular.

Ockham's razor must be used to pare down overly complex systems to emphasize emergent patterns and self similarity and cut out the superstitions of over-embellishment. Constructive compositional strategies build from simple means into complex hierarchies, and meaning is derived from the complex relations of parts, not from dense complication. The reductive analyst must be able to see the whole work of art even as they cut away at the layers. The constructive composer is wise to have an overview while building a work from the ground up with an ethic of voluntary simplicity.

Self-similarity appears in natural sound as transverse sound waves riding within longitudinal sound waves. In musical sound it extends to these sound waves contained within periodic beats (rhythm) contained within a pulse or tempo. Replication happens when two frequencies played close together produce a third or difference tone. Or when wave forms are superimposed to create composites. Or when two rhythms are superimposed to create a composite rhythm.

Emergent design can be heard in the late arrival of human voices on the evolutionary scale in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Schoenberg 2nd String Quartet, or Holst's "The Planets".

As proved by Godel, no system will perfectly model everything. Our calendar is broken into months with differing numbers of days and an added day at Leap Year. Calendars with tempered 30 day months need an extra 5 days at the end of the year. Un-tempered Pythagorean scales spiral out of control, never cycling back to a tonic. Equal tempered scales hide their imperfect ratios, built on infinite irrational numbers.

A Theory Of All Music must try to encompass most music. Advocacy of a Global Art Music must be for a system that is self-making and self-correcting. But no theory should be stifling.

There won't be a strict 1-to-1 correlation between a model for music and the cosmos but natural phenomena do serve as a model for the construction of music which can loop back to serve as a model to shape a virtual sonic reality. Such a model should emerge from the complexities of our world as does the approximate ethics of Humanism or philosophy of Pragmatism.

We live somewhere in the middle ground of the Pink Noise flicker, between the predictability of Brown Noise and the randomness of White Noise. This is the Holocene zone where music can exist as a living system.

Science will continue to develop better theories to explain the universe yet perhaps never reach a complete perfect end-theory. Art replaces Religion as the medium for contemplating the Cosmos. Wittgenstein said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" but through music we can try to articulate those things that science can't yet speak to.

Though all pieces of music come to end, we can work to ensure that the future of music carries on indefinitely.