The Whole History of Music (More or Less) - Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces | Lyssna här

How do you tell the entire history of music?

If you're director and Cosmic Shambles co-founder Trent Burton, apparently you start with the Big Bang, interview more than 100 people around the world, and emerge four-and-a-half years later with a nine-part, 10.5-hour documentary.

This week I'm joined by Trent to talk about For the Record: An Incomplete History of Music, the enormous new series presented by Charlotte Ritchie, which travels from the origins of sound and the earliest music through notation, recording, jazz, rave culture, streaming and AI.

I've been deeply embedded in the project myself as music consultant and mix engineer, so this conversation quickly expands beyond the making of the documentary into some of the questions it raises.

How do you tell music history when music doesn't evolve in a straight line? What gets lost when oral traditions become notation — or performances become definitive recordings? And what happens to music when a machine can generate it on demand?

We get into live performance, improvisation, rave culture, cultural exchange and appropriation, active listening, the economics of grassroots live music, Robert Smith's battle with ticket pricing, and why a 10.5-hour independent music documentary may make more sense on YouTube than on broadcast television.

Midway through, there's some actual music too: an excerpt from Slack Tide, my piece for violinist Harriet Mackenzie and me, premiered at First Light Festival 2026 and based on the tidal cycle of the Suffolk coast.

IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 – Welcome back and introducing For the Record

02:30 – Trent Burton, Cosmic Shambles and how the project began

06:00 – How 90 minutes became nine episodes and 614 minutes

09:00 – The impossible problem of structuring music history

14:10 – Notation, oral traditions and writing music down

21:30 – Recording and the invention of the “definitive” version

24:30 – AI, commodification and the future of live music

31:00 – Electronic music, improvisation and musical jeopardy

37:00 – Music, humanity, grief and why sound can make us cry

44:00 – Musical interlude: Harriet Mackenzie and Slack Tide

48:40 – Active listening and learning how to hear unfamiliar music