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CAT ON PIANO: THE VERY DEFINITION OF NON-COPYRIGHT MUSIC
As discussed in Chapter 1, chimpanzees create abstract paintings that sell for big bucks.
So, why couldn’t a talented cat compose music on the piano? If people buy chimp paintings, somebody might buy cat music.
Marshal Puma inherited a piano-playing cat after Ex-Marshal McDillon left town in a ball of feathers and humiliation. The cat, Tritone, walks along Marshal Puma’s piano keyboard.
Yes, but is it music?
Your brain hears a succession of random notes and can’t figure out which one is the tonal centre. Therefore, it can’t apply an organizing principle—a scale—to the notes it hears. So it can’t make sense of any of the intervals Tritone is playing.
Not only that, but Tritone, being a cat, has no ability to entrain. So he can’t even walk along the keys in a recognizably rhythmic style. Still, people do pay thousands of dollars for chimpanzee paintings. Who knows, Marshal Puma might want to record Tritone’s piano playing and send a demo to a record label in some other city, such as Wichita or even Austin. One that specializes in postmodern music.