The constructionist approach also reduced the importance of melody because extended melody was difficult to construct through editing short performance segments together, and even more so with no background in traditional musicianship. Without real-time performance allowing the full gambit of pitch contrast and musicianship as an aspect of structure, musical shape became difficult to manipulate. In contrast, the use of musical shape and direction based in a good grasp of harmony, counterpoint and modulation, remain the basis of dynamic structural expression in most performance based tonal western music, such as mainstream Jazz.

What was added through digital editing as authorship was the accurate manipulation of natural and found sounds as rhythmic instruments. In combination with production techniques such as real-time effects manipulation, space then became an aspect of rhythm (Gabriel CD 1989). Production interest in these terms replaced traditional contrasts created through orchestration; variety within pieces relying on spatial and rhythmic contrast rather than variation of timbre. A further contribution through widening the palette of permissible sound was extending the metaphors of extra-musical association. In contrast with instrumental performance and interaction between live performers, new referents may be environmental, the physical body, technical or industrial.

The constructionist approach to making popular music then created new musical styles based in sound and gesture, but remained grounded in traditional language and forms. The result was increased demand on production and technical skills at the expense of real-time performance skills, and traditional composition skills.

Keeping tonality and fragmented real-time performance as referents then poses simultaneously technical and artistic problems. The dilemma of much popular neo-world music is its imitative nature reinforced through technological invention. The artistic problem is the decorum of the mixing of new sound metaphors, since the juxtaposition of gestures from many sources may result in contradictions.

The assessment of musical quality on the basis of changed paradigms of authenticity is a main focus of the next section.

Experimentalism

The further one gets away from established musical styles, the greater the demand for new technical skill, composition methods, and new language, metaphors and structures. Possible solutions to reducing neo-world music to replicative pap exist within the modernist movement. New technology presents new tools and invites new paradigms and vice-versa (Chadabe 1996). The dilemma is the extent to which new extremes should be adopted in terms of the payoff for innovation.

Modernism poses two immediate solutions. One is in abandoning tonality but keeping pitch/duration through live performance gestures, alternate controllers, and algorithmic composition. A second is to abandon both tonality and performance gesture through a production aesthetic based in timbral transformation and spatial processing referenced to environmental gestures. The artistic problem in using these as a sole basis for musical communication is first outlined before pointing to an alternative.