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Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

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Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#51

Post by peepee1982 »

fortran77 wrote: post #43
dsclough wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practicing piano and fooling around in a DAW are completely different realms of music related activities. The pianists all know have given me the impression the activity is many more parts stress if the goal is practicing to be able to play a challenging piece, while working in a DAW can be more like splattering paint on a canvas when done like the parent comment describes

Ok. I just expected musicianship to be musicianship regardless of the instrument.

I have been producing music as a hobby for around 25 years. There were maybe two songs where I had to put some effort into practicing the parts I was recording. Maybe even just one.

The hard parts for me are finding good arrangements, making stuff sound good in a mix, writing lyrics, finding ways to do certain non trivial things in my DAW, reviewing what software I want to purchase, ... Stuff like that.

It doesn't involve much focused dedicated practice. It's just too general of an activity, and it's very easy compared to playing classical pieces on a piano.

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#52

Post by [deleted] »

whycombinetor wrote: post #44
fortran77 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. I just expected musicianship to be musicianship regardless of the instrument.

The difference here isn't the instrument, it's musical composition vs performance. You can compose and edit piano works in a DAW, or you can perform those piano works on a piano.

[deleted]

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#53

Post by j_kao »

larve wrote: post #30
j_kao wrote: post #7

I also wonder if writing music was chore-like due to the genre the author chose, specifically four-on-the-floor techno music that has largely fixed and repetitive structures? This music is meant to be mixed by DJs, after all, so consistency is really key to a lot of the techno genre. Of course, there are very creative divergences in this genre from artists such as Four Tet and Floating Points. Would the author still…

(author here) I’m not a song writer but I do have a fair amount of background in jazz and some metal, and while jazz requires a lot of practice to internalize music theory, and both being music with « real » instruments require a significant amount of practice, the writing felt pretty similar. I’d collect riffs, melody fragments, sit down and experiment with chord progressions (very very nerdy and brainy), and then I…

I hope my comment didn't come off as an attack and certainly admire what you've accomplished!

So long as the medium of techno allows you to embed your own creative characteristics, then I think that's a great form of expression (as opposed to churning out formulaic techno... though there's really nothing wrong with that, either).

In fact, setting constraints on yourself is a great way to inspire creativity and nuance (e.g. there's a lot you can do with a single note - rhythmically, harmonically, effects, dynamics, etc).

I also agree that after a certain point, genres become too simplistic of a model to describe music. I'm happy that you've put so much thought into this.

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#54

Post by lucas_membrane »

Doing music can be fantastic when it is both a means and an end. It is a desirable end if it is enjoyed for both musical pleasure and either improvement of social relationships or production of money. If it is a desirable end, it is also usually a means to enable doing more of it. Be very pleased if every turn of your feedback cycle is totally positive.

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#55

Post by vanadium1st »

I have several artistic lives.

My first one was in graphic design. I've studied it in college and done it professionally for many years. At first it was fascinating and artistically fulfilling. Each new logo was a small new adventure. I've worked on them for weeks, I fought with clients to keep my ideas, It took tons of effort from me and from them to achieve something. Through the years I became so much better at logo making. It took me a week to produce a logo that I was kind of happy with. Now I can do 5 better ones just in a couple of hours. I went through the same process that the author of the article went and became an art-producing machine. But at the same time I burned out and lost the love for my artworks. They lost their story and meaning. They were not special anymore. I remember the projects I've worked on in the first months of my career, but it's hard to remember what I've worked on last month. My hands are having fun doing what they know, but the artistic soul feels empty and unfulfilled.

At some point of burning out on graphic design I've picked up music. Started singing, learning instruments from scratch, writing simple stuff. Five years later, I have about 10-15 songs that I am really happy with. I don't have children, but those songs are the most similar that I've experienced to fatherhood. I am so proud of them. They don't feel like mine, or even like a part of me, but I love them and am happy that I did what was needed for them to exist.

My musical life is an absolute struggle. It was so hard starting learning music in my 20s from scratch. It was hard picking up each instrument, hard to perform before people. Each song takes me months of stressful rewriting. I still haven't recorded most of my stuff and am sticking to live performance for now. Of course I spend most of my practice time thinking of how I can improve this process, get better, more efficient. I love my songs and I want to be able to create much more of them and much faster.

But at the same moment, do I?

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#56

Post by 4gotunameagain »

rperce wrote: post #36
kmewhort wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you apply a monetary penalty to yourself?

I'm not the person you asked, but if I had to guess, I'd guess [beeminder]: goal-tracking software where if you don't reach your goal, they charge your credit card. Each time you fail, you get charged more. It's really good! [beeminder]: https://www.beeminder.com/

[dead]

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#57

Post by larve »

j_kao wrote: post #53
larve wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(author here) I’m not a song writer but I do have a fair amount of background in jazz and some metal, and while jazz requires a lot of practice to internalize music theory, and both being music with « real » instruments require a significant amount of practice, the writing felt pretty similar. I’d collect riffs, melody fragments, sit down and experiment with chord progressions (very very nerdy and brainy), and then I…

I hope my comment didn't come off as an attack and certainly admire what you've accomplished! So long as the medium of techno allows you to embed your own creative characteristics, then I think that's a great form of expression (as opposed to churning out formulaic techno... though there's really nothing wrong with that, either). In fact, setting constraints on yourself is a great way to inspire creativity and nuance…

Don’t worry I didn’t and now I hope my answer didn’t come off as defensive! I just love talking about constraints and what makes a genre, because it’s so hard to pinpoint.

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#58

Post by an_aparallel »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #13
raydiatian wrote: post #4

Everything in music is essentially a remix at its core. The Noisia guys had a similar philosophy of “resample and bounce often”. Always be making bleeps and bloops, then reprocess them, then reprocess them again, as many ways as possible without turning harmonic information into noise (from a band named Noisia, ikr), until you have something that feels novel and rhythmic.

> bounce often I get it, but feel that goes against my software-engineering-make-everything-repeatable learnings

there's a best of both worlds: re-synthesis. In FL Studio, a nice technique is bouncing a bunch of lead/synth/reese sounds, picking the best (helps if its a time measure that makes sense) - then importing it into Harmour (a Resynthesis VST) - the sound is recreated with 512(?) partials (aka sine waves) then those sounds can be manipulated to oblivion :)

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#59

Post by te_chris »

breckinloggins wrote: post #21

This feels like the kind of workflow that would fit me. My problem, though, is the "reviewing material I've already put away" part. I feel like I'm hoarding stuff rather than saving material for reuse. Any advice on how to get out of that rut? I'm thinking I just need to introduce a "review" phase where I habitually go through previous stuff. Oh... in the middle of typing this I realized a big stumbler for me! I don'…

I’m a producer/composer and I cannot recommend enough bouncing as you make iterations. It really helps get used to the music out of the context of the DAW. I’ve found it one of the key improvements I’ve made to my flow. I store everything in Dropbox so when I’m on my work laptop, say, I can go to the various bounce folders in each project folder (use Ableton and yeah, save WIP bounces with the project) and just listen to the tracks as they are. It’s super revealing.

Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

#60

Post by te_chris »

j_kao wrote: post #7

I also wonder if writing music was chore-like due to the genre the author chose, specifically four-on-the-floor techno music that has largely fixed and repetitive structures? This music is meant to be mixed by DJs, after all, so consistency is really key to a lot of the techno genre. Of course, there are very creative divergences in this genre from artists such as Four Tet and Floating Points. Would the author still…

A friend of mine just won the award for best independent album in NZ and he absolutely works by the chore philosophy and has for years. Some people do, some don’t, but if you do the chore thing for long enough it’s undeniable that your aptitude will consistently improve along with the establishment of your practice.
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