o00o

feeling some kind of emotional pain no matter what helps better songwriting thats why I am getting more into music theory to become more independent of that

using call and response really helped a lot to stay on topic while using a lot of synths. I am now trying to create songs that are as simple as possible to not become demotivated as I got lost in too complicated songs that took to long to create and burned me out on the long run

for me the mobile skin works petty well the only thing that looks weird is embedded youtube videos as they are double the size of the page itself:

yeah building on a repeating basic 4 chord progression sounds much more melodic than adding more and more chords to the song. thats also how most Bach songs are build too

What helped me the most was a good book on jazz harmonics. Jazz is pretty similair to idm as it is also about drums and groove. Currently I am very much into playing sheetmusic as its the same with drawing: once you have drawn a face well off a drawing by somebody else you can paint it yourself. Same with melodies. Once learned by imitation you can use it yourself in different context. You just get a feel for it by playing it over and over again until you can do it freely Just pick stuff you like while aware that the most expressive scales / cords are the hardest to play. Like it has been said: if its awesome in a simple form it can easily become complicated while the core feeling is still intact. From complex to easy is much harder if you want some intense effect

What you've done is just use a gross exaggeration to defend your point. 99.99999% of the world's population will will lose the formula 1 no matter how good a driver they are, so your point is pointless. My point is that people are free to buy whatever level of stuff they want, not need, and suggesting they have to be successful before they spend a more than little amount of cash on something decent is backwards thinking and kind of smacks of jealousy towards somebody who can afford something you can't. sure they are but they will not by buying become instantly as good as the artist without gaining as much experience first. But many people do indeed assume this. like they could buy fame. pictures like the one above suggest that if you had this equipment you are 50% there. Its just not true as it is not true to win the formula 1 by just buying a formula 1 car. the actual experience you gained over years and the work that is actually put into a result has much more impact than just the equipment used even more in unskilled hands

I often sing my melodies right into the mic and convert them to midi afterwards with Melodyne + correcting the wrong notes. This makes synth lines sound much more natural then just random jamming. I also play back chords I like on the headphones while singing so I get the right scale. I also convert complete songs with Melodyne DNA to look up how they are arranged. What also helps is just hitting one key to a melody while listening to it to get into the melodic rhythm of a song. Then if you got the scale its not really important to hit the exact keys just keep the same scale. If you are lazy you can just look up the scale in melodyne too

to the guys playing guitar as well as they like it: why not jamming with the guitar and creating midi patterns afterwards with Melodyne DNA?

So if you buy good equipment but are not successful you are cheating? Do I also have to be a successful race car driver to buy a nice car? Do I have to be a world class chef to buy a nice piece of meat? perfect example actually. If you just buy a professional race car and instantly start driving the formula 1 you will loose. If you start small you will eventually become better and over time win. Same with meat. If you just buy some very expensive meat but do not have any knowledge from before how to cook it perfectly it will taste much worse than it could. sure you can buy both for your own please but do not expect to become the same as a professional in the field instantly just by owing it. same with some expensive piano. sure you can buy that and have fun with it for yourself but then you are not buying it to become a piano legend instantly thats what many people do not understand. they think they can archive that by just buying in. On the other hand you are right good equipment helps a lot if you know how to use it but it will not magically turn your bad skills into good ones

True words indeed. It's best to have some equipment, and also knowledge about how to compose, how to wire up patches, how to produce and so on. At least, in my experience it helps to learn a bit of everything, unless you want to specialise in one area and team up with other people who specialise in the other areas. And, of course, you need to practice a lot. And you're right, all too often people want a quick fix instead of doing hard work. Buying equipment instead of learning and practicing is certainly quicker and takes less effort. Although if you factor in how you earn the money, it's probably wiser to spend your time doing a job you love like making music on cheap equipment than doing a job you don't in order to get that money in the first place, to buy nicer equipment you don't have the time to learn properly. So perhaps that's a false economy there too. But regardless of that, people will still rather listen to someone with talent and enthusiasm and a real love of what they're doing and constant eagerness to learn more, than someone who bought some expensive equipment and mucked around on it for a bit. This is just a flaw of the brain though. It's the same thing that leads to fad diets when everybody knows they need to eat healthy food and exercise a bit, and to the lottery when how much money you make (let alone have the restraint to keep) isn't as important as what you spend your time doing to earn it. And yes, learning to promote yourself and your music is also important. No one will come to you if no one's heard of you, because it's not worth anyone's time to scour obscure places looking for talented musicians no one's heard of. Once your music's good enough, show it to people and get jobs making more of it and licensing it out. Become a useful part of other people's teams, working on their projects with them. Contribute to the economy and culture of society by doing what you love. You become what you constantly think about. That can be a fan or a collector or a hobbyist or a professional. The job thing is a good point. The artist makes music and by being successful with it he gets money to buy better equipment. If you just do something else to get to this point than doing music you are kind of cheating. Its the same dilema you can get into with pirated / free music software. Instead of a natural learning curve you start top to bottom what makes you completely unable to handle it.

I am totally into that as studio time can also be rented. There is no need in owning all that stuff. I know many who instead of learning to play some instrument and to understand how harmonics really work did buy lots of stuff instead. As it is much easier to just buy something than learn something. They think they can buy fame and all is just hardware and one day a finger comes down from heaven pointing at them as the chosen one lol Aphex said recently its 90% hard work and 10% inspiration. You can do better music with just a guitar if you know how to play it well than most of these rich guys sitting on tons and tons of equipment. Sure if you can play its awesome to have great equipment but then you do not need to show this all the time as people will just appreciate the music as it is. Also there is much about promotion and networking. What helps even when you have great tunes and nobody knows about them. In that case some picture like this helps for sure but it does not help a bad tune become a good one

The interesting question is when was this picture taken as he has long hair

Where is that from??? i have never seen it before

Possibly the most current image we have (from 2011 sonar promotion article) this is a pretty old picture. I see a 2 keyboards one looks like an MS-20, some very large speakers and something that looks like atari? What else? What era is that from? SAW period? later? earlier? This is where I took it from: This shines more light on the blurry image (thx ZoeB): This is also pretty well known:

ah I missed that you mention it already. funny how he tapes them up so you cant read which one it is

no they're just his boxes full of drukqs, as you see they're not plugged in at all. nothing is plugged in as he uses his md player lol Still I think this is as close on "aphex twin in the studio" as you can get

are these small boxes with the logo sticker on it effect pedals?

whats the thing underneath his left elbow with the top removed?

I am about to start with game of thrones

Its so worth the money. I am going to frame the newspaper and put it on my wall as poster. its so worth it

Radiohead - King Of Limbs Autechre - Amber I am covered with artwork right now

looks like early tool

$6! very jealous about that. i bought this vinyl on discogs a few months back for quite a bit I know, my friends didn't understand why I nearly jumped out of my skin when I found it! I have no idea how it ended up in that crappy store, again the quality of the disk itself isn't that great but it doesn't make much of a difference when it comes to early Bibio! Also, since my last post this has become my most recent possession... is that cardboard sleeve on top from the CD version of the release?