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Auditor

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    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    Anyone find that when you zone out for like an hour with a simple arpeggio or loop, tweaking knobs and making it sing and warble and stutter and make love to your fingers, and listen back to it, you realize that it sounds like crap that wouldn't impress anyone and thus not worthy of keeping?

     

    ...I actually love it when that happens. It's like time travel. 

    Films Recently Watched

    in General Banter

    Posted

    Oxyana, wow. depressing. Very american, sadly. This is the America the tourists don't see.. They should just let that fat guy take as much drugs as he wants after the murder of his family. Sad sad sad stories

     

    Interstellar. Pleasantly surprised. Not much of a Mathew Mccon-ahay fan (great in buyers club and dazed and confused, tho )

    but i loved the subject of gravity and time. Excellent. 

    Watched Oxyana the other night. Gutting shit.

     

    I also watched a documentary by the same guy called Florida Man. One thing I noticed is that the Appalachian southerners were much more eloquent than the Florida ones (even when they were on mad pills). I live in Florida, and the rednecks here are just seem to have much less in the vernacular department compared to Appalachian folk. 

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    Sorry for the shameless plug, but thanks to this thread I got off my ass and released a bunch of stuff that had been waiting for I don't know what. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

     

     

    PS. I think it should be not very difficult to make a URL scraper for the EKT new releases forum. It may also be possible to automatically add all found Soundcloud playlist URLs to a special playlist on SC. I can't think of a good solution for Bandcamp right now...

    Edit: nope SC API does not seem to allow to add songs to playlist using this trickery.

    Noice

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    Listening to your recent tunes this makes sense. The rhythms in your tracks are different to normal, not as easy to predict which obviously makes for a more interesting track. 

     

     

    Thanks. I do try to use unusual sounds and rhythms as often as I can.

     

    The (hum)drums on many electronic albums are what turn me off of a lot of them. And god damned if I'll ever understand why people like that boots and cats and boots and cats and... music. I understand the inherent tribal rhythmic gene that exists in all of us, and how some of that music taps into that (I mean, back when I did a lot of ecstasy I danced to that shit), but seriously, I'd say about 15 or so tracks of that would be enough for the world. 

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    Awesome topic, i've dwelt on this for a long-time.

     

    For me, getting started is possibly the most stressful point in making music.  Naturally, when i'm done at work and get home my body and mind believes it must tune out.  So it actually feels unnatural forcing myself to do something creative.  I think it's years and years of just throwing on the TV and letting my mind shut off.  This barrier once crossed, is forgot about until the next time i begin the idea to create something new in a few weeks.  But getting through it is seriously like ripping off my own arm sometimes.  Then once started, it usually flows greatly from there and i'm addicted to working on / completing this new track.

     

    Only other stress I get is probably from percussion.  Fucking 'ell, i hate percussion.  If I could do songs completely percussionless with only melodies, chords, synths, sounds, field recordings, i'd be floating in clouds.  But what i want to create requires it.  It's stressful because I feel I can never get the shit to sound right, or interesting enough, and then once i'm done, is it good enough? or is not? TONS of second guessing.  Funny thing is if I sit at a drumset, i love percussion- its just the complexities of electronic music and it's IDMcratic standards that fuck with me.  

    Coming from a punk/rock background, I can totally sympathize with the woes of electronic percussion. The drabness of it was actually one of the reasons I stopped making electronic stuff (other than a drone/beatless track here and there) about 2 years ago. Finally just got back into it within the past 6 months. I find that mixing strange sampled things (fucked completely with fx) and slicing uncommon loops has been a game changer for me. I rarely ever quantize and I still never use step sequencing. 

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

     

    Also when I was younger and poorer and had less gear I used to worry that I'd become That Guy who has a shitload of gear and never does anything with it. Now I'm pretty much That Guy but I don't feel guilty about it anymore, my GAS is just something I have to feed every so often. Some people drop a lot of coin on gaming or clothing or car payments. I drop coin on things that let me explore rhythm and texture and tones and relationships between them, and it's beautiful having them at arm's length. If some of them are on the shelf for a while, no big deal. I can always loan them out to friends.

     

    And fuck feeling like you have to finish songs too. I would rather make one cool 10-second sound than an album of well-structured, boring tracks. 

     

    #idm4lyf

     

     

    +1 (except sharing my synths...) 

     

    I like your point on making short interesting snippets rather than well structured tracks that have to be over a certain time frame. Might make a short snippet album where every track is under 1 minute long. 

     

    Do it! Some of my favorite non-electronic albums are full of short songs (Ween - GodWeenSatan, Wire - Pink Flag, Guided By Voices - lots of stuff)

     

    You can be the first (to my knowledge) to do it with bleeps bloops and whooshes

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

     

    And fuck feeling like you have to finish songs too. I would rather make one cool 10-second sound than an album of well-structured, boring tracks. 

     

    #idm4lyf

     

    Well.....  true IDM is NEVER EVER making boring or shit tracks.  The "shit/boring" determination is something that is settled upon, so one must just never settle there.  Craft everything until it's awesome.

     

    Also, being able to put up with the non-euphoric nature of finishing a full track (usually somewhat difficult)- THAT is IDM.  Finishing music or any art takes a lot of discipline, and the more awesome tracks that are finished, the stronger one's IDM lazer becomes.

     

     

     

    Has anyone here thought about why one even outputs music?  It might sound like shit and non-underground, but it is 100% for sharing.  Every artist has been blessed with the skills to perceive and create, but they have taken these skills along with the burden of having to complete things.  Completion is divine, and truly IDM.  Any motherfucker can bust out badass loops.  How many people can output albums where every single track is solid?  It's seriously like <.001% of musicians.

     

    Think about it doodz and doodettes...  A lot of you are really good at making music and know it.  Didn't you work your fucking ass off for your skills?  You WANTED to be good at making music.  And now you're really fucking good at making music and complaining that you have to make awesome albums?!  Making awesome albums is 100% what you DREAMED ABOUT 5~20+ years ago.  Your skills and understanding of composition, sound design, mixing, dsp fuckery- fucking everything- your skills now have far surpassed what you even knew existed in music when you started.  And now you're going to let yourself down and get stressed out about something you asked yourself for?  FUCK THAT.  Difficult?  Possibly.  Time consuming?  Yes.  Stressful?  No!-- Believe in yourself, because you are obviously good.  Stick to your guns and COMPLETE ALBUMS.

     

    Mike P doesn't give a fuck about your sketches.  He wants your albums.  THE PEOPLE want your albums.  You know your skills are sound-- what makes you think thousands of people aren't unknowingly WAITING AND WANTING TO HEAR YOUR MASTERPIECES???!!!!!  Don't let yourself down by being a lazy fool, and don't let humanity down by being afraid of goals that YOU setup.  YOU asked for this.  YOU wanted this.  If you go around life being half-assed about things, you will not accomplish much-- you see, this "not finishing tracks/albums" concept carries through all aspects of life.  If you keep being lazy and never commit to things that YOU WANT, you will find yourself one day, old and crusty, disinterested in all, having a track record of enthusiastically starting new things and quitting them like a little impulsive bitch and crying to proverbial mommy when things got tough, living the life of a poor college student.  Remember those 45 year old dudes who used to randomly be at your college parties?  Fuck that.  That's about the least IDM it gets.

     

    The mark of a true Cosmic Warrior, is setting goals, and doing what needs to be done to accomplish them (end result is irrelevant and illusory-- the path walked is what is very, very important).  Being IDM isn't about outputting the best art in the world-- it's about outputting the best art THAT YOU CAN.  It's ultimately about sharing, but fundamentally, you have to realize your potential to yourself.  You know you can do it, so just do it.  YOU WANT IT, or you wouldn't have spent like half your life training for it.

     

    Completing albums is not easy, but it is 100% worth it.  Completing things in life is 100% worth it.  You owe it to yourself.  YOU are 100% worth it.

     

    I'd drink your kool aid

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    I get stress when I've had half-finished stuff around for a long time, but I end up not finishing the things quickly enough. It's that I remember clearly that the stuff felt so good when I initially recorded it, and I'm afraid of losing that vision because too much time passes. Then I get stress when I have to choose if I continue working on an old idea or start something new.. I guess the solution here is to Start Finishing Stuff.

    Then I get stress when I feel the need to program my MIDI remote scripts for Live in Python or build stuff in Pure Data because time spent on that is not time spent on actually making music. But on the other hand it's time I spent on making my workflow easier and I do like tinkering with that stuff, and it's fulfilling to build new functionality to the hardware I already own instead of spending $$$ to buy new flashy thingamajigs. I just wish it wouldn't take so much time. Maybe I have SAS instead of GAS (software acquisition syndrome).

     

    I agree with the above point that no matter how stressed I am, the moment when I start playing and record the first loop, everything's bliss and I like making music again. Even the sound doesn't matter, I can be happy with the simplest preset piano patch. :)

    Regarding your first point, I hate the feeling, too, of having shit half-finished and not wanting to ruin the "magic" that was there when you were jamming by coming back to it and sucking the life out of it. That's why I vowed, about a year ago, to only have 3 main projects going at once (at the most). If I have three sketches, I will stop myself from starting something new until I finish at least one of them, or decide to scrap something. 

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    Too much to quote and respond to here, but thanks for all the insightful and hilarious thoughts. I guess I'm lucky in that I don't have kids yet, and I don't work too often so I tend to have a lot of time to make music throughout the day. But I can totally relate to the opposite end of the spectrum - getting stressed because you want to make music and don't have the time. That's why I've never given it up for longer than a year. I miss it too much after a little while. 

     

    Better to be a little stressed about doing what you love than not being able to do it at all. 

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    You have to drill a hole into your head to aquire a "childlike state of consciousness by self-trepanation".

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning#Voluntary_trepanation

     

    Trepanation_illustration_France_1800s.jp

     

    "After some time there was an ominous sounding schlurp and the sound of bubbling. I drew the trepan out and the gurgling continued. It sounded like air bubbles running under the skull as they were pressed out. I looked at the trepan and there was a bit of bone in it. At last!"

     

    Hieronymus_Bosch_053_detail.jpg

     

     

    That'll help you to restore your float of creativity.

     

     

    (it won't, don't do that)

     

    When I was younger and smoking a shitload of dmt (and generally morbidly depressed) I sincerely almost talked myself into trying self-trepanation. I learned about it when I saw John Waters speak at a local college. He raved about it, but hadn't actually had the balls to do it. 

    Does making music stress you out?

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    I find that stress is generally my default mood, especially when trying to get myself into the studio. Once I'm in the groove, I usually start to have a good time and hours will fly by (especially if I don't immediately hate what I'm working on

     

    Lately I try to tell myself to have no expectations and just have fun in order to get in the right mind frame before starting on the work. This has been helping, but it's definitely a case of talking myself out of my "normal" mode - which is stress and a fear of failure.  

     

    This isn't how it used to be when I started making music 20-some-odd years ago. I want to somehow get back to that natural feeling of excitement and wonder. But, for now, it seems I'll just have to settle for the artificial version. 

     

    What about you folks, has making music become more stressful as you've gotten older, and what do you do to battle it? 

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