Any tips for making music with a full time job?

[Alcofribas]

On 2/11/2022 at 12:51 PM, chim said:

That 90's photo of Aphex living in a shit apartment with gear and junk stacked everywhere

link

[Alcofribas]

2 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

link

also lol @ don’t waste time tuning your fancy analog synth. imo, tuning rules and is not a waste of time. 

[chim]

On 2/11/2022 at 8:14 PM, chronical said:

wasn't it a one time thing dave sold and didn't manage to send out? would you want you to be called a disorganised whacko for a one time window people had into your personal life? I know you guys are in it for the meme but come on

 

smol edit: I think he couchsurfed and recorded things on peoples synth because someone stole all his gear and hard disks.. or was that before that?

Ehh, sadly, that's the takeaway for a lot of people. That kind of thing will throw sympathy out the window and burn your brand. He might even be at it under a new moniker, who knows?

It sounded like those hard disk contents were gathered over a very long time.

16 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

link

It was in the rare rdj photos thread which is now deleted.

15 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

also lol @ don’t waste time tuning your fancy analog synth. imo, tuning rules and is not a waste of time. 

It's really not when you've got several multi-takes to fatten your super hip bass sections and it won't stay in tune over 2 hours. And you only realize it when you add the other sections next week. So you have to dial in the original settings by hand because there's no preset memory, and then you realize the scaling is wonky so forget sub bass. And now it's 2AM and you gotta be up by 5:45.. which ties into our topic here. Repro-1 is a lot more fun to use than the Bro-1, even though the H/W filter is boss. I can't find a single software chorus or delay that beat even the cheapest pedals, the same for comp/eq and tape, but tuning wonky VCO's is something I kinda wanna do without. 

[Alcofribas]

On 2/13/2022 at 6:24 AM, chim said:

Ehh, sadly, that's the takeaway for a lot of people. That kind of thing will throw sympathy out the window and burn your brand. He might even be at it under a new moniker, who knows?

It sounded like those hard disk contents were gathered over a very long time.

It was in the rare rdj photos thread which is now deleted.

It's really not when you've got several multi-takes to fatten your super hip bass sections and it won't stay in tune over 2 hours. And you only realize it when you add the other sections next week. So you have to dial in the original settings by hand because there's no preset memory, and then you realize the scaling is wonky so forget sub bass. And now it's 2AM and you gotta be up by 5:45.. which ties into our topic here. Repro-1 is a lot more fun to use than the Bro-1, even though the H/W filter is boss. I can't find a single software chorus or delay that beat even the cheapest pedals, the same for comp/eq and tape, but tuning wonky VCO's is something I kinda wanna do without. 

OTOH, even vintage VCO synths do stay in tune. You will notice when they go out of tune, even if it’s 2am. You can correct this in like 1 second by turning a knob ever so slightly or pressing the handy Auto Tune button. Additional bonus for tuning issues sometimes sound good Plenty of VCO synths have patch memory and when they don’t there are many cases when dialing it back up is pretty simple and should just take a minute or two - for example on the Sequential Pro-One the manual even has preset sheets.In the case that this would be a hassle (with modular or like…when it’s between 2am and 5:45am??) I would agree this is time consuming but it’s part of the process imo. Not to mention the fact that computers fuck up and cause headaches constantly, I’ve personally had way more catastrophic recording failures as a result of a computer crashing or glitching out than I have had recordings ruined by unstable VCOs so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
 

Whether this is “more fun” is obviously completely subjective. Personally I don’t want to stare at the computer so much so in the scenario of it’s 2am and I have to be up in 3 hours for work, I’d rather being playing a synth than staring at my computer monitor. 
 

the idea that VCOs are for hipsters who don’t even notice when they’re out of tune - and they are always out of tune - seems unreasonable to me. 

[thawkins]

Paraphrasing a classic: time you enjoyed tuning your analog synth is not time wasted tuning your analog synth.

[Alcofribas]

1 hour ago, thawkins said:

Paraphrasing a classic: time you enjoyed tuning your analog synth is not time wasted tuning your analog synth.

There’s also a funny anecdote that when kraftwerk were on their first world tour they had a lot of tuning to do bc their synths were going through all kinds of travel-related stress and temperature changes so in the middle of the set they’d tune up and the audiences always thought it was cool as hell. Wolfgang Flür says they also just demolished PA systems doing huge oscillator sweeps lol

[ascdi]

The thing that got me back into making music, besides the pandemic, was picking up the two Behringer acid boxes clones (the 606 and 303 clones). They are super fun, sound amazing, are really stupid, and you can legitimately record an acid track from beginning to end in only slightly longer than the actual runtime of the track using them.

The other thing I realized is that, at least for me personally, although it is somewhat disappointing to have nowhere near the free time to write and perfect the next drill n bass masterpiece or whatever, it is _almost as fun_ to just record down some jams. I really enjoy just stacking up a little audio journal of a bunch of jams. This pleases me.

I don’t know why! I experimented with uploading some, it didn’t really do much for me to do so. I send some to friends sometimes. I dunno. The funnest part is just… having them? Listening back to them sometimes?

I got a decent Zoom recorder so I can push record, record whatever I’ve got that seems interesting, and then when it’s done, I just turn off the lights and go to bed. Later I take the files off the SD card in batches and clean them up or whatever. 

I sort of agree with the sentiment earlier in the thread that the days of writing an electronic album in your bedroom and then having that mean anything to you in terms of a career, or for it to even result in significant acclaim such that your life may change in any way, are mostly over. But I actually sort of think of that as a good thing. A lot of the unhealthy ways that musicians relate to their music (for example, obsessively wanting to perfect it) are in my opinion essentially because we’ve been trained for so long to think of music as a product that must be packaged up to _compete in a marketplace_. 

If we’re not competing for ears or dollars anymore then what does it matter if the build up of my intro is more finely tuned than the build up of your intro? What if a song “goes on too long” if you’re not trying to sell it to anyone? Or if “acid is played out”? Or any of the typical measurements of a track? My tune isn’t “mastered well” enough or whatever? Well like… mastered for whom? And why? TO WHAT END??

I guess this might sound silly but I think once you stop thinking of songs as products to be sold you sort of have to start questioning everything about what seemed to be the practice of even being a musician, at least from before. Better to just zone out and… EXPLORE THE SPACE??

[thawkins]

Yeah this stuff resonates with me a lot. What I like most is to play music, to be in the moment of creating something new and engaging in a jam session. Even better if that jam session is with friends, and the best if it's also got an audience that can appreciate it.

However in order to get to a point where I am allowed or invited to play these jam sessions in clubs and event spaces, I kind of need to record them, polish, cut into listenable tracks - most of all I need to get my name out there so that I get to have the live opportunities. This is all good in terms of getting better at making music, but at the same time the productifying-marketing aspect is also really soul sucking and demands energy that would otherwise be spent on being creative instead.

I am not having any illusions with regard to being able to live from my music, but I did like to play live concerts every once and a while.

 

Although I would say again that if your problem is "step 0: finding time & motivation to make music in your off hours" then that's really far from "step 31232: making money off my music".

[TubularCorporation]

Making money playing music was really easy for most of my life, it wasn't until the mid 2010s that it got harder (and that was as much about some personal choices I amde as anything else).

 

Making enough to have a chance at breaking even, much less turning a profit, after figuring in gear expenses, practice space, transportation, food, and a 4-6 way split (depending on the size of the band) of the $80-$150 that a typical small show would pay that wasn't so easy.  

 

FWIW, out of hundreds of shows between abotu 2000 and 2010 (basement shows before that don't count) I don't think I was ever asked for a recording by anyone even and pretty decent sized venues - the places that wanted a demo were big enough that if you were playing there you probably had a manager and label to handle that for you anyhow.  That has DEFINITELY changed - it seems like even dive bars these days want a full press package now because they want their BRAND to look PROFESSIONAL (even though they are drawing about 10%-20% the crowd size they used to, IME).  That stuff grosses me out.  I'd rather play a nasty basement show for 40 people who are really in to it and will have good, blurry memories for years than play at a club or bar for a few hundred people who are more interested in BEING SEEN than in the actual expereince.  The shows I've played that were bigger than around 200 were usually too big to really connect to the audience, and that made them less fun.  There are a few exceptions, but they were mostly sketchy semi-legal venues that were a LOT of fun but also legitimately dangerous for everyone involved and I'm getting too old to enjoy playing a show where I don't know if I'm going to get squashed, burned down, or arrested (plus around here all the good spots were shut down over the past decade and nothing replaced them because everything is condos now).  Those were the best while they lasted, though.  Which is fine, I got into music as a teenager with a portastudio in the mid-late 90s in a town where there really wasn't anyplace to play if you weren't doing bar rock, so I've just come full circle with a lot more gear.

[chim]

On 2/14/2022 at 5:41 PM, Alcofribas said:

OTOH, even vintage VCO synths do stay in tune. You will notice when they go out of tune, even if it’s 2am. You can correct this in like 1 second by turning a knob ever so slightly or pressing the handy Auto Tune button. Additional bonus for tuning issues sometimes sound good Plenty of VCO synths have patch memory and when they don’t there are many cases when dialing it back up is pretty simple and should just take a minute or two - for example on the Sequential Pro-One the manual even has preset sheets.In the case that this would be a hassle (with modular or like…when it’s between 2am and 5:45am??) I would agree this is time consuming but it’s part of the process imo. Not to mention the fact that computers fuck up and cause headaches constantly, I’ve personally had way more catastrophic recording failures as a result of a computer crashing or glitching out than I have had recordings ruined by unstable VCOs so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
 

Whether this is “more fun” is obviously completely subjective. Personally I don’t want to stare at the computer so much so in the scenario of it’s 2am and I have to be up in 3 hours for work, I’d rather being playing a synth than staring at my computer monitor. 
 

the idea that VCOs are for hipsters who don’t even notice when they’re out of tune - and they are always out of tune - seems unreasonable to me. 

Yes, good job punching holes in my isolated anecdote, but you're kind of missing the point. If you're a weekend warrior on a clock and want to effectivize your workflow, you have to take a good look at your setup and figure out what works best for you, not what you think looks cool. Computers have their drawbacks as well and are indeed notorious at crashing but you tend to not lose a whole project, which might happen if your Digitakt or MPC dies. 

14 hours ago, ascdi said:

I sort of agree with the sentiment earlier in the thread that the days of writing an electronic album in your bedroom and then having that mean anything to you in terms of a career, or for it to even result in significant acclaim such that your life may change in any way, are mostly over. But I actually sort of think of that as a good thing. A lot of the unhealthy ways that musicians relate to their music (for example, obsessively wanting to perfect it) are in my opinion essentially because we’ve been trained for so long to think of music as a product that must be packaged up to _compete in a marketplace_. 

If we’re not competing for ears or dollars anymore then what does it matter if the build up of my intro is more finely tuned than the build up of your intro? What if a song “goes on too long” if you’re not trying to sell it to anyone? Or if “acid is played out”? Or any of the typical measurements of a track? My tune isn’t “mastered well” enough or whatever? Well like… mastered for whom? And why? TO WHAT END??

I guess this might sound silly but I think once you stop thinking of songs as products to be sold you sort of have to start questioning everything about what seemed to be the practice of even being a musician, at least from before. Better to just zone out and… EXPLORE THE SPACE??

I think you're right in that the important thing is just doing something, making some ugly jams, spending that time, anything beats just thinking about it. But I don't believe there's any shame in looking at your art as a craft (instead of a product), that can be very rewarding. We've talked a lot of ways you can structure your life and approach in this thread and that applies to the creative process itself as well. During composition it's great to be able to shoot out ideas unfiltered, but it's also important practice to think critically about your music and challenge yourself. Over time I've valued my "work" for the most part as little time capsules. 

[Alcofribas]

12 minutes ago, chim said:

Yes, good job punching holes in my isolated anecdote, but you're kind of missing the point. If you're a weekend warrior on a clock and want to effectivize your workflow, you have to take a good look at your setup and figure out what works best for you, not what you think looks cool. Computers have their drawbacks as well and are indeed notorious at crashing but you tend to not lose a whole project, which might happen if your Digitakt or MPC dies. 

what point am i missing, exactly? you introduced this concept of "what looks cool" and "hip" as a non sequitur, and you seem to be identifying this with an interest in hardware which you've ridiculed in a couple different posts. i'm responding to that bc i think it's a frivolous characterization.

i think a big problem with the perspective you're providing, and one i see on a lot of electronic music-making forums, is precisely this idea of "effectivizing your workflow" - that sounds exactly like some shit a boss tells you to do at your job. i think a lot of people look at electronic instruments from this consumer gadget perspective which is linked to these notions of what is most efficient, sleek, minimal, what will enhance your workflow to make you the most contemporary, efficient metropolitan. with the tap of a touchless button you too can have lush pads. but i think this is a perspective that has nothing to do with instruments, it's consumerism. music making can very much be a space where you are linked to the work in a completely different sense that has values quite different from these.

i work for a japanese sushi chef who has many years training in kaiseki. the types of values he has in his work are completely different from this "effectivizing" stuff. when you train to be a sushi chef, you can literally just be making rice for years. until you get that right, you are not moving on. you gotta grind through that before your knife comes into play. if a dish in the kitchen breaks, you don't throw it away and go on amazon to replace it. you restore it, by hand (kintsugi). the work you put into restoring the broken dish connects you to your tools, to your surroundings, to your craft. when you present food on a restored dish you are giving someone something completely unique and irreplicable. every night at the end of dinner you have to sharpen your knives. as you sharpen them, you wear them down, eventually they will be too small and you will have to get another blade. you're not looking for the newest gadgetry to replace your blade bc the blade is perfect in its tradition of imperfection.

i think these are practices that would have a definite parallel to working with hardware in the studio - maybe you do have to tune things, deal with their moods and imperfect behavior but these aren't flaws or hindrances, this is part of your craft. indeed, there was this blog a while back by a guy who apprenticed in the studio with RDJ. he described entire days when they just did organization, cable management, sweeping and tidying. these are totally normal practices for an artist. where you see someone who is bad at managing their finances (again, more advocacy for the values of the workplace!) and deride hardware as being some kind of hipster fad, i think many others see a daily practice that is meaningful and rewarding and has to do with living in a material space with one's instruments, caring for them, etc. carl jung even used to greet his pots and pans by saying hello to them before he used them to make meals. it's about connecting with and having respect for tools.

this might exactly be the sort of thing that would provide a fun, meaningful and inspiring creative playground for someone who has to work a job all the time. the idea that they have to be making everything perfectively efficient and stripped down to effictivization could be a hindrance to actually stirring their imagination bc it's just a dull reitteration of the state of mind they're probably in at work all day. 

a lot of hardware vs software discussions seem to miss these considerations, bc they're stuck in consumerist ideas about what things are most efficient and so on.

38 minutes ago, chim said:

don't believe there's any shame in looking at your art as a craft (instead of a product), that can be very rewarding.

yes, brother

[qualitycontrol]

I think what is so hard about this subject is that there is no right or wrong answer because everyone has a different situation.

I could go on about how I find the time but it won't matter because my circumstance is unique to me.

It really comes down to the choices you make, how you treat your time, and your resources. What sucks is that nobody has the same amount or quality of all of those things.

But it can change, and that's my point I guess.

 

[psn]

3 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

indeed, there was this blog a while back by a guy who apprenticed in the studio with RDJ.

Do you have a link for it?

[TubularCorporation]

If only there were a natural pipeline from being a B+ Doom II player to making money with music, I'd be a pro by now.

[Brisbot]

I've started making stock music, and make a few $100 bit of passive cash from there - licensing them like $10-$20 a pop. I have been looking into going much further down this rabbit hole as it does seem possible to full time stock music, and passive income is always nice.

Musicians are in a position where they need a lot of revenue streams. It's easier to get into making sample packs/stock music/making presets/ etc etc things like that than to make money based off people buying your music.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Brisbot

[exitonly]

how is making crap music for pennies better than just getting a full time job?

[TubularCorporation]

2 hours ago, Brisbot said:

I've started making stock music, and make a few $100 bit of passive cash from there - licensing them like $10-$20 a pop. I have been looking into going much further down this rabbit hole as it does seem possible to full time stock music, and passive income is always nice.

Musicians are in a position where they need a lot of revenue streams. It's easier to get into making sample packs/stock music/making presets/ etc etc things like that than to make money based off people buying your music.

I've considered that but haven't tried yet.  Part of the issue is that I didn't really have a good enough monitoring situation until this winter (nice speakers, but bad rooms and no space to positon them well), and since I work mostly with old hardware there are things that I embrace as part of my sound that might not do so well in the library music sphere (i.e. it's noisy as fuck).

 

Last time I made any money from music was selling cassettes, but for some reason most of the sales were to Japan and Australia, and I was actually LOSING about $2 shipping on those.  When I increased my international shipping rate to reflect that I didn't make a single sale.

 

 

Actually, lasttime I checked the most successful independent artists of all time were still Insane Clown Posse, so I guess just be liek Insane Clown Posse WOOP WOOOP 

48 minutes ago, nikisoko said:

how is making crap music for pennies better than just getting a full time job?

Have you ever had a full time job?  Shit sucks.

[Alcofribas]

3 hours ago, psn said:

Do you have a link for it?

https://noyzelab.blogspot.com/2018/04/regional-arts-fellowship-field-report-4.html

Other activities with Richard included washing up, tidying up, helping out in the workshop, moving equipment, making up some cables and soldering them to a very obscure AKG spring reverb.. These sorts of things are a key part of any working artist/musicians life and it was good experience to spend the time on these less glamorous activities..  

[TubularCorporation]

Oh god, I've made so many cables I kind of enjoy doing it now. A really good one takes like 15-20 minutes between measuring, soldering, shrinking the shrink tubea dn all that (I haven't bothered to make a jig, I could proabably cut that time in half) but you end up paying like $4-$10 for a cable that would be $25-$50 if you bought it.

 

EDIT: scrolling through that blog post I didn't see a single photo of a studio that was even slightly cluttered. 

Edited February 17, 2022 by TubularCorporation

[Brisbot]

1 hour ago, nikisoko said:

how is making crap music for pennies better than just getting a full time job?

 I just combed all my music, put "could be stock music" in a folder of all the tracks that I don't care much for, but could i dunno, go in some commercial, and then submitted them to two different stock music sites. Now I have made money from music that most people would just keep at the back of their hard drive forever.

I wouldn't go out of my way to make stock music. Because my stock music is just like... my C and D grade tracks. The only difference is that I would spend a bit more time on some of them, making them longer. Adding loops, etc. Not too much tho.

And it isn't crap really. More just background music for passive listening. Ergo stock music.

It's also low effort if you are a decent musician. A while back I saw someone was making $30,000 a year by making just 1 track a day 30 mins to an hour, and submitting it to stock music sites. And now he was sitting on like 300 tracks in these websites and passively making $30,000 a year. Though his music is decent for stock music.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Brisbot

[TubularCorporation]

Hey, some of my favorite albums are library music.

 

 

[YEK]

2 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

https://noyzelab.blogspot.com/2018/04/regional-arts-fellowship-field-report-4.html

Other activities with Richard included washing up, tidying up, helping out in the workshop, moving equipment, making up some cables and soldering them to a very obscure AKG spring reverb.. These sorts of things are a key part of any working artist/musicians life and it was good experience to spend the time on these less glamorous activities..  

Jesus, I'm so jealous.

[Brisbot]

2 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

Hey, some of my favorite albums are library music.

What is the difference between Library music and Stock music? Is it referring to when you had to like order 'samples' from sound libraries?

Clicking on those, seems like they aren't necessarily libary music anymore?

[chim]

13 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

what point am i missing, exactly? you introduced this concept of "what looks cool" and "hip" as a non sequitur, and you seem to be identifying this with an interest in hardware which you've ridiculed in a couple different posts. i'm responding to that bc i think it's a frivolous characterization.

i think a big problem with the perspective you're providing, and one i see on a lot of electronic music-making forums, is precisely this idea of "effectivizing your workflow" - that sounds exactly like some shit a boss tells you to do at your job. i think a lot of people look at electronic instruments from this consumer gadget perspective which is linked to these notions of what is most efficient, sleek, minimal, what will enhance your workflow to make you the most contemporary, efficient metropolitan. with the tap of a touchless button you too can have lush pads. but i think this is a perspective that has nothing to do with instruments, it's consumerism. music making can very much be a space where you are linked to the work in a completely different sense that has values quite different from these.

i work for a japanese sushi chef who has many years training in kaiseki. the types of values he has in his work are completely different from this "effectivizing" stuff. when you train to be a sushi chef, you can literally just be making rice for years. until you get that right, you are not moving on. you gotta grind through that before your knife comes into play. if a dish in the kitchen breaks, you don't throw it away and go on amazon to replace it. you restore it, by hand (kintsugi). the work you put into restoring the broken dish connects you to your tools, to your surroundings, to your craft. when you present food on a restored dish you are giving someone something completely unique and irreplicable. every night at the end of dinner you have to sharpen your knives. as you sharpen them, you wear them down, eventually they will be too small and you will have to get another blade. you're not looking for the newest gadgetry to replace your blade bc the blade is perfect in its tradition of imperfection.

i think these are practices that would have a definite parallel to working with hardware in the studio - maybe you do have to tune things, deal with their moods and imperfect behavior but these aren't flaws or hindrances, this is part of your craft. indeed, there was this blog a while back by a guy who apprenticed in the studio with RDJ. he described entire days when they just did organization, cable management, sweeping and tidying. these are totally normal practices for an artist. where you see someone who is bad at managing their finances (again, more advocacy for the values of the workplace!) and deride hardware as being some kind of hipster fad, i think many others see a daily practice that is meaningful and rewarding and has to do with living in a material space with one's instruments, caring for them, etc. carl jung even used to greet his pots and pans by saying hello to them before he used them to make meals. it's about connecting with and having respect for tools.

this might exactly be the sort of thing that would provide a fun, meaningful and inspiring creative playground for someone who has to work a job all the time. the idea that they have to be making everything perfectively efficient and stripped down to effictivization could be a hindrance to actually stirring their imagination bc it's just a dull reitteration of the state of mind they're probably in at work all day. 

a lot of hardware vs software discussions seem to miss these considerations, bc they're stuck in consumerist ideas about what things are most efficient and so on.

I'm kind of a H/W junkie so the discussion isn't really about that, just the right tool for each fool. If we can forget the watmm anti-work sentiment for a second, I didn't mean effectivizing your workflow as in cranking more beats per minute, but you need an environment in which it's easy to find inspiration, get ideas out, and it's not too painful to polish those ideas, so it's not just width but depth as well. So that might mean you need weird idiosyncratic tools to get in the right headspace, or it might mean replacing an analog synth with a digital one run through a Lonsberry or Jive FX pedal instead... and of course days of cable management to avoid fucking yourself over. I've tried a lot of different methods over the years, from dawless sequencing to programming in Pure Data. I've also had phases of just impulse buying old crap because it looks & sounds cool, then finding out wrestling sysex programmers to create patches on slow interfaces isn't really my favorite way to go about it. But I can get happily lost for ages when I feel connected to the right tools, which is a good sign I'm on the right track (Carl Jung also talked about that). You mention some good examples of structure and work ethic in your post and just like for sushi chefs, creative work benefits from that, not because you're producing goods under expectations, but because it's meaningful to experience a sense of direction and continually grow with your output and its challenges. If we look at the typical EKT topics, since we're talking electronic music and gear here and not just sitting on the porch with a banjo, people can get frustrated by everything from time management to harmony & production techniques. That's why it's important to find a personalized & structured approach/solution to each aspect of music making. 

[TubularCorporation]

6 hours ago, Brisbot said:

What is the difference between Library music and Stock music? Is it referring to when you had to like order 'samples' from sound libraries?

Clicking on those, seems like they aren't necessarily libary music anymore?

AFAIK the name.

 

I don't know if the Bruton stuff is owned by KPM now or what.  Keith Mansfield did a lot of stuff for Bruton, a lot of Bruton regulars did stuff for KPM, KPM still has at least some of its catalog available for licensing going all the way back to the 70s.  I just call it "library music" because that seems like the more common term for it back when most of the good stuff was published.

Edited February 17, 2022 by TubularCorporation