Honing skills for a particular style to get fully familiar with it, needs a great deal of time. Are you taking this serious or prefer to explorer and produce different styles instead of concentrating on just a specific one?

Styles are like guys or gals. Finally you should marry yourself off to just one of them.

And your opinions are:

 

I am pretty curious about this discussion. Some part of me clearly knows my favourite styles but I don't know to what point we are not being pushed by the labels and PR people to develop a commerciable sound. I hate that. What if I want to make dark techno, or if I want make chillwave? If I am a good artist/producer, why the hell should they meddle in? Just to make some bucks for them I'll never see?

 

Bowie never stuck to one style.

 

Q : Have you found or made your working style (voice) yet?
A: Imho your "voice" is your Intuition ....follow that in life & in your music.It can "translate" in any style of music you want

So have a good one & free your mind (Yourself) too :

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 26, 2018

I'm too curious/bored/smart/impatient to stick to one style/genre. I also don't like "genrelization" and enjoy making/listening to a wide variety of genres. There is good and bad music in all genres/styles.
My musical ID is still in everything I do. My ID is my "voice".

 

There is a lot to be learned from sticking to one genre and pushing the boundaries of it. works for dub/reggae as an example....A lot of great artists make basically the same song over and over in different iterations...this applies to many genres.
The minuitae of production for different genres is pretty fascinating, personally i can get lost for years fixating on techniques or formulas for creating different styles. As an example the Haas effect blew my mind when i first learned about it, and i'm not finished with it yet...So there are techniques which will be part of my "voice" whatever genre i'm producing....
current:

previous:

 

I would never have made a living as a studio owner and engineer if I could only work in one style. I wasn't always happy about it, but if you are being paid to create a live cast recording of a stage musical with strings, brass, full band and twenty vocalists, you need to understand how that product is expected to sound to the listener.... which isn't someone like me... so you study Andrew Lloyd Webber and you learn. Of course the downside is you spend weeks hearing that shite in your sleep. But you now know how to mic up a horn section and where to place them in a mix. You learn to say no to doing jobs like that again and develop a deep hatred of musical directors. "The strings are too too shrill, they're screeching dahhhhling.... it's hurting my ears" Not to mention diva lead singers hovering over the sliders...."Turn me up! I can't hear a note I'm singing and I'm the damn star of the show! My name is at the top of the poster..... I've won awards you know..... did I tell you about the time I met Liza Minelli?"

 

... but working on essentially 2 different genres is a bit hard and sometimes practically impossible. Like Rock and Jazz, cause they are produced for different audiences demanding different knowledge and tools; 2 different worlds.

 

If only I had to be able to work with two styles. I have recorded and produced and engineered for everything from folk to jazz to metal. I don't get a say in who hires me, nor do I have the luxury of turning clients away because I don't like their music. I've written jingles for baby shampoo. I've done voice recordings of entire Shakespeare plays. Working in the business isn't anything like fun sometimes. Music is many languages. The more languages you speak the more people hear you.

 

You poor thing! Jingles and musicals! aaargh! and listening repeatedly to the works of Lloyd Webber [know this: the man is either evil or a total dickhead, re: extremely rich man flies home from US to UK to vote to make poor people poorer..https://www.theguardian.com/culture...w-lloyd-webber-vote-in-favour-tax-credit-cuts
So yeah, I am fortunate enough to have an enjoyable [but not particularly lucrative] day job that takes me outside [a good way to stave off studio tan anyway] and just make the music I want to. I've spent years discovering what's possible with digital music and still feel awe at the production skills and musical ability of people who are more talented [and probably younger and better looking] than i will ever be.
I don't try to make money out of it, it's all available for free download on soundcloud.
I've done a bit of music tuition, recording/production for other people but realised the bit i enjoy is the creation process, not promoting my stuff, gigging or trying to get rich with music that will only ever appeal to a limited number of people.
But I do know that people all over the world have heard my stuff and some even pressed the like button because they meant it!

 

Making money was easy at one point. I played 5 - 6 nights a week (sometimes to thousands of people), I had a record deal with RCA, a publishing deal and wrote songs for many artists. Royalty checks were a regular occurrence. The last song I wrote that had a commercial release peaked on the Billboard album chart at about number 50 for a day then dropped from sight. Six months later my royalty amounted to $77.
I don't make music just for money but I do need a reason, or a project to work on, otherwise music is a hobby and having been a working musician all my life I find it hard to adapt to my current aimlessness.