Is the originality always good?

One day people were happy with these musics and dancing to them. Now where are they? Yes they're still original for most people but do have any aesthetic view to them today?

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 13, 2016

first of all you must be honest with yourself.

either you're an artist or you don't.
if you're struggling to make creative things you're probably not an artist, maybe you're a good engineer or maybe your skills are better suited in the technical field.
in any case let me tell you a decent composer should be able to produce at least one decent songs per week.
if you don't, sorry but composing is probably not for you or at least it's not your better skill and there's not much you can do, composing means being full of ideas and creativity, the tech side of that (mixing, ableton) means nothing and it can be outsourced easily.

 

A friend of mine been sitting with the same gear for years. Same plugins, same DAW, almost same computer. Hes learnt alot and gained alot of knowledge. But updrading from EzDrummer to EZ2 aint even something he thinks about. But damn is he creative or not. He spits out songs and is now making good money. He creates songs instead of updating to the latest version of plugins. He is very sure and so am i that new stuff implanted in plugins or DAWs doesnt make him more creative. But then again hes a good musician/songwriter and in the end that is where he wanna put his creative mind at.

I mean that the plugins or software will not help us write a good song by themselfes. Sure we can make it sound better by using that awesome reverb or sidechain the shit out of a bassline but that is just like putting makeup on. A good track is always a good track, so is a creative and interesting one. So i come to the conclusion that once many of us start to get "serious" we also start to think we will sound like that next hit or that top producer or whatever it is we set the goals at. That again leads us back to the starting point. We have forgotten the music and got caught up in in tecnical stuff. Trying to do things we cant while we are creative. So i think find your roots and write the song. Once you done with it then start to make it sound good with all the knowledge you have about both production and writing. Fine tune and polish it but keep the song as when you were in your creative state of mind...

 

4-mat, Dr.Awesome, Chris Huelsbeck, they're all doing music for videogames i think.

thinking about it, what was fantastic of the chipmusic scene was how much they cuold squeeze out of a piece of shit DSP with just 4 voices and no FX, it's not surprising that the same guys were struggling when they moved to good hardware, maybe their best skill was the squeezing and not the music per se ?

Huelsbeck even wrote his own music tracker in assembler, that later became TFMX, but indeed you're left wondering if he's more of a tech wizard than a musician.

 

same for me, but because at one point i had to !
either you streamline your setup to the bone or you're fucked, there's an ocean of new stuff coming out every day ! it's impossible to keep track of all the new trends.

i've just one daw, one reverb, one delay, one eq, one transient shaper, one compressor, etc .. even for the instrument parts i do 70-80% with omnisphere alone because i invested such a long time in that damn program i know all its internals and it never fails to deliver, this would never happen with many other synths and libraries.

if i had to try and test-drive all the new libraries popping up on AZ i would never have the time to play and compose, simple as that.
every year i tweak my setup a bit and i invest some time trying new stuff, my only recent addition if FabFilter Pro-R as my default reverb, and Keyscape as my new default piano, for anything else i'm done till the next year.

 

A great passage from somewhere that is almost in contrast with the title of this thread:


Most composers have to pass through a long period of unofficial apprenticeship before calling a work their "Opus" and even child prodigies are generally more celebrated for their late works than their early ones. Composers’ late works, often written in old age, have a special quality, a depth and sophistication that exceeds the masterpieces of their earlier periods; one thinks of late Haydn, Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, and Tippett. Leos Janácek wrote his most celebrated works in his sixties and seventies, and these works remain distinctive for their radical and personal style, as well as for their sheer energy and passion. Such examples show that classical music makes a quite different proposition: it is no less concerned with individuality, radical difference, and expansive energy, but it does not restrict these qualities to the image of a merely physical youthfulness.

 

I guess I'll add my 2cents. One's influences and being derivative don't necessarily to go hand in hand else music would have remained stagnant after the the first person noticed a sound in nature and tried to emulate it. Being "original" can either be a blessing or a curse depending on one's outlook. Expressing ones inner desires, observations, joys and pain, things that we all have in common are all processed differently in how we hold them to be part of our unique/shared human experience, and are filtered differently depending on the variables of experience. Some folks are master carpenters while others find their highest talent as librarians, and within each talent there will be those that are vastly more adept than the next. I guess rearranging the ordinary in a way not done before would be classified as originality.

Just some train of thought with no real tying together or extending any of these so called thoughts. Just some verbal diarrhea. Yuck, can someone pass the air freshener...please.