Doesn't matter Foster
Like has been repeated in this thread you simply can't appeal to everyone's sense of taste.
Someone will always say your stuff is rubbish. Some will love it though.
Also personally writing is mainly a form of self expression.
If people don't like it then ok maybe I didn't put things across clearly enough but if only one person does then it's job done.
Don't focus on that really as your just setting yourself up for a fall and will end up writing stuff in order as to appeal rather than from the heart. That could be the aim though
If so nothing wrong with that but it's not for me personally

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 25, 2017

Don't say what they want to hear.
Say what you need to say.

 

Unfortunately I don't want to say any thing new and precious, just making some noises to cause terrible and dismaying pain to @Avenel ... .

 

maybe deservedly so for that hugely ridiculous generalization that was hopefully a language\meaning type thing

edited content as felt bad but why don't know

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 25, 2017

HAHAHAHA ... talking about Noise .. i was on Beatport listening to some new releases in the electronic/downtempo section and among other things there were a few new albums on Warp Records which in the past was a respected top notch label ... well judge by yourself, i dont know what the fuck is this but i can't even stand it for 20 seconds at low volume, imagine being forced to hear this shit in a Disco ??

more in depth ... they're probably selling this guy as a genius or something but the essence of this EP is ... it's just a bunch of sweeps with continous gates triggering everywhere, there's not even a clear beat as the drums come and go without much logic, hard to see any evolution in the melody, it's all about sound but it's not pleasant, at first glance one wonders when the song is going to "start" but it doesn't ...

dont think i'm a stuck up bitch, this is noise, not music, i dont give a shit if he's on Warp and he's playing in the best clubs, it's not even technically impressive, what he's trying to achieve exactly ? random noise and random arpeggios with trance gates and all ? so what ? it sucks, period.

 

actually it's very simple :
slim melodies are great as long as they give you emotions.
if they dont, people will say your song sucks because it's only made of a couple notes.

problem is, you can do a lot with just 2-3 notes, it's how you use them and what comes out of it that makes the BIGGG difference.
because it's very hard to make great things with less.
with complex melodies it's easier to mask the lack of ideas and to add smoke and mirrors.

so, kudos to those good enough to make big hits with nothing, but in the end they're the exception to the rule, we're inundated by tracks with barebone melodies and most of them sucks, soon people start taking for granted that less=shit but they're wrong, less=great if it's done the right way but it's rare and it's hard to make.

take the sub-genre called "Minimal" (dont ask me why), it's so barebone and boring in 90% of the cases that indeed it's tempting to say this genre sucks because it's TOO minimal, but noo, give it a chance and there are many diamonds in the rough and they sound great exactly because it's so minimal and simple.

 

No, there are limits, there are confines. If there weren't limits and confines then Jazz couldn't have a name - it couldn't have an understandable category.

Think of Venn diagrams......Jazz is a subset of the set of "music". How does it differ from the subset of music called "Trance"? The details aren't important, but it must be so (that there are differences) else the two words would mean the same thing. Those differences are limits and confines, of genre if nothing else.

You can't claim there are differences, but then say there are no limits. Limits distinguish. Else how are things distinguished? And if they don't, how can you say there are differences between Pop, EDM, Jazz, Prog rock, whatever?

Scales are limits and confines? Notes are limits. Tempos are limits. Time is a limit. An audience is a limit? Genre is a limit? Style is a limit?

Without them it would just be a full spectrum of random noise. Words have limits.....that's what makes them mean what they do, and not something else. Without such limits no words would or could mean anything.

 

but i would distinguish between "the mixing sucks", "the melody sucks", "the sound sucks", and "it just sucks".
saying that "it sucks" means nothing, we need details.

if it sucks in every department, sorry it just sucks and maybe it's time to become a DJ.

if just sucks in one dept. then dont worry : study and improve and with time you will reach a good standard !

i made lots of horrible awful songs and i guess every composer has lots of skeletons in the closet.
but it means nothing, what matters is where you are now.
if you're really ashamed of your past tracks just remix them, nobody will notice.

 

I take it all back......you're right!!! Geez, that's rough.:D

 

i don't really think I can add anything more that I would consider constructive to the argument Avenel in a positive manner.
All I can do is obviously state you have your preferences and tastes but maybe you might accept that others do also and that there is no right\wrong, answer I guess

 

the fact is, i was an analog freak up to 1995 because analog was still better in so many ways, but after that i gave up and jumped to digital big time.
i perfectly understand the nostalgia and the romantic factor in analogs but i would NEVER going back.

one thing is using modern analogs with USB and touch screen and all, but i'm talking about vintage analogs, those without even MIDI, no memory patches, cumbersome menus and storage on tape (!), noisy signal and dirty sound overall, no polyphony, no velocity, no midi learn and sysex etc. etc. ...

do you think it was a pleasure to be stuck in the analog age ? no, it sucks because your workflow slows down A LOT ! imagine having to write on paper the presets you're making because your synth has only 32 patches ... and that's lucky as many synths had no memory at all so you had to waste half an hour to set it up every time you recalled a different song, and this for each one of your synths.

on a modular ? even worse .. it's crazy.
modern modulars like the EuroRacks have any sort of modern thing and it's OK, but a true modular ? no, not at all, beautiful to see but a pain in the ass to use.

moral of the story, vintage analogs are not worth the hassle.

 

music can be many things but it must have a tempo otherwise you can't write it.
so that's the first obvious "limit", unless you compose Soundscape or Noise, in which case you can do whatever you want.

for anything else : yes, there are so many limits in the perimeter you have to work with music : unless you play for youself you will have to fit your music to somebody else tastes and adapt it to a specific audience, genre, sound, whatever.

if you work with a label, expect A LOT less freedom in what you do.

so, you're free to do what you want when you play alone, but for anything else there's a small perimeter you're allowed to operate.
in any case don't worry too much, there's a lot of experimental stuff and apart for rare cases it's not so impressive or pleasant to hear.
and rightly so because after all if it was so good it would have been already become popular.

at this point i dont think there's anything else to "explore" in music.
small things, yes, but nothing radical until the commoners raise the bar and start appreciating more technical stuff.
more tech = more freedom, and this would be huge step forward and a benefit for all.

lower the bar and 99% of the stuff being published will be forced to be simple, minimal, sterile, and barebone, as publishers are scared to publish music that is too "difficult" for the plebs.

 

Yeah....but....? ;) I've felt that several times in my life. Then there was Nirvana. Then there was Massive Attack. Then there was Trance. House. Radiohead. Jungle. DnB. Dubstep. So who knows?

And music, like sex, is discovered anew by every generation. Surely? Sex doesn't go out of fashion.....nobody complains it's the same old thing, over and over? Well, except my missus.

We're swamped in shite and BS - with that I can agree. ;)

 

of course, until 1996-97 there's been a LOT of radical shifts in music, evey 6 months new stuff came out, i mean stuff that was made to leave a sign for the years to come.
but now ? i don't remember anything really radical after the late 90s, until we count Dubstep but i dont consider it music.

you will find ENDLESS discussions regarding this topic and what exactly killed music in the late 90s but strictly speaking at one point we reached saturation in every music genre and sub-genre, and for this saturation Digital and the Internet is certainly to blame, even if in 1997 the internet was barely widespread outside acadamia and only in 1999 the music piracy became available to all with Napster and the P2P industry.

but it wasnt piracy that killed music, it was stalled already before the internet, everyone kept publishing the same shit over and over, lots of top hits were just remixes of old hits.
even without the internet it was a dead man walking apart for a few indie labels that made great stuff.

i rest my case, we can expect many good little things here and there but nothing radical will ever come out again, the only option would be a new super duper Synthesis that allows you to create sounds never heard before.

but impossible, we already can do that with Reaktor and it ain't going anywhere, even using microtonal it's been done already in any possible way.
so, we explore the whole gamut of sounds AND of pitch/notation.
what's left ? not much .. and this will be filled soon.

at that point music will be nothing but new copycats and remixes of music written in the past.
and maybe auto-composing algorithms will take over.

music is ... dead !

 

Haha. I hear music in air conditioners, fridges and shit like that. Even silence (tinnitus).

Have you heard this?

I think it's fantastic. Makes me cry.

Agreed. But I felt like that before. I can't imagine it, else if I could it would be already happening, right? I'd be doing it. I can't imagine it. Somebody else might?

There logically should come a point where "everything has been done" - but that discounts the temporal, the here and now, fashion, generations, etc. Reinvention is something itself. Doesn't matter that it's "like" something previously. Everything is like something else, a bit, anyway?

We're already in "post-modernism" - where ears will accept most any sound and style in combo. So, yes, everything is already "used up" and self-conscious and self-reverential? But that needn't take away its worth to new ears. Indeed, that's what makes music so "now" to new ears? Pop will eat itself!

Yeah, we could probably get by with something like Huxley's automata making music in Brave New World - and people taking "SOMA" to listen to it. I always thought "raves" were straight out of Huxley....and that was...err....decades ago......kinda zombie thing going on.

But, clearly, if you and I believe there's nothing more to do in music, then we're not going to be the ones coming up with it. Right? :D I'm always behind the curve anyway. Why not? It's cheaper.

 

@Avenel Your glass seems perma-empty, brother.
Music isn't dead for me at all but my perception is also my reality.

Forget the destination. Enjoy the ride. There's always something to explore and the journey is the whole point. Like sex.

 

Great music creates its own reality. I can't see why that doesn't have infinite scope. Originality and complexity are overrated. Repeat to fade.

 

Like when stuck at a busy intersection for ages with the indicators providing the back beat

 

Music is not dead. Maybe you're just a bad listener. Your ideology is something like this: "Oh I have heard that sound before and is not interesting anymore, what's next?". I suggest you think about the new fusions instead of listening to the music.


BTW, if you finished that book, take a look at this one:
The art policy and musical judgements - Who decides what is great?
https://audiosex.pro/threads/the-art-policy-and-musical-judgements-who-decides-what-is-great.28229/
The author "Julian Johnson", is a guy exactly like you or even more ruthless. He devalues all of the modern genres with the most harsh and unwelcome reasons and thinks that the classical is the salvation and eternity.

Also, you can never be a good agony aunt (or uncle) because you will direct poor people to suicide.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 27, 2017

Hmmm!
EDM is shit because it's all loops: If you weren't aware, the D in EDM stands for dance. Now, funnily enough, the one thing that all dance music has in common is repetition, so listening to dance music and expecting anything different is somewhat stupid.
Modular synthesis guys should f##k off: Why? They're quite happy doing their own thing.
Analog is dead/ Digital is here to stay: Analog is currently enjoying a revival. Over 50 percent of new synths in the past year have been analog, and that trend looks like it will be the same this year.
Music is dead! : That's like saying fashion is dead. Music does have a major problem, but dead. No. Music's problem is perfectionism.
Everything has to be perfect, and where this wasn't possible in the past, it is now. The problem in perfect is, that it's boring.
When you take away imperfections you take away character. That's why people like vintage synths, because the have character. The don't sinc up precisely, they do wander in and out of tune, but that's what gives them character.

Music will always be here, and like fashion styles will come and go, sometimes the same sometimes different. all you have to do is open your mind. Be creative, and not narrow minded. Choose characterful, and reject perfectionism, and never play to the gallery.