Harkat, if u dont post an existential banger rn this is all for naught
(also i hope youre doing well g)
1 BigUp
bye tnucs
Nah that was to Cyc 
In my teens/early 20s it was a lot harder to separate earnest, good artistic impulses from an anxious need to be cool as fuck source direct 5 panel yung edgy music producer & getting to inhabit that mystique. I probably really really wanted to be Zomby or smth when I was 19, of course influenced by very standard boring insecurities.What can ya do.
Now life and getting older has thankfully humbled that want away. Pretty sure I just wanna articulate the feels-meaning-sensation I get from the music I love, and am not in a rush to be recognized.
It helps that in 2024 the normal music “artist career” seems so totally stripped of romance, even highly solid artists I like are stuck shilling patreons and promoting their music via undignified and tiresome online discourse engagement, selling sample packs etc. No thanks! The kinda heat-death of internet culture (media in general tbh) is good for my music making.
Im genuinely quite shit at being immediately, naturally “musical” - friends who aren’t even into it are better at identifying tones and all that. But I’m as sure as I ever was that there is something very real happening when I hear the sounds I love, separate from how they function as indicators of cool identity or excuses for hedonism. There’s an inarticulable and true meaning there. Summoning that real magic from your DAW is the most satisfying and peace of mind bringing thing in the world.
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My guy…yes
recognition was already a bit of a hell hole when we simply thought a good record could take us out of mediocrity and into the sphere of being a cool boy. The landscape is so so grim for any of that now, but in a certain way…feels more open than ever? thats prob just own expectations matching up with realsies tho
Thanks man
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Not sure if this take is needed but my two cents, much like harkat evrything was based around a bit of a need to be edgy and cool initially if i looked at it honestly,
Nowadays as my cognitive function has declined music is pretty much my only way of expressing my true emotions, can barely leave the house through anxiety and can barely string a sentance together when in social situations through poverty of thought but i can, at times, get a beat done that shows theres still a remnant of emotion left in me !
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Sorry to sound like a mopey bugger here too, its not all doom n gloom ! Just the reason for making music has evolved over time from being something that was motivated by others opinions then to a past time, on to a form of therapy and now, maybe 10-12 years later as a form of desperate expression… motivating all of this reaaaly is the desire to hear or know that stuff is being blown on massive rigs to people on drugs and twisting minds… something not quite achieved yet to the level i hope and thanks to my stupidity n mental crisis something i dont think will now happen but thats one of them, i can either sit n cry about it or just keep making music !
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Dont butters :__) every time that track drops it cracks me up properly 
1 BigUp
I guess I haven’t really felt creative at all the last 2 or so years. Maybe a bit longer. Most of the songs I’ve made lately feel like I don’t have any real input into what comes out of it. I haven’t written or anything either for a little bit. I think there’s a lot of reasons for why that is.
It makes me feel really weird reading about how expressive you guys feel with music. I don’t feel capable of expressing myself at all. I think I’ve only made one song where I felt like I was actually letting out emotion. At least with electronic music.
1 BigUp
i had a 6 year period where i didnt make anything dont let it get to you.
what you struggling with? idea’s, producing, mixing? or just cba anymore?
btw do you do art or graphic design by any chance? this is a more personal question for my own benefit
That’s one of the worst things Ive ever put in my ears
1 BigUp
Someone told me recently when I was going thru a bland patch, to try making something in a different medium.
Same but longer lol. Still work on tunes here and there but the drive/spark is missing. But I think it’s a lot of reasons
There’s been a general cultural malaise for the last 10+ years, electronic music included. “Every visit to the cinema leaves me, against all my vigilance, stupider and worse.” Ofc there’s isolated interesting work here and there but nothing cohesive. I definitely need other things to inspire me, and there’s just less of it. Used to be finding new stuff daily/weekly that would get me excited to make music.
Big creativity boost for me was also going to nights and hearing this stuff loud and in the intended setting. But there’s rarely lineups I feel like going out for nowadays
Music feels more disposable than ever now, especially with spotify/streaming. tbh there’s too much music, too much “content”. I’ve probably overcorrected, but I want to avoid polluting people’s ears with unimaginative or derivative music. You’re just making it harder to find the good stuff.
And some of it is practical - my ideal workflow is a pain in the ass. I love the gear that I have and it helps me make the music I want to make, but everything takes 10 times longer. It’s almost impossible to work on more than 1 project at a time when you can’t just load the settings of all your gear in one click. Start a new one and say goodbye to some of those exact patches. But tunes I make 100% in-the-box just don’t hit the same for me, and I need the limitations of hardware to force the creativity out of me
There’s a couple sessions I always have in mind, where everything felt automatic and before I know it, I’ve captured exactly what i wanted to. This is still the dragon I’m chasing every time I open the DAW, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. Been a while since I caught that fucker tho
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sometimes it’s personal but most of the time i’m just trying to capture an imagined emotion or vibe
In terms of pure expression I still think nothing beats an actual instrument. There is no action you can make in a DAW that is as direct as how hard you pick a string or hit a drum. If I just want to express myself, I pick up my guitar. But if I want to create something I’m going for the DAW
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For me a lot of the time, it feels more like I’m discovering the song in a way. There’s a lot of emotion in that, sometimes, but it never feels like it’s coming from me. Sometimes (rarely) I’ll hear a sound that feels like it should be there, and make it. A lot of the time the notes just kind of fall into place. I’ve really been struggling with making something that sounds how I actually want it to sound.
Like I’ve tried sitting down so many times to make like an ambient synth track, but it never turns out like that. It just goes somewhere else.
Part of it for me, I think, is maybe just the medium itself. I’ve never really been into electronic music in all honesty. I’ll listen to a Playlist or mix here and there when I’m in the mood. I have much more fun generally just jamming on instruments. I’m not very good, but I do find it more expressive at least. I’ve always enjoyed percussion in particular. And me and my girlfriend have a couple of tunes we’ve made up that we always sing around the house.
I’ve also definitely been very focused on the chaabi stuff, so there’s that lol.
@sleeps honestly using furnace and reaper these last few weeks has been huge. It was starting to drain my soul opening up fl studio lol.
@Sac nope I’ve always been terrible at drawing lol
1 BigUp
I wanted to be recognized for being effortlessly exceptional.
Turns out that not only is there no such thing, but that I also had vastly overestimated the “I” in that proposition.
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I dont necessarily agree with this re: kandinsky, but there is something very interesting to me about the concept of living life fully as expression, instead of trying to segregate different aspects of it into a sort of personal/public sphere dichotomy.
I feel like it might be so basic (and possibly innate) that is an almost moot point to make but as someone who has felt so fragmented at times as an artist/person/son/whatever that a life like this sounds very alluring and maybe one already being lived by myself just with a distorted perspective of my own actions/interior
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especially with the discussion above about recognition, and probably to massively reduce the idea by own words and interpretation - this sort of idea of one’s life being the expression and the “art” they create is just sort of an existential outcome is also massively mythologized when it comes to big arts/music/design/film making etc (and i dont take that as what this passage is trying to utter about Kandinsky, but more-so what I’ve been feeling from it)
but for normies like me and maybe ‘most’ artists, i do think it holds a real value in terms of trying to balance a life. Not in comparison to any other person, but within one’s own actual need and from that, their ability, to express.
An exterior ‘critic’ being the one ascribing any sort of ‘harmony’ between interior/exterior is problematic obviously
I haven’t honestly been able to think about it too much yet, and there are strong vibes of equanimity coloring my thoughts around this but it has been a comforting thread of thought lately.
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