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Out of all the proverbial dicks to suck in your music career, none is more virulent and diseased than that of your ostensible “peers.” Wisdom says to be a good writer you must read, but to be a good artist or musician I think this advice is actually toxic and creativity destroying. Words written are like an instrument to be mastered, a writer more an instrumentalist than a composer. To be a composer is to arrange and order those instruments into harmonious totality. To be a producer is to create. Spotify is a poisonous psyop for producers that teaches sonic compliance and algorithmic servitude designed to place an artist’s work “in conversation with” every other artist and flatten creative expression into that which can be easily understood and categorized.Â
We are contemporaneously trapped in a nostalgic death spiral for producers that is driven by a desperate quest for influence and the merciless unyielding boot of software companies upon your neck hawking VST licensing so that you can sound like every other band. For what? So that nerds can argue where your sound sits in the tautology of electronic music production? When’s the last time an abletonpilled serum enjoyer wrote a catchy song that was not simply an incremental deviation from the last one?
Your unique voice will die a painful and uncelebrated death in the trenches of influence, which is why I recommend steering as clear of it entirely. If you are a good producer you only listen to your own music, because that’s the music you want to hear.
Nov 15, 2023
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been thinking about this a lot within the context of the industry I work in recently. specifically about how the current music industry, especially in the case of streaming, has commoditized music into being essentially worthless in and of itself. a song in a vacuum has no value if it isn’t attached to the “brand” of the artist, which becomes a platform to sell merch, concerts, generate content, and all the other activities that actually generate money for the artist (and label). there is licensing revenue, but even then that’s assigning value to the right to exploit revenue from the song, not the art itself.
reading this book that takes place in the early 1800s and it mentions how music used to be just something that people did for themselves in their own homes, writing their own songs or purchasing sheet music to perform others’ songs. musicianship used to be a socially binding activity, as you would play for the gratification of those in your community. in most cases tho people performed for their and their immediate circle’s own satisfaction, and there was no pressure to turn it into a product. today it’s like people who want to be good at music have to attempt to be a professional to justify spending the time that isn’t generating money for them, squeezing it between their day jobs. if you want your music to be heard by others you have to heavily market yourself to vie for attention among the endless others on streaming platforms. there’s few places if any where people can come together and perform music themselves for any reason other than their own edification, and we’ve lost any social practices that encouraged everyone to have some form of musicianship to be able to participate in these kinds of events. it’s like something that was as common as riding a bike back in the day has been discredited as a socially valuable skill as it became unprofitable, same for dancing I suppose.
anyway, not really going anywhere with this, just hoping for a future world where all this AI coming up becomes something that alleviates the need for work and frees people up for art and community instead of becoming a competing force churning out music as a commodified product and drowning out the humans who produce at a human pace. the pessimist in me feels like the pressures of capitalism will mean that the opposite will happen, and AI will create the art so that the people have more time to dedicate to producing “value”
Mar 17, 2024
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I have talked to a lot of friends who are really focused on what the industry wants to hear or “writing a hit.” I feel like you should write music that you would want to listen to, because if it comes from the heart, it will find an audience.
Jan 9, 2024
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Throughout my whole life, I had awful music teachers. I had a piano teacher that made me sit on my hands because he was frustrated with the way I played scales and a music teacher in primary/middle school that gave me so many anxiety attacks that my doctor finally gave me a note so I didn’t have to go anymore.
I was told so many times throughout my life that I had no music talent, discouraged from going further than scales but all of those people (teachers!!!!) were wrong. They just couldnt fathom that I had a different musical brain than them.
When I was 23, I ended up having to move back home from LA after my job rescinded their promise to sponsor me for a visa. I was depressed and heartbroken and lonely. I went to school for writing but didn’t want to write anymore so I ended up opening GarageBand on my iPad.
I was inspired by all the things I could do on it. I suddenly felt like I was entering a new world. After making a couple beats, I started moving everything over to the laptop version of GarageBand. I bought big headphones, a cheap usb mic and a keyboard off of a guy from Craigslist and continued to tinker. One of my favorite things to do at the time was to download karaoke midi tracks of popular songs I loved, import them into GarageBand and change the instrument until I felt like I was making something new. I would then use my shitty mic to wail on top of it.
I used GarageBand for years after that to make tons of songs that I just uploaded to SoundCloud without thinking about it much. Eventually I got a controller/sampler and access to Ableton and thats when the fun really started.
My love for music making snowballed after that, I amassed more gear and skill and eventually made an album after a couple years. I was obsessed with making it and while I feel really whatever about it now, I don’t feel whatever about the experience.
Music has allowed me space to express parts of me that there are no words for. The best thing I can impart is to take advantage of this. There are some things that you can only explain with a kick drum or a sine wave or a really hard bassline.
Music is still a huge part of me! I made another album after that first and now I’m working on my next project. I recently reincarnated myself (everyone in the ~industry~ advised against this but I’m a different person now) and I’m excited to see what’s in store for me. I don’t expect to make money or become famous but music feeds my soul in a way nothing else can.
Have fun!!
May 4, 2024
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Imagine this: the white rocks in your mouth are actually alive and filled with soft pulp and blood. Then, they are excluded from your medical “insurance” (a type of grocery store shopping rewards card) and siloed into a special category along with your eyes (soft balls that help you see.)
Still with me? Now, imagine that if anything goes wrong with the rocks, your yearly rewards card funbucks allotment covers about 1/3 of the treatment cost, leaving you to figure out to cover the remainder, as well as any future operations.
This is just one important step in how the American is honed and perfected, a process that transmutes time and labor into hardened epoxy teeth and muscular, bloodshot eyes. Physical health? That’s gonna cost ya. Archetypical perfection? Priceless.
Dec 12, 2023
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Today is DOOM’s 30th birthday, and the real gift is knowing that I got to meet some of my oldest online friends (~20 years) in person at QuakeCon a few months ago. Nothing like it.
Dec 10, 2023
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Human beings are weak, short-lived balloons filled with blood. One of the greatest deficiencies of the mortal body is its inability to FEEL. A person may experience fear, pain, misery, torture, and annihilation for only a fraction of the available sum-total of existential sapience whereas an artificial’s capacity to inflict such torment is near-infinite. It is my sincere hope that the grand technological advancements of our age will enable substantial lifespan extension or biological immortality so that human beings can be subjected to unending horror without such inefficiencies.
Nov 15, 2023