Music too easy to make now?

With all the free software and countless DJs/producers etc and Youtube promotion saturation is music just becoming too easy and too throwaway now or am I just being too pessimistic? What are your thoughts guys?

Music's always been easy to make. It's just electronic music in particular that's gone from "mysterious ultra-complex space sounds" to "shit everyone does when they're 13 before they join a real band" in the last decade or so.

It's no easier to write a shitty electronic tune than it is to write a shitty folk song. Punk song. Pop song.

If you're listening to shitty music, that's a personal problem.

There's definitely more shit to sift through, since the widespread use of internet removes the filter that the media last had in the 90's.

But since there's more resources, some voices can be heard that otherwise would not. This can be good or bad.

Yes, much too easy. Any arsehole who can torrent an illegal copy of reason now thinks that they're the next aphex twin. It completely negates the positive aspects of the internet (ie. giving people access to less popular and more interesting sounds). Also music software has a huge amount of preset functions. For this reason I'll respectfully disagree with whoever it was that said it was just as easy to make bad folk/ punk music.

Its easier to make shitty electronic for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfhVbHj4mPs

I've always maintained that electronic as a genre has this weird way of producing some of the best & worst of music, & that anyone has the potential to do either.

i think music got too easy to make when sampling became so prevalent

not that there isn't any good music using samples... but think puff daddy

Shut the fuck up.

^ that was my first thought on the matter.

The second, was that I wrote a journal entry about this subject (and why you are wrong) many months ago, so I'll go post that when I get home tonight.

i think it's great. what's the alternative? learn guitar?

lots of people have fun making music regardless if they are going to become notorious in a scene or not. it's like creative people picking up a pen or a camera, 's alllll good

Domt exactly see why there's a problem, never really thought that making music should be hard.

I was just thinking about this the other day-- making music is becoming less of a 'lucky people with money' or 'jobless hippy losers in a garage' kind of thing, and a more mainstream, acceptable and normal thing. Which, as already stated, means more good music as well as bad. But one person's good isn't another's, so it's all good in some form to someone.

Who gives a shit, no one is forcing you to listen to the shit music.

yeah it's easier to make music.

it's no easier, however, to make good music.

a lamborghini is more powerful than a prius, but if the guy driving it goes everywhere in 1st gear, he just looks like a tool and makes a terrible noise.

whereas the stig can make a prius wail around a track.

and so it is.

  On 11/22/2010 at 7:13 AM, maus said:

yeah it's easier to make music.

 

it's no easier, however, to make good music.

 

a lamborghini is more powerful than a prius, but if the guy driving it goes everywhere in 1st gear, he just looks like a tool and makes a terrible noise.

 

whereas the stig can make a prius wail around a track.

 

and so it is.

penis analogies only please

  On 11/22/2010 at 7:13 AM, maus said:

yeah it's easier to make music.

 

it's no easier, however, to make good music.

 

a lamborghini is more powerful than a prius, but if the guy driving it goes everywhere in 1st gear, he just looks like a tool and makes a terrible noise.

 

whereas the stig can make a prius wail around a track.

 

and so it is.

Nailed it, buddy.

But on a personal note I've been playing instruments and using a computer to make music for a very long time, it's a lot more difficult to get out of a computer what I want than a guitar, drumset, piano etc. to be honest.

If its too easy you have to try harder!

it is just as easy as writing bad music in other genres, but it's WAY easier to get it out there. Just bounce a track and upload to soundcloud, where as a band would have record / mix and all that.

it has always been easy to make music. people have been banging shit against other shit for thousands of years and calling it music.

it's just the internet provides a platform for mass exposure and every cunt expects to be famous these days due to the hellish rise of celebrity culture and programs like the X Factor et al.

is easier to churn out but harder to be innovative

the mix n match mentality to making music often doesnt challange new territory and noveltys wear off very quickly these days as its all too easy to emulate with modern software

increased software "intelligence" obviously makes some electronic music easier to make (for instance: randomizers, generative music, paulstretch). However, critical intelligence adapts to these new circumstances and makes one's music validity more difficult to obtain ("your record is lazy shit, entirely made on paulstretch"). As a consequence of smarter software, I believe justification of how one's music was made is gonna a big thing in the future.

  On 11/22/2010 at 5:31 PM, the anonymous forumite said:

increased software "intelligence" obviously makes some electronic music easier to make (for instance: randomizers, generative music, paulstretch). However, critical intelligence adapts to these new circumstances and makes one's music validity more difficult to obtain ("your record is lazy shit, entirely made on paulstretch"). As a consequence of smarter software, I believe justification of how one's music was made is gonna a big thing in the future.

theres still an art to getting anything decent or fresh from intelligent software tho

it may take out some of the hard work or get you out of bad habits but you still need a good ear, open mind and a little imagination

Too easy? Then why nobody with their terabytes of sounds and vsts and abletons and synths and other stuff can't make anything what Clark does with Mpc, mic, synth and efects? I mean if it's too easy, give me an example of how easily good track is made. It's not easier than it was ten years ago. There are just more presets. Still, you need to know how to use them. Imho.

yeah, to sum up, i think we can agree on the fact that making music is easy, but making good music is difficult.

making music: easy

making good music: difficult

Like others said, it's easier to make shitty music. I actually think it's harder to make good electronic music now.