Musical Maturity

Back in my youth I used to write a lot of loud dark angry music. I'd like to attribute most of it to a bad living situation, general apathy, or girlfriend frustration etc... but as I grow older my music is a lot calmer, more ambient, melodic, cleaner etc. Sometimes I wonder if thats just a sign that I'm maturing along with my music or something else completely.

Has your style changed for better or worse since beginning to write music? Did you go through a rough patch in your life and your music changed during that period? Has Venentian Snares really been angry for that long etc?

I was actually thinking about this yesterday. When I first started, I was like 'omg I'ma be the next afex twinz!!!111' so I made weird fast crappy music that was weird and fast for the sake of being weird and fast, not because that's just how the music came out. It's actually embarrassing to show those old tracks to mates, or even to listen to them, really... but I could never delete them, I have a soft spot for them.

After a few months of that, I relaxed and one day my stuff just mellowed out. For the last year and a half or so, mine have typically resided in the chill/ambient techno smoke-a-spliff-and-kick-it realm. Every once in a while I'll pop out something kinda dubby or groovy, but 95% of the time it's just chill, cuz that's the kind of music I like most.

As to if my life affects my style, not quite so much that I notice... I'm going through a rough patch right now, but overall it's consistently at least somewhat happy-ish and melodic, with the occasional dark track thrown out.

i wouldn't call it maturity so much as getting fed up with whatever i'm doing, and consequently changing my angle of attack.

mood of the music tends to match mine.

i've gotten more patient, more willing to take care of the details... but that's more about my level of maturity than the music.

edit: and of course, i'm always amassing more knowledge of music --> deeper understanding of what i'm doing --> deeper music --> more knowledge of music

it's all about the groove for me. i used to be huge into the watmm featured artists for their glitches and crazy squarepusher drums and everything, but i feel i've matured into more subtle music. stuff that is more laid back, slower bpms, and fat. actually right now i'm really into berlin style electro, just raw and heavy, but cleanest production ever.

Went from using mostly processed noise recordings, to using mostly synths with a few noises, to currently using mostly processed acoustic instruments with a few synths & noises.

Some of the first music I made was with loops in Acid, and before that on Sony Music Maker for the PSX, back when Discovery just came out. Then I got a macbook and started making stuff in garageband. The music I made then was really good stuff, zero quantizing, just dragging clips around making it match up, singing, clapping, beat boxing, just a lot of fun, not trying to match up with anything. I played a lot of halo 2 then.

1. banging on autoharps, guitars, flutes as a lad

2. "eletronic music production" class in high school brings the fact to my attention that i can do music on the computer, and computers were like, my favorite thing then.

3. class gets out for the year and i work on stuff all summer.

4. loops are made in sound forge, fruity loops then strung together in acid 2.0

5. switched to modplug tracker

6. switched to intelligent tracker

7. tried to learn guitar and hated it

8. switched to reason

9. switched to nuendo

10. switched to cubase sx, love it, become plugin addict

11. finally get enough hardware that i can do hardware musics. it is a totally new thing and i am shit at it but it's fun

12. phase where i was doing a lot of, i dunno, concrete? mixing live TV audio, stuff off a radio scanner, etc.

13. go back to the computer for a while

14. go back to hardware for a while

15. go back to the computer and finally start integrating the hardware more

16. started doing computer trax, live trax, somewhere in between depending on my mood

17. learning to sing and play piano

18. ?

  On 1/19/2011 at 8:13 PM, hahathhat said:

1. banging on autoharps, guitars, flutes as a lad

 

2. "eletronic music production" class in high school brings the fact to my attention that i can do music on the computer, and computers were like, my favorite thing then.

 

3. class gets out for the year and i work on stuff all summer.

 

4. loops are made in sound forge, fruity loops then strung together in acid 2.0

 

5. switched to modplug tracker

 

6. switched to intelligent tracker

 

7. tried to learn guitar and hated it

 

8. switched to reason

 

9. switched to nuendo

 

10. switched to cubase sx, love it, become plugin addict

 

11. finally get enough hardware that i can do hardware musics. it is a totally new thing and i am shit at it but it's fun

 

12. phase where i was doing a lot of, i dunno, concrete? mixing live TV audio, stuff off a radio scanner, etc.

 

13. go back to the computer for a while

 

14. go back to hardware for a while

 

15. go back to the computer and finally start integrating the hardware more

 

16. started doing computer trax, live trax, somewhere in between depending on my mood

 

17. learning to sing and play piano

 

18. ?

Nice timeline. I like this kind of thing.

I never had an electronic music class, never offered anywhere. I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing/writing guitar and acoustic music too. I started seriously trying to learn keyboard/piano maybe 5 or so years ago. There were practice rooms in my first college (community), then I moved to another college and there was a piano in my dorm which I played every day. Playing piano has been one of the most rewarding things. I've taught myself because I hate lessons/"proper technique"

Personally I think everyone who's into making tunes should become at least somewhat familiar with a lot of different instruments. You automatically start looking at melodies differently depending on whether you're using a computer, a sequencer, a keyboard, a guitar, a violin, a flute, and so on. And of course percussion instruments tend to make you rethink beats.

I sort of want to take a while & focus on sound design & recording techniques, because noise tends to play an interesting part in certain genres.

I started playing the drums in 4th grade, played in the marching band, jazz band, and symphonic band all through high school. Got into electronic music and started experimenting around 15; I too started out just arranging the samples/loops in ACID Pro 2.0 and Sound Forge. Moved to Fruity Loops after maybe a year. Taught myself about synthesis and all that in FL for the next 9-10 years while also sampling things on my MD Recorder and doing things with the sounds. I switched to Live two years ago and haven't looked back. Started with just an Oxygen 8v2 and Live, now I have my first HW synth (DSI Tetr4), a home made mini-arduinome, and a few other MIDI controllers.

  On 1/19/2011 at 8:39 PM, Cryptowen said:

Personally I think everyone who's into making tunes should become at least somewhat familiar with a lot of different instruments. You automatically start looking at melodies differently depending on whether you're using a computer, a sequencer, a keyboard, a guitar, a violin, a flute, and so on. And of course percussion instruments tend to make you rethink beats.

 

I sort of want to take a while & focus on sound design & recording techniques, because noise tends to play an interesting part in certain genres.

it is an object you can't see directly... but you can see the shadows it casts. by moving around, noting how the shadows change, you start to develop a picture of it.

(this is some famous analogy i am sure, i didn't come up with it)

  On 1/19/2011 at 9:34 PM, hahathhat said:

  On 1/19/2011 at 8:39 PM, Cryptowen said:

Personally I think everyone who's into making tunes should become at least somewhat familiar with a lot of different instruments. You automatically start looking at melodies differently depending on whether you're using a computer, a sequencer, a keyboard, a guitar, a violin, a flute, and so on. And of course percussion instruments tend to make you rethink beats.

 

I sort of want to take a while & focus on sound design & recording techniques, because noise tends to play an interesting part in certain genres.

 

it is an object you can't see directly... but you can see the shadows it casts. by moving around, noting how the shadows change, you start to develop a picture of it.

 

(this is some famous analogy i am sure, i didn't come up with it)

lol Plato - Allegory of the Cave

I suppose it might be fun to do a little timeline...

1991 - born (for reference)

<1999 - no interest in listening to music. Played around a bit with my mother's old Casio VL-Tone

1999 - Made noise with tape recorder & old Win98 software (still have some saved for sample use)

2002 - bought a Microkorg because it had a vocoder. Started making simple little tunes but didn't record anything

2004 - found Jeskola Buzz & made some loops with it. Actively listening to music for first time (mostly soundtracks)

2005 - more noise experiments. Played jaw harp & didgeridoo. Circuit bent stuff.

2007 - discovered Yello & developed an interest in electronic music. Got back into using Jeskola Buzz.

2008 - put out my first album, which has a pretty awesome cover if I say so

2009 - put out my second album. Started playing guitar a bit

2010 - Another album in the summer. After that I developed an interest in singing, started playing banjo & ukulele, & built tuned percussion instruments.

when i was very young i had a record player, i listened to some contemporary stuff, mostly thriller and star wars ost besides children's music

always was very musical and parents saw that so:

piano lessons when young , taken for about 10 years

listened to lots of motown and classic rock growing up

then listened to grunge and alt rock tons

hated techno

got into electronic music with prodigy, chemical brothers, fatboy slim and orbital mostly through other friends

started buying electronic music mags: dance stuff

bought some of those albums that these dance magazine recommended like fucking trance

decided that was shit music so stopped reading those magazines

got into more interesting music when a friend got me to listen to rdj album

bought rdj album and other aphex

discovered wattem

discovered awesome music

started making music on hardware

made what sounded kinda like orbital + video game music

then switched to software because of a friend

made weird, i guess electro and an ep

stopped making music for awhile

started up again but limited myself software wise and made some weird stuff

did this for a long time

currently going back to hardware AND software

going to teach myself music theory, something i never learned because i took private piano lessons and didn't study it as choice

  On 1/19/2011 at 9:37 PM, hautlle said:

  On 1/19/2011 at 9:34 PM, hahathhat said:

  On 1/19/2011 at 8:39 PM, Cryptowen said:

Personally I think everyone who's into making tunes should become at least somewhat familiar with a lot of different instruments. You automatically start looking at melodies differently depending on whether you're using a computer, a sequencer, a keyboard, a guitar, a violin, a flute, and so on. And of course percussion instruments tend to make you rethink beats.

 

I sort of want to take a while & focus on sound design & recording techniques, because noise tends to play an interesting part in certain genres.

 

it is an object you can't see directly... but you can see the shadows it casts. by moving around, noting how the shadows change, you start to develop a picture of it.

 

(this is some famous analogy i am sure, i didn't come up with it)

 

lol Plato - Allegory of the Cave

\

i got it from godel, escher, bach by hofstatder. :)

I'm way less prolific than I used to be. Certain parts of my music has matured in ways but sometimes I feel like my music has become less complicated

^As far as my track output goes, I used to spend two weeksish on each song, adding little bits here & there, and when it reached four minutes or so I'd call it done. Nowadays I tend to try making something that holds together in one sitting, & thus produce anywhere from 10 to 40 tracks a month (well, there was only one month where I did 40 or anywhere near that much, and that was the month I did my "two hours of sleep a day" experiment). Only the ones I really like end up getting weeks or months of reworking (if they need it).

  On 1/19/2011 at 9:58 PM, Bubba69 said:

I'm way less prolific than I used to be. Certain parts of my music has matured in ways but sometimes I feel like my music has become less complicated

i feel that way sometimes. i think it's because i'm an on and off musician, as far as producing. when it comes to playing piano, it's something i feel i HAVE to do and it's quite common for me to sit down and play for an hour.

  On 1/19/2011 at 8:39 PM, Cryptowen said:

Personally I think everyone who's into making tunes should become at least somewhat familiar with a lot of different instruments. You automatically start looking at melodies differently depending on whether you're using a computer, a sequencer, a keyboard, a guitar, a violin, a flute, and so on. And of course percussion instruments tend to make you rethink beats.

 

I sort of want to take a while & focus on sound design & recording techniques, because noise tends to play an interesting part in certain genres.

Some of the best noise is on 530AM. that plus an EQ and you have control over a lush spectrum, constantly unique.

  On 1/19/2011 at 10:06 PM, Cryptowen said:

^As far as my track output goes, I used to spend two weeksish on each song, adding little bits here & there, and when it reached four minutes or so I'd call it done. Nowadays I tend to try making something that holds together in one sitting, & thus produce anywhere from 10 to 40 tracks a month (well, there was only one month where I did 40 or anywhere near that much, and that was the month I did my "two hours of sleep a day" experiment). Only the ones I really like end up getting weeks or months of reworking (if they need it).

A lot of my good tracks are completed in 1-2 days, sometimes in just an hour. If I am making something that I know is good, it doesn't need much tweaking. I am happier to let it breathe.

Yeah, it varies for me. A couple of my personal favourites were one instrument melodies or noise things I did in less than half an hour, but then other tracks I'm proud of took a lot of revisions before they felt right.

my music has always been shitty, i never gave it to much credit, never will...

I used to make more beats, but I like melodies more now.

Most of the processes above (besides TechDiff's and a couple of others) can be summarized to "went from dicking about ripping off drukqs to dicking about ripping off SAW/analord".

Not that dicking about is inherently bad, but if you go from "dicking about" to "dicking about" and the purported fruits of your "musical maturity" are jams and aimless fucking around "that is more chill/more slow", you've not matured musically. At best, you've matured as a listener, and gotten over the glorification of fast/hard/dense... And that in turn informs your music and then you do a couple of slow/simple/chilled-out tracks and it's suddenly easier (because there's less to do) and you pump shit out faster, and then with an oblivious sigh of relief you think "boy I've sure matured". Nah, you've just gone soft, or were soft to begin with and you stopped trying too hard.

"Anger" has no correlation with maturity, VSnares uses it in a very focused manner and on albums that are conceptually linked at all to anger. As his IRL anger has increased, so has the anger "quota" of his releases, and as his IRL anger subsided, so did its presence in his music. He matured very early, however, I'd say, around Songs About My Cats.

Messhugah's Obzen has been unanimously hailed as one of the most mature offerings in metal, ever, and it's angry as fuck.

Lorn is one angry dude, yet articulates it with great refinement. Somebody like Loops Haunt doesn't strike me as angry at all, actually i don't find much emotion in his music. But is it aggro? Yeah. Also mature? Fuck yes.

Sorry to crash a good mutual jerk orgy, but all this underachiever-tailored motivational crap really ruffles my plumage. Someone mentions the cave allegory, and having transcended the cave... in this context, i think that's highly ironic.

Maturity, it its most trivial use, is nothing more than awareness. Awareness grants you perspective. Perspective grants you vision, and exposes the lapses in your expertise, which in turn leads to their correction. Vision grants you identity, security, ambition, true inspiration, and guaranteed idiosyncrasy. All these lead to music that reflects all these factors, and as such is mature.

Not that it's a conscious process. Some people achieve the steps above completely knowingly, to some people the journey becomes obvious only at its end, and some people are (if i may) never aware of how aware they are. For example, Burial, he achieved maturity from the start through pure accident.

Really, it's just about being 100% honest. And for the people who have no idea who the fuck they are, it's obviously difficult to share that with others.

P.S. Not that mature music automatically equals good music, or music that everybody should like. There are tons of things I don't like myself, but see how others might and are otherwise 100% mature offerings.

Flame away.

i don't know if you like me but i like you

  On 1/20/2011 at 12:29 AM, Lube Saibot said:

Most of the processes above (besides TechDiff's and a couple of others) can be summarized to "went from dicking about ripping off drukqs to dicking about ripping off SAW/analord".

 

Not that dicking about is inherently bad, but if you go from "dicking about" to "dicking about" and the purported fruits of your "musical maturity" are jams and aimless fucking around "that is more chill/more slow", you've not matured musically. At best, you've matured as a listener, and gotten over the glorification of fast/hard/dense... And that in turn informs your music and then you do a couple of slow/simple/chilled-out tracks and it's suddenly easier (because there's less to do) and you pump shit out faster, and then with an oblivious sigh of relief you think "boy I've sure matured". Nah, you've just gone soft, or were soft to begin with and you stopped trying too hard.

HEY CHASSIS HE'S TALKING ABOUT YOUR CRAPPY MUSIC