originality / inspiration / influence / rip-off / genres

here's a topic i've been pondering a lot lately...

i've had a reasonable amount of success and noteriety in the edm world making dance beats for DJs & playing them out. however, every time i stray too far outside the box from genre cliche, labels won't release the songs, DJs won't play them, and all of my 'peers' say "you should go back to making dubstep/drum n bass/house". in spite of this, i feel that the music i make when i avoid genre cliche and make what i really want, (like recently i made a song that's so syncopated there's no kick on the 1, so it's totally unmixable) i personally feel that those songs are my best, and the purest form of self-expression.

not to make this topic about myself, i open it up for discussion on the broader subjects of originality, inspiration, trends, and genre cliche. whenever i hear a DJ set with a bunch of tunes all within the same micro-genre of electronic music, i get bored after about 8 minutes. it's always the same kick & snare placements, and often the same synth textures. it's almost as though someone comes up with a cool few songs that have a certain sound, and then hundreds of people ape that sound for a few decades after that.

this isn't unique to the edm world either...when analord came out, boards like this & xltronic were (and still are) flooded with woefully average retro acid jams. when com truise and vhs head blew up, everyone started making 80's retro fetishist music. one of the (imo) laziest trends i've seen lately is, after the OG dubstep heads jumped ship once america ruined the sound, everyone started producing and spinning tracks that sounded like they were straight out of 1992...unaltered drum machine sounds, poor mixdowns and all.

as someone who's a huge fan of creative sound design and the infinite potential that modern music making tools allow us, this all seems disappointingly lazy and uninspired to me. just a mimickry of ideas that have already been explored to their logical conclusions, sometimes as much as 20 years ago, or an amateur replication of what's 'hot' at the moment. on the other hand, as someone who understands that the creative process itself is simply a reorganization & recontextualization of what has come before it, i recognize that drawing influence and referencing the past is an intrinsic part of the art world. without the imitation and manipulation of old ideas, anything new would just be completely incomprehensible and not grounded in any kind of familiarity.

i also recognize that the barrier of entry for electronic music is so low at the moment (all you need is a torrent client and a computer made in the last 8 years and you can produce 'professional' quality tracks), and that it's hard to accurately gauge the music world in 2013 due to the ratio of learned craftsmen to amateurs being radically different than the same ratio in any other medium.

is there some perfect balance between referencing cliche and infusing freshness? is it creatively bankrupt to ape an already crafted idea 100%, or is it simply a loving homage? would we even have dance genres like house, dubstep, or drum & bass if people didn't mimick other people's ideas to an almost plagiaristic level for decades afterwards? is that even a good or bad thing? i've met tons of people during my career who are perfectly content to listen to an incredibly narrowly defined micro-genre of electronic dance music for years on end. this baffles me, i could never do that.

tl;dr -- should i make trap music even though i hate it? i need money.

if it makes you money then you can just put it into that corner, and treat it like work. Maybe what you should do is make a new name to release your more creative stuff under. I would also imagine that the tack for gaining a rep in the "creative electronic" area is way way different than gaining the same rep in dance music.

I stopped being into the dance scene basically for the reasons you list above. I still love it, but I can't define my entire existence by like "drum and bass" or "trance", and those scenes are just really like that. Not much tolerance for things outside the spectrum. They are like music racists.

Do what you do for money, but don't let that stand in your way of delving into an artistic practice which might ultimately be a lot more interesting and fulfilling. Lots of journalists have ended up writing novels, and many graphic designers have ended up as artists. No reason you can't hedge on both sides, and maybe one day the artistic ideas you develop overtake the commercial ones revenue wise.

Just don't expect to get there through the same channels.

..nvm

dance music has to be entertaining and 'dancable' however you can work around this although it will only ever a niche audience who will ever appreciate it

on the other hand there can be a lot of very dull very random experimental hipster music which is just as disposable

the dance/drugs music revolution made electronic music big money which also spurred off a reboot of ambient/chillout music which has established a business culture to adapt for audiences although (vinyl market aside) the internet seems to have quashed any focus of attention for anything radical unless you do lots of gigs, get a following on a small online community like here or get good reviews on independent emagazines and mp3 sites

sadly the days of saying a load of bullshit to NME and becoming a millionaire overnight are long gone

Perhaps this is where aliases and two or more monikers helps. I feel that's what Hudson Mohawke and Lunice did with TNGHT, which has been pretty successful and unblushingly fun and I have no qualms with that. Otherwise it takes a fair amount of success and critical acclaim to pull off multiple genres, or at least dabble in both dancefloor and experimental sounds a the same time - takes a bit of luck and good timing really.

I look at successful producers like Mark Pritchard (Harmonic 313, Jedi Knights, Africa Hitech) or Kevin Martin (The Bug, Techno Animal, King Midas Sound) for inspiration in that aspect. They just didn't have the benefit of timing and a little luck as break-out as artists in the wat that producers like Flying Lotus or Burial or Four Tet have. Those producers made a name for themselves enough to experiment a lot with their sound without any problems. So even though Martin and Pritchard are probably as successful financially (I know they are as successful critically, just far less overall hype in mainstream outlets) they use new projects and aliases to hash out new genres and sounds they want to explore.

Also, I personally find the obscene hype and eventual decline of niche DJs kind of sad. Trance and prog house (god I never fucking got prog house) DJs that were the top of the DJ lists and headlining huge festivals are just not relevant anymore, both musically and in the view of most "media" outlets. Think of all the trip-hop and big beat artists who didn't continue success (albeit much quieter success) in the manner that artists like Massive Attack or the Chemical Brothers did. The same will happen to trap and EDM superstars. I've seen plenty of cookie cutter EDM and dubstep DJs and producers, with their slick websites and social media magic all over. No one will remember them in a decade.

I say make music true to yourself and you're uncompromising efforts and then have another project for you dance music. After all, at some point when it comes to DJ oriented music compromise will occur. That's where all remixes and edits fall into - before the says of digital downloads they were essential "tools" for getting music to different scenes and clubs. And there's no reason for your experimental music to seep into the pop and dance stuff. Hell, before the internet that's all of our braindance and IDM heroes made dance music because they knew no other outlet.

Sounds like you're just in touch with the wrong people. I see a lot of adventurous dance music getting pressed on vinyl and getting favorable reviews in dance music websites. The appetite for such music is probably the biggest it has ever been.

a lot of good stuff in this thread. thanks, guys!

as far as a pseudonym goes, i'm on my 4th or so stage name and i've released everything from IDM to dubstep to dnb to house to techno to ambient under this name so there's no real reason to change it at this point. totally see what you're saying and why that's a valid avenue for people wanting to explore the financial opportunities of producing cheese while not tainting their legacy, so to speak.

zkresko, things are a little different here in atlanta, unfortunately. things like vinyl, adventurous dance music, unique sounding DJs, and subtlety are practically non-existent.

1) there is a difference between plagiarism and tradition (I would say making DnB using the Amen Break is tradition not plagiarism)

2) do the thing you love and also the thing that makes money

3) don't worry about amateurs and plagarists: simply owning the correct tools will not make great music, and great music will always win

i some ways it's never been easier to release a 'successful' electronic music album or song simply because the bar has dropped so ridiculously low that we see people like Salem actually being pitchfork babies. I mean that to me is just totally astounding, that a band of such low amateurishish quality could become so popular overnight. It's easy to say 'holy shit how did these assholes get notoriety and stew in it, but i think instead it's a positive signal to people who actually *can* produce and produce interesting music well, like yourself (autopilot). The other challenge is being able to make something that you love or even like that latches onto the current but exponentially faster rinse cycle of the musical zeitgeist. If you can do this, half the battle is over. The other side of it though is a l ittle bit clever self promotion but most of all luck. Luck of who you know, luck of who's willing to listen to your demo, luck of a label willing to take a risk on something they see can at least get a return on their investment, or luck of finding someone willing to put their own finances at risk to promote your music. Luck is a huge component that i think most regular music fans don't understand. They are under the false impression hat if something is 'good enough' i will automatically get recognized. Sometimes shit rises to the top as we have seen time and time again. Sometimes great music rises to the top, but it's far from a guarantee. While it is easier now to promote music yourself than it ever has been, it's also harder to get noticed now than it ever has been because we are wading in a sea of bedroom producer ants on all sides who are all trying to get their demos out too.

Living in Atlanta i'm sure makes it more difficult to create a local name for yourself, but then again if you lived in SF or LA you'd be competing with a lot of people who are great at ladder climbing but don't make quality music. You have to have some impetus to ladder climb too, which a lot of people understandably don't have. It's a tricky game, and it will never become less tricky over time unfortunately, you just have to stay true and confident about what you're doing and don't let trends dictate what you really enjoy doing.

For me personally I've witnessed both shit music and really great music at least locally get attention in the 'big' world of electronic music. Holly Herdon is a producer out here who i think deserves every bit of attention she's getting recently, and it happened very fast. Even for someone as extremely talented and true to herself musically as her, continuing that momentum can be challenging as well. If it ever happened to me i would be pretty terrified by it knowing that because of passing trends or just short attention spans, regardless if i continued to keep putting out quality music, it might only be the Fact Mag equivalent of 15 minutes of fame. There are a handful of other producers that i don't want to mention by name (since they probably all google alert and know me personally) that make very bland music or music that is entirely rooted in retro fetishism, and for whatever reason have blown up. Some of them are quality producers, but make totally unoriginal trend surfing music, some of them are not good producers.

lol, do they rhyme with empassy prekordings and mistal?

and on a positive note, another bay area band that had some popularity from being signed on Triangle i actually think is really good, Water borders

You're totally right about luck. I'm gonna work on aligning my intent with the universe so that I can power level my luck statistic.

i just think in the bigger scheme of things it's not worth fretting over. Do what you love to do and if you can somehow insert yourself where you need to be exposed without being a disingenuous power hungry ego driven vacuum of a person, then by all means go for it. The internet has made regular joe feel as if he has 'power' and the feeling of wielding and gaining power is just not in my mind a healthy way for humans to behave or perceive the world. Being genuine and true to yourself is an uphill battle and it always will be.

  On 3/27/2013 at 10:31 PM, autopilot said:

lol, do they rhyme with empassy prekordings and mistal?

oh yeah, the one I never got into and unfortunately (nothing against them) made me a bit tire of the samey-ness of trap and some "future bass" rhymes with "wicks and crystals"

and i'm sure you've lived other places Autopilot, but one of the benefits of living somewhere like the SF bay area is you can actually witness first hand how many goddam talented people are out there playing music and performing who've never been on boomkat, pitchfork, fact-mag, resident advisor or any 'notable' music press outlet and probably never will be. They aren't motivated by careerism, just their love for making great music. It's a humbling experience and a reality check to know that there are hundreds if not thousand of producers like this in the sf bay area alone doing what they do with little to no chance of notoriety outside of a small circle.
In general this is what people i think need to appreciate more, that having a community of genuine people appreciating what you do is far more valulable than a bunch of snot nosed pitchfork cunts buying your itunes EP in droves for a couple months and then totally forgetting about you afterwards.

edits: it's easy to see a 'higher' place you can take your music when it seems like a 22 year old who released their first noise album 6 months ago is already a notable music star talked about on every 'underground' music publication on the internet. I think it's best to just ignore the juggernaut in general. Over time i think these taste makers will have a lot less clout and things will defer more to local or grass roots scenes, at least that's my hope.

@erlichman & limpyloo

  On 3/27/2013 at 10:31 PM, autopilot said:

mistal?

lol just checked out the music, holy god what throw away fucking shite. trying to remind myself to just be totally apathetic to how bad some of this stuff is

does Trap mean really weakly produced white-boy wanna be street fruity loops jams? my god

  On 3/27/2013 at 10:53 PM, autopilot said:

 

@erlichman & limpyloo

 

i want to personally be above concerning myself with such things, but i have to acknowledge that these thoughts do jump into my head frequently and posting them here acts as a form of therapy i suppose. it's frustrating spending days at a time making the most dense, interesting soundscape i can, only to see a flyer with some dbag in 80s sunglasses & an ironic hat playing a show in town that i know (from talking with the people who throw the shows) will get $500+ to play, only to check his soundcloud page and see that it's the same 808 clap buildup to goofy synth drop thing that everyone else is doing. not an original idea to be found.

 

i strive to not be a walking ego, even though bitching about other people's success online is in itself a form of ego gratification. it's frustrating when i'm living on ramen, basically unemployed, and make tracks this damn good. :P

 

now i feel like this thread's about me and not the discussion of cliche vs innovation as i had originally planned. *takes ironic selfie with iphone*

 

@joshuatx

 

omg, cranberry goose is one of the most ridiculous things i've ever heard, and i've witnessed hundreds of people get down to it with the utmost seriousness. that may have been the start of my musical existential crisis, lol.

To me, making the shit is the highlight. Beyond that, you do what you can but it's mostly out of your hands.

  On 3/27/2013 at 10:53 PM, autopilot said:

 

@joshuatx

 

omg, cranberry goose is one of the most ridiculous things i've ever heard, and i've witnessed hundreds of people get down to it with the utmost seriousness. that may have been the start of my musical existential crisis, lol.

I used to frequent turntable.fm and hung out in the sole room that played good dubstep, bass, garage, etc. and it was often old dubstep, new footwork, a lot of great house-y stuff, labels like Hyperdub and Hotflush and Hessle, etc. People would even drop by to play dubplate rips of stuff that was on rinse.fm. But some pretty predicable bass stuff was played too, and the same group I brought up had an account and would play new tracks. They were nice and all and I almost went to one their shows (Scuba was playing the same club later but I couldn't make that one). But before I went I listened to their souncloud and realized that it did nothing for me. Neither did any of their peers or labelmates. In fact, I was wondering why people were eager to listen to most of it at all. I've mentioned this before, but I swear a large amount of hyped but not never critically acclaimed producers seem to draw on some sorta abilene paradox in terms of their audience.

  On 3/27/2013 at 10:50 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

In general this is what people i think need to appreciate more, that having a community of genuine people appreciating what you do is far more valulable than a bunch of snot nosed pitchfork cunts buying your itunes EP in droves for a couple months and then totally forgetting about you afterwards.

 

edits: it's easy to see a 'higher' place you can take your music when it seems like a 22 year old who released their first noise album 6 months ago is already a notable music star talked about on every 'underground' music publication on the internet. I think it's best to just ignore the juggernaut in general. Over time i think these taste makers will have a lot less clout and things will defer more to local or grass roots scenes, at least that's my hope.

Fucking nailed it and I agree. There's a bubble there's a bubble that will burst with the "juggernaut" of online you speak of. It won't be a dramatic end but I think a lot of very "re-blogging" oriented music sites will cease to exist and a lot of people will begin to tune out the relentless tastemarker sites. I am guilty of following the big ones (RA, FACT, Pitchfork, Gorilla VS Bear) but I realize there are literally dozens of very hip and glossy sites that essentially re-post everything, and are at most anchored by some mediocre features and interviews. I have no interest in these cookie-cutter sites and instead spend my time here and following far more niche and local-oriented blogs, sites, podcasts, and radio programs.

love that dude

wish he'd do more of those

wow this turned into a great thread. The kind of stuff that should be getting talked about on EKT. :)

it will pass in the same way the alternative media blew up out of a void of diverse opinions about current events. Pitchfork and the like all have a stranglehold on the flow of musical culturally 'hip' information and there is no goddam way in hell that shitty status quo will continue, it just won't. How will it end and when? I can't say, but i have a lot of faith that it will. I believe in the general populations curiosity and genuine love of music, more than i do in the marketing payola bullshit Pitchfork vomits out.

Good video by the way, even though I've only heard of animal collective out of all the bands he mentions lol but at least he has hair and seems to be passionate in what he does, can't say the same for a lot of other pitchfork writers who seem intent on perpetuating the illusion