What are your long term music goals?

make a track and release it. (i might want more)

I did ! Sonar by Night 2008, Saturday evening on that huge outdoor scene :

Line-up was : Anti Pop Consortium first, then Miss Kittin, Busy P, me, Krazy Baldhead, Sebastian, and finally Ricardo Villalobos...

I was awfully stressed the few weeks before the gig, but surprisingly relaxed / got confident an hour or so before my (live) set. It was intense and went really nicely.

I got some amazing feedbacks then, so it kinda compensated the fact that none of my friends nor my GF could make it to Barcelona : believe me, that's the kind of extraordinary experience you want to share with people you love. I had a great time with the Ed Banger crew though (I then was in their publishing roster).

Amateur means doing it how you want it, professional means doing it the way somebody else wants it. Life is a load of booby traps meant to turn you into a slave to better chess players. That said, my goals are to own and not to rent. This stuff needs to be sorted in order to remain in a suitable timespace to do be do. I figured out recently that the hard knocks in life come mostly during the blaming stage of life, and the real fruits come from truly taking responsibility which does not always need to occur in the regret stage. Goals musically are to enjoy what i do whilst i do, and clear out neural and energy pathways for the porpoise of evolving, with Mozart as an example of a decent musician whose skills i'd use to compare my progress to. Getting a good sized garbage bin for the studio. Not releasing direct to soundcloud for a bit in order to release a proper album On vinyl. Just setting goals that are achievable helps in the short term, for positive autoreinforcement. Id get with a label but i dont know how. I think Id like to be in an electro partnership with another person who is equally passionate and hungry to achieve. But i know better than to think that i will be happier when i get what i want.

to live long enough to be able to physically model the sound of a silverback gorilla having a seizure then falling violently down a 10 flights of rickety old wooden stairs into a thick plate glass window & a pyramid of watermelons

  On 2/9/2015 at 6:12 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

to live long enough to be able to physically model the sound of a silverback gorilla having a seizure then falling violently down a 10 flights of rickety old wooden stairs into a thick plate glass window & a pyramid of watermelons

you're halfway there, john

  On 2/9/2015 at 5:57 AM, skibby said:

Amateur means doing it how you want it, professional means doing it the way somebody else wants it.

You can find clients with the same taste as yourself. With 8-Bit Generation, the director was also a musician and provided the starting point for a good few tracks. Towards the end, every night I'd send the director and Nina the latest versions of all the tracks, then all three of us would listen to them separately and write a list of tasks for me to do to tweak them the next day, then I'd implement almost all of them, subject to taste. I'm very much proud of that album.

For other projects, I've worked for people who just want a particular vibe or mood and just let me make whatever crazy music I like for them (as long as I remove the BBD clock whining). Yet others just use off-the-shelf music I made for fun months or years prior. So you can definitely do a job you enjoy, have fun with it, and not compromise on making music that you're proud of.

  On 2/9/2015 at 10:13 AM, ZoeB said:

 

  On 2/9/2015 at 5:57 AM, skibby said:

Amateur means doing it how you want it, professional means doing it the way somebody else wants it.

 

You can find clients with the same taste as yourself. With 8-Bit Generation, the director was also a musician and provided the starting point for a good few tracks. Towards the end, every night I'd send the director and Nina the latest versions of all the tracks, then all three of us would listen to them separately and write a list of tasks for me to do to tweak them the next day, then I'd implement almost all of them, subject to taste. I'm very much proud of that album.

 

For other projects, I've worked for people who just want a particular vibe or mood and just let me make whatever crazy music I like for them (as long as I remove the BBD clock whining). Yet others just use off-the-shelf music I made for fun months or years prior. So you can definitely do a job you enjoy, have fun with it, and not compromise on making music that you're proud of.

 

Yeah anytime i utter some sort of pronouncement, its bound to fall short of absolute :) i do like hearing things from your perspective ZoeB!

It would be super cool to find people to work with, the general phrase I'm trying to use is 'i envy that'

My long term goal is to stop buying plugins and start making music again.

HAVE. TO. MAKE. ALBUM. BUT. SO. LITTLE. FREE. TIME.

  On 2/9/2015 at 5:57 AM, skibby said:

Amateur means doing it how you want it, professional means doing it the way somebody else wants it.

This is true, but if both practices are done with passion and coming from a place of sincerity and the desire to create great music, does it matter if it's for someone else or yourself?

I think within underground music circles, there's often this tendency to look down upon making money from one's music or being "professional" about it. Yes, if people like it, then they like it, of course, and it's the music that comes before anything. But there's nothing wrong imo with having part of your goals be that you reach a lot of people with your music or to have a fan base of dedicated followers.

I think whether someone's goal in music is coming from their own extremely personal inner world and for purely solitary for therapeutic reasons or to simply entertain oneself or enrich their skills, or extreme opposite- to make a living, have a fanbase, create music for other people, etc, it's all good. Really, those factors are independent of where the actual music comes from, which I think is ultimately a spiritual place. Of course, a musician/songwriter/producer can go into extreme directions either in the "personal/ego/introspective" space or the "make money/get famous" space, and I think both extremes can negatively affect the quality of the music.

Hmm examples.. Maybe that boring pretentious 9 minute-long "progressive" song (that sounds like a safe mix between Led Zeppelin and Dave Mathews band -and 100th rate versions- b/c those are the artists top 2 favorite bands) about how enlightened/sad/passionate the songwriter is, performed at a coffeehouse. No one felt it and it was a yawner, but the performer was being genuine and doing it completely for him/herself as a form of relief, so creating compelling chord structure, melody or imaginative lyrics really served no purpose for the original function. But it's all good, cuz the artist was doing 100% what only they want, with only themselves as the audience in mind, so hey at least it was sincere.

Same, imo, with the artist who has no sense of musical passion / identity / story, and simply writes songs with only 18 year old girls in mind as the audience cuz his only real goal is to become famous and bang said 18-year old girls. The music sounds like a mashup of Simple Plan and Owl City (100th rate versions) with a little bit of trap/ hip hop thrown in the mix.

Now, with all that said, there's no harm done with either extreme so long as they don't feel the need to subject people to their music. If both hypothetical musicians created their music strictly for their own listening and it existed in a vacuum, then no harm done... which takes this to another point of whether music is somehow meant to be heard/shared. That's another topic maybe, but as long as one of the goals is to create good music (imo it is barely ever the only goal, as we are humans with complex thought processes, drives, stories, emotions and desires.. ex: how often does "make really good music" come from a place of "making good music" in a vacuum? I don't know if ever does. I know that when I hear beautiful music from other artists, it inspires me to want to do that too, make beautiful music, but I'm not just motivated from "beautiful music" in a vacuum.. im also motivated by the said artist and the effect their music has on other people like myself, im motivated by a fleeting feeling of excitement about the way that music effected me, im motivated by maybe trying to match that said artists ability to create really good music, so really there's no "one motivation" in anything... there's always these other drives in mind, i think. But regardless, doesn't matter, cuz as long as "something" motives one to create really good music, that's all that matters right? Like when Trent Reznor or David Bowie was hired to produce Antichrist Superstar or The Idiot.. sure, they wrote and produced for other people in mind (even other artists) and even prob made money to do it, and look at the result, some incredible music (that is, if you dig those albums lol)

edit: with all that said, skibby, i respect and admire your goals that you stated and agree with what you said.. really im just responding to that first line as a statement in itself, and taking the opportunity here to go off on a tangent here lol

To win a Grammy, just so I can kick KWest in the teeth when he comes running to interrupt my acceptance speech.

Keep practising. Hopefully at this rate I'll be confident enough to release music to the public some time around the year 2600.

what's the point? aphex already did it

Nice and insightful perspectives here.

Right now, I have practical ideas on my mind. How and where to have a more permanent studio setup instead of a weekend long temporary one where I bang out some tracks with my gear for two days and then tear down again to get back to work on Monday. And I'm spoiled with the work studio, so the thought of creating a smaller untreated studio at home doesn't appeal to me. But I might just have to bite the bullet, buy some cheapish monitors and do the best I can given the circumstance. Truly first world problem stuff.

Career wise, I'm not interested enough to pursue that idea unless that gets facilitated somehow. It's a lot of work to do on my own, but I have someone who is excited and takes a lot of initiative pushing my stuff so I'm really grateful for that. And they're honest about what they like and what they don't like which, at this point in my 20 year old hobby, is really liberating. I just keep making stuff, they take what they want to possibly promote, and then I shop elsewhere with the rest of the stuff by either showing others or releasing it myself.

Something I keep getting surprised by, and I shouldn't be at this point, is that tracks of mine I really enjoy and what I really hate doesn't make any difference at all to others. So it's really helpful to have some people to share with and have them sort that stuff out for you. For instance, I worked on a composition for the most part of a day and it wasn't exactly going where I wanted it to go. Just to change gears, I hit random on a piece of gear and bang out a track in 15 minutes. That's the track that gets the nod to get released. Moral is: if you have someone willing to listen and are eager to listen - by golly send them everything, even the stuff you think is pure shit, and thank them every time.

In the larger picture, I already have a career that I'm happy with. But making music will always be a major part outside of my career that I will never stifle or keep from growing. I just don't have as much time to focus on it these days.

I've been thinking a lot about this kind of thing a lot recently. I'd quite like to start a recording, mixing and mastering business, start up funds are a problem with that though. I do have a couple of people who believe in my abilities who have shown an interest in helping me start it. Good thing for sure, not sure how it'll pan out. Other than that my main goals are just to keep making tracks and keep writing for my band, all the while remembering that I get better results when I turn the critical part of brain off when I'm writing. That last part is especially important, as is writing whatever the fuck I want when I want to.

From listening to records

I just knew what to do, I mainly taught myself
And, you know, I did pretty well
Except there were a few mistakes
But um, that I made, uh
That I've just recently cleared up

And I'd like to just continue
To be able to express myself
As best as I can with this instrument
And I feel like I have a lot of work to do
Still, I'm a student of the drums
And I'm also a teacher of the drums too

What makes cancer tenacious? The moon rules the fluids
Including the inner juices of human beings
That which assimilates and feeds the body
So the crab feeds his astral plane
Assimilating and distributing all he receives
Slowly, until it becomes apart of you

I can fly to the strangest lands

And I would like to able to continue
To let what is inside of me
Which is, which comes from all the music that I hear
I would like for that to come out
And it's like, it's not really me that's coming
The music's coming through me
The music's coming through me

.....Entroducing

  On 2/9/2015 at 5:27 PM, Lane Visitor said:

 

  On 2/9/2015 at 5:57 AM, skibby said:

Amateur means doing it how you want it, professional means doing it the way somebody else wants it.

 

 

I think whether someone's goal in music is coming from their own extremely personal inner world and for purely solitary for therapeutic reasons or to simply entertain oneself or enrich their skills, or extreme opposite- to make a living, have a fanbase, create music for other people, etc, it's all good. Really, those factors are independent of where the actual music comes from, which I think is ultimately a spiritual place. Of course, a musician/songwriter/producer can go into extreme directions either in the "personal/ego/introspective" space or the "make money/get famous" space, and I think both extremes can negatively affect the quality of the music.

I think this kind of stuff is the emergent group property of music, where some times a divergent experimental idea will spread into a group, while other ideas never do. I don't think those ideas are ever bad, as they may at any time spawn a new strain / "genre". I also think the groups are extremely diverse, which means it's difficult to define what is made for the masses versus what is made for purely egotistical reasons. Music makers exposed to various groups will feel pressure from the group about the ideals and unfilled areas of that group, and this can feel both rewarding to try to fill, or it can feel oppressive, at which point the artist should withdraw I think. I think the absolute popularity of a group is not so much related to the qualities of the music but more about what the people in the group are exposed to and the history of that music that spread through it. On an individual level, I think there is always the tension of the individual vs the group, and some individuals are on the way out, while others are on the way in, and this is a brain and music listening thing.

A nice thing about pop, and good albums generally, is they can steal memes from multiple genres, cross pollinating them.

Here's a thought - people talking about making music for yourselves or for others, I always think that sometimes the best creativity comes from a mind existing within some kind of strange (deluded even) mental constellation - like imagine the music that would be made by someone who thought the devil told them they had to make it or they would roast forever, or the music that would be made by someone who believed everyone was speaking to them telepathically and wanted them to share their secrets in a coded form, or art made by someone who believed that they didn't really exist...

These are extreme examples, but you can see how they contrast with 'rational'/goal-oriented approaches

when my music takes off i'm building a gothic mansion of my own design in the woods ya know so i have more space.

  On 2/10/2015 at 11:21 AM, hoggy said:

Here's a thought - people talking about making music for yourselves or for others, I always think that sometimes the best creativity comes from a mind existing within some kind of strange (deluded even) mental constellation - like imagine the music that would be made by someone who thought the devil told them they had to make it or they would roast forever, or the music that would be made by someone who believed everyone was speaking to them telepathically and wanted them to share their secrets in a coded form, or art made by someone who believed that they didn't really exist...

 

These are extreme examples, but you can see how they contrast with 'rational'/goal-oriented approaches

Ha! That's a great idea. One of the drawbacks of experience is falling into routine and this approach can help possibly make something unconventional and new.

- Really figure out my Elektrons, get in a good workflow with them

- Get in a habit of cranking out a few tunes (or at least sketches) a week and eventually use them to...

- Put out an EP on bandcamp or something.

That thing about making pots is spot on. I need to be making a couple orders of magnitude more pots.

My long term music goal is to continue learning everything there is to the foundations of music for as long as I can. It's like a puzzle that just keeps going on and on forever.

  On 2/9/2015 at 6:12 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

to live long enough to be able to physically model the sound of a silverback gorilla having a seizure then falling violently down a 10 flights of rickety old wooden stairs into a thick plate glass window & a pyramid of watermelons

Haha nice!

  On 2/10/2015 at 10:49 AM, ZoeB said:

A nice thing about pop, and good albums generally, is they can steal memes from multiple genres, cross pollinating them.

Mos def.