What are your long term music goals?

I have a couple of goals right now. Maybe it'd be good to write them down so I can set myself targets

 

About 18 months ago I decided to start taking music seriously again after about 5/6 years of doing fuck all. Aside from a few band projects, in that time I put out 3 little 2 track EP's which I've been happy with (at the time), and that got some good feedback from whatever blogs I managed to get to listen. But then I realised that I wasn't happy enough with the actual sound I was creating and I had lost a lot of knowledge so for the past 6 months I've just been looking at the engineering side of things, how to be a better mixer etc. It's been good because I've just been practicing creating sounds, not thinking about tunes at all. And now I can just feel all these ideas inside me that are waiting to pop out, especially now I have a much better idea of how to go about making that intangible sound you hear in your head.

 

2 weeks ago I became a total electronic hipster and moved to Berlin. Feels like a new chapter of my life. 2 days ago I started writing actual ideas. I want to put together an EP that somehow captures this new excitement of moving and learning new things and hopefully someone (albeit small) will want to release them because frankly I suck at self confidence and can't network/promote for shit.

 

My much more longer term goal is to finally build my own studio here. I've always had gear set up in a bedroom and so on, but I want to find a space where I can build/design a nice little studio to work in, try and do the acoustics, everything. Then I can start to expand into the hardware/software hybrid setup I have in my mind, and hopefully become a producer for other people, because I've also discovered over the last year that collaboration is so much more enjoyable than I ever considered.

 

Sorry, I rambled there.

sounds like fun, b born

Produce my own lp, release it on wax do my own artwork on it. Figure out how to do a live set with a couple drum machines fx etc. and do the liveset, somewhere other than my living room in my robe.

Years back I had some releases on labels I like, which was nice. This included some vinyl and a full length CD, promotion and and mostly good reviews on Resident Advisor and some other places. I also did some live shows (which I didn't really enjoy to be honest).

 

Realistically I don't expect to achieve anything else like that again, due to getting older, life's responsibilities, changes in the music industry, and my lack of desire to self-promote my music.

 

I continue to make music for fun, but it feels a bit empty just posting it on Soundcloud. Down the road I'd like to master some tracks and maybe put them on Bandcamp or something.

  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

I actually wanted to do something like that in the past, though I've no time for 'conventional' music making as it is. But I wanted to make music under an absolutely crazy persona - Albums full of preaching, liner notes full of insane diagrams, videos that would probably upset authorities, live performances to agitate health and safety staff. Like people thinking - 'Jeez, that guy shouldn't be allowed close to the public' type crazy. But I'm not sure if people would actually realise it was a persona/act, and not just me having a breakdown ! (plus I've just revealed my plans on here already. oops!)

^ haha that's a cool idea.. personas are always fun to play with.

i really want (read: need for my own sanity) to get a decent e.p. of stuff together and release it. this should have been done ages ago but ive never been happy with my setup/sounds. now im getting there sonically i need to get this shit down into tracks that im happy with.

 

short term: plug everything in to new mixer when it arrives. make cool shit. release cool shit.

 

long term: make more cool shit. get noticed. play gigs again. earn some money doing something i love - proportional to the hours put into it would be ideal, but <have my doubts get a better studio again so i can make bare noise.

 

 

i was there and fell out of the scene, i want back in again

I receive greatest joy when creating music, improvising, jamming. Want to keep feeling this special sensations. Also would love to do collaborations with other musicians, movie makers in future. And of course will be nice to find listeners. PROGRESS!!!

Edited March 10, 2015 by nbven

In general, my thoughts tend to be on what I'm working on at the moment. I've been a bit sloppy with quality control in the past few years so I'm really focusing on putting together consistently solid albums now... four months into my current work and it's coming together nicely, so I suppose my goal at the minute is to complete it in a fashion I'm happy with. That said, I suppose I have a few long terms goals:

 

Continually improve. I've been working with acoustic-based ambient stuff for so long that I find it difficult making beat-based / electronic stuff now without fucking up the mix, so I'm really wanting to get to the stage where I can listen to my stuff without cringing.

 

Play some gigs. I've only done a handful, ever, and I just want to get properly into doing it. It's more fun than sitting at home focusing too much on tweaking tracks that already exist - I prefer being in the flow / moment of a live jam.

 

Ideally, I'd like to be able to support myself with a part-time job and some earnings from money, be it releases, gigs, label, whatever. I'm slowly putting together plans for a distro for a number of labels whose shipping costs to the UK are really prohibitive - especially with cassette labels.

I wish for IDM Stardom for all those who in their hearts, truly want it. After all- musically- there is nothing cooler in this world. Granted, you might realize that dream of a 19 year old at 65 years old, but motherfuck, it'll be worth it.

 

Besides IDM idealism dreamt up by 14 year old me-- musically, I do want to directly express self through guitar and keyboard, respectively, through improv. I love improv. Improv is the true IDM of musicianship. The glitz and glamour is just for the drug parties and testicular fortitude. IDM levels of improv fluency = for the heart.

Edited April 10, 2015 by peace 7

i want to not suck at making it

what sucks is that when i arrive at the long term, i forget what i wanted in the first place because time has a way of changing perspectives.

- Make a 4-track EP

- Get a regular gig somewhere in town

- Make music good enough that it doesn't need some douchebag (myself included) hyping it to get people to listen to and talk about it

Edited April 10, 2015 by sweepstakes

- Live off of tunes (not hand to mouth if possible)

- Perform when i'd like to. Beat stagefright. See the world

- Find a place without (complaining) neighbours

- Do charity via music

- Reduce tinnitus

- Make family proud

- Jam more with mates

- Become more in tune and keep enjoying

I just wanna learn as much as I can

Make the best music I can make

And not stagnate

 

That is enough

Everything else is vegan gravy-like substance

  On 4/10/2015 at 3:26 PM, Tristan said:

- Live off of tunes (not hand to mouth if possible)

- Perform when i'd like to. Beat stagefright. See the world

- Find a place without (complaining) neighbours

- Do charity via music

- Reduce tinnitus

- Make family proud

- Jam more with mates

- Become more in tune and keep enjoying

 

i'd adopt those goals myself.

Long term goal: to open up a dimensional portal and traverse through it.

 

Short term goal: to send extra-dimensional wallpaper and furniture through the portal so it's all set up how I like it.

Edited April 14, 2015 by webby

My goal is to finally make a track that gives me a genuine feeling of awe. I get some kind of satisfaction with every track I finish but I just want to make that one that impresses me. If I get there I hope I'll be able to keep the quality up and make some albums.

  On 4/15/2015 at 11:28 AM, Twelvetrees said:

My goal is to finally make a track that gives me a genuine feeling of awe. I get some kind of satisfaction with every track I finish but I just want to make that one that impresses me. If I get there I hope I'll be able to keep the quality up and make some albums.

 

Listen to your tracks after you've forgot about them in 5 or 10 years. You might get that feeling with a couple of them. Being in the thick of it is a different sense of satisfaction than listening to your music without recalling the process of making them.

being able to simulate realistic orchestral/chamber music with old hardware synthesizers from 1994 ✓

Keep experimenting, learning and making tracks.

Share what I make.

Listen to feedback.

Make more.

Never have to work a 9 to 5 again

to create music in a three dimensional environment that the listener can walk around in, with different parts of the mix fading in and out depending on what part of the room they're standing in.

  On 4/26/2015 at 9:26 PM, Brisbot said:

to create music in a three dimensional environment that the listener can walk around in, with different parts of the mix fading in and out depending on what part of the room they're standing in.

 

Sort of reminds me of Oskar Hansen's "My Place, My Music" from 1958.

 

  Quote

 

Hansen designed the ‘Moje Miejsce, Moja Muzyka’ (‘My Place, My Music’) pavilion for the Międzynarodowy Festiwal Muzyki Współczesnej (International Festival of Contemporary Music), an important new forum for avant-garde composers. Working with Józef Patkowski, a pioneer of electronic music, Hansen experimented with the ‘spatiality of music’ – what he called an ‘audiovisual space-time’. A large fabric structure, like a shirt with sleeves, each equipped with a speaker at its end, would be suspended in a park. Viewers were to be encouraged to move through the space. In Hansen’s words ‘each could walk their chosen path in relation to the music – almost as if they owned it … the spatial relativity of the music’s reception brought the listener closer to an intimate experience of it … integrating sound with the listeners’ movements as well as with the trees and clouds’.[40] Here was a playful view of experience that unhinged the architecture of leisure from its supporting role in the reproduction of labour or the promotion of socialist modernity.

from http://faktografia.com/2012/02/09/architecture-and-the-image-of-the-future-in-the-peoples-republic-of-poland/#_ftn40

  On 4/22/2015 at 6:47 PM, paranerd said:

 

  On 4/15/2015 at 11:28 AM, Twelvetrees said:

My goal is to finally make a track that gives me a genuine feeling of awe. I get some kind of satisfaction with every track I finish but I just want to make that one that impresses me. If I get there I hope I'll be able to keep the quality up and make some albums.

Listen to your tracks after you've forgot about them in 5 or 10 years. You might get that feeling with a couple of them. Being in the thick of it is a different sense of satisfaction than listening to your music without recalling the process of making them.

 

Totally true. If you've been able to make music and "know you're pretty good" for at least 10 years, listening to tracks you haven't heard in at least 5 years will make you realize that you were just as awesome as you thought you were (or more). It's unfortunate that that level of confirmation takes years, though, but if you have that opportunity, it's fun and good for inspiration to help you in the present. This span of time will also affirm negative qualities that are still existent in your production or workflow-- for me anyway, it's having to actually finish tracks/albums.

 

With drawing, I've finally gotten to that point of being able to let go, draw freely, sincerely and directly express, and end up with something that is me, "impresses me" and somehow goes beyond what I expected but also exactly what I expected. Since I have that level with drawing, I use that as a baseline comparison with my music, and then where I'm lacking really becomes apparent. If you take your highest skill (any skill)- the one that is so natural, innate, and easy for you to be ultra at- then compare that with your music, you can see how your music is lacking. All skills at high levels are art, and all the best art is about sincerity and ease of flow. So in the end, aesthetics are merely a superficial outcome of a refined process. If you can feeeeeeeeel the way you do when performing your highest skill (which is a hard to describe zen type state) and apply it to music, that music skill will also become ultra (I think one of the main problems that every artist encounters is that they second-guess themselves and modify a result based on planned intentions and expectations, which explains the phenomenon of extremely early works sometimes being pretty next-level; yet executed without years of practice).

Edited April 27, 2015 by peace 7