Does making music stress you out?

  On 5/10/2017 at 6:34 AM, peace 7 said:

I have been sending demos to labels for 20 years, and I'm 35 now.

lol

  On 5/11/2017 at 4:27 AM, Auditor said:

 

  On 5/11/2017 at 2:47 AM, lyst said:

Awesome topic, i've dwelt on this for a long-time.

 

For me, getting started is possibly the most stressful point in making music.  Naturally, when i'm done at work and get home my body and mind believes it must tune out.  So it actually feels unnatural forcing myself to do something creative.  I think it's years and years of just throwing on the TV and letting my mind shut off.  This barrier once crossed, is forgot about until the next time i begin the idea to create something new in a few weeks.  But getting through it is seriously like ripping off my own arm sometimes.  Then once started, it usually flows greatly from there and i'm addicted to working on / completing this new track.

 

Only other stress I get is probably from percussion.  Fucking 'ell, i hate percussion.  If I could do songs completely percussionless with only melodies, chords, synths, sounds, field recordings, i'd be floating in clouds.  But what i want to create requires it.  It's stressful because I feel I can never get the shit to sound right, or interesting enough, and then once i'm done, is it good enough? or is not? TONS of second guessing.  Funny thing is if I sit at a drumset, i love percussion- its just the complexities of electronic music and it's IDMcratic standards that fuck with me.  

Coming from a punk/rock background, I can totally sympathize with the woes of electronic percussion. The drabness of it was actually one of the reasons I stopped making electronic stuff (other than a drone/beatless track here and there) about 2 years ago. Finally just got back into it within the past 6 months. I find that mixing strange sampled things (fucked completely with fx) and slicing uncommon loops has been a game changer for me. I rarely ever quantize and I still never use step sequencing. 

 

Listening to your recent tunes this makes sense. The rhythms in your tracks are different to normal, not as easy to predict which obviously makes for a more interesting track. 

  On 5/11/2017 at 10:36 AM, Chesney said:

Some kind of watmm music channel somewhere would be an amazing addition. I try to dip into peoples tracks and releases when I can but i'm not physically on here even if i'm logged in, i'm working, so have very little time to delve down the thread list often. But I would love to press play in the morning and have a days worth of new music play while i'm working. That way when something sticks out I can look for it on here and give kudos.

A WATMM playlist/radio would be cool, especially if you could personalise it by hiding/liking tracks. 

it wasnt stressful before but now Im finishing an album it is. Ive done everything from starting to learn Spanish, making memes, doing exercise and got a puppy to avoid finishing the last few tracks.

I only read page one of this thread but...

  On 5/11/2017 at 2:33 PM, nexxxus666 said:

it wasnt stressful before but now Im finishing an album it is. Ive done everything from starting to learn Spanish, making memes, doing exercise and got a puppy to avoid finishing the last few tracks.

I wanted to say this basically. Making music is fun/intriguing/challenging but never stressful. If it's stressful, I reassess what it is I'm doing and either approach it differently or drop it.

Finishing tracks/EPs/albums, however, can be stressful. But the writing and 'grind' of working on tunes is rarely stressful to me. Just those last stages of questioning my choices, presenting it to others in a 'finished' state is what stresses me. Perhaps I can work past that eventually, who knows.

  On 5/11/2017 at 12:54 PM, Alan Ord said:

Listening to your recent tunes this makes sense. The rhythms in your tracks are different to normal, not as easy to predict which obviously makes for a more interesting track. 

 

 

Thanks. I do try to use unusual sounds and rhythms as often as I can.

The (hum)drums on many electronic albums are what turn me off of a lot of them. And god damned if I'll ever understand why people like that boots and cats and boots and cats and... music. I understand the inherent tribal rhythmic gene that exists in all of us, and how some of that music taps into that (I mean, back when I did a lot of ecstasy I danced to that shit), but seriously, I'd say about 15 or so tracks of that would be enough for the world. 

Sorry for the shameless plug, but thanks to this thread I got off my ass and released a bunch of stuff that had been waiting for I don't know what. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

PS. I think it should be not very difficult to make a URL scraper for the EKT new releases forum. It may also be possible to automatically add all found Soundcloud playlist URLs to a special playlist on SC. I can't think of a good solution for Bandcamp right now...

Edit: nope SC API does not seem to allow to add songs to playlist using this trickery.

there used to be a watmm soundcloud group but it looks like maybe soundcloud have got rid of groups entirely?

  On 5/12/2017 at 2:25 PM, BCM said:

there used to be a watmm soundcloud group but it looks like maybe soundcloud have got rid of groups entirely?

I just tag all my tracks #buttstuff and the tags sort themselves out

Some good stuff in there thawkins, gonna have to give it a full listen later. Good to get it out there, isn't it?

  On 5/12/2017 at 11:20 AM, thawkins said:

Sorry for the shameless plug, but thanks to this thread I got off my ass and released a bunch of stuff that had been waiting for I don't know what. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

 

 

PS. I think it should be not very difficult to make a URL scraper for the EKT new releases forum. It may also be possible to automatically add all found Soundcloud playlist URLs to a special playlist on SC. I can't think of a good solution for Bandcamp right now...

Edit: nope SC API does not seem to allow to add songs to playlist using this trickery.

Noice

  On 5/12/2017 at 2:25 PM, BCM said:

there used to be a watmm soundcloud group but it looks like maybe soundcloud have got rid of groups entirely?

Yeah, since SC dropping groups my SC gets virtually zero traffic haha.

Never stressful. Looking at 5k+ unfinished tracks stresses me out quite a lot though

It's been stressing me out lately because I was asked to do a show in just about exactly a month a few days ago and agreed, but the past 4 years everything I've done solo has just been tracking stuff live into a DAW with hardly any sequencing and it's all completely unperformable, so I've got until the 13th or 14th of next month to come up with a live rig and set from scratch.  Which normally wouldn't be a big deal but a friend of the guy who asked me is playing and he could potentially help line me up for a vinyl release with real distribution so it feels like there are actual stakes, rather than the usual go up and have some fun and if people like it that's a bonus" scenario I'm used to.

That's kind of stressful but usually making music is one of the only times I don't feels stressed, especially if I'm performing.  Playing music in front of an audience is is usually when I am the most natural and comfortable in my own skin, it's when I'm NOT doing it that I feel stressed.

Making the music doesn't stress me out. It's trying to one-up myself and do something different than before that makes it difficult. Lots of second guessing.

foh with your first world problems, just have a wank or something and stfu.

  On 5/13/2017 at 9:54 AM, Djeroek said:

foh with your first world problems, just have a wank or something and stfu.

Bought Octatrack, instructions unclear. Dick stuck in midi jack

  On 5/13/2017 at 2:34 PM, Auditor said:

 

  On 5/13/2017 at 9:54 AM, Djeroek said:

foh with your first world problems, just have a wank or something and stfu.

Bought Octatrack, instructions unclear. Dick stuck in midi jack

 

Followed advice and now I am getting stuck notes.

  On 5/12/2017 at 2:43 PM, auxien said:

Some good stuff in there thawkins, gonna have to give it a full listen later. Good to get it out there, isn't it?

Yes, it's always good because the part of my head that's been subconsciously working on these tracks can now finally have a rest... and start cracking on the other 20+ hopeful things I got littered around my desktop.

  On 5/18/2017 at 8:08 AM, osobjornmedved said:

 

  On 5/13/2017 at 1:47 AM, Braintree said:

Making the music doesn't stress me out. It's trying to one-up myself and do something different than before that makes it difficult. Lots of second guessing.

 

Sounds like IDM Man talking.

 

"Don't do that, they'll be expecting it!"

 

  On 5/18/2017 at 8:16 AM, osobjornmedved said:

 

  On 5/12/2017 at 3:26 PM, perunamuussi said:

Never stressful. Looking at 5k+ unfinished tracks stresses me out quite a lot though

 

 

Coming up with completely new ideas is the most fun part, but it can get tedious to bring them to completion. You might be able to combine some of the unfinished tracks and get some interesting results.

 

On the other hand, a lot of the time (for me) arranging and mixing are the most fun part, and it's coming up with the one or two core parts that the arrangement/mix are built on that can be hard work.

making music is like treasure hunting. Just make a shitload and don't think about it

  On 5/18/2017 at 8:48 PM, marf said:

making music is like treasure hunting. Just make a shitload and don't think about it

Treasure Hunting: Just make a shitload, and don't think about it.

  On 5/18/2017 at 8:48 PM, marf said:

making music is like treasure hunting. Just make a shitload and don't think about it

Yeah, the time to think about it is before you start working on it and after you're done and are sifting through the results.  While you're actually working there's no time to thing, you've got to just react. At least that's how it has always worked for me.

Or as an old jazz guy I took lessons fro years ago said put it, when you make music you have to bring more than you need (i.e. all of your ideas, skill and experience) and the real artistry is in what you DON'T use.  He was talking about improvisation with other people but so much of making electronic music is improvising against the real-time feedback from the machines you use and refining it incrementally that I think it's a relevant way of looking at it it here, too.

I can't speak for anyone else, but personally I just like bullshitting about process (I guess that's probably part of collecting "more than I need") but when I actually sit down to make something, all of this is right out the window.

It's like Lao Tzu saying "the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way" and then going on to speak about it at great length.

Anyone find that when you zone out for like an hour with a simple arpeggio or loop, tweaking knobs and making it sing and warble and stutter and make love to your fingers, and listen back to it, you realize that it sounds like crap that wouldn't impress anyone and thus not worthy of keeping?

...I actually love it when that happens. It's like time travel.