…or is it just me?
I’m a trip hop/instrumental hip hop fan at heart, but I really enjoy making ambient music. I find the process really relaxing and therapeutic.
However, I don’t really listen to much ambient. There’s the odd album, but that’s few and far between.
Edit: I suppose if I added beats to my ambient stylings, it would equal trip hop in a DJ Spooky kind of vibe.
I make post-synthwave / 90s Roland Video Game Rock and I’m not even sure if that’s an actual real genre or I just made it up. I don’t really listen to video game soundtracks outside of playing video games so I’m not sure where this is coming from lol.
There seems to me to be a lot of people who make house and techno that don’t actually listen to the music, or go to where it it is played and dance to it. It is very strange to me.
Personally, no. I wouldn’t presume to dive head first into making a genre I only know of “academically” (without listening to it pretty extensively). If I did I certainly wouldn’t share it with the world lol
“Hey I’ve don’t really listen to [genre] but I made a bunch of that music! Here you go die hard [genre] fans!”
For me it’s more about a shift…
I’ve always listened to electronic music but never to a point of being a favorite genre.
I have memories of listening to Jarre on Vynil as a kid, then years later it came back with Bjork, Aphex, Add N To X or Squarepusher… but never made anything really electronic or synth related before 2020.
I didn’t even really know the use of a filter and even less about LFOs.
It has been pretty busy since two years, learning synthesis “for real”, trying hardware, discovering so much.
Now it’s the other way around, it feels almost strange to make vintage rock or jazz or indie stuff.
I don’t really make genre stuff but solely try to create a collection of sound layers I haven’t really heard before. That’s what’s exciting to me. Things that are new to me. Maybe my stuff falls between two stools because of this. But I’m not too bothered about that. It’s entertaining for me.
Besides my recent habit of listening to Rasta jungle/drum and bass almost exclusively, I’m mostly a rock and metal guy. My last EP was psytrance/techno/whatever, and for the last 18 years, I’ve been part of an eclectic electronic duo.
Hell, half the time I finish a release, I rarely listen to it again. For me, it’s about the process and the enjoyment of time spent.
I assume the disconnect between music we make and music we listen to is a function of the limitations our machines and our technique on those machines.
We are stuck making music that is not our favorite music, because we don’t know how to make our favorite music. Our haphazard approach, paired with the tendencies, or low-hanging fruit of our gear, tends to produce a certain outcome, whether that is ambient or techno or whatever.
There is a current thread, “Learning Music Theory”. Lots of good debate on the value of music theory. Perhaps learning music theory can help us create the music we like to listen to.
oh, that’s me.
i don’t really listen to techno, but i’m making it, since it’s hugely popular, and i want gigs.
I’ve heard this from some people so its not too uncommon, listening to completely different styles from what they create.
I don’t usually think in genre or look for tropes, just like to experiment with sound. I was playing some stuff I came up with for a friend and he kept saying on different songs that it was this or that subgenre of electronic music, some of which I had never heard of, so accidentally yes
You might want to keep that to yourself if you want gigs 
Maybe it’s a bit like sport. There are some sports (thinking golf, tennis, bowling) that are more fun to play than to watch. Likewise, there are genres that are more fun to make than to listen to (which is not to say some people don’t love listening to them, much as some people genuinely enjoy watching golf.)
There are also some genres than make sense in a non-everyday context. Live gamelan is amazing, but I’m not gonna listen to it at home. Likewise club music, for me (obviously not everyone).
I do wonder at how much the synth/sampler crowd seems to be dominated by sorta Lo-fi house and ambient music. I know it’s plenty popular, but do wonder if, as suggested above, it’s also people leaning in to what their instruments are good at vs the music they really want to hear in the world.
i’m sure nobody gives a phuck about my motivation 
If the mix tape you gave me to get hired was good/fit the bill, no I wouldn’t care. It would strike me as kinda a weird look to say “I love techno so much I don’t even listen to it.” But DJs don’t get hired for what they listen to, point taken.
I apologize if I came off as an jerk or anything 
of course, if i do something – i do it well (otherwise, who needs it?)
Good question!
Most of my music is kind of genreless - I sometimes get compared to other artists more than put in genres - a big body of my work gets likened to people like Eno, and some of it to Public Service Broadcasting. Also a lot of cinematic, dramatic stuff. I don’t spend any time listening to anything like that.
I mostly listen to EDM, minimal techno, stuff with breakbeats or other delicious drums and synthy stabs and arps. I do make that stuff as well sometimes and I’d like to make more of it.
An Enfant Sauvage style album is on the horizon I think which is a melding of worlds.
Yes. But for me it serves a purpose, that is to not being influenced too much by other’s music. So I can bring my own personal stuff. And maybe add something new to a genre ? Don 't know, but a metal head trying to make polka, as an example could possibly create something special 
, more than a polka specialist who will play by the rules .
Shit I have to make polka now…
I grew up listening to rock and metal and my interest in synths was first piqued later on by bands like Dark Tranquility and Soilwork using synths. Loved the evocative and other worldly sounds synths could bring in to that sort of music when done well. So I started acquiring synths but never really backgrounded myself or was part of a social scene that was really into electronic music.
I’m pretty piss poor at writing music generally, but if I’m starting with guitar I know where I am genre-wise. If I’m starting with synths or drum machines I still don’t really know the genre conventions and whatever comes out comes out.
I usually listen to analog and electronic cumbia and maybe some latinoamerican pop, but with electron devices it seems much easier to create something techno-y, which I might have done some times. I also have fun doing that. But something that I listen even less than that is hardcore-metal-crustpunk, and I am playing in a Band for seven years now… I used to listen to that kind of music but those years are long gone. The band stayed.
People recording generative dawless ambient jams are making music they don’t really listen to… nobody really listens to.
