None of my friends are supportive of my music

The Lounge General Discussion
#22

Stop giving encouragement and stop seeking encouragement until you’ve found that place within yourself that values you, yourself, and your work in its own right, independent of the resonance it may or may not create in the world around you.

This sort of “reciprocal complementing” is a formula for psycho-spiritual disaster. If you give encouragement or a compliment, give it without expectation or don’t give it at all. Equally, unless you respect yourself and your own work first, no one will give you or your work (genuine) respect. But once you respect yourself/your work, what others think and feel about it becomes less existentially important to you and you develop a confidence from within rather than without.

Be truly honest with yourself in regard to your work, be so with love (ie not judgement but just an honest observation), and keep doing your best and see how things change around you also.

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#23

Follow for follow, bro.

#25

Beautiful.

A lot has been said on this thread.
I would summarize it this way:

  1. Ensure you make tracks YOU are proud of.
  2. Look for people that appreciate them to make music with and develop your art and pleasure further.

People around you love you for different reasons, not necessarily because of your taste in music…

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#26

Hey, I know how frustrating it is, I’ve send a link once to a magazine article about my work to my family, and I didn’t get even one response! I couldn’t believe it!
What I’ve learnt is to make stuff for myself, not to get appreciation. Just make the stuff you like, do the things you really want to do, without trying to please anybody, and little by little, like-minded people will come to you.
bets of luck!

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#27

You got it easy. I even have relatives telling me what I make has no interest and I should stop doing it because I’m no more a teenager. But hey, why should I care ? Why should you ? You said it’s a hobby, so just enjoy what you do. If anyone in this world happens to enjoy it too then it’s a bonus.

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#28

This !

Corollary: don’t give compliments to friends if they don’t really deserve it.

#29

Not sure that always holds. Say this is a young kid starting to mess with Reason or Ableton. Composition and mix are shit but you want to encourage them to go on, not beat them down and leave it.

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#30

Compliment the effort, not the result :wink:

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#31

I once had a girlfriend who got depressed about my music always being dark and “difficult”. Didn’t get it at all :smiley:

By a group of friends I got asked to play live at a birthday dance party. I asked 'm literally whether they knew my music and thought it would fit. Yes sure, they said. Of course it was a complete mismatch and said girlfriend came to ask whether I could play happier, danceable stuff instead, while I was playing the set…

Final incident with this girl that led to break up was that we had plans to go to another friend’s birthday party. But then I got the opportunity to play the first live show with my new band, that I had been practicing with for a while. I chose my music passion and ambition over the friend’s birthday party and that made clear to her that I was never going to choose the conformist family life she had in mind so that was that.

My current girl is a queer-activist-cyber-punk-goth-artschool-freak and proud of it. Makes a better match :wink:

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#32

Ahaha… once a friend (who never heard any of my tracks at that time) asked me something similar… I was reluctant to but I said yes anyway… and that’s how I played bangin repetitive techno in front of 30 people that absolutely hated anything electronic in the first place. Never again.

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#33

Hi!
Everyone I know who makes music is very enthusiastic about it.
Most people aren’t, they dont care and love despacito 10 times a day too. Or not. You know?
If you make a gig chances are good, that people are visiting it because they WANT to hear it.
If you try to convice your familiy and friends it’s normal that they maybe are a bit annoyed about your enthusiasm they don’t share. Good thing: there is the internet where you can share your stuff. Good times for music aside the commercial channels. Anyway: Do you and your band enjoy?

#34

think of two bubbles: one is your family and close friends, that like you no matter what you work on and if you’re famous or not. the other bubble is the group of peer musicians, who are as interested in the same type of music as you are. they give you tipps and honest feedback.

its important that you have these two bubbles. if you would just live in one all the time, you would live in a feedback loop without any possibility to break out from time to time. dont try to unite these two bubbles, because it will cut you off from external input.

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#35

If they’re your friends you should be able to ask them about this

#36

None of my family or friends give a shit about the music I make. In fact, some of them go out of their way to tell me it’s shit. That’s just the kind of relationship we have though. I make music of varying quality for a laugh and none of us take life very seriously. Besides, most of them know fuck all about what I’m doing or how I’m doing it so their feedback is pretty pointless anyway.
Sometimes my wife gets quite enthusiastic but that’s mostly because she’s my wife.
If I was ever to get a gig I’m sure a big bunch of my mates would come along and stand at the back talking through all the quiet bits and complaining about the beer.

My friends are twats.

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#37

one of my number one rules with music (and this goes for when I’ve been in bands too) has been to never sit a friend/family member/significant other down and go “listen to this thing I did! what do you think?” I would never want to be put into that position; someone staring at me, waiting with bated breath to see what I think, as if my reaction will mean they will or will not get a multi-million dollar contract. that’s uncomfortable. if someone asks, I’ll send them a link. if they have something to say, they will.

my advice is just to start scheduling a bunch of shows. play out as much as you can. you’ll get real feedback there. and even if your friends don’t get into your music, they’ll at least respect the fact that you’re playing out a bunch, so clearly others do.

but I feel for you. I definitely know what it’s like to have people treat something you spend all your free time/energy/money on as if it’s nothing.

#38

This thread makes me think of this record by Hugo Massien

Listen to the words at the beginning of the track, I’m sure you’ll crack a smile

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#39

100% agree.

If friends or family know us at all, they know we make music. If said friends or family are interested in hearing our music, they’ll ask how they can hear it. 99% will never ask. If we just accept this up front, we won’t be too disappointed.

I have had friends and family in my studio, surrounded by gear, monitors powered on, DAW on screen, and not ask a single question or express interest whatsoever.

Some people are just not curious about other’s hobbies/passions. Sometimes these people may not have hobbies/passions of their own and therefore are incurious about yours?

I don’t know. I wonder about this sort of thing myself.

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#40

great thread! i can relate to a lot that‘s been written here

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#41

I am fortunate in that my family like my music - or most of it, they have no problem telling me if they don’t and I don’t mind if they don’t like everything I do. These days I don’t have many friends, none close anymore, back in the day I had plenty of friends and most of them were not into my music, some of them were jealous, some indifferent, some just not into music or only mainstream stuff.

Ultimately though I don’t care, because I don’t make music for other people, I make it for myself, yet strangely enough it seems to find its own fans from all over the place, this to me is much more valuable - strangers who owe me nothing enjoying what I make, I get kind of embarrassed by some of the messages I receive, they are really nice and I always appreciate them, even if it isn’t my goal to have fans, I can’t deny it is very nice to know that my music resonates with others.

TL:DR Be yourself, please yourself, do it with only this goal in mind.

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#42

I really appreciate the support I get from friends and family, albeit mostly in the spirit of encouraging passion and creativity in general. Funny though - some other friends are not into the genre I produce, so sometimes I’ll put on some favourite tunes by big names and they’ll ask if it’s me and I’ll stare at them for a while like “I could only WISH this was me”. It reminds me that a lot of them have no idea what they’re hearing, and they just lump things together into a world of sound that they’re not used to, which makes me not mind too much when it seems like they’re really unimpressed by my music.