What's your biggest obstacle in making music you're happy with?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Apologize if there are similar threads out there already, I did some basic searching but didn’t find anything that seemed to already cover this ground, and wanted to get the communities take on this. I haven’t been on Elektronauts for long but it’s an awesome place and I’d really like to hear peoples thoughts.

I’ll start:

For me it feels like there is a massive gap between my taste and my ability. I inevitably compare my musical output to the artists I admire and find it deficient. I try and turn this into something useful though and try to “copy” songs I like. In doing so I usually get inspired by something and end up completely diverging from what I was originally trying to do which was the entire point of the exercise.

I’m also pretty lazy. My setup is all hardware and so music making always feels very tied to the moment. This can be a good and a bad thing, but I’ve found it does seem to make it unlikely that I will return to ideas after exploring them. If I setup a new project and spend an hour or two jamming, it’ll either end up as a song on an album or I’ll never touch it again. I’ve been actively trying to combat this recently and forcing myself to work on a project for more than 1 session, with various levels of success. Typically in the past I take the advantages of the ephemeral nature of all hardware setups and then “brute force” it. Just make essentially 40 tracks or so and pick the best 8 or something. This is very time consuming though and I think (for me) has a lower quality output overall.

I’ve released 4 bodies of work (2 albums, 2 EPs, of questionable quality) during quarantine this year and am working on something new now that I feel like is some of the best music I’ve ever made (for me at least). I think the amount of time I’ve been putting in and (counter intuitively) being less critical overall of my output has lead to some stuff I’ve been really happy with.

This post is already pretty long and rambling already so I’ll leave it there; interested to see what you guys think.

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#2

Without a doubt, my biggest obstacle has always been an inability to deal with faulty equipment. Yeah, I know one shouldn’t blame the tools, but the fact is, when there is a failure in the system, it can stop a session dead. If I’m lucky, I can find a fix or a workaround before the spark of inspiration burns itself out, but all too often, the session comes to a grinding halt and hours, days, weeks, and bank accounts are exhausted searching for a solution.

What’s worse is that I am in a constant battle with OCD and anxiety, so I become utterly obsessed - to the point of irrationality - with fixing the problem (which is why I said “an inability to deal with faulty equipment”).

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#3

I’m a bit obsessive about such things too, it can even affect my sleep.

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#4

I can relate. For me it’s debugging stereo imbalance problems in the recording chain and my noisy reel to reel machine that I’ve been debugging for the better part of the summer. Had to take a break from working on the RtR as it’s been driving me crazy. Put in on the floor and will come back to it in a few weeks.

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#5

This type of conversation always reminds me of an Ira Glass quote, I’m no longer a beginner as I have been doing this for the last 25 years but I think it still applies.

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

― Ira Glass

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#6

Yah this quote is like my mantra. My whole approach to my definition of success in music is:

“If I do this as much as I can, in 20 years I’ll probably be pretty good at it.”

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#7

GAS, no question. Obsessing about gear and messing around with my setup has robbed me of untold hours when I could be making music. Hence, zero output of significance!

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#8

That’s quite interesting, I’d always though that taste was one of the most important factors, but I also think that some people who do make music have no taste, but can still have musical talent, and there are people with no taste or musical talent who think that they do have both. Personally I think that taste is probably more important than talent, as talent can be built upon more directly, taste seems something less malleable and more instinctive, maybe, although new experiences can add to it.

But maybe that’s just my taste talking :confused: :joy:

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#9

Trying to force myself to make the music I think I should instead of letting it go with the flow. Also, constantly learning new gear doesn’t help.

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#10

To try, after 40 years of electronic music, to find my signature in terms of sound synthesis, to accept the challenge of bringing something to it, to think that I will succeed by the concept of “going further than the others” that I will get there …

Be careful what could pass for pretension is not because it is a personal goal i share here…

And nothing says that I will succeed. Nor even that the audience will qualify what I propose in the sense of the goal I have set for myself. My goal is an obstacle but I am completely happy to try the challenge.

My rescue plan is to learn keyboard and to end up jazzman in small bars which i could drink cocktaïls and flirt with old women :slight_smile: as i failed the normal citizen life

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#11

I try to play both sides of it.

I have spent enough money on gear at this point that I treat it like a bank. If I want something new, something else has to go. I try hard to put no new money into the gear bank. This makes me reason about what to keep and what to spend really hard, and the rationalization of spending more money becomes more difficult.

Works for me (most of the time).

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#12

It’s such a true statement. You grade yourself against your own taste and expectations based on work you love.

This lines up directly with my biggest obstacle currently: Mixing. I’ve very much a beginner to production and arranging electronic music. Figuring out how to produce a sound in the same space, level, and character in my monitors as the sound that lives in my head has been really daunting. I realize there is a lot of time, patience, and ear training involved here, so I’ve tried to train myself to enjoy the garbage mixes I produce :wink: .

I’m also reminded of a short essay by Anne Lamott… Shitty First Drafts

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#13

my biggest obstacle is the lack of time.

my mind constantly invents various weird things, and i really need plenty of time to experiment with them — some are really cool.

things are even more complicated, because my sense of beauty is strolngly against weirdness for weirdness sake and experiments for experiments sake — it dictates me that my stuff must be musical and pleasant, so keeps me away from all kinds of «experimental music» :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

but finding the balance requires even more time & effort.

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#14

I often fiddle way too long with a pattern. I’ll get some effects going that I plan to use for transitioning or for interest, then I’ll map a controller to the effects. After that I have so much fun turning knobs or (newly) pushing around on my Touché that I get lost in the fun and end up turning off the computer at night without much progress.

My worst thing I do though is the “let’s mix way further than I have to” thingy. I hate it! Ill slap on reverb, process the sh*t out of the drumbus, slap some 2bus whatever on it, so that I can hear what might come out and maybe have 1 minute (hardly arranged) to listen to in the car. I have to increase my buffer settings until eventually my CPU goes “dude, Im out”… I really hate it when I do this!!!

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#15

Time.

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#16

In the past, it was having too much gear and needing to connect it all and work out any teething problems that comes with sending midi this way and that. I have no problems with choice paralysis anymore because I know what I want to do (finally after 20 years or so haha), so the only thing that really stops me is having to get out a guitar, cables, amp sim pedal, or else connecting more than one box over midi and routing audio around. This is the reason why I switched to just using an Analog Rytm and a laptop. I even gave my Nord Lead 2x to a friend on a permo-loan yesterday because of its bulk and the hassle of integrating it with more modern gear. The only thing I might integrate into my setup in the future is a KeyStep 37. My laptop has two USB slots, so that’s it for me!

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#17

Well I think at one time at least people who got into creative endeavors were compelled to do so because of their love of the medium, not just to get their 15 minutes but to actually add their own voice to the mix. With that you tend to gobble up everything you can get your hands on in that medium so you can learn from it. I think inherent talent might exist is some, but it usually comes later as you study others (also with good taste presumably).

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#18

Lack of time.
Lack of talent.
Lack of discipline.

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#19

THIS.

What helps me is the approach that Speedy J occasionally mentions in his Knob Twiddlers Hangout: He can’t make something he intends to make. Doesn’t work. He’s accepted he just makes what comes out. This idea of rolling with it has already lifted a lot of pressure for me in the last couple of months.

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#20

Plus this is beautiful.

1 Like