Why so many „quantised“ music stuff on youtube

That might be a big factor​:smile:…but I do like a lot of electronic with 4/4 simple beats. For example rival consoles. So don‘t hit me too hard :relieved:

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Studied musicology, jazz, classical and what they call “modern” for more than 10 years (conservatoire in Paris and Geneva). As for every tuition you follow in life, it only results in what you make out if it: I mean it is not because Mr X or Mrs Y is telling me I have to hold my drumsticks in a certain manner that it will actually fit me.
On the subject of 4/4: well unfortunately, as we use very little of our brain capacity and the fact that every natural thing in life goes by it (walking, breathing for instance) we have a tendency to relate more easily to this.
Again, that is what I was thought… Therefore not true for everyone :slight_smile:

Those against the clock videos are normally just bad attempts at making house techno…
that’s basically what it is, I would recommend watching something else or listening to good music you like to get inspired :joy:

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I agree with you OP! That’s why the Knob Twiddlers Hangout and their weekly Live Streams are so nice. They tend to need some time to pick up, but that lack of hurry gives so much back. Also the Ask The Producer series mentioned above is nice like that.

I do sympathize with all family people who can’t fit that in their schedule

Social media is about quantity and continuity of uploads, not about quality.

Short videos with direct satisfaction works very well.

I hear dj’s these days releasing old unreleased scatches, changing their ideas into 2 minute songs, works very well on spotify and other social media

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It has similar elements but who did Randy Wolfe steal from. Traditional Celtic Folk Music perhaps?

There seem to be two major factors leaning towards this format: economics and interest.

Video production costs money. Whether you’re going for a team of sound-person, videographer and editor (or more), or for a ‘one man band’ who does all three, you’re going to be paying the day rates for those people. For an ATC video, you’re likely talking a day on site and then a day’s edit. Depending on size of team and day rates, you’re already talking £400-£1500 or more, just for a 10-minute video.

Turn that into on-site production of a week or a month, then the editing of a feature-length video, and the costs spiral. Balance that against the kind of income you’re likely to get from YouTube, and as the size of the project increases, the economic reality becomes harder to justify - YouTube viewership skews towards the short, so the longer the video, the less it’s likely to make.

Regarding interest, a lot of music production - especially bedroom electronic production - is very boring. For every producer going out into the woods and recording the sounds of rocks hitting each other for drumbeats, you’ve got another 99 producers spending five hours scrolling through prepackaged sample libraries in their DAW. For every producer hopping around joyfully amidst their all-hardware setup, you’ve got another 99 sat silently at a computer screen clicking a mouse while the same 4-bar loop plays so long you’d think they were making interrogation tools for the CIA.

Keeping things short-and-sweet allows us to avoid some of this tedium, and puts producers in a novel environment that (sometimes) makes them a bit more interesting to watch than if they were in their comfort zones.

This loops back to the economics, too - there’s not a large market for ‘tedious and relevant only to a select few’ :rofl:

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Being a person that has a tendency to take too much time, i find it interesting to see what other accomplishes with a time constraint. Not least a really tight time constraint.

(On a side note, i have a lot of respect for Andrew Huang.)

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For me its entainment not so much inspiration. That as you said i get mostly from listening to music.
But I want to see good content. Even thou I find Stimmings music absolutly boring I like to watch his videos because he really tries to explain and showcase his process which is interessting.
I always love it when there is a talk after an against the clock video because that is the interessting part.

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I could watch Stimming talk about music, mixing and gear all day long even though I have absolutely no interest in his style of music. I still respect his opinion as a competent musician and the man’s hilarious every now and then.

Edit: Another great one is the Scandi who does mixing/mastering videos under White Sea Studio. But damn! The tracks he uses as source material are the lamest, most watered down, commercial shite ever haha. I don’t know how he can bear to listen to them

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Second that :smile: and he has this slight amount of sympathical arrogance sometimes… aaaaaaand his gear reviews are some if the only ones you can watch. Paid Bo reviews on one end of the spektrum stimming not giving a fuck on the other end​:smile:

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My YouTube viewing tends towards content that is generally interested in processes, how things work, how people work or what things do.
Channels like Fact and Telekom seem mostly interested in conveying these ideas, though sometimes in fairly contrived formats.
Channels like Andrew Huang just seem like adverts to me.

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I think against the clock is really just about getting to see in people’s studios and then doing something normally with hardware and their process, well that’s at least what I have watched them for… not exactly for the quality of music they are making.

Edit: Im sure there are some good ones though, i haven’t seen a lot of them personally

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…all this said…in times of an actual, average attention span under ONE MINUTE…

and two decades in, since producing electronic music became one of the top ten average hobbies…

YouTube is about how long you can keep eyes on you. It means a lot of content and gimmicks.

I watch some of the Minecraft videos my kids have up occasionally. Some of them have amazing production value. Others not so much. Raking in 3 million views per video at a video per day for these people is nuts. They are doing approx $2k per day. I get why some of them record gaming for 8 hours and then spend another 4-6 in post. Every day.

The format against the clock requires little prep and since it’s a single live stream, little post. They don’t get enough views to live on and the effort to do them matches.

A two hour documentary takes way more effort than you could ever recoup. So the only reason to do it would be to promote something else.

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They could bring down cost to almost zero. The linkin park dude is live streaming on producing tracks for weeks now. Always long hours. Not always my cup of tea but it really has value and it literally is just a webcam stream.
Colin Benders does that too.

It’s been said, but imma restate it.

It’s all marketing and followers because it’s a job. These content creators can’t make a living with “12 hours of a 30-day journey writing 6 songs to only get one song out of it” as a headline. They also have to put out content more often than that.

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It’s what works for these content creator types on youtube.

If you wanna watch someone’s screen while they make a full track there’s plenty of producers doing that sort of thing on twitch.

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I highly recommend Limmy for this, when hes not making us watch him play games, that is.

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Youtubers like Andrew Huang or Cuckoo are not really musicians, they’re entertainers who just happen to make entertainment with music equipment. The music they make doesn’t really matter, what matters is the material they get out of making that music. They’re not artists, they’re media professionals. It’s a fine distinction that didn’t exist a decade ago. Their job is to review, inspire and entertain on a visual media platform, which is why they put stupid restrictions on themselves like make a track in 10 minutes. It’s an exercise often used in school, for example. It’s something you can do to practise making music, but not a thing professional or serious amateur musicians do regularly to produce music.

And I’m not giving those guys shit because they don’t actually produce much music, it’s a good job they’ve made for themselves. Most musicians make hardly any money off music. The safest career path is like, advertising or movies or something, and this is kind of similar. They’re the stars in their own gear / music focused shows, good for them! I’ve learned a lot from Cuckoo’s videos (less from Andrew Huang who I find endlessly irritating and the music he makes horrid, hah).

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