IMM thread for just straight up asking for people to tell you you're a good music person for when you feel like a fucking terrible music person

i've been making little songs for years now

i have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 loops and demoes and half written ideas from the last 3 years made with logic

i have no ambition to do anything with them and yet i'll sit at my desktop and bang out another 1 or 3 or dozen and leave them unfinished

i justify this to myself saying its a hobby but ive spent far too much time and creative energy working on these

sometimes i feel like if i devoted myself to this full time i would make really excellent jams. then i listen to other people's homemade music and its amazingly well-mixed and executed with their voice and listen to my gloppy horribly mixed music and i think good thing i have a regular life because i would bankrupt my family if i did this full time

not sure what to do with this shit anymore

i guess people who cook for a hobby sometimes entertain thoughts of doing it professionally, but they don't often beat themselves up for having spent time doing something they enjoy. why is it different with music?

gotta eat

man does not live by breakbeats alone?

ha this is like my creative life for the past couple of years, and i think i've talked about it on various threads. basically, when i was actively in a band/doing music, my main motivation was fear/guilt - if i don't write songs, we won't have songs to play, so i need to force myself to work on songs. since the band broke up, i no longer have the need to force myself to be productive creatively, and i'm pretty lazy so i don't end up doing much of anything musically, but i still have those guilt/fear feelings. so i don't really write any songs but i can't stop feeling guilty about it.

also identity issues tied up in there too obv

i think i know what you mean but can u elaborate on identity issues? like, your identity as a Person Who Makes Music?

yeah basically - this sounds annoyingly self-deprecating but for years i felt like that was the main "interesting" thing about me, now i don't have it anymore. also part of the reason we stopped the band was to have a baby, so now being a dad is a new identity, one that takes up a lot of time and energy

this will be true for me v soon

i was never in bands, tho, so my musical shit is a SECRET IDENTITY

in my early 20s it was cool

now i will be DAD WHO WANTS TO BE YOUNGER SELF

maybe you just need to declare some of that stuff finished and put it up on bandcamp or something so you can get past it and start something new?

Isn't it a luxury to able to do whatever you want with it? if you were a music star who depended on making music for a living, you'd be obligated to monetize your vaults somehow, no matter how embarrassing, because your kids need dental care.

I like to jam to the drum machine for fun, so I got hours of riffs and chord progressions and stuff. I'd definitely like to do that kind of playing like some people like to play video games etc. I don't write lyrics to all of them or finish them all, as you take something like that in and what comes out over half the time is very different as it starts getting played in a band. Bummer is when you think you got something together as a demo recording that really works and when you take it in to a band and the thing just flops and for one reason or another just never works, usually someone can't play it or finds it hard to play or can't get the feel.

I probably write less now that I am in a band, as I don't sit around and jam with the drum machine as much now, as I am usually working on band recordings and with playing shows, it takes forever to work up songs now and I got a pretty decent backlog now. If I get something, I'll record it.

Yeah I completely understand this, identity issues and all. (except I don't even have a readymade identity of "parent" to take up the slack.)

I dunno, I pretty much ended the hobby a couple of years ago. It's not that I wasn't finishing things - I'd get stuff to the point where I had nice self made mixes to put on my iPod. But going a step further with it - setting up a bandcamp or whatever, after every single record deal fell through in just really disappointingly nothingy kinds of ways - y'know, I just thought: there's too much terrible self produced music out there and too many people trying to shout about it - why add to that pile with mine own shitty self produced music?

So I stopped.

I have a good excuse, with my smashed wrist, but it's an excuse, I could do something around that if I really had the desire to.

I dunno. The advice I always give about trying to turn your hobby into a career is this: been, there, done that. Be prepared that it will mean you stop making music to make yourself happy or proud, and a whole lot of other people start having fingers in your pie. And not even in the obvious ways, either - you'll find yourself writing to please other people even when you fight against it hardest. I guess I know ppl who found lower pressure ways of getting paid for music, doing soundtracks and stuff but it just seems like a lot of hustle for not a lot of joy.

The identity stuff is harder - like I'd ~been in bands~ since I was 15. Way over half my life. Without "musician" on my cv, who the he'll am I? Middle aged computer programmer in Croydon? I can't even talk about what it means, what I've lost and what I had to grieve and get over. Not to mention all the gear I have lying around my house - feel like I should donate it to a youth centre or something. I sometimes think I should do something to pass it on - volunteer in the local music for children program, but I'm never gonna do that bcuz I fucking hate children. Whatevs.

Anyway I was going to try to be all "things will be ok" positive and I've ended up just depressing myself. No easy answers, it's just better for me not to think about it, I guess. Or write rock'n'roll novels to titillate teenagers out of all my experiences.

Kinda feel like an asshole for typing all that. When will I ever learn, never talk about yr own problems on ILX.

WCC that was an awesome post!

dude you're not allowed in here, your music is amazing

First I think the ageism here is somewhat self-imposed, my favourite musicians in my hometown are 38 and 41 and neither do it professionally. I can't remember the last time I've seen a band and thought "these guys are too old for this shit" unless they're wearing neon tanktops and singing about "kids" in anything other than a parental sense

Second the moment that you start relying upon music for even a small portion of your income is the moment the joy of music making evaporates entirely, so if you're lamenting any "hobbyist" status you should just relax. All musicians aspire to be DJs or professors or authors or like anything.

Third even with Logic's built in plugins you can mix anything til it sounds good, just read some TapeOp and learn how to mix those tracks and then post them here so we can all listen, ok

and also WCC that post was awesome and also you accomplished a lot more w your music than most ppl do which is something to legitimately be proud of imo!

xp
OK IF U SAY SO

See I read "when you feel like a terrible music person" and I was like "right now and all this week too" so I clicked through. I do not know a single pro musician who doesn't feel self-doubt six days a week

But yeah finish that stuff and get it online
WCC I've heard your stuff years ago but don't remember where? I just have a notion of what it sounds like but don't remember the physical circumstances so I might be making it up, did you link to it on Plan B or something

I'm not thread police, all are welcome obv.

yeah it's a major fallacy that established artists are somehow immune to doubt and crippling self-loathing. no matter how accomplished you are, there is always someone you will measure yourself against, who makes you feel like a stuttering child. there's a story, maybe apocryphal, that after hearing a jorge ben album caetano veloso wanted to quit music - "he's too good!"

but those are all mind games to be kept in perspective. not to get all monastic about it, but the work is the work, it's the only thing that matters. you're a channel, a conduit. the canal doesn't worry what others think of the water. sometimes the water runs dry. you wait, and remain ready. everything else - musical fashions, what somebody thinks about you, your "identity", your level of "success" - is a distraction.

what you can and should do, is create the conditions for success. practice. don't give up. don't be a dick. music is a craft, get the best tools you can afford. network with other musicians and music fans. learn to work with other people (not everybody can be prince - if your ideas seem half-finished, maybe it's because they're waiting to be complemented by another). and have fun - it's called "playing" for a reason.

the guilt/identity thing is pretty crazy. my gf has asked me if making music (not playing gigs, but producing) makes me happy, because on the surface it looks like it only causes frustration when i'm not getting as much done as i feel i 'should' or when it's not going well. and i don't know if it makes me 'happy' exactly (i think it does, although it's more like a deep-seated satisfaction when something is finally done & released that is unnoticeable to the outside observer), but not doing it is worse.

i see it as a compulsion that is constructive because it occasionally leads to cool experiences that i wouldn't have had otherwise, but i would probably admit there are a lot of ego & identity issues at core of it.

that's all otm

the guilt stuff is weird because sometimes i wish i could just not do music at all and not WANT to do it anymore but that guilt is so ingrained now that i don't know how to get rid of it. only way i can think to do that is replace it with some other hobby but i don't really know how to do anything else or know what that other hobby would even be

re: replacement hobby, a lot of musicians are into cooking...

crochet

Yoga, apparently

messageboard posting

http://spreadsheetyogi.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/yoga-for-computer-users.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnu4l7Eqcs1qdtw7so1_500.gif

You peoples are all super amazing awesome positive. It's a good look.

I know you'll probably all laugh at me, but my displacement hobby really is writing rock'n'roll novels. Like, somehow writing about it, trying to get the feeling across of what it was like to do it. But I think that probably I'm a better writer than I ever was a novelist. (Mainly coz I never had to do it for a living.)

Ways to make sure you actually finish stuff:

Don't try to write "an album" as a project. Set yourself a project of finishing a song. Keep the process short and light. I used to try to never spend more than 2 days on a song (day 1 for recording backing tracks, day 2 for vocals and mixing) because the more time I spend on something, usually the worse it gets. First or second take is always best. You never finish a painting so much as abandon it - so my painting teacher taught me to always step away from a painting *before* you thought it was done. Works really well with writing songs, too. Find one or two people whose opinion you really trust to listen to it before you call it done. If they like it, trust them. It's done.

It's weird how much less hassle there is in my life now that I don't do music. Things like gigging, trying to schedule rehearsals with bandmates, dealing with the petty gatekeepers of music - these days I kinda don't know why I put up with that kind of thing for so long. But on the downside, it's really hard for me to make or keep friendships without the formal format of a band. I definitely used my band as my social life for way too long.

I'm sure I've linked my music here, and on Plan B - at least half the band were staffers there at one time or another, ha. I just went and looked at the MySpace, it was just weird, it was like a time capsule from 5 years ago, and everything just stopped. It's weird, bands are like high school in some way - you talk to those people every day for like four years, and then one day you never see them again. But I think that feeds into the not wanting to make music thing, too. That it always was just such a social thing. And now it's not a social thing, what's the point?

The social aspect is really the important part. The music I'm most into is the stuff my close friends make, seeing them develop it and tease things out, watching them play every month. "Local music" blah blah. Oh, and I totally remembered what band you were in, ha.

WCC, I am going to remember your "how to finish" tips when I buckle down to my ILX comp contributions later this month

been feeling more motivated to work on music stuff lately, but haven't had any time to do it, then when i have a little time i don't have the energy. frustrating.

you're a good music person

ha thanks. listening to your mix right now. it's good.

main problem is i'm a morning person, have the most energy/creativity around 10/11 a.m., on weekdays i'm at work then and on weekends usually doing something family-related. if i want to work on stuff on weekdays, i can't til like 8 or 9 and by then i'm pretty wiped out by working and home life stuff, all i really want to do is sit around and be lazy. so i guess i have to try to find the time to work on music on the weekends.

See I read "when you feel like a terrible music person" and I was like "right now and all this week too" so I clicked through. I do not know a single pro musician who doesn't feel self-doubt six days a week

― BC Forgbs (Ówen P.), Tuesday, 12 June 2012 13:50 (1 week ago) Permalink

REAL TALK.