Why do you produce music?

[NoAffiliation]

Is making (good) electronic music a talent that can be developed or is it an artistic gift just a few have?

funny question, how many thousands of tracks a day come out on beatport? this is far from an art form where only a select few gifted people contribute professionally

i don't know if i'd consider it a gift but what usually creates an outstanding artist is simply the ability to live like an artist. some people will just do it all the time and nothing else matters and every decision in life will be based around it. very few people will walk out on friends, family, significant others, and society in general to pursue something to the maximum. this is not something you consciously choose to do, it's just there or not. it's not a pretty road but people like that usually do extraordinary things

[AK]

^^^^^ And in another reply to that question. I think the people that go against boundaries are somehow seen as revolutionary, Aphex Twin - or whatever he's called now, Autechre, 4tet, Jimmy Edgar - I could go on, but the point is, is that they have not seen the musical boundaries that some people impose on themselves, if you listen to some music where it is really interesting and not just repeating an initial idea with 6 minutes of filter cut off, you can hear that different scales are used for every moment within that tune. I find this very exciting in music, constantly changing the theme and the emotions from the chords and scales to constantly keep the listener guessing while adhering to a solid grounding of rhythm and bass.

[hydrogen]

Kind of filled this to be able to come back to it, or not in a few years and see if things have changed. Anyhow, making music and playing with synths is amazing, so i'll just keep doing it for a while.

same here!

[simonb]

what usually creates an outstanding artist is simply the ability to live like an artist. some people will just do it all the time and nothing else matters and every decision in life will be based around it. very few people will walk out on friends, family, significant others, and society in general to pursue something to the maximum.

I've been feeling myself getting more and more flakey lately, ignoring texts, not going to every single night out I'm invited to, etc, because I'm sitting at home making music; hopefully that means my music's improving :p although I have to say the last thing I produced sounds suspiciously like:

repeating an initial idea with 6 minutes of filter cut off

EDIT: The "artist's lifestyle" is an interesting idea - I think it requires a lot of introversion to sit there for hours making music. I feel like I need a good balance of social contact vs sitting around on my own, I know that if I spend a couple of days locked in my flat working on music I start to feel a bit cabin-feverish and then when I find myself in a social situation it takes me a while to adjust again... like my social skills start to go away after a few days of not using them, if that makes sense. I guess that's maybe one good thing about my day job, I get enough time with people that I don't feel bad going home and spending my evening in the studio. Anyone have any thoughts/experience on this?

[Barfunkel]

just repeating an initial idea with 6 minutes of filter cut off

Sounds like my music!

[AK]

Hahaha. I guess I shot myself in the foot there. I'm on about a blance between interest and complexity. We al have our tastes, I don't like music that's overdone just like I don't find music that's underdone very interesting.

[AK]

i don't know if i'd consider it a gift but what usually creates an outstanding artist is simply the ability to live like an artist. some people will just do it all the time and nothing else matters and every decision in life will be based around it. very few people will walk out on friends, family, significant others, and society in general to pursue something to the maximum. this is not something you consciously choose to do, it's just there or not. it's not a pretty road but people like that usually do extraordinary things

I got to know a guy from Australia a few yrs back via the net and forums, there were a bunch of people who were doing decent music and they'd upload their stuff and we'd all be checking out each others tunes and trying to better each other, then this guy ( who I wont name ) decided that he wasn't putting enough time into his music. He'd tried to submit material to Ministry Of Sound and got knocked back but that only drove him forward. I definitely wouldn't recommend his approach but he quit his job as a head chef and disappeared off the net for like 6 months 'locking' himself in his studio at home and became an obsessive recluse with a musical fixation. Anyway, when he emerged, he had a release that was an absolute smash. It won track of the year at Breakspoll and rocketed his name in that genre. He was already an accomplished DJ but after that release came a series of others and from his humble DJ sets in Sydney, he started touring the world, UK/China/Qatar etc and obviously earning a sh!t load of cash too.

We were all like WTF! One minute he's on the forums and MSN uploading tracks to the net for feedback and the next he goes AWOL and emerges with massive success.

[steevio]

EDIT: The "artist's lifestyle" is an interesting idea - I think it requires a lot of introversion to sit there for hours making music. I feel like I need a good balance of social contact vs sitting around on my own, I know that if I spend a couple of days locked in my flat working on music I start to feel a bit cabin-feverish and then when I find myself in a social situation it takes me a while to adjust again... like my social skills start to go away after a few days of not using them, if that makes sense. I guess that's maybe one good thing about my day job, I get enough time with people that I don't feel bad going home and spending my evening in the studio. Anyone have any thoughts/experience on this?

yes unfortunately i'm the techno recluse type, socially inept till i actually get out gigging / clubbing then i revert to my former more extrovert self.
me and my soulmate artist girlfriend of 16 years, spend 7 days a week in the mountains, working 10 till 10 on our many projects, and organising an electronic AV festival. we go see, and get the occasional visit and from close friends, and go out clubbing once in a while, and now we're converting a 300 year old barn to live and work in.
we've learned to live on very little money and pay hardly any rent out here, we could never do what we're doing in the city.
the thought of doing some random job just to survive in the city, and make music in my few hours of spare time is about as far from my reality as you can get. neither me nor my GF could possibly do it.
as far as music is concerned, i dont actually spend enough time on it, learning and building a modular has been a two year project in itself, and only now am i finding the time to really get into writing music for the first time in about 4 years.

i've never been happier.