This 16 year old producer from London really has something special

[jancivil]

well for me, a musical personality, your own personality, comes with involvement crafting, phrasing, playing music. you're going to rely on the machine from the very beginning, the Producer way o' life, whose personality is it? the loops, the quantize settings? There is a momentous difference between a melody produced by someone who has approached melody in musicianship, and this.

it's not just this, not at all. it's all of this, it just starts to dawn on me that less and less people will recognize this crucial lack in a music.

[Tricky-Loops]

https://soundcloud.com/sendy/goofy-science-amiga-tune

HANDS UP FOR AMIGA!

(An AMIGA 500 was my first computer; but I used it for writing articles and making layout for our school magazine and other kind of literature!)

[jancivil]

mmmmm...well, one could, possibly, say that his effort is ' garbage'...but it would beg the question about what makes it garbage? The noise? The skewed beats? What?

you see, in my way of looking/ hearing things I'd rather know the mechanics of doing a better mix than hearing a toss about it being 'garbage' maybe he will grow through that way....

I thought it didn't matter. I didn't know we were supposed to not only 'be encouraging' but teach him for free by proxy.

[tanabarbier]

well for me, a musical personality, your own personality, comes with involvement crafting, phrasing, playing music. you're going to rely on the machine from the very beginning, the Producer way o' life, whose personality is it? the loops, the quantize settings? There is a momentous difference between a melody produced by someone who has approached melody in musicianship, and this.

it's not just this, not at all. it's all of this, it just starts to dawn on me that less and less people will recognize this crucial lack in a music.

I understand, totaly. To me tools are tools, and what matters to me is what you do with it.

It reminds me of discutions between musician friends, and others more interested in "producing", they couldn't understand each other, the first saying that making music with a computer is not human blablabla, and for the same reason not musical, and the other group saying "when you only play music composed by someone else you don't "make" music".
Funny how we never see what's in our side of the fence, and worse, this fence isn't real!

This is what happen to me when someone ask me to help him in his making of a let's say house track, I don't have a f...ng clue in what ways you are supposed to limit your creativity so that it fits in the house category! I can help on every technical aspect, but it is absolutly not important in comparison of the music.

[Sendy]

https://soundcloud.com/sendy/goofy-science-amiga-tune

HANDS UP FOR AMIGA!

(An AMIGA 500 was my first computer; but I used it for writing articles and making layout for our school magazine and other kind of literature!)

Yeah, us Amiga kids know what's up. I did so much stuff on my Amiga (including getting properly addicted to vidjoe games). Remember Deluxe Paint? I used to spend hours drawing and animating crap on that... Usually little people falling into pools of acid and getting blown up and crushed. Yay for fantasy violence!

But there was something about the Amiga that just meant having one let you find your creativity. They don't make them like that anymore...

[jacqueslacouth]

No, Bill's right, we should be more encouraging.


I think it's great the kid makes poorly mixed music that gives me a headache. Headaches make me feel alive, I wish there were more kids around that could inflict this lovely zestful pain on my ears. Musicians making superbly balanced and harmonious music are ten a penny, so go kid and create your own niche. Anyone can do subtle, it's nothing special. Become the god of distortion. You can do it. You have the power, now abuse it. Music is not about inpsiration and individualism, and your talent will show us the truth. You can be Madeon, don't let the nay sayers stop you. We need more Madeons, so please please please make more wonderful Madeon-ness with your silky mixing skills. Your advantage is your youth and don't let anyone deny it. Youth = Madeon. It's just such a pity that you didn't attempt to Madeonify yourself when you were even younger - if you'd started out as a foetus you probably would have outMadeoned Madeon himself. If the world denies your skills you'll know they're wrong because you're the man. You're 16, the world is your mollusc. Nobody will forget Madeon MolluscMan. You're so molluscy, I could even eat you with no 'R' in the month. But I'm too old to fall at your feet, and anyhow molluscs do repeat so badly on my poor old digestion. But the zinc will do me good - give me zincy wood Mollusc Man.

And with encouragement like that, how can the boy fail?

I remember thinking along these line the first time I heard the Beastie Boys…I wanted to pierce my eardrums with knitting needles as I was sure music was dead and buried!

[jancivil]

between musician friends, and others more interested in "producing", they couldn't understand each other...
Funny how we never see what's in our side of the fence, and worse, this fence isn't real!

yes, it's semantics. I do all virtual music. the fact of the tools is not a determinant per se. human phrasing is not vacated by the use of a sequencer. human phrasing is vacated having never done music by hand however. there is music such as this which doesn't breath at all. there is a fundmental deficiency I can't escape.

then it's 'This Producer'. The whole tag is bizarre. The word for someone writing a piece of music is 'songwriter' if not 'composer'. 'Producer' seems to have a rhetorical function though, there is a whole level of musical activity that's bypassed in a hurry to arrive at viable product, where it's no defect but even desirable to 'appropriate' all your source material rather than taking these steps. It's commerciality in extremis. I don't mind arguing against that qua that.

[lotus2035]

...a melody produced by someone who has approached melody in musicianship...

You can hear this kind of musicianship in elevators and shopping malls the world over. A lot of it is well crafted melodic drivel. My point being there is a lot of very ordinary unimaginative music out there crafted by very musically knowledgeable musicians.

It's funny that two of the comments on the page for the track in question mention melody. Aside from the fact that the track sounds like some loops pasted over each other there is no doubt a melody within albeit slightly buried under too many layers.
It's there but it seems you either can't hear it or refuse to hear it. That's fine. Your understanding of melody probably isn't compatible with this kind of music. And getting you to see it may be like getting someone to see either the old or young lady in the image below. Some people just can't see one or the other.

The Rock and Roll of the 50's now considered classic was noise to the older generation once. The inherent melody or musical craft within didn't make a blind bit of difference to the old generations attitude towards it. They thought it was total crap and to them it WAS total crap, period.

I agree with your comments about the "Producer" tag. It's lazy. But then again it's not the first time in history some people lazily applied a label where it don't really belong. How many "guitarists", "drummers" and "pianists" etc are out there who have all the gear and not one clue how to use it? This is going on 50 years. It's the same thing now except it's done with 'puters and shit. People like to talk themselves up without much merit but now we're going back to the dawn of humanity.

OK I've spent enough time on this Madeon wannabee, who himself is a cheese-master and whom I suspect may be a poster boy for some kind of ageing EDM producer conglomerate. Kind of like Stock, Aiken and Waterman for Generation X. Which would make him Rick Astley or maybe Kylie Minogue.

[pc2000]

I'm actually not surprised at how anal a lot of these responses are. Seems to be a lot of pointless nick-picking and musical self-righteousness. I'd bet a lot of the negative posters don't pick apart their own music to such a degree and likely couldn't handle what they're dishing out when it comes to their music being bashed.

You can copy & paste a lot of these comments to the subject of RAP or HIP-HOP music- which was ripped apart and continues to be by traditional musicians when it came on the scene. The comments were no different than this thread. The nay- Sayers thought it was a mere fad that would surely not survive any amount of time. Guess they were wrong considering it's still around and dominates commercially. Love it or hate it, people are making a very good living off what's called pure garbage and non-musical. Hell... look at the number of rappers that have become major name actors because of it.

I can't stand blue-grass music, anything with bag-pipes, and some other styles, but I don't feel the need to blast it to bits.... I simply don't listen to it! A number of Traditional Jazz musicians can't stand so called Smooth or lite Jazz which they gladly rip to shreds and turn their noses up at; but plenty of people like smooth jazz and prefer it over traditional Jazz. Everyone has their preferences and some people are just over analytical.

In reality I think the kid made a major mistake posting his music for late thirties, forty or fifty somethings to critique. This music is obviously not the target audience for this age group. I'm certain if this age group posted their songs in a forum full of 13- 18 year-old's to listen to... it likely wouldn't be pretty.

[kritikon]

I'm actually not surprised at how anal a lot of these responses are. Seems to be a lot of pointless nick-picking and musical self-righteousness. I'd bet a lot of the negative posters don't pick apart their own music to such a degree and likely couldn't handle what they're dishing out when it comes to their music being bashed.

I think you'd be surprised at how much most of us do pick apart our own efforts. As for handling what we dish out, I never get tired of pointing out that if you're making music for yourself, you don't tend to post it. I don't exactly because I don't care what others think of it. I'm not after success or recognition or anything else. I make music entirely for myself. And I never get tired of pointing out that for anyone to post their music out there, get used to criticism or stop posting it. I assume the kid wants to "make it" otherwise why publicise his music? Music's there for being bashed or for being loved. It's always been that way. Again, tough titty. I often hear "I make music for myself". Which is fine - I always fail to believe it when these people publicise their music though.

In reality I think the kid made a major mistake posting his music for late thirties, forty or fifty somethings to critique. This music is obviously not the target audience for this age group. I'm certain if this age group posted their songs in a forum full of 13- 18 year-old's to listen to... it likely wouldn't be pretty.

Yes, I agree. Absolutely. I'm sure he'd hate my music, and his reasons will be perfectly correct. But he's never going to hear it. He wants me to hear his though, otherwise why is it on a public site? I'm sure I'm not his target, but again publicise it and...tough titty.

And I dunno why anyone here gets all soppy about a poor 16yr old kid getting criticised. If he's seriously ambitious about it, he actually won't care shit if some nearly 50yr old criticises him. If things are right in the world 16yr old music should be criticised by oldies. He shouldn't want acceptance by us. For sure I wouldn't have been overly happy if the next generation up like my favoured music at that age. He'll care more if his peers criticise it and don't buy it. If he's got any sense - comments here from old farts (like me) will be water off a duck's back. If it's not, then he has to learn really quick, because he's going to get it all the time if he does succeed, and he'll get far worse from his own peers I suspect. Anyway - I'm not slagging his music as such - as already said, I've heard far worse - it's OK. Nothing special, but OK. I certainly don't like his production/mixing and his age is irrelevant to that. I hope he'll get better at it, I pray that's not the target standard...please.

[kritikon]

And anyway - Kain will be happy. In reality it's likely it's either Kain's music or one of his mate's. He's got 10 pages already, which is a good thing. ANy publicity is good, right? He'll have more listens of it. Aim achieved.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

but at 16 how many of us had the confidence to do something totally different?

In all honesty I did, and when I was younger too.

In fact I was playing live in a band at the Mean Fiddler in London when I was 17.

i think i was on the 'fiddler' stage at 19...played a few gigs at 'the flag' in wembley before that...ah, good times

p.s i think the choon is good...can't say i love it, but that has nothing to do with the production skill

i also think that the age is a significant factor....he is not uniquely talented at his age, but in terms of production chops he has obviously been at it a while

i know we take all this for granted but until the last 15 years it was not common for the composer/player to also be the engineer/producer

good job....keep on keeping on

[trimph1]

mmmmm...well, one could, possibly, say that his effort is ' garbage'...but it would beg the question about what makes it garbage? The noise? The skewed beats? What?

you see, in my way of looking/ hearing things I'd rather know the mechanics of doing a better mix than hearing a toss about it being 'garbage' maybe he will grow through that way....

I thought it didn't matter. I didn't know we were supposed to not only 'be encouraging' but teach him for free by proxy.

Well...let's put it this way. If one has the time to whine about his efforts being garbage then they might have the time to say why it is garbage.

Otherwise just look and go on...

BTW..I also did look and went ....meh. I have heard a lot better things from kids as well....

[vurt]

I'm actually not surprised at how anal a lot of these responses are. Seems to be a lot of pointless nick-picking and musical self-righteousness. I'd bet a lot of the negative posters don't pick apart their own music to such a degree and likely couldn't handle what they're dishing out when it comes to their music being bashed.

I think you'd be surprised at how much most of us do pick apart our own efforts. As for handling what we dish out, I never get tired of pointing out that if you're making music for yourself, you don't tend to post it. I don't exactly because I don't care what others think of it. I'm not after success or recognition or anything else. I make music entirely for myself. And I never get tired of pointing out that for anyone to post their music out there, get used to criticism or stop posting it. I assume the kid wants to "make it" otherwise why publicise his music? Music's there for being bashed or for being loved. It's always been that way. Again, tough titty. I often hear "I make music for myself". Which is fine - I always fail to believe it when these people publicise their music though.

you can be encouraging and critical at the same time though.
i just perhaps expected better than "its crap" (to paraphrase) from musicians.

[debra1rlo]

I'm actually not surprised at how anal a lot of these responses are. Seems to be a lot of pointless nick-picking and musical self-righteousness. I'd bet a lot of the negative posters don't pick apart their own music to such a degree and likely couldn't handle what they're dishing out when it comes to their music being bashed.

I think you'd be surprised at how much most of us do pick apart our own efforts. As for handling what we dish out, I never get tired of pointing out that if you're making music for yourself, you don't tend to post it. I don't exactly because I don't care what others think of it. I'm not after success or recognition or anything else. I make music entirely for myself. And I never get tired of pointing out that for anyone to post their music out there, get used to criticism or stop posting it. I assume the kid wants to "make it" otherwise why publicise his music? Music's there for being bashed or for being loved. It's always been that way. Again, tough titty. I often hear "I make music for myself". Which is fine - I always fail to believe it when these people publicise their music though.

you can be encouraging and critical at the same time though.
i just perhaps expected better than "its crap" (to paraphrase) from musicians.

yes, it's important to know WHY it's crap. prevention and all that.