Are you alone?

[Firebird]

I wonder, are you alone in your world of sound?

Do you have a network surrounding you that understands you and shares your passion for music, sound nerding, synth tweaking or whatever - or are you travelling alone?

Is your wife or kids or friends part of this?

Do they care?

A very wise man once told me, if you are ever to be successful as a musician, you simply cannot care what other people say.

This makes sense to me.

Also, the enjoyment I get from it is well worth the time.

Do I get involved with my girlfriends hobbies?
Somehow I think whether I ask her about knitting or not, she will still continue to do it.

I make music for me, not for the opinions of others.
Sure, it would be nice to have lots of people who love it, but.......

[SODDI]

I have found that women tend to be much more tolerant in terms of music, most will listen to a much wider variety of music then most men do. Don't know why that is...

I think that is because most women try very hard to be tolerant of men - and that includes the music men inflict upon them.

Case in point - my wife is sitting in the other room with the Pandora grindcore station I have left her with. (I won't say listening.) But she is pretty much always OK with the music I play at her. She only draws the line at Captain Beefhheart and the Magic Band.

This tolerance pretty much extends to all interactions with men and it causes women no end of troubles.

[robogone]

Interestingly I managed to send a copy of a rough mix of what I'm going to submit for this month's Music Cafe contest to someone who doesn't post here much to get feedback and we spent quite a bit of time online giving feedback to each other on recent tracks.

Being alone doesn't necessarily mean without contact with other musicians, and I seriously doubt that anyone I know and have met in person would be able to give me any constructive feedback on the track I have been working on.

[Katelyn]

I wonder, are you alone in your world of sound?

Do you have a network surrounding you that understands you and shares your passion for music, sound nerding, synth tweaking or whatever - or are you travelling alone?

Is your wife or kids or friends part of this?

Do they care?

No one in my family nor any of my friends other than a couple online really give a shit, not that I really expect anyone to or really ever notice. Music is such a personal and spiritual matter for me to begin with. Okay not entirely true about no one caring, my brother, being a musically talented person himself takes a passive interest.

But... when I stop and think about it, it's kind of weird that my roommate who plays guitar and bass (and has the equipment in his side of the house even) doesn't take much of an interest... probably because he's all into punk and some rock and doesn't think that much of dance music.

My brother was in an a capella choir for a number of years, and has a pretty good 88 key Yamaha he plays on. He likes to play video game music (FF7, Elder Scrolls ect) on it for fun, he's pretty decent at it from what I can tell. Sometimes he asks me how it's going but really hasn't anymore. After he heard some of the more stuff I made he kind of wasn't into it... he once tried to tell me about a sound that he "couldn't describe" that he thought stood out too much.

It turned out that 'weird noise' that he couldn't stand was my freaking bassline... I used a pretty good 303 emulation with a lot of distortion. So um ya, he eventually told me he just thinks he doesn't like Trance.

Since then he's not really brought it up but will sometimes discuss music with me when I talk about my projects. I'd be a liar if I didn't say that he knows a lot more about music than me. It's kind of weird because I never really took notice of what he did with music until I myself started to realize that it's what I wanted to do. In some ways I'm jealous that he got all those years of training yet just sees it as a hobby, where as me, I didn't realize until about 22 that I wanted to do music, and don't see it as very likely that I'll learn from anyone but myself.

My mother has always been kind of dismissive, but I asked her some time ago if she would buy and listen to my Album/EP when I finally put one out there (I plan to finish that in May, oh god that's coming close) and she finally said yes.

It's not like any other art I've tried to do before in the past where my motivation peters out after a while, there's something more primal and personally driving about music. It's kind of like I get possessed by the spirit of the sounds. It may be partly that you can instantly receive back part of the art in a sensory way that feels more "there". For years I thought I wanted to write, but I gave up on that sticking to poems whenever I felt like it. It wasn't until I started to listen to Goa, which was a couple of years after dabbling in music, that I realized what I wanted to do.

Damn I might as well have told my life story as it relates to music xD That actually felt really good to let all out... I'm gonna go eat a sandwhich then get crackin' back at my current project

[waiting man]

I wonder, are you alone in your world of sound?

Do you have a network surrounding you that understands you and shares your passion for music, sound nerding, synth tweaking or whatever - or are you travelling alone?

Is your wife or kids or friends part of this?

Do they care?

No, but I'm working on it.
On BIG scale.

[RunBeerRun]

I used to work at a zoo, and all those monkeys couldn't carry a tune. I do better alone or with my wife.

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

I have a select set of like-minded folks that I share my music-making with. Some understand and care. Some don't understand but like my stuff so they care.

Those who don't care, I tend to end up not caring about in return.

99% of my gfs have been musicians of some kind, the one that wasn't was an unmitigated disaster of Lovecraftian nightmare proportions. Urgh.

[Nielzie]

Alone...

And nobody hears...

[FarleyCZ]

I actually am alone. I wish I wasn't but ... noone in this f***king city listens to my favorite generes. We have hip hop people, rock and metal people, bunch of club kids listening to top40 and indie guys singing at choirs. Literally noone else.