KVR Audio

werp · Post by **werp** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 1:31 am

I spend lots of money on gear because I'm eccentric.
My wife doesn't mind as long as it looks pretty.
my kids aren't interested in it apart from the bonus that it keeps me out of their sight.
I don't make noises to annoy the neighbours because they're too far away.
one of my cats likes it.

trimph1 · Post by **trimph1** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 2:23 am

I'm just a gear ho'....no other reason.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:24 pm

I buy gear because I like getting new things and having toys to play with. I write music because I enjoy the creative process. I almost never upload or share my music with anyone, because that really isn't the point of it for me and I don't need external validation that my work is good.

Finding an audience doesn't even mean that what you've created is good, necessarily. I noticed that two videos I recently worked on at my job are now available on YouTube. One of them I'm proud of, and it's been viewed about 3,000 times. The other one is utter crap, and it's been seen over 37,000 times so far. There's no accounting for taste!

Make music for yourself, not for others. Make music because you can't NOT make music.

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:32 pm

d-s-m wrote:We spend a fortune on expensive computers, monitors, headphones, software....etc, just to make music that no-one gives 2 shits about My tracks only get an average of around 50 plays each, and I have free downloads enabled....the most downloads I ever got for one track was 10, usually much less though. Also the people in my real life know I make music, yet they never ask me anything about it....they are just not interested in the type of music I make.

I'm guessing its much the same for most of us on here, right?

Maybe spend a bit of the money to buy *friends* and *likes* ?

Virtual love could reveal to be rather disapointing though ...

Doug1978 · Post by **Doug1978** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:47 pm

Who cares?
I listen to my music (and it's fuckin' cool).

I make it to relax with, and to explore ideas.

It takes me away from some emotions.
And puts me into new emotions too.

And it's not like anyone else has such good music taste anyway.
F*ck 'em.

And as for the money: Well, there's not enough good drugs or sex parties in this quiet part of Miyagi anyway.
It'll be gone when I am, so enjoy it.

Desu yo!

2ZrgE · Post by **2ZrgE** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:50 pm

d-s-m wrote:We spend a fortune on expensive computers, monitors, headphones, software....etc, just to make music that no-one gives 2 shits about

I haven't spent a fortune, and actually someone cares about my music: me/I/myself [can some native speaker teach me which word is right here?

).

And that's enought for me.

Though I give my music away for free, some people already gave me some money for it voluntarily, which I found rather encouraging.

My humble advice would be: always try to deliver quality stuff, and concentrate on a genre which isn't covered by the 'EDM' mainstream (so don't do Dubstep, Electro House or Trance I mean), get better and better, and maybe people will start listening to you music.

Don't expect to become the next Aviccii, Deadmau5 or Skrillex, that likely won't ever happen...

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 2:33 pm

Think about it like this:

Why do you expect other people to enjoy your hobby?

My dad majored in photography in college, never made a career of it, but does it for fun now. He and mom go RV camping, and he takes walks and shoots pictures of wildlife and scenery. Some of them are frankly fantastic photos and should be able to sell in various formats if that's what he wanted to do. Instead he makes slide shows of their various trips, adding goofy clipart and terrible pun captions to them. And then he subjects friends and family to hours of sitting through slide shows when we visit.

I have a couple of Facebook friends into knitting. They're so excited about yarn and handmade wooden knitting needles and so on, and they share photos of every arm warmer and blanket square and scarf they make. It's boring as hell to most of us, but whatever.

I have another friend who draws, pretty decently... and complains that not enough people buy her artwork and she can't make a living from it. But there's a lot of artwork in the world that I'm also not paying to own (and a lot of it is better or more interesting than hers, which isn't saying hers is bad by any means).

Who is the music for?

For a while I worked pretty hard at performing and entertaining other people. There's a bit of a rush in doing that well, having a few hundred people cheering at your group, and a few of them coming up after the show and saying you were "one of the really good ones" or whatever and lining up to buy t-shirts. But the time and effort I was spending on performing other peoples' music left no room for me to make my own. And I find myself happier making my own weird, obscure eletronic music that might be downloaded by a dozen people if I'm lucky.

As far as expenses go -- I've spent a few thousand over the years, I guess, most of which wasn't necessary. But compared to other hobbies it's frankly quite cheap. There are people who spend more than that on supplies to make scrapbooks.

And let's not even get into horseback riding or sailing or that sort of thing. Hobbies cost money. Music is probably one of the cheaper ones, even for gear addicts.

fluffy_little_something · Thu Mar 19, 2015 2:39 pm

foosnark wrote:And then he subjects friends and family to hours of sitting through slide shows when we visit.

That sounds like his photos are not that fantastic after all

Still, I would rather watch his boring slide shows than listen to horrible music for hours

BERFAB · Post by **BERFAB** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:09 pm

I'm a musician. Have been since I was 8 years old.

I love that technology has now advanced to the point where I can actually create the music that's in my head. It also means that I can do it all myself. I don't have to fight with a diva lead guitarist, or a tempermental drummer.

The process is it for me. I usually don't share my stuff with anyone. Maybe with the kids once in a while, but that's only when they wander into the studio asking for help with their homework. Once in awhile, they're impressed, and it means the world to me.

The gear has mostly been bought on sale over the years, and is now a pretty impressive studio. I don't spend nearly as much as I used to anymore because there's much less that I now need. As for the expense, I figure that it's WAY cheaper than what therapy might have cost all these years. And, for the most part, my spouse has been cool. Occasionally she asks about the cost, and I remind her that some guys drink. As vices go, this is a pretty good one.

Finally, as my kids have hit their teen years, I catch them sometimes giving their friends a tour of the studio. It seems that I'm the cool dad on the block with a recording studio. Or, at least I choose to believe that.

Cheers
-B

PatchAdamz · Post by **PatchAdamz** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:16 pm

Tricky-Loops wrote:Who cares? You're here at KVR to buy plugins and to help developers to survive!!!

Thats right, and what do we do with plugins...make music!

Its the chicken and egg thingy.

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:18 pm

d-s-m wrote:We spend a fortune on expensive computers, monitors, headphones, software....etc

Gear is dirt cheap these days, people are so lucky

At the end of the 70's a SeqCirc Pro 5 synth cost as much as buying a new car. Having your own recording studio, cost as much as a new house.

memyselfandus · Post by **memyselfandus** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:30 pm

None of it matters if you are making music because you love to make music.

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:56 pm

fluffy_little_something wrote:
foosnark wrote:And then he subjects friends and family to hours of sitting through slide shows when we visit.
That sounds like his photos are not that fantastic after all
Still, I would rather watch his boring slide shows than listen to horrible music for hours

About 1 in 10 of the individual photos is really good. The other 9 are pictures of campground signs and other dull stuff that is exactly the same everywhere. (And even with the good photos, once you've seen a few extreme closeups of bees' eyes you don't really need to see 89 more of them that day.) He presents it as kind of a record of their travels, and he's not a good storyteller

But yeah, bad music leads to mental trauma and violent thoughts much faster

SuitcaseOfLizards · Post by **SuitcaseOfLizards** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 5:37 pm

I make music because I love making music.

That there are people that enjoy listening to my VERY odd dark ambient/dark electro stuff (and even some of my more New-Agey works). is nothing short of amazing to me.

Just finishing my first full album, going to actually try to sell a few copies. If I make beer money for one six-pack of something good, I will call that "success".

Over the past 12 months I've had more than 2000 plays on Soundcloud, a pile of good comments, even some downloads and re-posts. SOMEONE is listening to my works, and I try to get out an listen to others tunes - and there ARE some seriously talented p[eople out there, just .. also .. a lot of crap.

Cochrane · Post by **Cochrane** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 5:43 pm

It's simple: stop doing music and keep buying stuff! Maybe it's a win-win situation...

We spend lots of money on gear, but no-one cares about our music lol.