What if we don't stick to a genre?

[ghettosynth]

Here's the actual culprit behind "recent developments", which made me experiment further.

That's lovely, don't really like the mix though.

[Functional]

That's lovely, don't really like the mix though.

Is it just my imagination or are the vocals panned bit to the right? Because now to think of it, it sounds bit odd especially when I listen to it through headphones. Same seems to be going for most of their songs actually. Vocals seem to slightly be panned one way or another.

Other than that though, I do enjoy their mixes. But then again, I enjoy witch house where having distortion on the master channel can be acceptable... stuff like this actually ruined my chances to do FOH mixing for bands unknown to me, unless it's jazz or something similar where you can be 100 % sure that the low-end rumble of malfunctioning electronical unit (for example, a nord keyboard) isn't just chords being played at low keys for some experimental effect. Yes, this once happened to me.

[ghettosynth]

Yes the vocals are off center.

[do_androids_dream]

What if we don't stick to a genre?

Then you might do... God forbid... something interesting..

and not cookie cutter copy pastey hero soundalikey

..but I wouldn't bother coz no one will like it coz it doesn't sound exactly the same as all the other people making your 'genre'. As we all know, people don't like 'different' or unfamiliar - they like the same. The more 'same' it is the more brilliant people will think you are.

[Functional]

Okay so we finally have our first single released. I think our approach, for now, will be just releasing singles without forcing any albums. Maybe we will eventually make compilation CD out of works and just call it a compilation CD. And maybe we will eventually move into albums, once we have enough experience to compose music with a good sense for an album. AFAIK, many artists actually have done this. For example, the early BoC releases.

Regarding marketing and all that jazz, we won't bother for now. I think it might be a nice approach to build up a fan base slowly with single releases that, perhaps, get discovered and shared. Here's the track in case anyone is interested: https://soundcloud.com/kro6ka/kro6ka-run

[deastman]

What if we don't stick to a genre?

Then you might do... God forbid... something interesting..

and not cookie cutter copy pastey hero soundalikey

..but I wouldn't bother coz no one will like it coz it doesn't sound exactly the same as all the other people making your 'genre'. As we all know, people don't like 'different' or unfamiliar - they like the same. The more 'same' it is the more brilliant people will think you are.

This sad but true.

[Functional]

This sad but true.

To be honest, I don't think it is. A lot of my favorite artist are popular / very popular and they sound completely unique. Amon Tobin, Andy Stott & Burial for example. These can be pretty much considered "mainstream" due to their popularity and they sound like no other in many respects (at least to me). Some aren't necessarily that popular, say for example A/T/O/S, but in my eyes at least they are very popular.

Then there is "ultra popular", which is what gets most plays on radio. But that kind of a thing doesn't even concern me at all. I just think it's shallow to imply that there is a dichotomy between being popular and creative. Sometimes it works the both ways, even though I'll admit it quite often doesn't. Say, for example, the recent documentary on shoegaze, Beautiful Noise, kind of illustrates this well. https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/t ... iful-noise

But despite the lack of commercial success, I think it's even more amazing to influence other musicians. Not to mention, the early inclusion of females as musicians because of their musicianship (instead of their gender) into the world of rock music.

Hell, Cigarettes After Sex ain't even that creative necessarily, but they make great pop music still imho. I'm not sure if they are innovative or not (if they are, I can't put it into words), but I think they are very welcome in the world of music.

[jancivil]

It seems like young people really care about genre, along with this there are surely more genres about, than when I was young.

I haven't given the slightest consideration to genre in the impetus to create a music. Genre a lot of the time ghettoizes a music, puts up walls around it.

I started learning about creating music from taking things off a record, as much as I could hear and then reproduce. Beatles Abbey Road was huge. I wore the grooves off that.
What genre, 'pop'? 'rock 'n roll'? Does the 'She's So Heavy' portion of that record signal 'rock 'n roll' or what, exactly? The influences in that record were quite varied.

A year later the record I listened to the most was Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. It's a heavy modern classical record, it's rock vaudeville, it's hard rock, it's R&B...
Ultimately it goes in the Rock bin in the record store.

This took me to Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps. The opening tune in that is a Lithuanian folk tune, verbatim afaik. Bartok went out in the streets and recorded 'folk' music, a key part of his vocabulary. This made a different result than a more insular approach, 'classical' as more a genre... for one thing, it was interesting rhythmically.
These go into the Classical bin at the record store.


Around this time, Miles Davis was into 'rock', and R&B and funk, James Brown. His music was more commercially viable then ever now. Blood, Sweat and Tears was viable commercially following the same dynamic. Jazz was now informed quite a bit by rock, this when rock was still very much alive, mind. Not sure if rock is dead exactly but it's begun to smell a bit...

So, the walled-in strictures of this or that genre would seem to ensure consistency, no lumps in your mashed potatoes.
You were flummoxed at 'compositional cohesion' so until that sinks in or occurs to you organically, there is no 'album' in the sense I consumed albums in. There's nothing to worry about here, not really.

It's nice to get attention, but it seems like the tail wants to wag the dog there. I mean it doesn't look like yer all that assured as to what you are yet.

[woggle]

genres are useful marketing tools - consistency of product is important in the marketplace. This applies generally - for example have a look across famous innovative artists (visual or musical). Typically they produce a work which in some way challenges the existing dominant player in the market - often because they open up a new market as a coherent target rather than supplant an old one (eg Punk). Flattering young people has been used successfully in marketing since at least the construction of "the generation gap" but more broadly flattering is probably the oldest marketing tool. So I flatter you in to believing that only you special young person understands the true nature of reality and the best way to validate your specialness is to attach your identity to this particular sound / look and so on. And it makes my marketing way easier if I can then have a defined look/sound to market (build the market and so on)

consistency of product helps marketability.

of course if your interest is only in making art then none of that matters - but if your interest is in having a career in the arts then it matters a lot.

All the successful artists I know - lifetime careers, purchased by the Tate, perform internationally(classical music) etc - have a public professional persona that is true to themselves but trimmed down and targetted. Much the same way all of us do at work. I don't think you can fake a personality for long though, just present a more refined version or aspect of yourself for within your professional life.

[Functional]

Not sure if rock is dead exactly but it's begun to smell a bit...

To be honest, I never got to experience rock like that. My earliest music memories are when my mum enjoyed a lot of Enyas and Enigmas work. This was when I was about 4 years old, so about 20 years ago. So now something like "Caribbean Blue" is very much a lullaby song to me. Then obviously my mother also played the piano a lot, so I got to hear many compositions. Though I hated the damn thing back then, only grew to love it once I started living on my own. Oh how many times I have heard Moonlight Sonata.

I can only wonder what was the rock era like. All I ever really enjoyed are some post-rock acts and this also is a very recent thing to me. For a long time it was all about electronic music, until I got to work with live mixing, when I really started appreciating jazz music that was especially performed live. And untold amount of stories from this co-worker who used to work (as a soundguy I guess?) for Bruce Springsteen himself and god knows how many other great musicians of that past. He actually always was a critic for my obsession with shoehorning music into genres (I also, at times, kind of am self-ironic about it). At one point he explained part of his dislike about "genres"; he used to know a brilliant singer (I really wish I could remember her name). This singer was just about to get her deal with a record label. But once the push came to shove, the record company rejected her; "Look, you're very talented and your voice is amazing, but we cannot simply do anything with it", as in, it didn't fit into their perceptions of the genres they market. Which I think was truly a tragedy.

So, the walled-in strictures of this or that genre would seem to ensure consistency, no lumps in your mashed potatoes.

To me, genres are bit like a "starting point" indeed. There is no real formula to that, it's more like "let's do something x-esque" and then see what happens, where X is the genre. It isn't always genres necessarily. For example in that song it certainly wasn't, it was a specific song. The end result also surprised (at least me) in many ways. Hard to explain why, but like for example it doesn't have any bass in the "traditional sense", not to speak of sub bass which (before that) always felt like a sort of staple thing to me that just has to be everywhere.

You were flummoxed at 'compositional cohesion' so until that sinks in or occurs to you organically, there is no 'album' in the sense I consumed albums in. There's nothing to worry about here, not really.

Yeah it never really occurred to me before you brought it up explicitly. It makes sense. So we don't quite yet bother ourselves with this because...

...I mean it doesn't look like yer all that assured as to what you are yet.

How could we even be to be honest? We've only been doing this for one year and this is something neither of us has really been doing. And personally, I've been into "music production" for 6 years now. Barely enough to be confident in front of a DAW and know a handy thing or two. Not much else, though.

We just know some things we don't want to do. So for example both of us like Enya. But we don't want to do that, because it won't work live in the way we would want it to work. I already feel uncomfortable about doubletracking in itself (unless for harmonic purposes) because you can't really do that live the same way (unless composed with a looper in mind, which she wants). But dunno, lot of artists I like use this effect in great ways on their album. Though in that song we avoided it on purpose.

As far as albums go, only thing I know I want to do is to have this sort of evolution between albums, evolution with a lot of experimentation in terms of production methods. But I think this kind of stuff will come off naturally and has less to do with composition of an album itself.

[Functional]

Actually I have to take some of that back. Regarding rock music, I was indeed very much into Radiohead and still am. Both of us in fact love Radiohead. But I don't think that's quite the same thing. Plus personally a lot of my favorites are more experimental works of them, especially Reckoner & idioteque.

[Zexila]

Okay so we finally have our first single released. I think our approach, for now, will be just releasing singles without forcing any albums. Maybe we will eventually make compilation CD out of works and just call it a compilation CD. And maybe we will eventually move into albums, once we have enough experience to compose music with a good sense for an album. AFAIK, many artists actually have done this. For example, the early BoC releases.

Regarding marketing and all that jazz, we won't bother for now. I think it might be a nice approach to build up a fan base slowly with single releases that, perhaps, get discovered and shared. Here's the track in case anyone is interested: https://soundcloud.com/kro6ka/kro6ka-run

Nice track.

Just an idea, you can always gave out your track for remixing to some friends or online via some places that organize such things, can bet some EDM guy would just love to put that vocal in good use and than do his own thing, that's really nice way to get your stuff out there and have variety of genres covered.

[VariKusBrainZ]

That's a nice tune posted above, but that's it. Nice. Nothing exciting happens, the mix is quite dull sounding and static and there's no evolution dynamically or structurally.

Just saying as the OP seems to want to break into the 'market' and is taking the game seriously.

I probably couldn't do better but then I don't have asperations, I make noises for fun but I know what's good and what's meh

[Functional]

Nice track.

Just an idea, you can always gave out your track for remixing to some friends or online via some places that organize such things, can bet some EDM guy would just love to put that vocal in good use and than do his own thing, that's really nice way to get your stuff out there and have variety of genres covered.

Thanks

And yeah, we're ahead of you with that. Once I get my new hardware setup up and running (atm in running process), I'm creating a remix pack due to a request from a friend of mine who produces hardstyle. And as luck would have it, someone already made a short D&B bootleg out of that, so after consulting with the singer (who heard it), we came to the conclusion that we should have the remixpack ready before our releases for the people. At the very lets we will share them in rather obscure places on requests (I'll probably be doing most of the sharing, as I'm more active in the realm of internet).

It's not really "to get ourselves there", we're just curious to hear what other people come up with. And hey, maybe more people will appreciate the singer, who has such a beautiful voice and got talent too imho. I feel really lucky that I get to work with her.

Just saying as the OP seems to want to break into the 'market' and is taking the game seriously.

I think you misunderstood this thread. "Break into the market" isn't really what I'm hoping for and AFAIK same goes for the singer, we just want to make music. And if we did, surely we have to have more than one song behind us, now don't we?

This thread was about how to release our music. The "seriously" part only applies to that we won't get criticized for something like "the album makes no sense".

[Zexila]

Thanks

And yeah, we're ahead of you with that. Once I get my new hardware setup up and running (atm in running process), I'm creating a remix pack due to a request from a friend of mine who produces hardstyle. And as luck would have it, someone already made a short D&B bootleg out of that, so after consulting with the singer (who heard it), we came to the conclusion that we should have the remixpack ready before our releases for the people. At the very lets we will share them in rather obscure places on requests (I'll probably be doing most of the sharing, as I'm more active in the realm of internet).

It's not really "to get ourselves there", we're just curious to hear what other people come up with. And hey, maybe more people will appreciate the singer, who has such a beautiful voice and got talent too imho. I feel really lucky that I get to work with her.

Great, another idea, saw plenty of folks just releasing track with few remixes as an EP, maybe try that, so you get so many flavors right there, maybe even do whatever you taught instead as a remix too, try to really explore that one idea and make an EP out of it.