Software Hoarding

[vurt]

Mozart would have made such bangers if you gave him an electric guitar or a synth!
New toys.

he was the og punk rocker!

Franz Lizst

he used to get knickers thrown at him. like tom jones.

[BONES]

Seriously? This is what it has come to? The world is overflowing with talentless hacks who call themselves "producers" because even they know it's laughable to refer to themselves as musicians. That term is reserved for people with musical ability, not laptop jockeys who can't play an instrument and know absolutely nothing about music, which is reflected in the crap they "produce." Wankers.

If someone asks you, do you tell them "I'm a musician" or do you say "I play an instrument"? Having other people think of you as a musician is one thing but to call yourself a musician is nothing but pretentious wankery in my book. I've been playing synths since 1981 and I'm not a musician's arsehole. So what? It's not something I see as necessary to do what we do.

I would hardly call someone who makes "music" that appeals to crass, musically illiterate people a musician.

That would be pretty much anyone who ever sold a record because 99% of people who listen to music have no idea what a good musician looks or sounds like. I doubt that Paul McCartney would describe himself as a good musician, from everything I've seen of him in interviews he just thinks of himself as a bass player in a band. That's how a man comports himself.

[jamcat]

Mozart would have made such bangers if you gave him an electric guitar or a synth!
New toys.

he was the og punk rocker!

Franz Lizst

he used to get knickers thrown at him. like tom jones.

Punk rockers just get bottles thrown at them.

[jamcat]

You forgot the third type the MUSICIANS who hear melodies and harmonies, and rhymes, and rhythms, and the timbres that make up those things and feel compelled to bring them into the world.

Anyone who calls themselves a "musician" is definitely having a wank. So full of themselves.

Seriously? This is what it has come to? The world is overflowing with talentless hacks who call themselves "producers" because even they know it's laughable to refer to them as musicians. That term is reserved for people with musical ability, not laptop jockeys who can't play an instrument and know absolutely nothing about music, which is reflected in the utter crap they "produce." Wankers.

I think you are making the things more complex than they are .. If you are playing or producing music that the people you target are happy to listen to, then you are a good musician. If not then you are not.
Then you can argue about your technicality or knowledge being better, it is all bullshit. It is like a tennis match or MMA fight. You can argue that your form is better. But if you lose the match, you lose the match. Period.

I don't know about you, but I'd definitely rather lose a tennis match.

[Ah_Dziz]

I've had entire human beings thrown at me at punk shows.....

I don't really see the problem calling yourself a musician if you make a living playing musical instruments (regardless of what random assholes on the Internet think of your music or your audience).

I also don't see what's bad about calling yourself a producer if you make/ produce music for a living.

Plenty of people (myself among them) still make a living as composers for other musicians as well as for their own projects. I don't really follow how any of that has to do with amassing tons of software.

People whose main goal is to release finished songs may end up with tons of software so that they have any sound they might want close at hand.
People whose music depends to a huge extent on the sounds they use and the context they use them in will probably spend more time learning the ins and outs of generating sounds if they are that picky.
Most people, in my experience, fall in the massive area in between. They will happily use a neat sound they come across in whatever context makes sense for their piece and will also happily make a brand new sound for their piece with the tools they have available. Learning how to dick around with analog style subtractive synths, or building your own granular samplers in software doesn't make someone a better musician, producer or composer.

I'd imagine that "hoarding" software comes mostly down to the hoops that one has to jump through to sell/ transfer software as well as the behavior of companies that are happy to kill off software that will run with no problems on current hardware I've got a couple windows 7 machines still hobbling along just to be able to use tons of abandoned software without resorting to cracking software that I've bought and paid for.

[kritikon]

Musician, bah humbug. I'm going to be a musicologist when I grow up.

[Hyperbole]

If someone asks you, do you tell them "I'm a musician" or do you say "I play an instrument"? Having other people think of you as a musician is one thing but to call yourself a musician is nothing but pretentious wankery in my book. I've been playing synths since 1981 and I'm not a musician's arsehole. So what? It's not something I see as necessary to do what we do.

I doubt that Paul McCartney would describe himself as a good musician, from everything I've seen of him in interviews he just thinks of himself as a bass player in a band. That's how a man comports himself.

Okay, fair enough. When I meet someone for the first time or when someone asks me what my hobbies are, I usually say something like, "I play keyboards and enjoy writing my own songs." Unless they also play an instrument, people usually ask, "What kind of music do you like?" If they seem closer to my age, I will say "80s-inspired New Wave and Synth Pop." Or if they are young and I don't want to date myself, I will say something more vague like "Electro Pop" (which is probably more accurate because I incorporate all sorts of influences, some more recent, into my music).

If people ask what instrument I play, I will say something like, "I started playing the piano as a kid and took lessons all the way through college. But I have more fun 'dinking around' with synthesizers. Computers can make even a marginal keyboard player like myself sound decent."

At no point do I announce, I'm a Musician!" (with a capital 'M'), or worse, "I'm an Artist" (which is embarrassingly pretentious). But I do think "musician" better describes me as someone who plays an instrument, has a reasonable understanding of music, and who writes his own songs. "Musician" is just shorthand for "trained player who understands music and who writes and arranges his own music."

[plexuss]

I'm a Musician... Go fk Yourself.

[jamcat]

A musician is simply one who musics. Paul McCartney is definitely more than just a guy who plays bass in a band. He sings, plays piano, plays guitar, plays drums. All of it effortlessly. And he’s written few songs, too.

In some ways Paul seems like he’s not really a musician because it’s like he’s never taken a lesson in his life or has ever given much thought to it at all. He just sits down and does it like he was born knowing exactly what to do.

[lobanov]

If you give a painter 8 colors they still just mix them and ultimately have up to millions of colors in their completed work. Should they have stuck to 8?

My fridge has 50 ingredients in it but I don't get overwhelmed when I make meals, nor do I make myself use all 50 ingredients in every meal. No one complains 'there's too many ingredients now, I wish I never discovered XYZ dish' (well maybe Hákarl). I never see 'I have too many ingredients I can't make anything' complaints in cooking discussions.

No mechanic complains that they can't get to the job done because they have too many tools.

Daily people complain in electronic music discussions that they have access to too many tools.

OK. What if you own 50 fridges?

[_leras]

Mixing multiple instruments will create a new timbre. (If you know how.)

This is why I need so many synths and FX.

To be honest I think software has become so cheap, with some many bundles, it's hard not to accumulate synths and FX.

I'm not disciplined enough to bounce everything down to audio, and it's not a locked in part of my workflow. So, I think I need to keep hold of the FX and instruments I've used in tracks that I might want to later revisit for whatever reason.

[_leras]

Seriously? This is what it has come to? The world is overflowing with talentless hacks who call themselves "producers" because even they know it's laughable to refer to themselves as musicians. That term is reserved for people with musical ability, not laptop jockeys who can't play an instrument and know absolutely nothing about music, which is reflected in the crap they "produce." Wankers.

You can call a kid a good musician, you can say your departed grandmother was a good musician. Playing an instrument is one kind of being musician. Being a singer is another. A drunk banging out a tune on garbage cans at 3am on the street outside is also a musician. There's no magic to it.

(Being a professional musician is a different story.)

Why do people call themselves producers? Well it's mainly that as well as playing, singing, or programming, all the parts - they are also writing, composing, recording, mixing, sometimes mastering and well, you know, Producing fully completed pieces of music. Some they are musicians AND they're doing all that other stuff AS WELL.

I'd hate to be you feeling I need to be superior and look down on other people just because, presumably, you don't like the type of music they are making. How sad. :-/

[BONES]

If people ask what instrument I play, I will say something like, "I started playing the piano as a kid and took lessons all the way through college. But I have more fun 'dinking around' with synthesizers. Computers can make even a marginal keyboard player like myself sound decent."
I cut to the chase and just say "computer".

At no point do I announce, I'm a Musician!" (with a capital 'M'), or worse, "I'm an Artist" (which is embarrassingly pretentious). But I do think "musician" better describes me as someone who plays an instrument, has a reasonable understanding of music, and who writes his own songs. "Musician" is just shorthand for "trained player who understands music and who writes and arranges his own music."[/quote]
Much easier to say "I'm in a band", at which point it ceases to be about me and becomes about the music.

I'm a pretentious wanker. Go fk yourself.

There, I fixed that for ya.

A musician is simply one who musics. Paul McCartney is definitely more than just a guy who plays bass in a band.

It's not about that. It's not up to you to decide how good you are. John Lennon knew how good McCartney was and I'm sure that's enough for him.
[/quote]He sings, plays piano, plays guitar, plays drums. All of it effortlessly. And he’s written few songs, too.[/quote]
Too narrow. There are plenty of brilliant musicians who never write anything. Think players in an orchestra. Conversely, I write songs and I'm not a musician's arsehole. You guys want to think you're so clever, you're so special, but you're not. You could see it in the thread about whether you're born with talent of if you can acquire it.

Any f**king idiot can write a song, it's not hard and it doesn't require any talent or much skill. Any f**king idiot can bang away at a keyboard or strum a guitar, it doesn't make you special. Any f**king idiot can sing as well as most Top 10 artists with the same level of training and opportunity. It's not the right way to look at it. Your work should speak for itself and for you. You do the best you can and if you're happy with it, how is that not enough?

I'm not disciplined enough to bounce everything down to audio, and it's not a locked in part of my workflow. So, I think I need to keep hold of the FX and instruments I've used in tracks that I might want to later revisit for whatever reason.

The other side of that coin is that if you do want to revisit a song, having it all bounced down to stems isn't going to be much use, so why do it?

[Hyperbole]

Why do people call themselves producers? Well it's mainly that as well as playing, singing, or programming, all the parts - they are also writing, composing, recording, mixing, sometimes mastering and well, you know, Producing fully completed pieces of music. Some they are musicians AND they're doing all that other stuff AS WELL.

I chuckled over the fact that the talentless hacks (i.e., "producers" in this absurd, more "expansive" sense of the term) are the proper pretentious wankers in your telling: Because "musician" doesn't capture all the marvelous things they do (like twiddling knobs on a console,) they have to instead refer to themselves as "producers." It would be comical if it weren't so pathetically self-absorbed and reflected a deep-seated insecurity. (Even they know they are frauds.)

I'd hate to be you feeling I need to be superior and look down on other people just because, presumably, you don't like the type of music they are making. How sad. :-/

I "look down on" (actually, loathe/despise/revile) self-important people who are objectively bad at what they do by any measure of taste, as is reflected in the utter shite they "produce." Only other people with said lack of taste pretend to like their "output" (which can't be called "art" without abusing the English language). This is a particularly ridiculous form of virtue signaling to their fellow talentless, fraudster friends.

[Hyperbole]

If people ask what instrument I play, I will say something like, "I started playing the piano as a kid and took lessons all the way through college. But I have more fun 'dinking around' with synthesizers. Computers can make even a marginal keyboard player like myself sound decent."

I cut to the chase and just say "computer".

At no point do I announce, I'm a Musician!" (with a capital 'M'), or worse, "I'm an Artist" (which is embarrassingly pretentious). But I do think "musician" better describes me as someone who plays an instrument, has a reasonable understanding of music, and who writes his own songs. "Musician" is just shorthand for "trained player who understands music and who writes and arranges his own music."

Much easier to say "I'm in a band", at which point it ceases to be about me and becomes about the music.

While I may not be the world's greatest keyboard player, I can play the piano. Just grunting the word "computer" doesn't really capture the whole "tickling the ivories" aspect.

Also, it might be confusing to say, "I'm in a band." In that case, people might think I am the drummer. While I try to be modest and self-deprecating, I don't hate myself.