All these newbies getting spoon fed everything.

[thecontrolcentre]

Know what i find really weird? Those "push a button and out comes a sound or beat" controllers like Push and the likes. TBH, i have a hard time considering that actual music making.

PUSH is no different to any midi controller. It does what its programmed, or played to do. It creates no audio. It can be played melodically. What's so weird? Maybe you don't understand how it works.

[deastman]

Know what i find really weird? Those "push a button and out comes a sound or beat" controllers like Push and the likes. TBH, i have a hard time considering that actual music making.

What on earth are you talking about ?!

What on earth don't you understand about it?

I think you misunderstand what Push does. It is simply a MIDI controller and physical interface to Ableton Live. It isn’t a groovebox or a push one button and out comes a song type of deal. It has a variety of modes and functions, but all it really does is provide a physical interface to Live so you spend more time interacting with buttons and making music instead of staring at a laptop and clicking a trackpad.

[Delta Sign]

As long as people are having fun, everyone wins, in my opinion

Many people probably wouldn't call something like messing in Pure Data "making music" either, but I don't give a shit, because it's fun to me.

By the way, no statement of value ever started with "kids these days". These "kids" are having fun, which is something positive, "kids these days" people get angry at them, which is something negative. Who wins?

[dellboy]

Advanced technology lets us make more and better music faster.

Why ?

[Michael L]

Advanced technology lets us make more and better music faster.

How do you know that in e.g. a 'DAW vs Guitar' contest, the DAW would make better music in less time?

[jancivil]

Advanced technology lets us make more and better music faster. If someone doesn't catch up, he will be left behind. Telling people to "work hard" is just like telling a guy to cut crops with sickle when his neightbour uses combine.

This is precisely what's going wrong.

And not, the tech does not in any way let 'us' make better music, faster or any kind of way. The evidence is strong that the opposite is the effect of such supposed ease. It's not easier. It's like saying that copy and paste trumps learning how to write your own actual sentences, because who can be bothered nowadays. It's an idiotic attempt at an argument, frankly. It's very facile. Which illustrates the very lack I'm pointing to. Lack of thought. Everybody Dunning-Kruger tonite.

[Delta Sign]

Today the access to tools for making music is certainly easier and a lot cheaper than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

If more people have the possibility to make music, there will be more music. The overall quality of this music (whatever that means) is going to be lower, for sure, but some talented people who would not have been able to make music 30 years ago, are now able to make great music because they can basically make it for free.

Therefore, there is more good music. However, the amount of "bad" music is of course far greater as well, but who cares?

[antic604]

Yeah, I share OP's view. This is especially evident on FB groups, where people:
- don't know or understand the basics of sound design/processing/flow, just blindly apply the "tips" they've heard somewhere,
- don't go through their DAW menus, right click drop-downs, don't try modifier keys,
- don't ever read manual or even google stuff, especially if they see something in their DAW that they don't know how it works,
- are very impolite and unspecific asking for stuff (eg. "give me... go!", "my synth acts weird", "pad kills my CPU"),
- get all riled up when someone mentions the manual

On the other hand, it's the same for me with my car - my father could pick it apart and put it back together, while myself I only know how to tank it full of gasoline. I expect to it "just work" and if it "gets weird", I'll drive to service and probably am very vague in trying to explain what's wrong with it. And I've never read the manual

[ATN69]

Everything was much better in the good old days ...there, I said it

[jancivil]

As long as people are having fun, everyone wins, in my opinion

Many people probably wouldn't call something like messing in Pure Data "making music" either, but I don't give a shit, because it's fun to me.

By the way, no statement of value ever started with "kids these days". These "kids" are having fun, which is something positive, "kids these days" people get angry at them, which is something negative. Who wins?

Really, that's the single overwhelmingly true criteria for 'statement of value'? Extrapolate (cherry-pick) that out of what was said and that's all you need to come down with a value statement. Intellectually empty discourse, I'm sorry to have to point that out. And it's probably futile to, another aspect of the wider problem.

Music in culture wins when there is a glut of people all doing the same thing, as they find better validation and the easiest approbation of this lazy, feckless and uninterested peer group?

It's not just a single thing in music, it's not even just music; it is a winding down of the whole culture and a wide and broad dumbing down of the world. But such WINNING, because the kids are just having fun. Sure, no, working at a craft and getting skills together, that's BORING, it's not fun at all. Once upon a time if you wanted to have something under your name you had to do a bit more than paste clips acquired from others onto a DAW sequencer timeline. The richer experience is 'no fun' so it loses to the shallowest experience ever.

The facility available meaning people never need to get their own hands involved has a certain end, laziness; and this end, having something out there which, while you did as little as possible to *produce* it, justifies the means. Or lack of having your own means.

I'm just saying. There is still a great big world of people doing their best in music, doing fantastic things and I don't actually encounter this in music except here. BUT if one wants to share there is a whole lot of dross occupying space in the virtual world, so some of you are losing out to it not knowing where to look. And if you think EDM is conscious rather than being drones maybe you already are predisposed to this sort of 'winning', which isn't, it's losing out.

[benheman]

It's a complex topic. Simply changes in signs of the times. Too much information and resources floating around at the same time!

[Delta Sign]

I don't think there are less people who are actually learning the craft, there are probably even more than ever, and the ones who are just messing around don't hurt anybody.

Picasso started by painting rather boring portraits, should we have told him to stop?

[jancivil]

If more people have the possibility to make music, there will be more music. The overall quality of this music (whatever that means) is going to be lower, for sure, but some talented people who would not have been able to make music 30 years ago, are now able to make great music because they can basically make it for free.

Yeah, well I started on guitar from very cheap instruments. I think if there's no possibility for a person to have the very least as I did is pretty bleak. I did not know, however, that computers were free today. I don't know how someone got the chops together to make this "great" music having nothing but computers, ever, either.
So this is rather a bit of sophistry on your part, I wonder why I'm even seeing this. However:

Therefore, there is more good music. However, the amount of "bad" music is of course far greater as well, but who cares?

That's an assumption, I don't know how that's demonstrable fact. If it turned out to be true, I would tend to agree; the ratio of good:bad is not a huge driver in my life, but this is a different topic.
At KVR it's a thing, and even over the time of it it's more a thing now than it was just a few years ago.

Fortunately I'm not really very prone to needing to make things for wider consumption or for it to be at all lucrative. It does affect those who do, so you have eg., a John McLaughlin record maybe breaking even today.
It's definitely, and demonstrably not a WIN for everybody in music for there to be so much occupation of the virtual space, which is where it's all at today.

[jancivil]

I don't think there are less people who are actually learning the craft, there are probably even more than ever, and the ones who are just messing around don't hurt anybody.

Well, that's your disposition, I wouldn't know either way. I have shown my thinking on 'it's all good' and you may just want to dismiss the points.

Picasso started by painting rather boring portraits, should we have told him to stop?

That's what we call a non-sequitur. Picasso PAINTED, and apparently he mastered representative painting before he went abstract or before even the blue and rose periods.

You extrapolated 'boring' and tried to make it do a whole lot more than it does in order to present PICASSO?
The only work that does after all is illustrate MY point. People learn instruments, on very cheap instruments if that's the only means available, just like people figure out how to get ahold of some paints and an easel, their parents may even love them enough to help provide. Picasso was not copy/pasting on any medium. There was no such availability; so maybe the lack of ease means better quality.

[Harry_HH]

Advanced technology lets us make more and better music faster.

When I listen the output of 1950-2018, to me it seem that on the contrary, its harder to make good music with the advanced tech.