Musical shortcuts - How far do you go without guilty conscience?

[funky lime]

There's a graphic that used to float around here years ago. I can't find it, but it basically comes down to this (very much paraphrased) idea:

I used to use drum loops but they told me it was cheating, so I started programming my own loops.
I used sampled drums to make those loops but they said it was cheating, so now I decided to sample my own drums.
I sampled drums that other people built, but they told me it was cheating so I decided to make my own drums.
I used store bought drum heads but they told me it was cheating so I decided to make my own drum heads from sheepskin.
Now I'm too busy herding sheep to actually make any music.

I'm sure I've butchered it, but you get the idea. "Roll-your-own" is a concept that can be inherently enjoyable on its own, and it certainly is a rabbit hole. But if your goal is to make songs, don't get so caught up reinventing the wheel that you aren't making songs anymore.

(Also, stay away from Stardew Valley )

[Bombadil]

Bottom line is, on one level, if you're multitracking, you're cheating. So, we're in good company.

[thecontrolcentre]

Bottom line is, on one level, if you're multitracking, you're cheating. So, we're in good company.

[vurt]

if youre using anything be it a loop or a midi loop, preprogrammed arp, sample you've taken from someone elses recording...

if someone asks, wow did you do all of this?
if you reply yes, then youre a dick.
if you reply yes, except for this loop/sample/etc here. then great, go ahead.
if you also add where the bit you seem to be over thinking from, then even better, crediting its origin

no one is getting killed, maimed, turned into a zombie, because you used a bit of a musical thingamabob.
as a stereotypical italian new yorker on tv might say "forgeddabooouuuut it!"

[IncarnateX]

^^^^ Easy to say when you are not suffering from anal-sadistic personality disorder and your favorite target of projection is music

[vurt]

try meditation.
or weed.
or both.

[donkey tugger]

Loops, exceedingly rare. For example, I recently used a tambourine loop for one of my songs because I tried to record a real one, and it didn't sit in the mix as well as the loop. That is about the only time I can remember using a loop.

Playing the tambourine is f**king hard work, so I do use loops I've already recorded quite a lot.

I'm do like to program drums from scratch.
Guitars I generally try and play things as live as possible then comp the acceptable takes together
On the odd occasions I use the sinthesisers it's always a preset with a bit of fiddling
As for vocals - use Newtone (FL's Melodyne type thingy) to tighten up my appalling habit of at times going into Brian Ferry on crack style tuneless vibrato, and sometimes use GSnap to tighten up the tuning just a touch. I also like to arse about with harmonizers - Melda's MUnison...

It's all cheating.

[IncarnateX]

weed.

Already included in self-medication but doesn’t beat Mr. superego

[benheman]

It's all about creative re-arrangement and originality while using the cheats! Just make it yours...like many big name stars do. A COVER!!

[lotus2035]

Did you build the chair you sit on? The Desk you use?
Did you build your own computer from scratch using components you invented made from raw materials you dug out of the ground with your bare hands?
Did you code your own OS and DAW and software instruments and FX and install them on your self-made mud-encrusted computer??
Do you provide your own electricity by cycling on a bicycle (that you made from scratch/raw materials etc) attached to a home-made generator all in a house which you yourself built?
Do you provide your own oxygen and sunlight?

If the answer to all these questions is no, then you sir, ARE A FRAUD!!

[dreamkeeper]

Right... the usual BS. It does not matter, whether or not something is pre-made - hence the usual comments along the the lines of "everything is cheating, unless building your instruments yourself..." is utter nonsense.

What really matters, is how much a preset (or whatever tool) determines the result. So, as a rule of thumb: the more people would arrive at roughly the same result with something, the worse you should feel using that something. The mere fact that these days almost everything sounds the same, just shows how few 'musicians' do care about that rule. In fact, most just want to sound like everybody else, it seems...

Edit: ah, I see, now you even have to make your own chair and desk etc.

[IncarnateX]

Did you build the chair you sit on? The Desk you use?
Did you build your own computer from scratch using components you invented made from raw materials you dug out of the ground with your bare hands?
Did you code your own OS and DAW and software instruments and FX and install them on your self-made mud-encrusted computer??
Do you provide your own electricity by cycling on a bicycle (that you made from scratch/raw materials etc) attached to a home-made generator all in a house which you yourself built?
Do you provide your own oxygen and sunlight?

Don’t think this analogy applies, none of the above has been my ambition to build from scratch but until now it has been my hard-to-break principle that I should build my music from scratch and take full ownership of every detail. That ambition now clashes with letting go of control and ownership and even make use of other’s music.

[schiing]

Interesting, I just thought about that when I read an article about prefabricated loops in The Guardian recently.

As a listener I don't care at all about whether music contains prefab sounds or not - not as long as I'm unaware of their origins.

But as a musician it matters a great deal to know that I've built everything from scratch myself. So once I learn about other musicians "cheating", I guess that I subconsciously do question their work ethics and pride a bit. At least when it comes to using unprocessed loops, sequenced presets and not coming up with their own chords.

I don't feel the same way about heavy loop chopping. Nor necessarily about your run-of-the-mill ADSR synth preset - a lot of them are classics that I consider standards in their own right, like a guitar or a piano.

All that being said, I really don't mind making music that sounds derivative of other stuff that I love - in fact, being able to do so is an important reason why I love doing this thing.

(Btw., here's the article I mentioned (if I recall correctly, the author was a bit confused about the different concepts, but good fun nonetheless): https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/ ... -pop-music )

[jancivil]

Again, I do not do everything myself. However for me, the composition, the act itself involves shaping a performance. When a composer in the traditional sense writes the whole, and the parts of the whole out on staves, she is imagining a world, and is endeavoring to create a world which lives in performance. And in front of that, lives in her imagination as an ideal. Yet there may be new aspects of it created anew as 'reinterpreted' or just through the filter of personality.

So while there are performance practices, ways known to the performer(s) - idiom - the idea is to create something of one's own out of one's own imagination.

So yes, a piano is a piano. Except when it's a prepared piano; except when it's an out-of-tune piano; except when the performer is being Glenn Gould vs being John Tesh; except when it's Cecil Taylor vs a regular sort. Get my drift?

So, I said this in the other iteration of this discussion, if one is doing music that is supposed to represent an idea of mechanization and the aesthetic is involved with a certain kind of sound world attendant to that, an arpeggiator may be the most apt thing conceivable for a part. If one is trying to do something more... painterly, to use I think a fair analogy, not so much.

So I do my own drum track (my own parts; in the digital era, my own MIDI in the piano roll). From nothing, a blank slate in the key editor. You may well say, and be right, that I owe Vinnie Colaiuta et al a hell of a lot. However I may rather owe them compositional credit if it's their MIDI, and it's the basis for my other shit.

So I'm prepared to be called an elitist or a gatekeeper, what-have-you, for this, but either you're composing the thing or you aren't. If you are heavily dependent on something as_a_basis, it's too clever by half if you want to believe you didn't, IMO. Yeah, I should mind my own business.

[IncarnateX]

Interesting, ....
I don't feel the same way about heavy loop chopping. Nor necessarily about your run-of-the-mill ADSR synth preset - a lot of them are classics that I consider standards in their own right, like a guitar or a piano.

Never had problems with any of that either. As per OP, I am talking about loops and auto arrangements whether they are samples or presequenced preset, e.g. an arp loop. Bread and butter presets are very useful, who wants to create a “Jump” brass from scratch as if this was supposed to be your own in the first place when you can have it as standard library?

Nice and honest post, btw. I am not that alone after all it seems