All these newbies getting spoon fed everything.

[mcbpete]

Fair enough. In 100% of the videos i saw, the people used Push to shoot loops.

Here's a video to modify that percentage

[sjm]

Paragraphs please. You can Google what they are, or try a video tutorial.

Ancient Greeks and Romans didn't even put space between their words when they wrote. Sometimes they even wrote "boustrophedon" (as the ox plows) where the direction alternated line by line from left to right, to right to left.

You kids and your need for paragraphs.....

Or the ancient civilisations and the pitfalls of no video tutorials on how to layout prose being around yet.

[thecontrolcentre]

Weird (double post)

[topaz]

Hey, sometimes some incredibly talented people use pads to shoot their own loops

Fair enough. In 100% of the videos i saw, the people used Push to shoot loops.

[sjm]

To be more on topic, I would question to what extent the number of people expecting a free ride has increased, and to what extent their visibility has increased.

Before the age of the internet, you couldn't ask a random noob question online and hope that at least one of the 1000 people who read it might respond. You'd have maybe a handful of people you could ask. And they'd probably pretty soon get bored of you not bothering to put in any effort yourself, and stop answering your questions until you put in some effort of your own.

The internet has made the act of spamming a viable alternative, and it's why spam works. It's not much effort to copy/paste the same question to 10 forums and wait for just one person to answer. That's not to say it's more efficient than finding the answer yourself; the latter is invariably quicker if the question is basic. But it does mean that instead of a certain demographic finding no audience to answer their basic questions and moving on to a new hobby if they can't make progress on their own, the "lazy" approach now actually brings rewards.

And nowadays you and I are thus exposed to far more people who fall into this category than back when our circle of acquaintances was much more geographically constrained. It's easy to forget that while there's no lack of questions out there that can only be being asked by people who are too lazy to RTFM, it's actually just a handful of people out of millions and millions of netizens. All of those others who have done their own research don't register on your radar, because they are inconspicuous and out of sight. Just like you never notice when you are in the quick queue at the supermaket; Murphy's Law is confirmation bias at its best.

I also think that the perception of today's yoof isn't helped by a lot of tutorial videos that are essentially clickbait that promote the idea that in 5 minutes you can go from zero to hero. It's in their interest to sell that myth, because it gets them traffic, which gets them monetisation, which makes the world go round.


If you were to ask me how to address this issue in general terms, I would say that it's a failing of the education system. If the education system is not teaching people how to learn by themselves, it is failing its students. And I think a lot of education focuses far too much on imparting knowledge rather than teaching how to acquire it. If your school system is built around being spoonfed information, and having to ask the teacher the most basic questions because you have no idea where to find the answers yourself, why would your behaviour suddenly change when you go out into the "real world"? Especially in today's technology-driven job market, being able to learn new skills and understand new concepts is far more important than having memorised stuff at school. The jobs that kids of today will be performing in 20 years haven't been invented yet; how else are we to prepare them for those challenges?

[penfever]

This thread fascinates me, as I have a car crash rubbernecker sort of mentality about pretty much everything -- so I think I'll take this opportunity to pour a bit of oil on myself and strike a match.

I'm a long-long-longtime lurker on these forums. I rarely post because I'm essentially ignorant about almost everything -- even after years of lessons of one sort and another, watching videos, buying and selling gear. I sort of stumble around, musically, finding a few things I like and making many mistakes, occasionally finishing a song. I'm not quite as bad as some of the 'friends' people have been describing here ... notice how it's always someone's friend? ... well, I have no friends, particularly no musical friends. I have certainly encountered folks who would like to take my money. But it's hard to consider those people friends, exactly, even though many of them are quite nice! I have wasted both time and money, I won't pretend I haven't. But I have had success -- when "inspiration" strikes ... but I hate inspiration, it's unreliable in the extreme.

@JanCivil -- I always found your username ironic, given how you tend to pick fights with everyone on this forum, but your musical talent is undeniable ... for anyone who hasn't listened to the tracks, you should. Doesn't mean that everything you say is correct, of course, but you're certainly more of a person to be taken seriously than me.

So I guess I'm asking you, but my question is open to everybody. I'm fascinated by this idea that attention span is the new intelligence. I think that there is some real truth here. Now attention span is pretty clearly linked to willpower. And willpower is trainable in the way that a muscle is trainable. And perhaps what's insidious in modern technology is the way it saps our willpower and attention span, thereby making us more vulnerable to all sorts of tomfoolery. It encourages us to demand more for less, and not to look below the surface of things. I happen to believe that most video games also encourage this kind of thinking.

What is the best way to ESCAPE this kind of thinking? When you're sitting in a room, musically uncertain and uninspired, knowing that you care about MUSIC but sure that everything you're actually WRITING is derivative and, well, not your best work, how do you INSPIRE yourself to go on, without just stumbling through presets or cleaning up your plugin folder or whatever? How, in other words, do you reorient yourself, over and over, to what matters, the track?

Particularly curious to hear amateur answers. I think I know how the pros do it.

[thecontrolcentre]

Another example of these talentless PUSH users ...


I blame the parents

[Daimonicon]

Does anyone else notice a trend among new producers wanting to be spoon fed information - particularly about Ableton? Its a lazy and unconstructive way to learn music production. I mean if you need an Ableton 10 course to tell you how to set up your DAW then your either an absolute beginner which is fine but if your not then you should probably pack it in. I mean the kids these days they expect just to be able to watch a series of youtube videos and then be able to produce. How do they ever learn from making mistakes and create their own unique way of working? This lazy, not wanting to read the manual or text books on the subject approach to learning is leading people to create generic music because you are just allowing someone else to define how they think you should work rather than defining that your self. The thought process should be "I want to achieve this sound, how can I adapt my work flow and use particular tools to achieve this and what do I need to learn in order to do so?" Then pick up the god damn manual or read a book! Im so sick of these lazy generic producers that don't understand how to learn for them selves. You think Andrew Weatherall or the Chemical Brothers had endless Youtube videos spoon feeding them exactly what to do back in the early 90's? They figured it out for them selves by making tons of mistakes, understanding the instruments and the processes behind the music, developing their critical listening skills and then defining their own way of working. The Kids of today man I tell you.

Serious study have confirmed that youngsters today are lazy when it comes to internet. I've read that a couple of years ago. And no not on the internet. The study showed they are more prone to ask questions and expect others to answer it rather than search information themself. I remember a kid asked once, not here, but on a another forum, about 10 years ago "I purchased Cubase. How do I do to record?" Those that are serious to learn and produce and make good music, they will study hard on their own and only ask questions they can't find answer for and other serious questions. The spoon fed kids, they will never learn enough to progress away from basic level and soon give up the music interest.

[chk071]

Another example of these talentless PUSH users ...


I blame the parents

Still not a way i'd want to make music.

I didn't call anyone talentless, BTW. So, no need to feel butthurt over things which only happen in your imagination.

[sjm]

So I guess I'm asking you, but my question is open to everybody. [...] What is the best way to ESCAPE this kind of thinking? When you're sitting in a room, musically uncertain and uninspired, knowing that you care about MUSIC but sure that everything you're actually WRITING is derivative and, well, not your best work, how do you INSPIRE yourself to go on, without just stumbling through presets or cleaning up your plugin folder or whatever? How, in other words, do you reorient yourself, over and over, to what matters, the track?

You need to watch my latest video: 5 Top Tips To Writing Innovative Music That No One Else Uses!

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------

On a more serious note, why do you feel uninspired? What do you try when you decide "music-making time" before realising there is no inspiration? Or are you doing a Samuel Beckett, and simply waiting for it to arrive?

[herodotus]

Paragraphs please. You can Google what they are, or try a video tutorial.

Ancient Greeks and Romans didn't even put space between their words when they wrote. Sometimes they even wrote "boustrophedon" (as the ox plows) where the direction alternated line by line from left to right, to right to left.

You kids and your need for paragraphs.....

Or the ancient civilisations and the pitfalls of no video tutorials on how to layout prose being around yet.

And you thought you had nothing to be thankful for.

Although the idea of going to YouTube for prose advice fills me with an obscure but profound sort of dread.

[jancivil]

@JanCivil -- I always found your username ironic, given how you tend to pick fights with everyone on this forum,

Really? Everyone? I really did laugh kind of hard at that one. No exagg.
It's my name. It's not a choice. I developed a middle name for Facebook just for this type of remark: Notevenhardly. OK?

I'm not picking any fight with a person here. I found some assertions quite absurd and so badly formed, and frankly I'm having that day everywhere, including in my real life so I'm not hiding my objections today. I used to be worse, but I care quite a lot less today.

They are objections TO POINTS; I never saw a couple of these people post here in my life, what fights can I have with someone I have no emotion regarding? I have had a couple of doozies here with people I hate, however.

but your musical talent is undeniable ... for anyone who hasn't listened to the tracks, you should. Doesn't mean that everything you say is correct, of course, but you're certainly more of a person to be taken seriously than me.

Ok, that's awkward. I'm very critical of things that i do before I have anything formed about what someone else does. But, these are matters I definitely have considered, and reflected on, and formed my own statements on before. And I think what I said here is a bigger picture than dissing any particular person's remarks.
I def do not consider myself as specially gifted, I had to work for whatever I have in terms of capacity. But thanks.

So I guess I'm asking you, but my question is open to everybody. I'm fascinated by this idea that attention span is the new intelligence. I think that there is some real truth here. Now attention span is pretty clearly linked to willpower. And willpower is trainable in the way that a muscle is trainable. And perhaps what's insidious in modern technology is the way it saps our willpower and attention span, thereby making us more vulnerable to all sorts of tomfoolery. It encourages us to demand more for less, and not to look below the surface of things.

Well, I would concur with the attention span deficit as at issue. Is it necessarily tied to the quick if not instant gratification of an impulse? You want 'will' to overcome it. I've become impatient that the machine should be quicker than it is, led to this avidity by the machine's responsiveness. When did this start for me? I'm not real sure.
Wait, was I not always like this? This would need to be studied. I like 'resolve' better than 'willpower'. I have kicked several habits in my life, which is down to a sort of resolve, but that sort of resolve is born of necessity and that necessity doesn't exist for me as it might be supposed to for all sentient beings/all beings for which self-preservation reigns supreme. I did it in order to get back to creating music.

So I, in creating music, have no deficit particularly in my span of attention for the tasks I set out before me. I will simply do what is needed to get a result I can live with and love for the duration. Is this easier for me, having grown up in a world where: there were no cellphones; there was no personal computer/there was no world wide web/there was no Netflix/there was no DVR and watch later with commercials passed over. You had to wait for your show to come on broadcast.
I think it's quite possible that this is the case.

Still, I have some of the same impatience now, being spoiled. But maybe there is more muscle developed during a time where things had a place and a time and a certain expectation of propriety.

What is the best way to ESCAPE this kind of thinking? When you're sitting in a room, musically uncertain and uninspired, knowing that you care about MUSIC but sure that everything you're actually WRITING is derivative and, well, not your best work, how do you INSPIRE yourself to go on, without just stumbling through presets or cleaning up your plugin folder or whatever? How, in other words, do you reorient yourself, over and over, to what matters, the track?

Particularly curious to hear amateur answers. I think I know how the pros do it.

I may have a pros sort of answer. I came to creating music on a computer setup out of having ideas for decades before there was such a thing.
(There clearly are, OTOH, many around here that did not, that were not even interested in becoming a musician such as people tend to do when they are young, I mean as children. But one day, it occurs to them to get into music because, hey, look around, there are a lot of people doing it and it's apparently just that easy, since they're clearly idiots, too.)

So while everything you do as a very young person is emulating something, and derives clearly from this or another external source, the musician learns a discipline eventually. So by the time I had any music theory course (age 18) I had opinions, I had experiences, I had chops. By the time I consciously chose "Ok, guess what, I'm just going to compose music like as a thing, all the time" I had been a musician for some 10 yrs (age 24 now). So I had ideas which weren't all that derivative, or at least that could not be reducted to particularly emulating this, that or another source. I had a musical personality and had even been called 'composer' by a real composer by then. So, it's acquired discipline, a set of skills that is a result of working for years at a discipline or disciplines that feed into the one where you feel you are ready to actually do your own music. Part of that is setting quite high standards based in who you find heroic and striving to live up to that in some ways. For me, I actually sought to be a classical performer for a few yrs. Pathetic in a sense, but it did give me some good habits and the experience was that of never doing quite enough, and that of no one will be stroking your ego, because they're actually making their living criticizing you and the likes of you (which includes people who are absolutely your superior anyway).

Vs, again, having a notion from peers that because there is this technology which will stand in for you, as your bass player (from a loops disc you copped with CM 'zine), as your drummer (same basic source as yer bass player) so it just doesn't matter that you never really worked WITH a bass player or drummer, or any of this stuff which is from that acquired discipline because that can be got around; so one has a mistaken sense of what one *should* be ready to do. (^universal 'you' in there, note well)

So, I don't think this is a willpower question, it is a what is your actual developmental history up to now question. One may well have an unreachable goalpost, the forming of a musical personality will tend to take a long time.

[martinjuenke]

Does anyone else notice a trend among new producers wanting to be spoon fed information - particularly about Ableton? Its a lazy and unconstructive way to learn music production. I mean if you need an Ableton 10 course to tell you how to set up your DAW then your either an absolute beginner which is fine but if your not then you should probably pack it in. I mean the kids these days they expect just to be able to watch a series of youtube videos and then be able to produce. How do they ever learn from making mistakes and create their own unique way of working? This lazy, not wanting to read the manual or text books on the subject approach to learning is leading people to create generic music because you are just allowing someone else to define how they think you should work rather than defining that your self. The thought process should be "I want to achieve this sound, how can I adapt my work flow and use particular tools to achieve this and what do I need to learn in order to do so?" Then pick up the god damn manual or read a book! Im so sick of these lazy generic producers that don't understand how to learn for them selves. You think Andrew Weatherall or the Chemical Brothers had endless Youtube videos spoon feeding them exactly what to do back in the early 90's? They figured it out for them selves by making tons of mistakes, understanding the instruments and the processes behind the music, developing their critical listening skills and then defining their own way of working. The Kids of today man I tell you.

The ancient Greeks already wrote that their youth is lazy, unpolite and morally rotten!
Something never changes..

[sjm]

And you thought you had nothing to be thankful for.

Oh, I know all about the sanitation, medicine, wine, public order, roads etc.

But in terms of clear layouts designed with the reader in mind, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Or the Greeks? I mean the Greeks even use a confusing alphabet made up largely of maths and physics symbols... You aren't Greek are you, Ἡρόδοτος..?

Although the idea of going to YouTube for prose advice fills me with an obscure but profound sort of dread.

It's the new frontier.

[inkwarp]

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

that's a very fatuous remark. Picasso did indeed master formal painting techniques and his early work he emulated many different styles before finding his own. this work is varied and anything but 'boring'. on top of which, this has nothing to do with the OPs comments. I very much doubt that you could say Picasso was 'spoon fed'...