I completely suck at producing

[Unaspected]

A musician is a person who can perform with a musical instrument to an acceptable level of proficiency.

It's strange to consider a musician as being better or worse than someone producing music as they both require different skill sets. Also odd to think that a musician has to be a composer or song writer in order to fulfil the initial function. Whilst I would expect a composer of music to be proficient in at least one instrument, I would not expect the same of a music producer.

[Hink]

A musician produces makes music. Period.
If you need to learn something to do that, then so be it.
No one ever said it's easy or requires no talent.

Could you be more specific, makes music, like plays music or writes it from start to finish and makes an actual track? I personally never called myself a musician, neither among my family nor my fans, despite it being my main passion for many many years.

Anyway, I seem offended at least one person here who just plays an instrument for many years and consider himself more of a musician than those who do not play an instrument. It is like nowadays forbidden to have difference of opinion an everyone so triggered by everything. I never looked down on people who play instruments and do it well. In fact I consider them true musicians but only if they release their music or play in front of an audience (like opera for example). Otherwise, they just know how to use an instrument and that's great, but they, in my eyes, certainly ain't better than a kid who creates/makes music in his bedroom and uploads it on youtube or beatport or bandcamp. Yet such instrument players always riding the high-horse just because they operate one single thing.

So apologies to user Hink. It is all just playful debate/rant and exchange of opinions.

I cant accept an apology based on lies, kindly show me where I ever said I was better...I have never said that in 20 years on KvR.

[Propellerhands]

I cant accept an apology based on lies, kindly show me where I ever said I was better...I have never said that in 20 years on KvR.

I misunderstood or misread your initial response to me, hence me jumping into defense of bedroom producers. After all I was responding to one specific person in this entire thread.

Truth is though, people who play an instrument, from my experience and observations, often look down on people who only "play a computer" and feel offended when bedroom producers call themselves musicians.

[Hink]

you understand of course that that is their problem and not yours right? Curious though, would you like to be judged on such an assumption? Your response seems more like a justification. Is there something that precludes me from the same respect you likely expect, because that is exactly what you are doing, do you not see the blatant hypocrisy here? You're making assumptions I will make assumptions and frankly I do find that offensive to you, please do not put words in my mouth or assume you know me.

FTR I say this here all the time, I play* for my peace of heart and soul.

*play meaning playing my guitar, playing a keyboard, playing a harmonica, writing, recording, jamming, performing, singing or just diddlying about on the neck and doing nonsense stuff for savage amusement.

[machine_spirit]

This post is hilarious and true.

When I got into more complicated video work it hit me just what starting from nothing feels like, even with all the resources out there it can still be really difficult to find your footing.

For sure, i think the combination of raw complexity and a need for creativity presents this unusually intimidating obstacle. Difficult to remain creative when you can barely communicate with your tools, and any search for knowledge will likely yield multiple answers and a set of new questions. Messed around with some C++ programming many years ago, never again lol

Truth is though, people who play an instrument, from my experience and observations, often look down on people who only "play a computer" and feel offended when bedroom producers call themselves musicians.

I agree.

On a somewhat related note, reminds me of some statistics i saw posted here somewhere, where it was a small percentage of guitar owners that actually bothered to record anything. With that in mind, i believe the majority of even complete beginners at electronic music production open their DAW with some intention of saving what they're doing. That might not be optimal. I wonder if the empty sequencer issue would be less intimidating if it was possible to start a kind of project that wasn't possible to save, only export to audio (perhaps not even that). That could make the initial intimidation less of an issue and make it more natural to just mess around the same way you can with a real piano or guitar for example.

[Bodhisan]

Different opinion. I have seen countless examples of people who know how to play an instrument, and do it pretty well, but most of them do not produce any kind of music. Or if they do, they never share it with the world. So what gives? If you can't produce a single track, are you really a musician? Just because you play an instrument? Not aimed at anyone here, just wanted to give a perspective to people who think not being able to play an instrument is kind of a proof that you ain't a musician. Maybe so, by the old traditional standards. In old times you had to play something, there were no computers to do the sounds for you.

But nowadays, knowledge quite often makes one lose creativity (especially public education making kids into zombies). Learning an instrument may help some people, but definitely not all of them. There is a saying that one must know the rules first in order to break them, and I would disagree. Again, seen too many people who know all the rules and play piano or guitar wonderful but their music is just boring and uninspiring. So to say that playing an instrument helps 100 percent of the time is a huge stretch. It may help some, may not to others. What is more important is practice in general and listening to all types of music and more practice. It took me 2 years to create something that I wanted to share with others apart from my family. Nowadays people want to get everything at this very second. Eh..

You make good points in your post - and I agree that often "knowledge" can stifle creativity ("The day you teach the child the name of the bird, it will never see that bird again.") Too, I agree that some, if not many musicians often look down on computer composers who don't know how to play an instrument - I know that I've felt that way. We're learning you don't have to be a "musician" to compose music - and do it well, too. For traditional musicians, it's kind of a kick in the ass, maybe much like when commercial painters were introduced to the newfangled way of spraying paint onto a structure. Those who learned how to brush it on probably thought "That's not painting." I'm sure there are better examples than that, however.

Your mistake, in my opinion, was to define a musician as one who composes. That doesn't make sense, as Hink first pointed out - even if it is just your opinion. You probably should have simply said you were wrong about that instead of defending a careless comment - maybe stuck with your theory that you can still create music even if you're not a musician - there's proof for that.

[Propellerhands]

I wonder if the empty sequencer issue would be less intimidating if it was possible to start a kind of project that wasn't possible to save, only export to audio (perhaps not even that). That could make the initial intimidation less of an issue and make it more natural to just mess around the same way you can with a real piano or guitar for example.

Oh, I do not know about others, but to me empty sequencer is straight out inspiration to work on something. My personal problem always been finishing my sketches or disposing of them. Just a month ago I had like 7 demo tracks that I worked on constantly one after another until I deleted 6 of them leaving just 1 for a while, then making another demo track and then combining those 2 into a single track. That's basically how I roll. So if I could only get one chance to export, like you suggest, I would probably never create something worth releasing. Though it could work for others, I don't know.

Furthermore, the main reason I chose a PC over an instrument was that I can create music quicker this way instead of record stuff multiple times. It would be a hassle. On a PC you can just delete it quickly and try again. I am sure many others did the same. Not because they lacked the will to play an instrument but because PC is more versatile thing. You can mimick any instrument there and more importantly you do not need a 3000 dollar synthesizer to create sci-fi music or something.

[vurt]

mines closer to 10

[melomood]

Starting off with no formal training at all was fun,but I did find myself learning a few formalities along the way,whether I meant to or not
Life is a shady queen

[blehbleh]

Can anyone recommend tutorials that explain the basics of (electronic) music production? But not something like musical theory, I need something to help me figure out how beats, leads, pads and keys all work together, how I should choose sounds that sit well together, how to create basslines and drum beats - but not for any special genre, more like general theory of melodies and rhythms, and making all of them work together

Even when I use InstaComposer together with presets, my creations still sound like MIDI 20 years ago. When I put a key filtering device (to only play notes in scale), it still sounds like crap. Almost feels like every channel of the track exists in its own space and tempo.

It's like I have absolutely no sense of rhythm and melody, so bad that it defeats even the AI melody generators and presets together.

I think half the battle is figuring out how to place things in the stereo field. Once you know what frequency ranges to target and how to place things in space, then the mix starts to just sound better, once the mix sounds better, you start to feel a groove and then chase the groove. My problem has always been that my mixes were so terrible I couldn't feel the "heart" of the song.

Mastering the Mix has some good resources:

Never Get Stuck Again, example chapter:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pj2q9vqflpmeq ... r.pdf?dl=1 (directly from MtM, free chapter)

How Pros Make Hits:
https://www.masteringthemix.com/product ... -make-hits
https://www.dropbox.com/s/siz02r1qts3vs ... D.pdf?dl=1 (five free chapters!)
Songs discussed in the electronic music chapter:
● One Kiss - Calvin Harris ft. Dua Lipa
● Sad Machine - Porter Robinson
● Midnight City - M83
● Andromeda - Gorrilaz
● Never Be Like You - Flume
● Electricity - Silk City
● The Middle - Zedd

Here's a good rhythm resource:
https://passionforedm.com/blog/music-no ... -tutorial/

If you're anything like me, you have ideas in your head and are shocked to find out that it's super difficult to translate those ideas into a recorded track. Unfortunately, music theory (rhythm is a part of music theory) is absolutely needed.

Do you have an example track?

[jamcat]

Not sure that I would want to make a "hit."
I prefer making songs that I still respect in the morning.

[ATS]

Not sure that I would want to make a "hit."
I prefer making songs that I still respect in the morning.

"I'll still respect you in the morning."

[andramedon]

There are a few decent courses on https://www.skillshare.com/

There are so many discounts via youtubers etc. I got mine for the year upfront for around $100 AUD

[mixyguy2]

Not sure that I would want to make a "hit."
I prefer making songs that I still respect in the morning.

Yeah it would suck to be rich.

lol.

[rilderec]

People who learned an instrument and musical theory when they were children, are lucky, because then it is difficult to catch up