Is an increase in the number of people creating music good?

[mjau]

A tangent from the Creative Commons thread.

Fire away.

[Jeff White]

All of my musical friends and their friends are really talented. We all have a lot of fun creating.

I have noticed that it is increasingly more and more difficult to keep up with the amount of good music that's coming out these days.

Positives all around.

There has always been a lot of people in garage bands, etc. Now those folks can record and post online. That's all that's changed. Is this a good thing? Yes. Does it mean that everyone's music is good? That depends on the listener's opinion. I would say that the ability to polish a turd has become easier using computers, but nothing replaces good songwriting and conviction in my book. The amount of people involved in music doesn't mean that there are 300,000 Bob Dylans or Paul McCartneys running all around. However, the technology of today prevents distance and financial backing from getting in between your creations and my ears.

Jeff

[chris harris]

I think that it's fucking wonderful.

But, if you're living in the past, and resistant to the new paradigm, then I'm sure that is sucks really hard to be trying to survive these days.

In the past, fewer people made music (professionally), and as a result, the few who were most successful, made obscene amounts of money doing it.

Now, waaaaaaaaay more people are able to make an honest, reasonable living from music.

I'm sure that the dudes who delivered ice were really bummed when someone invented a freezer small enough, and cheap enough to put in your house.

The smart engineer these days is the engineer who finds ways to WORK WITH bands who record on their own, rather than just insulting them and trashing them on message boards. I don't have a long list of "legitimate" credits. And, I live in a very, very small market. Yet, I'm able to stay busy and keep my clients coming back, because I'm willing to work with them to achieve the results that make THEM happy, on THEIR terms.

[RoyMatthews]

Music isn't about consumption it's about creation. The listener is secondary to the process. Everyone should be creating some type of art. It's good for you.

[DrummerMan]

I think the ability for everybody to easily create/record music and make it available to the world, one way or another, means little by itself or on its own, but since there is so much new stuff saturating our senses, it forces more people, I think, to push their everyday music above the "average" and to a higher level of creative artistic expression. That's the most artistically substantial way to shine in this modern tumultuous sea of mediocre stuff (obviously, there's other ways to successfully sell your self, like as a sex symbol, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here). Just by the nature of there being so much more "stuff" out there, the same percentage of exceptional stuff now means a much bigger number, especially since it's becoming more and more apparent for young artists that no one is going to just scoop them up and "make" them a star over night. It's all on us to make ourselves whatever we can be now. That kind of responsibility can make a lot of people shy away and crawl back to a corner, but it just as easily make people really step up to the task and put it all out there, honestly, in a way that maybe was too risky in the golden days of big label deals.

I listen to more current music now than I have since I was 8, and I think that's due to the creative quality of it. Sure, there's still plenty out there that bores the living shit out of me, but it seems easier to find the really good different stuff that I wouldn't have known where to look for in, say, the 90's. I'm happy that I'm living in these current musical times, personally.

[DrummerMan]

The listener is secondary to the process.

I don't know if I completely agree with this.

I mean, I don't think you should want to skew everything you do based on what you hope the average listener thinks is currently "cool" or whatever, but if you're not making music for somebody else to enjoy, why bother making it available at all?

Make music you believe in. In my experience, if it's honest art, it will connect with people.

[@?,*???&?]

The listener is secondary to the process.

I don't know if I completely agree with this.

I mean, I don't think you should want to skew everything you do based on what you hope the average listener thinks is currently "cool" or whatever, but if you're not making music for somebody else to enjoy, why bother making it available at all?

Make music you believe in. In my experience, if it's honest art, it will connect with people.

And thus it is the case that everyman is searching for Perfect Self-expression and nothing more. That's why so many people are pro-tooling away in their youths. They'll abandon it later to have it supplanted by having a family.

Why do men make records? Because they can't have babies.

As for whether more musicians is good- we don't have more musicians, we have more people recording. I'd hazard a guess to say that given the exponential growth of population, we have no more musicians for every thousand of people than there existed in the past. There are simply more people.

And also, no one is doing a study on this stuff and so much could be learned if they did. In particular, if the Lessig book does lead to legislation, it would be ill-fated without such research.

[mjau]

Jeff - it's a value question. Care to dip your toe in the water and make a value statement?

[RoyMatthews]

The listener is secondary to the process.

I don't know if I completely agree with this.

I mean, I don't think you should want to skew everything you do based on what you hope the average listener thinks is currently "cool" or whatever, but if you're not making music for somebody else to enjoy, why bother making it available at all?

Make music you believe in. In my experience, if it's honest art, it will connect with people.

I guess I was going by the question of 'creating art' not releasing it. I agree there's no point going through the process of recording and releasing music unless you're looking to have someone listen to it.
But fundamentally I believe that art is for the artist first and the creation of the art is really the payoff.

[;ivlunsdystf]

Music isn't about consumption it's about creation. The listener is secondary to the process. Everyone should be creating some type of art. It's good for you.

I agree 100%. I think the past 5000 years or so are actually an aberration; that we will soon (in the next 1000 or so years) get back to a much saner way of dealing with creativity where everybody will be creative on their own and the task of being creative through art will no longer be farmed out to 'specialists'. I think a lot of this reversal has happened very quickly over the past decade as creative media have become so readily available to so many people.

Being creative is good for us because it gives us an outlet for our energy that doesn't require us to subjugate other beings or conquer and hoard things that are not ours. Except the paradigm of commercial art/music/creativity is very much about subjugation of an audience, which is why I say:

The ego-based paradigm, with some jerk gyrating on a stage or wandering pretentiously amongst the peons at a gallery opening subjecting an audience to his/her creations: This paradigm is on thin ice, man. Thin ice.

[chris harris]

Why do men make records? Because they can't have babies.

there should really be an awards ceremony for the most idiotic things said on this messageboard.

[JGriffin]

the paradigm of commercial art/music/creativity is very much about subjugation of an audience,

whaaaa?

[;ivlunsdystf]

Why do men make records? Because they can't have babies.

there should really be an awards ceremony for the most idiotic things said on this messageboard.

Yeah. For this statement to NOT be idiotic, the following would have to be true: "No good record has ever been made by any man who has ever previously sired any progeny". Or even "No record whatsoever has ever ... " (the rest is the same)

The funny thing is, I sort of agree with Jeff here

(just kidding)

[DrummerMan]

The listener is secondary to the process.

I don't know if I completely agree with this.

I mean, I don't think you should want to skew everything you do based on what you hope the average listener thinks is currently "cool" or whatever, but if you're not making music for somebody else to enjoy, why bother making it available at all?

Make music you believe in. In my experience, if it's honest art, it will connect with people.

I guess I was going by the question of 'creating art' not releasing it. I agree there's no point going through the process of recording and releasing music unless you're looking to have someone listen to it.
But fundamentally I believe that art is for the artist first and the creation of the art is really the payoff.

I see what you're saying.

Didn't mean to jump on your statement unwarranted. I sometimes get chilly flashbacks to when I was mostly playing free jazz gigs, during it's little peak in popularity in New York and other places during the late 90's and early 00's. There was sooooooooo much masturbating going on in front of large audiences. Many people would excuse themselves by saying that they were "creating" pure art and not being slaves to marketing or the audience's comfort zone. Alot of people didn't seem to understand that there's a huge difference, IMO, between something SOUNDING good (even if only to it's creator), and something FEELING good while making it. The former has artistic value, the latter is masturbation unless strongly paired with the former. Of course, there was some amazing music that came out of that scene (and still is), for the same reasons, I believe, as I said in my first post on the subject. Probably the same percentage as always, but actually more good stuff just because more people were doing it.

[;ivlunsdystf]

the paradigm of commercial art/music/creativity is very much about subjugation of an audience,

whaaaa?

Agree? Disagree? That's up to you. I say the dominant commercial model puts the viewer/listener/cinema-goer at the mercy of the creative person, which I call subjugation.

That's why I think it's great that there are so many people making records. It's a 'power to the people' sort of thing. Also, once you've been a part of a recording project you (1) realize how easy it is to do a so-so job and (2) realize how devilishly hard it is to make something really good. These are good things to be aware of.