I'm trying to learn music production with a DAW, sometimes I wonder if I'm wasting my time. Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).
I'm at the stage where sometimes I make something that sounds good (to me) but I know it requires work (in the "not fun" sense) to finish it and even then, it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself.
Which isn't a problem if the process itself is joyful, but I have to admit I've always struggled to enjoy anything that doesn't involve other people in some way (shared goal or approval of some form).
None of these problems are "new", but I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent. Kind of wondering how others are affected by all this, if at all.
I’ve been involved in one music project or another (bands, albums, solo projects, etc) for the past 25 years.
During the pandemic, a friend and I decided to make a record together. We labored over it for almost two years and finally “released it” on bandcamp to very little fanfare.
A few friends and family had nice things to say, and one random stranger reached out with positive feedback.
I get a monthly stream report from bandcamp, and it almost always says zero.
I am so pleased with this project and have such great memories of making the album that I had two lathe cut vinyl copies made (one for me, and one for my friend).
I put a big part of myself into the project and was able to convey ideas and feelings that I couldn’t express effectively via other methods.
I listen to the recording about once a year. It’s a part of me now, and I couldn’t be happier with my journey in making it.
To me, this is the purpose of the creative journey. Knowing yourself better, and enjoying all of the steps involved in arriving at what is always a surprising destination.
If someone else feels something as a result of your work, that’s a nice bonus, but not something I focus on at all.
If you didn’t sink a career’s worth of time doing creative work professionally, then that’s a nice relationship to have with creative output. For a lot of people, AI has been one gut-punch after another with someone selling cheap knockoffs of your work in the same marketplace using your munged up work taken without credit, compensation, or permission. Mortgages not paid, cancer not treated, birthday presents not purchased for your kids, dreams dashed… and then people telling you the real purpose of creative work ends when you expect it to be anything more than a hobby.
I completely agree. It makes something that was already very hard that much harder. I have a friend who played guitar in a "famous band". They made it. Meaning, they played on David Letterman and went on extensive tours, had a huge fanbase, etc. Some years back, he reached out to see if I had any leads on IT jobs. I was surprised to say the least, but his response was simple, "there's no money in it." That conversation really hammered it home that you can "make it" and still live without financial security. Fast forward to today, and the situation is even more dire given what is happening with AI.
I don't think highly of AI made stuff uploaded without clear labelling as such.
But it's almost certainly not AI's fault if your mortgage is not paid, your cancer not treated or you can't pay birthday presents for your kids. Music was already extremely "cheap", and success has very little with how much or little work you put into it (extremely unlikely either way).
Let's fund art, but this business model you want to do it by is hardly worth saving.
It’s not just music that is getting ripped off and what is this funding model you’re proposing? How will that help some who designs and sells a few T-shirts etc?
It goes for all other art as well. I wasn't proposing a specific alternative funding model right now, but I think just about anything (even nothing) is better than extending intellectual property laws.
A) Nobody goes into the music business from the ground up planning to support themselves selling albums, like a small business. Everybody has known for decades that doing so requires laying a ton of groundwork and for the first several years, at least, you’d be lucky to have low streaming compensation be a problem for you. Planning on any other path— persistent notoriety after going viral, being irresistibly appealing to large enough audiences to sell at least dozens of albums per week right off the bat, etc.— is like planning on winning the lottery. That’s literally the least representative market for commercial art. Even for audio!
B) There’s a universe of creative workers AI fucked over that have nothing to do with retail music sales. Concept artists, stock photographers, session musicians, copywriters, video game foley artists, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. Those were all reliable career paths until very recently. Disney chopped their concept art team to replace them with models Disney trained on their work… probably posturing to look pro-AI enough after their pathetic sora debacle. As an aside, they can go fuck themselves.
> AI has been one gut-punch after another with someone selling cheap knockoffs of your work in the same marketplace using your munged up work taken without credit, compensation, or permission.
I want to be clear. I am 100% on-board with AI being absolutely shit.
Buuuut, this has always been the case. Before it was scammers taking images from the web and undercutting you with prints, now it's scammers stealing your artistic style.
It sucks, but it's not a brand new problem. What makes it particularly bad now is that there's a much larger flood of it.
As a hobbyist musician and songwriter of decades i was excited about AI music in October. I could finally take my rough demos of me singing along to my guitar and make better demos then just using garageband as Im not much of a singer. I enjoyed using Suno for a month or less then realize this is shit .... my own songs are AI slop just like everyone else - all sounds the same and my songwriting talents are meaningless now with anyone can now do this. I didnt listen to my slop for months then the band I play in asked to hear some slop of mine and then / there my AI slop had some redeeming quaility. As with my band (church band) and I listening and then playing along to my slop. Just slop writers can now play their slop like real musicians can........
At least not yet Im sure robots will and also an AI microphone with AI built in will be created so everyone sings amazingly.....
Overall AI is stealing humanity from us all, we are allowing it and it is only to the benefit of a few rich pie holes.
But just think… soon we’ll be able to pay some SV company to exercise all of the creative and intellectual effort we would have had to do manually with our squishy meat thought boxes… yuck! Disgustingly inefficient. With the convenience of simulated romance, brilliance, excitement, art, music, relationships, faith, a sense of wonder, sex, human connection, joy, exploration, and everything else that manifested itself in the real world with real obstacles and pushback and negative feelings, we’ll have plenty of time to do all of the menial jobs that are left. What a win!
The legal situation is also completely different. It seems like models IP-wash, so there is nothing legally wrong with what current people are doing with ai. In contrast, the scammer selling your photo was clearly violating IP law, and you could (at least theoretically) pursue legal remedies.
Scale makes it a completely different problem. AI has wiped out the compensation market for entire fields— like copywriting, stock photography, and concept art— practically overnight, and it happened because tech companies have conjured up a very selfish definition of “fair” in the context of fair use. (Isn’t it hilarious to see them get their knickers twisted over distillation? They can blow it straight out their assess.)
It’s comforting to think this is just an incremental change in the battle for capital-focused hyper-efficiency, but it’s absolutely not. This isn’t even the steady decline manufacturing saw over decades… it’s is like what happened to paste-up men or telephone operators but over an incomparably large swath of the creative world.
I'll be honest, I think that this line of "everyone creative is going to be out of work" is parroting exactly the same lies that VC are selling about genAI. At the end of the day, that's what VCs want people to think. There is, to date, basically no reason to use a generative AI system other than if you buy what the VCs are selling. And they reallllly want to sell genAI systems.
I certainly don't buy it, and IIRC only 15% of the broader workforce use genAI for their jobs. Offices are having to force people to use it, and even then people don't like it. Programming is an outlier in this regard because, it turns out, most of what we've been doing is solving the same tasks over and over again in different domains (which is what A Pattern Language was designed to solve). Most other work is not like this.
For the arts, and for most media, what humans have been craving for about a decade now is authenticity. They want a real person they can connect to, an artist whose work makes them feel seen. The artists who have recognized this with a good command of media have been growing sustainably and there's a big industry in this now. There is a certain proportion of people who like the slop, sure. But the actual fact of the matter is that the younger generations, 20 - 30yros, can smell slop from a mile away, and adding slop to advertising, to your media, to your art, actually makes it sell worse. Exactly because it is inauthentic. Talk to literally anyone in advertising whose company tried AI ads. You see an uptick among 50-60 year olds, and a massive, massive downturn among 16 - 30 yros.
From a media executive standpoint, most of the media properties that are inauthentic have been failing massively, with a handful of them able to turn a quick buck before they fail. Execs are verrrry slowly learning the fact that media produced for a very quick ROI and for the branding and marketing potential tend to fizzle out quickly, whereas passion projects are sustainable income, a well you can keep going back to. Whether or not they value that well as much as independent creatives do... ehhhh.
For programming, there's not much to stop people from using the stuff because barely any higher-up supports "building bridges safely". What executives want from programming is a quick ROI, they don't even care if customers complain. So what I forsee for programmers is that the field is going to be gradually flooded with people using genAI. This will drive the cost of our labour downwards, while people are expected to give 10x or 20x the output that they did 5 years ago "because AI makes them fast". This turns every job into a rush job which makes the software system as a whole much less stable. I forsee a number of Horizon IT level problems in the next 10 years. But by then, programming will be much more on the level of a truck job where you have to piss in a bottle and keep driving, or a sales call job where your manager will pull you up if you're 5% under par. Just remember, everyone jumping on the AI train did this to our field.
But, it's not inevitable. It's only inevitable if we all keep shouting that the AI bros have won, from the rooftops. That's the hype keeping this bubble alive. The entire AI bubble currently rests on marketing, and the first step in bursting that bubble is to simply not believe the lies that you are being sold.
I'm a little off being thirty years old. I've played musical instruments of my own accord since I was 3 years old learning violin in an orchestra. I did folk music through my teens. I know about 5+ instruments and I've gigged at pubs, fields, parks, events, and a wedding. I have never touched genAI for music, and I really do not need to. I've listened to the output of genAI for music. It's samey, repetitive, and bland. "Slop" is a very good descriptor. Frankly I can't see a single reason why I would want to destroy my entire creative process and have it output by a black box. Why would I contract someone else to play my own music, let alone a machine?! Baffling. Most of the people around my own age are getting super into vinyl and cassettes and records because they like the fact that you can hold something in your hands. Because they like connecting to an artist. AI slop does not give them that, cannot give them that, and artists who think that the AI slop is better than them are a) obviously not very good in the first place, b) foregoing their own personal development as an artist in service of chasing trends. Trend chasers have never lasted long in creative work, and honestly, they're selecting themselves out of the pool. They're selecting for an audience who no more likes their work than the work of any other sloptist. You can't see me but I'm giving a biiiiig fucking shrug right now, like the jurassic park guy. Nobody cares about sloptists, sloppers, soupies. They don't care about the art, they only care about the profit, and people can smell that a mile off.
"You need to learn that the product of your writing is yourself. You are the artwork. The time you spend writing will change you, it will make your better at expressing yourself. You'll have a wonderful time, but you'll also grow as a person, you'll become more empathetic. The product of your writing is you. You are the artwork."
- Brandon Sanderton
One part of being an artist is that you are a clown who entertains people. You cannot just make music you have to be out there being outrageous and weird.
This is exactly what all the successful ones do. No AI can go on television and sing songs about how great Hitler was.
Becoming successful enough to be on TV (or get a ton of views on media sites) is so uncommon that it’s pointless to use as a comparison for any common career path in the creative world.
And I’m speaking more broadly than music— it’s much worse in other fields. Most commercial art does not involve being an entertainer.
> To me, this is the purpose of the creative journey. Knowing yourself better, and enjoying all of the steps involved in arriving at what is always a surprising destination.
That's EXACTLY how I used to feel about creativity. I was an art major who didn't make it, and I found that expressing myself via my hobbies was good for the soul.
Then I almost died and completely lost interest in making art!
Facing my own mortality, I realized that the time I invest into my wife, kids and family will have a larger positive contribution on the world, I think.
I know that sounds like a Hallmark Card.
At the same time, I've often wondered what my life would look like if I appreciated my family MORE and my hobbies LESS when I was younger.
I can relate here. I have son, who is now 3.5 years old. I haven't had the time or energy to produce any "finished work" since he's been born, and that marks a lull after 25 years of steady output. I don't feel sad or disappointed about this in the slightest. As my wife likes to say, "it's the season we're in." That said, I do really enjoy chaotic jam sessions with my son, as he's very interested in banging on his little drum set, so in some ways, it's just a new beginning. There's no better investment than time with our children.
I feel a part of this is that in any creative endeavor, you can never exactly capture what you want and thus have to leave something out. There are those that try to get it perfect, they never finish.
Nothing wrong with prioritizing family over art, that's pretty rad! But occasionally you can still do art, just don't be to serious about it. All my paintings are objectively rubbish, but heck I like them and didn't put a huge amount of time into them.
> Nothing wrong with prioritizing family over art, that's pretty rad! But occasionally you can still do art, just don't be to serious about it. All my paintings are objectively rubbish, but heck I like them and didn't put a huge amount of time into them.
That's basically where I landed. The idea being that making art is something I should do if I'm just trying to relax. Once the hobby starts looking like a second job, I know it's too much.
Not a near death experience but similarish. Im trans and from a conservative religious family, so I planned to cut them off and eventually did..
Throughout my teens and young adulthood I immersed myself really deep into drawing and writing. But as my own life has started to form around me, I got a partner who I might have kids with, friends I care about. Ive slowly come to your pov too, and Im wishing I spent less time doing art in the past
I've been asking myself this question in the last year:
> Why do I want to make music?
I picked a basic DJ controller and a midi controller bundled with Ableton. I'm a novice, but I love listening to music and dissecting what makes a good performance. I crave that feeling of getting chills when I find something new that moves me in new ways. This set was a pretty recent example:
That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.
I resolved early on that I was never going to make a money doing this, which simplified things greatly. There's a primal part of our brain that craves adoration. I do wish for others to adore my music. Even if it's a handful of people. I do wish to perform publicly one day, even if it's at a park for passersby.
Mostly I just want something to move my brain in different ways. I want to create something beautiful.
>> That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.
As I enter my mid-50s this is how I feel about the music I listen to. I have decades and decades of music I love for a variety of reasons. I don’t have time for “discovery” anymore. If I get introduced to a new band by someone I know or algorithmically, that’s great but I’m not going to spend hours trying to find the next great thing when I have so much I enjoy already.
I think it's great stuff. If you haven't already, build a website for the band or album and leave it up as a static tribute. If it's not something that brings riches, maybe it's a contribution to the world.
And do what you can to do what AI music makers wouldn't think to do - differentiate with photos of yourselves, the process, the wilds, etc. You've done all the hard work writing and recording the music, so you might as well embellish its place in the world, and the places it's about.
Marketing your album is a different kind of work. Thats why labels and whole distribution industry exist in a first place. Bandcamp is not a streaming platform, so you naturally wont get organic listeners here.
I had a very similar experience releasing a video game. Barely anybody downloaded it because I didn’t put any effort into marketing/promoting, but “I couldn’t be happier with my journey in making it”. I have replayed it a few times and it makes me unreasonably happy (although I’m taking a break now because I want to forget where everything is on the map).
I'm happy they shared it on a further request, but I feel not having it in GP or profile is consistent with and further strengthens what they wrote in the post.
The reality is, essentially nobody makes money by creating music. Taylor Swift, you might say, is a billionaire. Is it from selling music? Nope, it's from selling tickets to her shows. People want to see her perform live. A Taylor Swift impersonator would make no money singing the same songs. A cover band wouldn't do any better.
It's the same with authoring books. Almost nobody makes any significant money off of them. It's so paltry I don't really understand why authors are so concerned about copyright infringement.
People steal my copyrighted stuff all the time. I long ago stopped caring about it. But I do very much like Github as it protects me from others accusing me of stealing their code.
If you want to make money, you'll need a plan that does not require copyright protection.
> Taylor Swift, you might say, is a billionaire. Is it from selling music? Nope, it's from selling tickets to her shows. People want to see her perform live.
People want to see her performing...her music. She would not make nearly as much money by going up on stage and sitting quietly for a few hours.
It's also worth nothing that she literally re-recorded several of her albums due to someone else getting the rights to them instead of selling them to her, and the proportion of streams and sales they got compared to the original versions was so high that it effectively forced the person who had bought them from the previous owner to sell them to her in the end anyways.
I don't necessarily disagree with the larger point you're trying to make, but saying that she doesn't make her money from selling her music doesn't really seem accurate.
I'm sure she makes some money selling the music, but the big bucks are from filling a stadium with people paying insane prices to hear/watch her perform.
There have been many stories on HN over the years on rock bands making a pittance from record sales and having to tour to make any decent money.
You're not wasting your time, my friend. But you've got to be very certain and honest as to why you want to learn that.
If your goal is being heard and appreciated, well, you better reconsider.
If you're doing it for your own pleasure and pure love of art, absolutely do go on, without any expectations. It may or may not take off, but the samurai must not care.
Agree 100% with this and I also think the default mindset of "being heard and appreciated / make some money out of this" is very recent and only from the last (or two) decade(s).
In the past learning a skill and do something was mostly for pleasure, and something that would stay in your inner circle of friends. Maybe one of your friends would tell his other group of friends but that would be it.
Now internet gave us the opportunity to reach the whole world and that changed the expectations.
>I also think the default mindset of "being heard and appreciated / make some money out of this" is very recent and only from the last (or two) decade(s).
Artists wanted to "be heard and appreciated" since they started banging rocks together for rhythm and painting on cave walls...
Yeah. People act like it's a sin to want some notice or respect when you've worked and achieved something, like you should be some zen-like creature that is purely intrinsically motivated. It is not wrong to want some notice or respect from your peers once in a while.
Of course it's not a sin to want some notice and respect from people. It's a totally understood and natural, human thing.
By proposing to part with those expectations, I don't mean getting rid of human nature in a transhumanist way.
I'm just trying to warn people who are in the very beginning of their creative ways. There are so many ways to descend into misery and depression exactly because of the mismatch between expectations and our current reality.
Because I've been there.
In my early (1999-2001) music "career", so to say, my music somewhat blew the local scene, it was big in clubs, it played on the local radio, people would repeat catchphrases from my tracks when greeting me, I watched them dance to it. I made so many friends around it.
There was an immense motivation to write a track in the morning and listen to it in the evening on a 10 kW sound system among dancing people, under stroboscopes, black light and lasers cutting through fog.
Then our local club movement died out and its remnants were squeezed into small disco-bars with shitty sound, where people came to booze some and pick up dates, not for music.
And the music itself moved to the Internet. I tried to adapt. But oh boy was that a stark contrast!
I played a live gig in a disco-bar and some drunk morons came and asked me to play "something happier".
I watched my tracks never reach more than a hundred listens on the Internet (with a single random exception).
Ok, you might say it's just my music that is not of due quality or novelty, and you might be right. But I saw so many brilliant artists' profiles with such pitiful numbers of listens over such long periods of time that it totally shatters all illusions of getting heard on the Internet.
You either drown in the ocean of low to zero effort content, or you have to market yourself and again drown in the choir of yelling voices trying to shout everyone over, or you bombard labels with your demos to never get any answer, or an answer you get, but it basically states that you're someone's business asset from now on.
Sure, you can still expect your family or friends to listen and appreciate, but you know what? They don't care either, or care in underwhelming ways. And this alone can break your heart beyond all repair.
Still, I was able to glue mine back and go on with my music. And musically and sound engineering-wise, it's now a cut better than my "popular" and "appreciated" music from my club era. But only me and literally 3 friends of mine know that.
That's what made me a zen(ish) creature and write my original comment above.
Thanks for expanding on your story, it means a lot to hear from people with experience.
I've received a lot of thoughtful responses and am a little embarrassed because I'm probably looking in all the wrong places in my search for identity or joy or meaning. My life kind of fell apart in the last few years, first the career, then the relationship, then my sense of self as I realized all I've ever done were coping mechanisms. At this point, I'm essentially looking for a reason to live, and that places a heavier burden on anything I try than is reasonable.
Just don't give up, Gecko. The night is darkest before the dawn..
Sometimes one needs to let go (sounds beaten and banal, I know). In my case, I had to let go of my image as a musician. I didn't touch music at all for a few years. Then I started writing it again, as I please, without following any dogmas, never aiming to release it. And I grew fond of it, while before I mostly cared for how others would estimate it.
Just live aimlessly for some time. Find solace in nature, biking, hiking, watching the clouds, whatever keeps you afloat! The purpose will find you.
P.S. And by all means learn a DAW or a physical instrument!
Thanks for writing this. For the record, I wasn't responding to your original comment, which I agreed with. And I agree with and empathize with what you're saying here too - it sounds like you've had an interesting relationship with creating and have a lot of perspective on it, good and bad. Although if you were advocating to get rid of human nature in a transhumanist way, I would understand that to some extent - it's at least a solution. :)
I probably should have provided more context, but it's all rather off topic.
However, I guess my life is strange enough so that people made assumptions around my original statements that don't reflect my meaning.
Quite frankly, I'm friendless and have very low self esteem and have felt "not good enough" for most of my life.
I remember building Lego starships with a friend a long time ago, and I felt that on a fundamental level, nothing I could ever make would match what he could build. It was like a law of nature that I'm flawed in that way.
Any new interest that came into life also came from friends. Nothing ever originated with me, I didn't have the confidence for that. Having others to collaborate with automatically validates what I do, in a way.
It's possible I simply never learned how to self validate activities.
My need for validation is a very childlike one, it's rooted in emotional neglect. I remember my mom praising other people but never finding praise within our family. One of many things that planted seeds of this sense of fundamental inferiority. Then life solidified that in various ways.
I resonate with a bunch of this. The idea that what I make is somehow not as good as the “real” version of whatever it is (where “real” is hard to define, but roughly just, always better than what I made).
You mention the emotional neglect and the connection to childhood, and I get the sense you’re interested in figuring it out. It made me think you might like Joe Hudson’s work on YouTube.
Can't agree with this more. I also started learning guitar and producing music very recently. I have no interest in getting heard and appreciated (on most days atleast).
It has been a tremendously rewarding journey to create new music and see myself improve. 10/10 would do again.
Some people just never found what that thing is for them. And usually you find those things doing them the hard way while you suck. And then the reward is people will see what you do and recognize the work you put in. But if suddenly every person with a prompt does the exact same thing with zero effort, it does take away from the joy of doing it. At least if the joy of doing it is related to the feeling of liking to do "hard things" or liking to think of oneself as one that "does hard things". And I'd say that includes a lot of people and a lot of activities.
I bet a lot of accountants in the old days were really good at basic math, and proud of being fast and accurate and now there's calculators and the amount of people that work on mental math just for the love of the game is probably super small in comparison to when it was a core skill of many more people's jobs.
> For me it is beyond trying to make money or become famous,
To clarify, when I speak of "approval", I'm not imagining a successful career or financial success. It's much more basic, i.e. having a few people tell me they genuinely like something I created would do that.
> it is simply to enjoy the journey and the creativity that comes with creating music.
It's unfortunately not simple for me (again, context of long term burnout / depression etc). If I only go by enjoyment, I will watch TV and maybe read and go on bike rides until the end of my days. But that is not fulfilling in the long term. I have a creative drive, but it's rather intermittent and not enough to consistently want to do the work involved. I'm trying to nurture it.
If you're after that, try performing for (campfire guitar? Christmas carols?) or with (entry level jams, especially electronic ones) other people. Much easier to start out that one would think, but it requires a lot of self-confidence. With performing, you can scratch that creative itch by adapting/embellishing source material. A small lick here and there or a handful of alternative voicings are enough!
have you told the people around you that you are looking for that support and that its motivating?
I think you will find that creative works are no more fulfilling than bike rides when you actually get into it. There's no separate magic to it, and a good chance you wont remember doing either of them after some time
You can scratch the same music-exploration itch with a much lower time commitment and get the same thrill of accomplishment as you improve. There is also a built-in crowd of other players at any skill level that you can share your achievements with.
It's not the same glassy-eyed state as you'd get with normal video games, TV, or doom scrolling at all. You will need to focus and clear the mind.
OP said they're trying to nurture their creative drive, which is not the same itch. It's like someone saying they want to learn how to cook, and you recommend they microwave a TV dinner.
I'm a fan of rhythm games, as well as making music. Both are skills, but the game is a pale shade when by comparison IMHO. Monochrome vs the rainbow. OP said they're looking for long-term fulfillment and creative growth. I don't think rhythm games satisfy either, but well, you know, that's just like uh, my opinion man.
But actually creating music or playing an instrument is much more rewarding. The time commitment is part of it, the journey is the destination and all that.
Walk into any library, book store, second hand shop or wherever they sell media. Look at the hundreds of thousands of book, albums, DVD and I wonder how many of those folks were doing it trying to make it big, grab attention or turn it into a career?
And that is a very VERY tiny slice of the entire pie. For everyone successful artist you find, there are hundreds or thousands that never got lucky or had the skills to make it. I put luck first deliberately.
A good example, based on the IBSN listings there are currently 158 million unique books. That is one unique book for every 53 people on the world, how many can you think of?
I love going to old book stores and pulling out something random, usually some paper back from the mid 60's/70's on a topic you probably never even thought of. How much time and effort went into writing that, editing, producing, marketing it? I look up the authors to if they ever made much of it all, about 99% of the time, their name doesn't turn anything up. Despite their published works, they could still be alive, they are already forgotten under the sheer volume of works out there.
There are TV shows I remember, they had whole crews working on it, actors, writers and producers. The only proof they exist online is about a paragraph or two, didn't even get a wiki page. To be appreciated by those close to you, that should be more than enough, but for some it has to be broader, I do not know why.
I think a part of it is that many people come into this world thinking it is a race. I say, IF and that is a very big if; if life is a race, it is a 100meter race and it doesn't matter what position you come in. Saunter your way, take the long way. And yet when you get to the finish line there are loads of people racing past mocking you and desperately trying to convince that "You think that is the finish line? Nah, this is marathon and the real goodies are there!". And so they keep running as fast as possible, wearing themselves out and getting exhausted to no end. The joke being that there is no other finish line.
You can be content in you, content in now. Just be chill... damn it!
I’ve asked an artist if they should be worried about the newest generative AI capabilities. This is his (translated) response:
> Artists? Pencil laborers, more like.. I am in favor of using AI in visuals. It will eliminate a lot of mere decorators, and won’t even slightly affect the artists. I hope AI as a technology has the same effect on the world of ART as the invention of photography had: it got rid of a lot of empty landscape copiers. Impressionism was born shortly after that. See, I believe many cursed photography, but Monet never saw it as a problem.
> I hope AI as a technology has the same effect on the world of ART as the invention of photography had: it got rid of a lot of empty landscape copiers
I like this analogy. Maybe this time around is different, but I like to hope it's not.
The anti-AI discourse is almost identical to anti-photography diatribes from more than a century ago.
Artists will also learn to use AI to make art. I don’t mean slop, which is low effort stuff and I tend to use that term regardless of whether AI was involved. I mean real art where the AI is used with painstaking care the way a photographer uses their camera.
What it will do is it will spoil it for 99% of small time artists that still managed to make a living out of it. It will drown audience with slop and make them not care for new releases even more.
That "artists" idea is that the Monet's will survive, but art is not a rat race where just the Monets need apply. A healthy art scene needs all kinds of creators, at different levels, and needs to be able to sustain a decent above-average quality chunk of them. Not just the Monets.
Not to mention it seems like the pretentious artist in the discussion sees themselves as some outlier Monet type that will be fine.
Claim: What it will do is it will spoil it for 99% of small time artists that still managed to make a living out of it.
Why: It will drown audience with slop and make them not care for new releases even more.
Claim: That "artists" idea is that the Monet's will survive, but art is not a rat race where just the Monets need apply.
Why: (because) a healthy art scene needs all kinds of creators, at different levels, and needs to be able to sustain a decent above-average quality chunk of them. Not just the Monets.
As for the last claim:
Claim: Not to mention it seems like the pretentious artist in the discussion sees themselves as some outlier Monet type that will be fine.
Here's the why behind that (since I didn't elaborate as I find it self-evident):
because he says he's fine with AI, because AI will sweep the art scene from lesser artists and lives the Monets and real artists. Either he claims that he is one of the lesser artists that's OK for AI to sweep away, or he implies that he's one of the good ones that would be fine. The latter sounds far more plausible.
The "phrased slightly differently" is the why. It's not circular, it's one step further, e.g. "why would it spoil it for small time artists" "because it will drawn the audience with slop".
You just keep questioning at the next level, like a small kid asking "any why would it do X", "because Y", "and why would it do Y". Ultimately you'll reach asking why the Big Bang happened or something.
What you're ask for seems to be "ultimate causual mechanism". That's not how arguments work, this isn't Physics. The reader needs to apply their thinking to the implications of extra slop production, for example.
If they don't believe that AI will produce extra slop, I don't know what to tell them.
> Why: It will drown audience with slop and make them not care for new releases even more.
why do you think this is the case though? vs people being more excited to get art made by small artists because they arent ai slop.
tbe small artist opening their stufio to sell prints has always been about the experience of visiting and talking to the artist, not the piece of slop that you end up buying
He would certainly reply that his paintings weren't valued so highly for their functional purpose before.
If AI art doesn't impinge on your friend's business, it's because he was selling art for art's sake rather than (as the majority of artists do to make a living) creating art to fill a functional need. The latter is what photography and AI impact.
A lot of people thought the same thing with everything going from analog -> digital. Or heck, even learning an instrument when MIDI was first introduced.
Even before generative AI, there is a long-going debate in audio circles around simulated guitar amplifiers. The truth is, the simulations of them have gotten so insanely good that now one could simply purchase an all-in-one pedalboard and have basically all of guitar history at your toes.
My rule-of-thumb is this: "does this tool I'm using in particular take away from the authenticity of my performance or songwriting?" Example: I am very keen on performing vocals and guitar at the same time, and I don't have an expensive studio setup, and my office has background noise. I use these tools, and yes even some open source AI ones, 1) remove background noise of the individual tracks and 2) do a final master against a recording I want to target (using something like Matchering or similar [0]). It still sounds like me, my voice isn't perfect, my beat isn't consistent, but it sounds like I rented some studio space. So for me it was a cost-saving measure.
>> one could simply purchase an all-in-one pedalboard and have basically all of guitar history at your toes
And this is actually a problem. Great art usually comes from constraints, real or artificial. These things are a lot of fun to tinker with (a really fun hobby) but one amp, one guitar, and a small number of effects pedals will probably lead to you actually make more and better stuff.
I have an all-in-one amp / pedalboard and it's just more practical, even though all I do is just pick an amp, plug in my guitar and play. They take up less space and cost less money in the long run if you actually do want to use many pedals.
I get what you're saying but in general this specific case I think the all-in-ones win for most people.
This was definitely true for me, which is why I write everything acoustically and ensure the song is "good" before going in my later age. If I want a specific effect, I then google what pedals were used in a particular song or artist, then I try to recreate the chain, and then tinker with that on top.
Ultimately I spent so much of my time worrying about "what crazy expensive equipment should I buy" when I was younger and more into this stuff, and I should have simply just played my shitty instruments and recorded on my shitty equipment. That's on me, but I also find it empowering as an artist that I can clean up my recording in the way that replaces my need for expensive equipment while maintaining (in my humble opinion) a sense of authenticity of my performance. I agree there may be too many knobs, but finding the knobs that I want has never been easier and I would rather live in the now than in the past.
> A lot of people thought the same thing with everything going from analog -> digital.
A lot of people were right. Music gear lead heavily back into analog after the initial analog to digital transition. I started out using computers exclusively. When I purchased my first analog synth, I couldn't believe how much better it sounded than my VST's. It's hard to quantify exactly why, but my ears lit up the second I started using it.
In terms of amp modeling software, some of it is indeed very impressive. But, tends to fall apart when you need to tweak parameters. I assume this has to do with the capture process. But, if you are happy to use stock patches, it's basically an amp replacement.
I love making music, and got into it as a venue to be away from the computer. I still do post-production in Ableton, but everything else happens with gear not even connected to a computer. I've tried to make music with a DAW, but it feels so sterile and boring, compared to actually using hardware to make it.
Maybe get a second-hand Novation Circuit to start with, or some similar "groovebox" that lets you make songs on one device, and see if you actually still do enjoy making music, yet haven't found the right process for you yet.
I don't think you're wasting your time, as long as you're having fun, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world. Sure, AI could probably make "better" (by some definition of "better") music than me, but AI couldn't make my friends smile at me as I play them my music I've made, that's quite literally priceless.
> AI couldn't make my friends smile at me as I play them my music I've made, that's quite literally priceless.
Can I ask how you share music with friends? I guess this is part of my problem, I don't really have anyone I could share with or collaborate with. The few people in my life don't listen to the type of music I like.
I ask them to come over, then I ask them "Hey, mind if I play this for you and you tell me what you think?" basically. Alternatively, send it as a .mp3 via Whatsapp/Telegram and ask for feedback, but that's almost never as fun or useful.
Best way to meet like-minded people is to go to music events where those people are, always a ton of music makers around those, usually also by themselves, sometimes in the back or on the side to the speakers. Most people in such events are OK with being approached by strangers :)
+1 for hardware groovebox. DAW workflow isn't the only workflow. Hardware can be a pain, but if you embrace the limitations it can be really fun and rewarding as well. Korg Electribe originals are my favorite.
Maybe you could see if there's someone who finds the "not fun" part fun and you could collaborate with them. That would solve two problems at the same time.
Either way, I strongly encourage you to keep using a DAW if that brings you joy. Using AI to create art is a different skill set, just like using acoustic instruments is a different skill set from using either. Each option appeals a different amount to different people, and you should just do what brings you the most joy.
You have the answer to the "why do it" in the first part of "why you are doing it". Just because something may be created at the click of the button doesn't mean it fulfills the goals you are looking for. People knit even though there are machines that do that for you. You are doing it for you.
1. All that AI really does is a (partially) randomized exploration of the space that has been spanned by existing music. AI creativity, as far as it can be said to exist, is limited by this. You, on the other hand, are human and not bound by any of these limitations. You are free to explore wild things that no AI can do. Just as a completely random example, you could go out, record noises your environment (even if it's just with the smartphone), grab interesting parts, chop them up, process them and turn them into unique new instruments. Bang on random stuff that has a nice ring to it. Record background hums, apply filters and envelopes to them etc. And there are so many other ways to produce unique creations.
2. Most importantly, music is a form of human expression. It is able to capture the human condition in a unique way. As a human, you can express these things genuinely through your own emotions, experiences, memories etc. AI systems can only produce hollow facsimiles of this. Regardless of whether you are conscious about it, every piece of music that you create is a reflection of you: your thoughts, your emotions, your process. And that imparts the true value on your creations.
> Just as a completely random example, you could go out, record noises your environment (even if it's just with the smartphone), grab interesting parts, chop them up, process them and turn them into unique new instruments.
I'm not sure if you already knew this, but this is actually a thing already - it's been called "Botanica" and there are a bunch of cool tracks floating around.
I just recently setup a very simple home recording studio after picking up drums again at 40. I had the same thoughts, but I'm going it for me and it is extremely therapeutic. Plus, given the genre (extreme metal), I've gotten into much better shape. (Also picked up an 8 string guitar. I never grew out of my edgelordiness. No real point to mentioning this but just wanted to tell someone :)
AI music may eventually satisfy the masses and you can't stop that speeding train, but the process of creating something yourself will always have value if it's something you're interested in creating.
don't sell your work short. it has value because it comes from you, and struggling to finish is unbelievably common in the creation process - not to mention frustration and a lack of joy.
if you're creating because you feel a drive to create, you are making art and that has intrinsic value to yourself and others. if however you are performing the act of musical creation as a means to an end, what you are doing may be better considered work and not art. the work of others can also be appreciated but it is different.
keep at it though. you are asking good questions and unlike many you are also personally engaging with them.
I recently wrote more or less this exact comment on another platform recently (although I've been making music for a while).
I was told that I should make music for myself, but I guess I don't really understand that perspective? It's like with code – I used to enjoy writing code in the past, but these days if I want to build something I'll just generate it with AI because most the time it will be quicker and better than me hand cranking it. I used to enjoy it but coding just seems pointless now.
I don't really get why the average musician would bother recording there own stuff anymore either. If you want to create music then the AI is really good and you should just use that. It took decades to get half decent at playing instruments and producing my own songs, but today a kid can put out a song that sounds far better than what I can do in just 10 minutes with AI.
For the last two decades of my life all my free time was basically spent coding or write music. I can do neither now. I'm trying to learn more practical skills like wood work because that's the only way I've found I can still get that feeling of accomplishment which I got with coding and music, but it doesn't come as naturally to me unfortunately.
Definitely lost a big part of myself over the last year or two which I'm trying to come to terms with.
Maybe I should have been more precise – I'm trying to learn how to physically manifest things in head. Woodwork is part of that, but I'm just generally manufacturing skills from CAD design, electronics & PCB design, metal work, 3d printing, etc.
You should 100% buy a cardboard table from Ikea if you just need a table that sorta does the job for 5 years, but if you want something made of solid wood that's a certain shape and style, you might be better off building your own depending on your product & price requirements.
Similarly there are just little things that I know can be built but there's no real demand for the product because my specific requirements are niche. For example, I have chickens and sometimes we get foxes snooping around their coop at night. I have an alerting system for this, but I'd quite like to be able to trigger gun shot noises and my sprinkler if there's indeed a fox in my garden to try to deter them from coming back.
No one's going to sell stuff like this, but I can make it. I'm also an AI doomer, so feel I need to learn basic skills like this which might help if things start getting bad and I'm somehow still around.
Art is a form of communication. You turn to the arts when the other methods to communicate something either do not feel as if they fit, or feel that they will not encompass the idea you wish to convey. Art is a dialogue with other people, not a commodity. The point is to help yourself understand what you want to say, not to say something that is valuable in way that can be exchanged for goods.
So do not become discouraged by the machine generated sounds. They are only sounds, not a message.
I have done this with music, writing, and many other things. AI doesn’t make any of these things less enjoyable for me because the process of creation itself is the part that I enjoy.
I have a very low bar for what I consider to be a successful creation: it just needs to be enjoyable for myself in the future. Anyone else who happens to enjoy the content I make is a bonus. I have several songs on SoundCloud that I have produced in the past and I still enjoy listening to them.
Few things are as satisfying to me as seeing a musical idea realized and executed well.
It is immensely fun to write, play, and record with friends. In a good session there's usually a moment where something falls into place and suddenly the record feels awesome and the path forward is clear. The whole room will jump up and say "That's it! Do that again!" and shout and high-five and get a second wind to keep going. It is invigorating and it never gets old.
Even if the records aren't any good, it's so. much. fun. to make dumb shit. Whether by yourself or with a friend. Don't underestimate the fact that music is pure play. It is one of the most plastic mediums available to us and you can sculpt it endlessly and continue to surprise yourself with the things that you can make. Have fun and do it for it's own sake.
This is all to say, the reward of making music (for me) is doing the work and being creative. Even if that's all you achieve it's valuable and priceless. You've already won. Great work. All secondary rewards (adoration, financial success, etc) are a cherry on top of that thing you've created. You did that.
There are still several avenues for this, and I imagine they'll continue to exist even in a mostly-AI-enhanced world. You'll need to dedicate time to finding them.
For example, Battle of the Bits [0] is a community all about chiptune music. I'm sure you _could_ use AI to help you learn and produce some things, but the community is mostly about sharing ideas about what works at the electronic level, so even if AI became super capable, it wouldn't help you engage with the community in any meaningful way. There are several such communities across different domains and I imagine they aren't going anywhere anytime soon, regardless of how much improvement happens w.r.t. AI, since the focus is on "what you learned" and not so much "what you did".
Similarly, I have seen communities focused entirely on Silicon Graphics workstations, or pc-98 internals. Human passion-based communities aren't going anywhere, Google just makes it incredibly hard to find them outside of word-of-mouth.
> Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).
This is the reason why a lot of us make music. Writing orchestral pieces is my own meditation. I don't share most of them, and replacing them with AI would defeat the purpose.
Please keep learning it! The world needs more musicians, even if we never hear them.
Learn an instrument (guitar,keys,drums...) if you haven't already and go jam with friends and do concerts instead. That's the best part of making music.
The age of music production is almost over, the age of the music industry already is.
I wouldn't want to be in the DAW/VST business today though, because a lot of potential customers are thinking exactly as you do...
> I'm trying to learn music production with a DAW, sometimes I wonder if I'm wasting my time. Part of my reason for trying this was reading how creative endeavors can be therapeutic (I'm dealing with burnout/depression/cptsd).
If you enjoy the process and its outcomes, then it's not a waste of time. If you are forcing yourself to do it or have another motivation for it that is not rooted in genuine interest, then yes, you are wasting your time.
> I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent
This is a spiritual question, so you will have as many answers as there are askers. I found my answer and am happy to share it with you. Why do it? Because I want to. What is worth doing? What I want to do or what gets me to the things I want. Wanting is a very important process, that is often damaged by conditioning. We are told that some things we want are bad and that some things we don't want are good. Or that ego is evil. So many ways this process can go wrong. I think fixing this in oneself is part of becoming an actual adult. Once you know what you want and what you don't want, you no longer are dependent on others telling you what to do or forcing you to do things you shouldn't be doing. Ego is not evil, it's there for a reason. Some people have an overgrown one while others have an underdeveloped one. What is needed is balance. I don't think the pattern recognition machine has anything to do with it. I suspect, that a lot of people who use music as a band aid for personal problems, i.e. people who build their identity around being special due to music making, are the ones who are afraid of AI, but if you just enjoy making music, then what does it matter if music itself is patterned and if a machine can exploit that? It doesn't take anything away from the joy of making music, if you experience it in the first place.
I need to force myself to do almost everything. Simply saying it's a waste of time because of that isn't practical unless I give up on life entirely.
In practice, it's not binary. I'm interested because I want to make music similar to that which I like listening to.
Sometimes I get enjoyment out of it, but sometimes I lose interest maybe because I'm facing a frustration.
My question of wasting time is connected to "can I even create something worth listening to". If nothing I could make is worth listening to, then I guess I would feel the process of creation is pointless.
I've heard others write about how what they produce is worth listening to, to them. I think that is enough, but I also think I lack confidence in my own judgement. Almost like I need someone else to confirm my validity. I have recognized that as a result of emotional neglect, but I haven't figured out how to fix it.
I understand how you feel, because I have been there.
Worthiness is an illusion created by the mind. In reality, there is no worthiness. "can I even create something worth listening to" is an absurd question. You either like what you are hearing or you don't.
Sounds like you are not in a good place right now. The only thing I can say, that I hope won't sound patronizing, is that it is just a stage in the process of life. When I felt that way, it was both terrifying (why do I feel that way) and not terrifying (I don't feel anything). Some call it depression. Maybe they are right. For me, it's the quiet before the storm - the old has to die for the new to be born. I can now see, that the reason for that was the life I lived up to that point was not the life I wanted to live. I wasn't authentic to myself. I was weighed down by coping mechanisms, misguided beliefs, fear, and trauma. There was so much I had to reject and heal. Took me a few years, but now life has a new taste to it.
You said you are facing frustration. Good. Face it. Whatever it is that you feel, don't try to run from it or cover it with something else. The only way is through. Good luck
I agree, the question of “why should I bother to do x/y/z when AI can do it so much better/faster/easier?” will become more prevalent and urgent as time goes on, resulting in a sort of creative and intellectual nihilism that will be harder on bright, intelligent people.
It was already difficult in the pre-AI age to engage with some activity in a meaningful way for the love of the process. AI now serves as the ultimate temptation away from doing the process yourself, getting the reward with much less of the effort. At work this may be appropriate, but life is not your work. We must be wary of using AI for activities that reduce the texture of our lives, making it less rich experientially. Bold claims to AI changing the world is reducing human activity to that which is readily generated on computing devices, and with it collapsing our sense of self to those few activities.
I used to make a lot of music in FL, mostly beats. I would make beats similar to whatever I was listening to at the time, try to get a little weirder with it every time. Like making Memphis style beats with crushed drums and warped samples running through PS1 reverb until it's drowning. It was never for anyone, I would send my songs to my group chat with my buddies for feedback. Kind of fell off just because I got into other hobbies. It doesn't need to be for anyone else. A re-mix of a song I did got 2M on YouTube though, the real catharsis was beating the botted 300k views the shitty rapper from my grad class had though. That video is copyright struck so I don't make any money from it, but that was never the goal, I just uploaded so I could send my songs to the boys/listen on my phone to do the 'ol car test.
I find the process itself a balm for the soul. It’s the one part of my life where only my vision matters, and I am free to completely disregard what others want. That includes some kind of imaginary audience.
I have a bunch of friends who also make music for fun and we share demos and build each other up. Sometimes we make stuff together, send each other inspo, discuss how to improve something in a song, etc.
But I have to say, the end result is completely irrelevant here. We’re all doing it for the fun of making, not for the finished product.
Given that you said you get the energy from the social element and approval, you could build a social network that will be a source of that approval for your creations. Otherwise you could find a hobby that gives you what you’re looking for without the less enjoyable parts.
I'm having fun building elaborate software that meets my needs precisely and nobody else's. I mean, maybe it would meet other's needs but that production would take away from the fun and learning I have building it, and would also reduce its utility for me personally.
If you do it for money it is maybe a waste of time, because the chance to win the race were already low and now you have to compete with a tsunami of AI generated music. If you do it for your enjoyment, nothing changed and nothing will change
I know this is kind of at odds with this thread in general but
> but I know it requires work (...) to finish it
If you're like me and, when you get to this stage, you tend to burn out and abandon the thing, have you tried using gen AI to get you over that hump?
I love coding and still do but I often reached a point where all the fun, easy things were done and I'd be stuck at 90% with only difficult and boring tasks. I've been using Claude recently to just get me over that hump and finish my projects. It can still be fulfilling if you do it right.
Hey friend, if it helps, every “song” you make will eventually become a symbol and memory of a time in your life. It doesn’t have to be good. Sometimes these sounds have even more fidelity than text when it comes to capturing your emotional state and thoughts at the time. I didn’t realize that for a while but in retrospect all of the “it sounds bad” and “I didn’t finish it” didn’t matter
But you will end up with something where you can say „this is mine, I did that“ for the rest of your life. Even if no one ever cares. I come back to some of the things I did in the past through hard labour (coding projects, skateboarding videos) and even if it is nice if others appreciate this, they are still always there for myself as sign of what I achieved.
I am hopeful that in the near future once AI has saturated as much of everything that it can that it will actually become even more worth it to do things. At least for me the only reason to experience art in any form is that there was human intent behind it. Thus making human generated content more valuable compared to the flood of empty AI content.
Just pick up your instrument and make some noise. DAWs are time sinks.
Music is about the “feel” first and foremost. Playing music on a physical instrument or singing is a feel thing.
DAWs are tools for polishing what was created with feeling into something “produced”. If that’s what you want to end up with, that’s ok. Just be clear with yourself on which you’re trying to do.
I had this exact realization. Taking chords from a chord progression generator, putting it into FL studio, adding a random melody that stays in the key from a cool synth preset, some random drum loop, and end result? I guess it could be called music. Its a combination of sounds that doesnt sound actively bad.
I noticed the problem when I realized I couldn't make music in a specific mood or genre. Sometimes I'd finish my song and think "oh wow, a happy rock song" or "a sad edm song" or whatever but it was always just random chance where I ended up. With music theory knowledge I could always add more instruments or notes that could exist in that place but with 0 direction, whatever I made was always listenable but never more than that.
I'd wager most people who make music are making it for the sheer joy of expression. Like .001% of people who make music get any kind of meaningful monetary return on it, and I think anyone who goes into it looking for monetary return is doing it for the wrong reasons. In my view, AI changes nothing where it matters it music.
Mhm... it sounds like the main problem is that you like the result more than the actual process.
If you start a new hobby, you should enjoy the time you spend doing it. Of course, every hobby has its chores or tedious parts, but doing it just for the end product or for the validation you get from others will never work in the long run.
For one, acquiring an instrument is expensive - even secondhand, most instruments cost a significant amount of money. Learning it properly is even more important and expensive - fixing something in a DAW is easy, unlearning muscle memory is much harder.
Keeping up said muscle memory also isn't easy. Sure, if you got a free-standing house, no one will care much about a drum set, trumpet or whatever. But most people don't have that luxury in urban sets any more, and typical residential building quality makes even some electronic instruments (e.g. kicks still cause some amount of noise passing through floors) a challenge. Building noise ordnances / HOA rules are a bitch on top of that - most allow only a limited time window in the afternoon, useless for working-class people.
Local community groups... if your community has one, and they have some studio space where noise doesn't matter, great! Most, unfortunately, don't - space in urban environments is already rare and at a hefty premium, space that accepts noise and has adequate resources (in practice: a usable toilet is the most important) is even rarer.
> For one, acquiring an instrument is expensive - even secondhand
Depends on the instrument. You can get a completely new Harley Benton electric guitar for sub-$200.
> Sure, if you got a free-standing house
Sure, trumpets and classical instruments are a challenge, but all the guitars and all the keys can be practiced on headphones with near-zero noise. It's not an excuse.
Lmao compared to the past things are easier than ever. Can you imagine telling a farmer from 100 years ago that life is too hard? Society has made people accustomed to free stuff and cushy living. Life IS hard for the majority of us without significant wealth.
You can find really affordable used guitars or keyboards which are completely suitable for beginners. Beginner's electric drum kits are cheaper than real ones and hook up to headphones - there goes your sound problems.
I definitely agree it is much harder to learn a instrument than it is to learn a DAW. Believe me, I've done both.
There are lots of reasons to forego picking up an instrument, but living in an apartment or a modest budget are certainly not good reasons.
>> For one, acquiring an instrument is expensive - even secondhand, most instruments cost a significant amount of money.
This isn't true at all. You can get a brand new Squier Strat for < $200 and a second hand one for less than half that. You can pick up used acoustic guitars for next to nothing if you look hard enough. You can get a used digital piano for < $200 too.
Go check out a drum circle, all you need is a bucket. Learn to sing, join a choir. It’s not that hard if you quit making excuses. I’ve lived in small towns in rural areas for most of my life and there have been multiple community music groups in all of them.
instruments have never been cheaper, and for as dense as US cities can be now, they're still not that dense and people have learned to play instruments in denser settings
What? I never said that. A DAW is not a musical instrument, it does not produce sound. You output an audio file, then it’s played through a speaker. It kills the joy of performing in my opinion. That doesn’t make it not music.
1. None of this should matter if you do it because it’s therapeutic.
2. If it turns out it’s not therapeutic for you, try something different. Play piano. Learn chess. Learn MMA. Go for a run. Heck, vibecode something silly. Music production is not the only way, if you have it a good try and it just frustrates you, try something else.
What about finding game creators or similar who could make use of a musical collaborator. Your music gains an extra purpose, you mix with other creatives and those others get their soundtrack sorted before they head to Suno as the easy option.
I have little interest in doing a DJ set in public but I'll spend hours crate digging for new music and mixing circular black slabs of vinyl for nothing more than the love of the craft.
It's not a waste of time. Every time some new thing comes out and becomes popular, everyone everywhere says everything must be that thing because it's the future. In America, everyone wanted pure white sliced bread. People wanted frozen TV dinners. People wanted chain fast food restaurants. People wanted no effort reality TV. People wanted endless superhero movies.
Now people want actual food and they want stuff made with human hands and they want to know what's in it. People want TV shows with a proper story. People are beyond done with cookie cutter superhero movies.
The slop wave is going to pass. AI can make stuff that sounds super polished and perfect, but people will want the rough and crude touch of something hand made. They'll want to see videos of musicians showing behind the scenes of how they made something. They'll want to go and see a musician perform. Interest in 100% AI generated music will fade into the background and it'll be relegated to soulless Muzak used for ambiance in soulless chain restaurants too cheap to pay for actual music and too afraid to play any songs that might offend or annoy someone.
The not-fun work isn’t on the song, it’s on you. Improving the song is a byproduct. This only really becomes apparent over time but you’ll realise you were working on yourself all along.
If you're learning for your own enjoyment then you should keep learning. But regardless of AI, the music industry has always been notoriously difficult to get into
Fear not, a few of us are building in the direction you're hoping. Leveraging AI to make it easier to stay in a creative headspace with music rather than getting caught in a spreadsheet with endless settings
Sharing is definitely a core part of "why do it", but that can be sharing with friends/family or a living room performance
I have ~40 demoes from a music career that never took off. Now I am feeding little Suno with this demoes, turning them into afrobeat with oboe, deep house with harmonica, etc, and reliving the creative joy.
You can make a decent demo in a DAW and run it through AI for a nice production. The art of writing songs is still equally hard IMO. And a good song is still good, no matter what costume it wears.
It's worth doing. Those "no AI" mixes on youtube are doing great, though the vast majority of people is clueless and will happily digest any slop.
Create for yourself, and for those that seek the human effort and passion. There's an increasing number of us.
I'm the biggest doomer on this site, yet I'm certain human art will become even more valuable, and appreciated, than it has ever been before in history. Just don't expect to make billions out of it, or to reach out to the masses that are quite content with industrial-scale mediocrity.
You are clearly just at the beginning of your musical journey. I am happy for you. Yes, music for me too makes no sense without other people. This means, I suggest, that you must go out and find other people to collaborate with. The more you do it the more you realize just how many people out there are in the same boat as you. And once you find that right person or group, it’s like nothing else. And let’s be clear, this will take you far far outside your normal social circle. The type of people who like the same music as you may be completely different in every other way. It is important to actively seek out the right people and along that journey, define exactly what that person is, as well as who you are. This is the thing I care most about and yes I hope that more tools, AI or not come out to reduce that work that you have to do to make something polished, so everyone can focus on being creative.
>I'm at the stage where sometimes I make something that sounds good (to me) but I know it requires work (in the "not fun" sense) to finish it and even then, it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself.
That's true of 99% of very polished finished work too. Amazing bands and artists in Spotify with sub 1000 streams/month.
>None of these problems are "new", but I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent. Kind of wondering how others are affected by all this, if at all.
Absolutely. One big concern is that even if you do it and you're proud of it, many will think it's AI anyway.
Plus the over-inflation of AI generated shit. It could all die in a fire.
> I've always struggled to enjoy anything that doesn't involve other people in some way
Well... play in band/orchestra ? You get to meet people, interact with them, build with them, etc.
I've been making music solo using various machines and computers all my life and I love it, but it's probably not for everyone. Yes, you're alone. Yes, (almost) nobody cares, so if you can't enjoy the process there is no point really.
() from time to time someone will show some interest but let's face it: there's just too much good music released everyday, competing with other distractions for the attention of the people.
For people like me, AI doesn't change much, it's another tool. We've been abusing technology in music for decades.
It depends what you want to get out of it, and what you think art itself really is.
If it's nothing but an end product, that needs to fit a specific aesthetic, with a specific sound, then I probably agree. AI is making that "pointless" in a way.
Almost everyone I know who's been an artist for years though, has come to a similar realization: What you set out to create, and what it turns into through the process of creating it are different things. The meaning, truly is found along the way.
You can always be better, there's always more to learn. Nothing is ever truly perfect, or "complete"
If you write harmony, there's always a different way it could be written, that might fit better, or be more interesting. If you do sound design, whether that's with getting different guitar tones, synth programming, unique recording techniques, there's always more to learn, or a different way to approach it.
If the only point is an end result, then AI can deliver a simulacra of that.
For everyone I know that loves music, or working with DAWs, the end result is an ever shifting target as you learn more, and understand music in a different way.
Ultimately, there are no shortcuts to making something new, because the practice of trying to make things is what results in what your art becomes. Tools and technology can shape what that thing ends up being, but they (traditionally) don't replace the process of creating it, and the feedback loop between who you are and the decisions you make along the way.
Stripping all of that out, and jumping to a "finished" product, is, well very product focused, but to me completely devoid of art or musicianship.
Some people seem to compare this to sampling, but anyone who's ever actually worked with sampling in a creative way will realize how hollow that comparison is. Almost all good sampling still requires a good deal of active feedback, between the person working with it and the way THEY hear what's going on.
Remove the person from that loop, replace the decisions with a general vague notion, and you end up with something that sounds "like" music, but that feedback loop is broken.
I see the same thing with all the AI UI design that's coming out. It's all generally quite competent, and exactly the same. Great for a business tool, where maybe the velocity and an acceptable MVP is the only point, but terrible for actual design and novel thought.
TL;dr: Why do it? Because you want to, and you think that with enough time engaging with something you'll change, just as it does, and the result isn't something you could have ever predicted when you started. It changes you, and that's the point. Just like learning an instrument, or learning to code. It's not purely about the produced result, and that very result fundamentally is changed by you actively engaging with whatever the medium is.
> Stripping all of that out, and jumping to a "finished" product, is, well very product focused, but to me completely devoid of art or musicianship.
This hits very close to the philosophical core of the AI debacle.
All hardcore fans of AI just want things done. The process is of no interest to them.
This is truly an eschatologic problem of desire. Consider:
Some people want to grab their result, attain satiation, have orgasm, and die, right now.
Others would much rather enjoy the process, the meal itself, indulge in gentle act of love in tune with the partner, and just keep on living their lives, continuously.
Thanks, I like this answer. I think part of my problem is more general, a struggle to enjoy something when I can tell I'm not good at it. It's kind of a circular problem, I will need to spend more time on it to get better and I need to conjure confidence that I could do so out of the ether.
I have experienced the process you're talking about, although to some degree I feel it's symptomatic of a lack of skill. I start out with some kind of inspiration in mind, but end up with a compromise between what I can do and what sounds good when I fiddle around with things. Part of me feels dissatisfaction that I don't know which knobs to turn to get what I want, but I suppose that's just the normal learning process (albeit less structured than those I have gone through in the past, which is its own obstacle sometimes).
I’ve also struggled with the “not enjoying something because I suck at it” problem, and it’s a tough one. The answer is to remove expectations, but much easier said than done.
That said, I wonder if doing it with other people who suck would help. I started playing ice hockey as an adult, and the thing that got me over the initial hump of being completely useless was doing lessons with other newbies in my exact shoes (or skates) rather than trying to go right to full speed games.
I'm at the stage where sometimes I make something that sounds good (to me) but I know it requires work (in the "not fun" sense) to finish it and even then, it will likely never be appreciated by anyone but myself.
Which isn't a problem if the process itself is joyful, but I have to admit I've always struggled to enjoy anything that doesn't involve other people in some way (shared goal or approval of some form).
None of these problems are "new", but I feel like AI is making this question of "why do it" or "what is worth doing" even more urgent. Kind of wondering how others are affected by all this, if at all.