We've reached the point where literally millions of everyday people can produce music of reasonable to excellent quality without the need for expensive equipment or studio time.

I find myself wondering what this means for today's musician. What sets this one person apart from the other people who now have the ability to manipulate audio in complex, previously unimaginable ways?

Without singling out any famous musician (I have a good example from a group I like, but people will interpret my singling out as an insult), I want to bring up the example of sample-based, loop-based music. On a large number of albums, you will find sections of music that use everyday sounds in a musical fashion. Doors slamming, the shutter of a camera, a metal can, the sound of wood snapping, water splashing, and so on. The examples are endless.

Samples being looped are the best example because while the results might be complex, the approach to discovering and creating these results is not.

Here's the big, embarrassing reality: anyone reading this can go to http://www.freesound.org/ or use any other royalty-free sample resource, download a completely free audio sequencer (or something such as Reaper, which isn't free--but free), and edit a bunch of sounds to make a 'beat' or 'track' that could actually be played on radio provided that it doesn't clip.

All you have to do is make sure that the audio doesn't clip and that you mix reasonably well so that the different parts can be heard.

You might argue "but what about the rules of mixing and mastering!" I would concede that you had a point--if you had said this two decades ago. Need I remind you of the loudness wars?



Need I remind you of how people listen to music these days?



With people settling for lower sound quality in the first place, who would even notice the difference between some amateur's attempt at making songs and the professional's output?

Especially when it comes to songs intended to sound either distorted, degraded, or just plain old with the use of distortion plug-ins or filtering... just how can one tell the difference?

You might tell me that the professional intended to create that effect.

So what? What happens when we intend to create that effect as well because it's so easy to create with naive knob-twiddling?

You might tell me that the professional knows what they're doing and understands the math and the theory behind it.

So what? We might not know the theory, but the point is that we can create extremely convincing works in the same style.

You might tell me that professional did it first.

So what? Other professionals usually do variations of the same style when a new technique is pioneered--is it somehow less appealing when we do it?

You might finally add that the professional can create much more than that one style.

This is the one point I would give you, but it means nothing in this day and age. We live in the age of singles. People will think it's your 'style' if you do lo-fi. You don't even need to prove that you can create higher quality works because it just might turn out that your listeners won't even care or have the ability to appreciate it anyway.

So what does this all mean?

I feel that the one redeeming factor in all of this is that we are rapidly reaching a level where the musicians who receive the most accolade will be the ones who are the most creative and original no matter what technology they have. This could be a great thing for music because in order to differentiate yourself from the masses of people who can do the same thing that you do, you will have to create something so unique... so amazing that it makes everything else worthless. More resources won't provide this to you like in the past, it will require genius innovation, it will require musicians to push the boundaries further than they've ever pushed them.

If I were a professional musician I'd be struggling to constantly create incredibly original content and I'd be changing up my style constantly so that the amateurs couldn't copy or catch up with me.

But not many musicians are doing this, unfortunately. We are being subject to a lot of "I can do that too" music and it's a bit depressing.

What do you think about all this?