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Two things srping to mind:
The first is that the term producer has become bastardised for our uses, as opposed to the traditional meaning.
It used to mean the guy that gave an overall feel or subtle changes in aesthetic, rhythm or overall sound to an existing piece of music; a band would have written a track, and the producer just refined it, and certain bands/artists would choose producers based on what they would bring to the band's/artist's sound.
For us (EDM) "producer" means the guy that composes,writes,arranges,sound designs, tracks, engineers, mixes and masters the song from scratch. It's a complete misnoma.
Why bring this up? Becuase I think it's detrimental in some ways to what the ultimate goal is: make a good fucking piece of music. The problem is that all these stages are distractions and spread you thin. Not saying ti can't be done, but most people I know and respect have at least a couple of people helping them now, as they have learned their time is better spent elsewhere to make good music. All my score composing friends, can mix their own scores, but don't as there are people who can do it better and then they don't concentrate on engineering then, just writing something that is worth engineering.
I'm not saying that we can't do it all but often I find that people who are stifled, are caught up by all the other aspects and have forgotten the only goal that matters: make something musically interesting. I could care fucking less if you spent months mastering Zebra just to make that one lead accompaniment.
Theses other processes are technical, not necessarily creative (although there is crossover) and that hurts some of the process IMO.
Maybe it's becuase I've spent a fair bit of time with some serious pro engineers, but when you hear them talking about "producing" they get very nervous, and are nearly terrified not to blur the line of what they are doing and what a real producer is meant to be doing. They are, in their minds, completely separate disciplines.
The second thing is not to over think it - that's why I believe most schranz is formulaic. It's over intellectualised - it's no longer about a vibe that just wants to make you jack your body in a club (ask l4c about his jumpstyle for more info). The shit has been too thought through and that's why I reckon (outside of the "commercial product" reasons) Artists start out interesting, get boring and make formulaic rubbish devout of life or interesting feel.
So when anyone says I find I've got better but I'm less inspired, stop thinking and just do.
Make something on the fly. Use a drum machine. Play/Jam out loud on your keyboard and record it. Get drunk with an artist more talented than or very different to you and record it all.
Stop obsessing about the details and most importantly, stop listening to all the stuff other people make that is formulaic and boring. Listen to people who make something that you're not able to and try to get close, otherwise you're just adding to the pile of dross.
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