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| quote: | Originally posted by orTofønChiLd
after reading this i concur, analogue is better than digital |
Unless you use analogue saturation VST's. 
Yeah... And sorry, Steven. You and I are on the same page, a bit, but I'm pretty much giving my shit away. I doubt, highly, that I'm lowering scarcity of the top-notch, quality beats out there by offering free, full down-loads of my music, but to say that it's not the economy seems dubious.
For starters, I have been pretty unemployed for the past three years. I won't get into the details but I will say that I've been on several job interviews; have been told, outright, that my resume' over-qualifies me for the part-time, minimum wage jobs to which I have been reduced to applying for - even with the three-year gap in my employment history (although I suspect that does discourage being heaped with the yes pile). In short, even though I still apply for the jobs which I know, full-well, I am capable of, I'm also applying for jobs I've done years ago - stuff that I absolutely swore I would never do, again. And still - nothing.
What that means for me is that I don't have the funds to purchase equipment - even software - that would make my work as a producer easier and also fundamentally better. It might be a poor workman who blames his tools, but let me tell you that, having upgraded from Project 5 to Sonar, has been like turning on a light in the area of quality, in-so-far as music production is concerned. Having upgraded my computer and DAW have shaved what must have been hours off of my work-flow and has eliminated many of the steps I used to have to take in order to obtain the quality I thought should be offered. My current upgrade, notwithstanding, the difference between what I can do, right now, and what I'd like to be able to do has a lot to do with procuring more hardware to include a computer strictly dedicated as a DAW - more robust and expensive than this cross-trainer I'm currently using.
I am far from the arrogant American Idol contestant vainly attempting to tell Simon Cowel (prospected label owners, distributors, or the general public for that matter) that, I am the next Paul van Dyke, and he is making a serious mistake for not supporting me. Fact is that I take risks in adopting the style I've adopted; that even without my unflinching preference for break-beat, I tend to be somewhat more unorthodox than most producers, and that it's been difficult bringing it to a receptive market, all things considered. There are also mistakes, I'm sure I'm making (both in marketing and in music), that unaddressed hinder the quality of material I make available - even considering my meager kit.
All told, however, I'm very much the self-contained operation. When I'm not working on music, I'm working on graphics for album covers or trying to figure out how to develop my currently appalling face-book page (and, of course, filling out applications and doing job-interviews for part-time post-renter, apartment cleaning and gas-station-attendant - among the jobs I have applied for the week before last). I have listened to several reports by NPR's On the Media that music industry is suck and then heard just as many reviews of music on NPR, among other media, which were absolutely glowing about music I (like to think I) could have done better, using Project 5 and my old Pentium 4 computer. It is irksome when Rolling Stone Magazine refers to a face-book page where some ass-hole's player is chock full of shit it would take me ten minutes, from start to finish, to make - and better than that ass-hole did.
This must be the second thread, this week, where someone has posted a complaint from the industry perspective, griping about the state of things. It's either a lack of talent or a lack of funds or a lack of something and, while I find several areas of my life lacking, I also don't complain about them and can easily realize that about 90% of it is within my dominion to do something about.
I hear a lot about unemployed people who just do nothing, at all, because they have given up. They do nothing about their situation, because they have nothing they think they can do. I am not that man. Pretty much every waking hour, I am up to something and I am still squirming financially - but at least I don't complain about it.
You complain about the industry being in dire shape, but I'll submit, just by virtue of the Rolling Stone article pointing to a sub-par producer, that those at the reigns of the industry aren't exactly doing all the right things. Never-minding poor, little, old me, there are people here, posting on this board and in this thread, no less, who should have easily been the subject(s) of that article - and yet those connections aren't being made.
If you want to know the reasons for your troubles, I'll submit my opinion that they are poor taste in conjunction with an acceptable level of mediocrity. Scott Hardkiss, even though I don't blame you, specifically, is an excellent example of that. Assholes like him don't exactly raise the bar for the rest of us. Now, I haven't heard you spin and I haven't heard your productions, but you're in here, complaining about a sorry state of affairs.
It's a competition and I freely admit that I am, somewhat humbly, at the bottom of the food chain. That said, I have no schadenfreude for you at the top, middle, or wherever you are, even though you seem to be bleating about your revenue projections and there's blood in the water. I also don't really care, lest you turn yourself into the hiring manager I've been looking for, that you succeed.
What's safe to say is that I think that label owners, in some measure, are part of the problem. Another part of the problem is that, while it takes a monumental effort to make a really good song, it takes a very minimal effort to make music which is as disposable as it is danceable to by the club goers who drink themselves imbecilic, every weekend.
I'll submit that I'm a little ticked off to find you bitching in this forum when I try pretty hard at what I do and don't. I'm not saying that you don't try hard, either. Luck is the residue of effort, after-all. But please, don't advertise that you're part of the problem you've been profiting off of for quite a while and then, as things seem to be heading south, come and bitch about the net result.
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Now with extra singles!
my old stuff, not quite up to snuff - but I still dig it - UPDATED 9/23/2012
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