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Post by cowboycoalminer on Mar 10, 2015 11:43:51 GMT -6
I recently bought the most inspiring intstrument I've ever owned. I can't seem to be able to put it down. And I can't get much work done because I just want to sit around and thump on this guitar. Losing sleep because I can't go to bed for wanting to play.
The thought occurred to me last night at 2 am on a work day, I used to love this stuff. I mean really love it. I'd sit for 8 or 10 hours straight playing by myself and to myself.
I just don't do that anymore. Making music has become a task, mechanical. I want to get back to that point in my life when making music was about pleasing myself instead of trying to please others.
Thinking out loud.
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 10, 2015 11:47:25 GMT -6
This?
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Mar 10, 2015 12:07:35 GMT -6
That post is disturbing so many different levels JK..
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Post by tonycamphd on Mar 10, 2015 12:28:51 GMT -6
insert code here
Short answer= to get chicks 8)
long answer= to get chicks 8)
honest answer is a question= how do people live NOT making music? It's my salvation quite honestly, I've always done it for myself, if someone else digs it?... It's a bonus 8)
btw cowboy, congrats on the new found inspiration
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Post by sll on Mar 10, 2015 12:32:25 GMT -6
I recently bought the most inspiring intstrument I've ever owned. I can't seem to be able to put it down. And I can't get much work done because I just want to sit around and thump on this guitar. Losing sleep because I can't go to bed for wanting to play. The thought occurred to me last night at 2 am on a work day, I used to love this stuff. I mean really love it. I'd sit for 8 or 10 hours straight playing by myself and to myself. I just don't do that anymore. Making music has become a task, mechanical. I want to get back to that point in my life when making music was about pleasing myself instead of trying to please others. Thinking out loud. I hear you. I find that making music has become a chore most of the time as well. I miss the days when I had a cassette multi-track and an SM57. It was so much easier to be creative then. I had more time in those days, but now, when I do get time, I spend most of it setting up gear, dialing in a sound, running back and forth to set levels. By the time I get around to hitting record, I'm burned out, or time's up. It's too easy to forget why we got into this in the first place. My life has been a sine wave around the zero crossing point that is music. Every once in a while the two cross and I remember how fun it was. Then, it's off to something else that has to be done instead. It's ironic, back when I was in college, I had many creative outlets and bands to play in. I didn't have any gear, or place to record then. Now, I have killer gear and an adequate studio space, but no band or projects of my own to record. Somedays I feel like I would trade all that gear in for the time and opportunity to play again. |
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Post by tasteliketape on Mar 10, 2015 14:55:53 GMT -6
My studio been.on hold for a move( divorce)
but managed to have an acoustic built by this guy in Minnesota (Scott) and like cowboy said hard to put it down amazing guitar but all this has let me enjoy just playing for me which was originally what it was all about
sit on the front porch without no shoes picken the bass (or acoustic) an singing the blues
Mr Cale had it right lol
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Post by Johnkenn on Mar 10, 2015 15:05:24 GMT -6
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Post by kcatthedog on Mar 10, 2015 15:20:17 GMT -6
With recording its easy to get caught in trying to be perfect and or trying to perfect everything, yet when you are inspired and or writing; I think we are just in the moment and it is inherently enjoyable and in a way carefree.
perhaps we can/should try to have the same spirit with recording ?
Enjoy your new guitar cowboy !
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Post by formatcyes on Mar 10, 2015 15:23:05 GMT -6
The problem now is we do everything..
We are the engineer, the IT guy, the cleaner, coffee boy, accounts manager, electronics tech,shit kicker and many more when all that work is done we get to be the artist. But it doesen't stop now we have to compose, play/program all the parts. Mix and master.. While all this is fun it is taking away from the reason most of us play...
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Post by sll on Mar 10, 2015 15:38:28 GMT -6
Ask Cowboy what he got  here are my two monkeys. Sorry John, those are not a matched pair. You might as well send them to me. |
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Post by kcatthedog on Mar 10, 2015 15:54:51 GMT -6
shhh JK is colour blind !
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Post by lpedrum on Mar 10, 2015 16:22:51 GMT -6
I'm not trying to be contrary, but I've been thinking more and more lately about how helping others is a big part of why I continue in music. Honestly, if music was just a solo pursuit of my own I don't think that would be enough for me anymore. I have an ego like anyone else, but I'd never want to be a front person--to much me me me!
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Post by mrholmes on Mar 10, 2015 17:48:52 GMT -6
I became a professional guitar player because I want to please myself, and I am happy if others are pleased when they listen to it. Making music is a way to communicate to humans around the world. You also can comunicate via an Album etc. Charlie Haden said that making music is the best what he can do against stupid politics like G.W. Bush did it. If I play for my own, live or while I am teaching I know it brings peace to the minds, it slows down myself and my audiance with luck it helps to keep us away from reading stupid propaganda by our governments. And with a lot of luck it contributes to a world peace one day. Making Music is like a prayer. We express our feeling and with this we send waves to the universe. It is a fact of physics that energy is unlimited if it once is set free. You do not have to be a famous musician. If you only touch one person with your music you made the world a better place in this moment. Thats the reason why I make music.
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Post by 79sg on Mar 10, 2015 18:25:23 GMT -6
I've contemplated this many times and end up in the same place , we make music because it's who we are whether we are commercially successful or not. We do this because otherwise we'd spend countless hours in therapy but creating music is our therapy. It's what keeps us going, it's our hopes and dreams, why? Because it's ours and it cannot be taken away from us. It's a never ending quest to be better tomorrow than we were today. It's an obsession but a good one.
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Mar 10, 2015 18:36:21 GMT -6
I've contemplated this many times and end up in the same place , we make music because it's who we are whether we are commercially successful or not. We do this because otherwise we'd spend countless hours in therapy but creating music is our therapy. It's what keeps us going, it's our hopes and dreams, why? Because it's ours and it cannot be taken away from us. It's a never ending quest to be better tomorrow than we were today. It's an obsession but a good one. This is well said! |
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Post by Martin John Butler on Mar 10, 2015 18:58:30 GMT -6
when making music was about pleasing myself instead of trying to please others. There's the rub, when you make music you love, within it, all the hopes and dreams your soul contains is imprinted there. That is what attracts people to music, and by nature, it is a healing force for them, and for yourself by default. You don't have to sacrifice your art to please, it's your true art that helps people, not the construction of something commercial and pleasant by design. We all gotta live and eat and have responsibilities, but if you take your art away from its true direction, it's soul killing, and I've been guilty of doing that at times. Also, we're in transition, working with other musicians was more fruitful, but controlling results by DIY is often a response to so many negative things we encounter in the music business. What we gain in autonomy, we lose in collaboration. This is why I'm so grateful to some of the wonderful folks here, I feel I have some friends who help keep me on the path, and they offer such generous help. I feel they want to see me happy and doing well, and I want to see them win too, whatever their style and tastes are. |
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Post by matt on Mar 10, 2015 19:45:51 GMT -6
Making Music is like a prayer. We express our feeling and with this we send waves to the universe. It is a fact of physics that energy is unlimited if it once is set free. Yes. Yes!!! Very profound, my Good Holmes, and deeply true. I have always loved music to the point where I felt compelled to make it - first as a guitarist who covered the playing of others, then (hesitantly at first) as a musician who was/is brave enough to create. The act of creation is complex. It's part defiant, part questioning, part supplication - and more. Light and Shade. A transient expression celebrating the gift of life. A display of raw ego. Or love. No other art form is like it. Therein is the kernel, the truth, the power of music: no other thing (other than killer sex maybe) can make an otherwise sober person cry tears of ecstasy. Or shout "1978!" over and over again at a concert - held in 2012. For the entire human race, music is the real master. |
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Post by RicFoxx on Mar 10, 2015 21:17:35 GMT -6
I do it because it gives me a high. I don't make music for other people...I make it for me. I love sitting in a room with my monitors set up to where I can play and sing for hours on end of my favorite songs that make me feel and I can relate to. Then it usually inspires me to create...and then I create and when I do this I feel like Im doing what I was born to do.
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Mar 10, 2015 22:37:34 GMT -6
I do it because it gives me a high. I don't make music for other people...I make it for me. I love sitting in a room with my monitors set up to where I can play and sing for hours on end of my favorite songs that make me feel and I can relate to. Then it usually inspires me to create...and then I create and when I do this I feel like Im doing what I was born to do. That's because you WERE born to do it. I can prove that in court. I've heard enough of your evidence to convict!! |
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Post by swurveman on Mar 11, 2015 7:10:31 GMT -6
I do it for the challenge to get better in all areas. It's a labor of love. What's tough for me is the decline of the music business. If I did it for money, or had to do it to support my family, I'd be extremely discouraged and would have gotten out at least 10 years ago. I'm lucky I can do it for the love of it.
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Post by swurveman on Mar 11, 2015 7:29:25 GMT -6
I want to get back to that point in my life when making music was about pleasing myself instead of trying to please others. The more I record other people's music, the more I'm finding this to be an interesting aspect of music. For example, I had a band come in where the guitarist was all set up to play, when the vocalist went over to the amp and started fiddling with the tone and distortion knobs. The result was a horrible muddy mess, which when I tried to mix the guitar with the rest of the band was a nightmare, as I had to use a considerable amount of EQ to get it to be even manageable and it still sounds horribly muddy and distorted. I knew it sounded terrible when I heard the changes, but figured that there must be some kind of emotional problem between the singer and guitarists and didn't want to get in the middle of that. Because I hated mixing the song so much due to the horrible guitar sound, I learned from this that if I get in that kind of situation again I need to speak up an say that the guitar sound shouldn't be recorded that way. In the future, I'm going to say something like " this is a really muddy sound that I'm going to have to heavily EQ while mixing to get it to be listenable. You hired me as your engineer and I need you to understand that we need to get a better tone. Trust me that I know what I'm doing to get a good guitar sound that I can mix." If they tell me that this is the way they like it, I'm going to tell them to pack up and go home. I can afford to do this. So, I understand that others can't make this kind of stand because they need the money, but it's just not worth hating something I love. I'm hopeful that if I say it delicately and diplomatically that people will respect my engineering ears and it won't be an issue. We'll see. |
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Post by WKG on Mar 11, 2015 8:50:56 GMT -6
Since I was very young I have always had dreams that I could fly. As the years passed I have found my ability to fly higher and farther in those dreams has increased dramatically.
There are many reasons why I love to make music but at the most fundamental level it's because it is one of very few things that enables me to break free and experience the reality of those dreams. I make music because I love to fly, finding and following the breezes to the updrafts, seeing how high they go and discovering the new places they will take me to.
Sometimes you get to come back with stories to tell others, those are called songs. |
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Post by tasteliketape on Mar 11, 2015 9:06:42 GMT -6
The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Just sayin
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Post by WKG on Mar 11, 2015 12:08:37 GMT -6
The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Just sayin
Nah, that only works if you happen to be close to the edge of a cliff. Which actually might do the job, just a bit differently, not quite as tidy and perhaps a bit more short lived... 
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Post by mrholmes on Mar 11, 2015 20:32:46 GMT -6
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here are my two monkeys. 
