All good 
I guess hearing a respected musician being so critical counts for something.
For sure. It’s good to have those ppl around you.
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Outside of feedback from a more experienced mentor, I’m not sure art criticism is ever useful for artists. The primary function of criticism is highbrow marketing.
I enjoy the process of playing with sound. Sometimes the process of turning a sound into a track that others might enjoy is fun, other times it just feels like I’m making training materials for new HVAC technicians.
I try to make stuff I like listening to. Works quite often. Not always exactly what I‘m aiming for, but room for improvement is a good thing I guess.
I enjoy making music nearly every time. Besides when there are technical issues.
I wouldn’t make music that don’t enjoy making…
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It might shed some light to your blind spots which as time goes by can turn out to be a valuable thing.
It all of course depends on what you want to do, and if you want to hear other ppls perspectives.
Some of the most valuable and interesting stuff I’ve heard about my art has come from friends that aren’t making music or think of the technical aspects in any way, and some of the most useless stuff has come from music teachers.
Cool topic! Well most of the stuff that comes from pure noodling around is not very enjoyable and in the best case just food for my sampler but when I have a clear goal or task, then some quite listenable magic happens 
sometimes, it’s both. most of the time, the making part ends up being more interesting. there are probably a handful of my own tracks that i’ll listen to once in awhile. the other pile all represents my learning journey.
I like that feeling when I feel like im a genius and gonna get rich because the track are so insanely good so I listen to it 50 times and dont get its my ego playing me. This works best on weed but happens to me straight too.
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Ive got to enjoy it and i enjoy getting there even if i dont always get to the point. IF i dont like it i dont save it and move on
or
neither.
i make music that i enjoy performing live.
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I would draw a sharp line between teachers and mentors.
I’ve encountered very few mentors in my life, and they usually weren’t formally trained or employed as teachers. A good mentor is much like a good friend - you know each other well and your mentor has more than a shallow understanding of your skills, goals, and shortcomings. A good mentor is also experienced in the specific domain you want to grow in.
Teachers usually have general knowledge and a broadly applicable syllabus. They often - by design - lack the equivalent of professional experience in their domain. Conversely, professional colleagues often lack the skills and ability to teach well. Many professional peers are also your competitors, so there is little incentive to offer useful guidance unless there is enough of an experience gap that your growth won’t threaten their career.
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that must be nice…
I sit down stoked to make some sounds…wanting to do something along the lines of the byproduct of a BoC/Ae/MBM/AFX gang-bang…and in the end turn out Pandora easy listening. its disheartening at best…and I walk away in utter disappointment.
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Most of the stuff that I make now is drone, noise, and space music/new age type of things. I like performing noise (like, doing a jam in the living room, not with people who paid to be entertained or anything) more than I like listening back to my performance or other people’s records. I do really enjoy listening to the drone stuff I make now, but it’s hard to know whether there would be much of an audience for it. I started doing these generative drones that have a lot of pretty subtle movement in them a few months ago. I was tired all the time and didn’t feel like messing with hardware so I’d make this stuff and I’d start feeling super peaceful and fall asleep in front of my computer once I got it all set up. My spouse also seems to enjoy relaxing to my drones, which is pretty awesome. It seems like a tough sell to random other people, but on the other hand, 12 hours of Star Trek TNG engine noise has 2.6 million views on YouTube, so you never know!
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I make music that is only possible to finish and wow the world with when midi 2.0 becomes common place.
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I love listening back to stuff I’ve made. I am a bit hyper critical though: a playback goes something like this:
- Nice one, this is good
- Why’d you do that
- Stop repeating that one bit
- You ruined it you fool
- Nice recovery
- The cymbals are too loud
- You ran out of steam at the end
- You used pattern 2 to death
- You gave it a stupid name
- 6 minutes are you having a joke
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I find it best to just honor the idea. Sometimes that means following it to and end product which is not anything I personally may listen to. Sometimes that means an end product that is right up my alley. Often it means leaving an idea to the ether when you start to force it or it’s simply is not anything inspiring.
By the way none of this speaks to quality in my opinion. I’ve finished tracks that are atypical to me that are quite good(IMO). I try to use all this exploration to learn techniques I otherwise wouldn’t pursue. It also helps to gain new perspective in songwriting and arranging. The haughtier side of me also considers it part of finding my “voice” 
Surprised you feel this way; some of your stuff in the current sounds topic are definitely along these lines if you ask me.
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Good point. I would agree.
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When I make music, I do consider whether I would listen to it myself. In other words: If it was playing at a friend’s place (not gonna happen 
but let’s assume for the sake of the argument…), would I enjoy it enough to care to look it up?
Often I don’t succeed at this, but I consider it to be worthwhile to analyze my music in this way. As they say one is one’s own harshest critic.
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I love stoner rock. I make psytech, its also my favourit subgenere, besides techno, sometimes i make ambient, i just find some things to pop for my taste, i.e. melodic techno is ok for background (but fun to make), but for active listening i need harder stuff.
I would love a subgenere of stoner rock techno.
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