I’ve sort of ruined it for myself, in a way. In my work, it’s not uncommon that some of the things I do are exposed to lots of people. And the crowd’s not always quiet, so whatever you do, you don’t do it in a void. There’s a context where it makes sense, an endgame where you know someone’s waiting to react to what you’re doing. Not always as you anticipated, but nevertheless a reaction of sorts.
Because of that, I’m sort of a context addict. I have a hard time putting in the time on something just because I can, even if the output measures up to some kind of quality. But it seems that when it comes to music, people don’t pay all that much attention to what others are doing, unless they’re pros or semi-pros. Just look at the Our Music section here. Most tracks posted hardly make a dent, hardly attract a comment, less a like on Soundcloud or similar. And some - many - of them are pretty damn good and deserve the attention of their fellow Elektronauts. You deserve your feedback, my friends.
But we’re too busy caring about our own next piece, to spend some time congratulating our fellow musicians on what they do. We ourselves create this void, in a context where feedback and reaction are essential to growth and learning.
And yet, if someone posts something along the lines of the Octatrack’s inputs, you can be sure there’ll be a hundred comments on that before noon, and not all of them friendly.
This isn’t always the case, of course. But it’s certainly not an exception. And it’s not unique for this place. The fact that most of the more seasoned musicians here spend a lot of time talking about gear’s pros and cons, or handing out advise on how to behave on the forum, but hardly make a comment when someone posts music, makes me wonder about the point of it all. While advise on manners are always appreciated, I’d really like to hear more from an experienced musician about the quality, or lack of such, on the work I’m posting here.
I should conclude with the fact that I’ve worked close with a (very) famous musician for the last year, a person who went to that place that we all wished we could go with our music, and then came back with hollow eyes and a pale face.
I mean, if he with all his success couldn’t find a purpose to what he was doing, then where does that leave the rest of us?
So yeah, that experience has certainly colored my opinion on this, so I guess, as I said, I sort of ruined it for myself.
It does make the balance puzzle easier, though. I have three kids to go home to at the end of the day. That mentioned musician has no one. I wouldn’t wanna trade with him for all the arena gigs in the world.