If I could go back thirty years I would be a success period… Hell I am a success… I would do it again even bigger… don’t need the gear…
I sound like a prick, sorry… Just be positive!! You probably are a success and don’t realize it…
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This. We are all successful if we are happy and joyous and spreading that happiness around like a cold in a lunch line or a plague or a fever.
“If music be the food of love, play on!”
- The Honorable Prophet Billy Shakes The Spearminter.
Hint
I wrote this on the Twelfth Knight.
By candelabra light.
With a feather 🪶 pen and a feather 🪶 hat.
During a Midsummer Daydream at dusk. Hallelujah.
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nope.
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Solid. Why continue to try if there is no success in it? It can’t just be about collecting synths and being disappointed by bleeps and bloops. I guess it could be, but I’m not feeling that. I’m feeling like I’m about to sort a couple things out and finally do a release I think could have a real shot. But anything that keeps the love alive goes in the “worth it” column, and that’s a win.
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There is (and was) a world beyond the internet.
There used to be these places called “places” that people would go.
Those were the days.
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I think if I went back in time 30 years I would be wearing even less pants than what I am now, which is already very little pants.
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I have lots of gear that was actually rather new or current in 1993. But that’s not really relevant.
Maybe if I had all the time I had back then, but all the gear and knowledge I have now …
Back then, to get a friend to play your track at a club … hopefully you lived somewhere that had a club or clubs … which played the kind of music you make/liked. Or a pirate radio station that you could send a cassette to…
Crap, you’d need a good tape deck too.
It seems like back then, you could become “regionally famous” and eke out a living maybe more than you can now?
Nope.
While I do think I’m somewhat accomplished as a musician, my ideas come from being inspired by others who actually know what they’re doing. That pattern, I imagine, would’ve been the same back then. So no, I’d still be someone who writes music in a genre where there are thousands better than me, whatever the field would’ve looked like in this imaginary place back in time.
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I have moments all the time when I look around at my current set up and think man, if I had all this when I was starting out…but from 16 through 23 I made half a dozen albums with a Fostex X15, a flanger and distortion pedal, a Dr Rhythm 220 and a crappy guitar and ended up in a band and with record deals. Fast forward and I’ve done absolutely nothing of note with my current setup compared to those glory days 30 years ago, so yeah, no.
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Edit: like you have all of your present knowledge and experience. Like that movie where the Beatles didn’t exist except to that one guy and so he wrote his own “songs” and blew everyone away but they were really Beatles songs. I dunno, just spitballin here!
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Like this but for electronic music
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In that case, I think I’d do really well 
I like that movie. The Lennon scene is my favourite. And the Harry Potter payoff don’t remember which one the Final Cut went for, I’ve seen multiple versions, all of them really clever. Had to be a struggle to pick that one
30 years ago i was into very different approach(es) to do music, and had not give up to synths yet (that happened a couple of years later, in 1995).
so… i guess i just wouldn’t appreciate it back then. (except for e-drums … probably)
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These threads always end up with arguing about what success really means to each one.
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No. I’m not very talented at making music. I enjoy it though. Plus I don’t want to be successful if it would involve a lot of traveling and interviews, promo etc.
Hell yeah I would be succesful even without most of my gear. I would just bring my mpc and some records and recreate all of the classic sample based hiphop beats that hadn’t been made yet.
I would have production credits for songs like:
Nas - the world is yours, Nas is like
Souls of Mischief - 93 till infinity
Dr Dre - Nothing like a g thang
Mobb Deep - Shook ones
Jay-Z - Dead Presidents, Hard Knock Life
Biggie - Juicy
Raekwon - Verbal Murder
Etc etc.
I would feel like a biter sometimes, but then I’d look at my platinum plaques and enjoy life 
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I would’ve retired early, bought a grand piano and gone fishing.
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Back 20 to 30 years ago I just wouldn’t be so lazy…Less parties, more work. That should be enough.
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Yeah but my taste hasn’t moved much past the 90s and all the lame music I make is so basic and derivative that maybe it would fit right in! I could rival 2 Unlimited …
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To me it would have totally changed my life.
Even staying on the same path until 2003, being in Brussels with a Machinedrum then, I might have forked.
But who am I fooling, I would have knocked on Radiohead’s door and taught them their own songs. Teaching them FM synthesis
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