Learning vs consuming / Millenials & music production

[SixOfOne]

youtu.be/IV6tZEj4yY0
youtu.be/r7hraQwMKIw

His videos are really well done. There was another one I saw recently that described pretty much what's being discussed here, the fact that technology is one of the reasons people aren't as focused.

[SixOfOne]

This one:

youtu.be/an4eFdqYPlI

[chava]

I would say to the millenials to reduce their stress and confusion :

1) Stop focusing on happiness as a goal in life
2) Stop focusing on a 'career' (maybe you will just get a job and that's fine)
3) Change yourself before you start changing the world.

And to the old guys:

1) Stop being grumpy and nostalgic and believe in the youngsters, maybe that is in fact what they need

Regarding the waning quality of todays productions due to impatient millenials wanna-be's. Well, obviously you forgot how much cr*p was produced back in the 90s - and the producers were just as impatient and often took the easy way out (buy Roland gear, sync up, there you go).

[Will Frances]

Deep thread, there isnt a clear and easy answer to all mentioned here however, I believe technology and connectivity has grown like vines around us, allowing us to percieve thing being closer and at a faster rate, hampering old ideals and giving birth to a new broadly adopted outlook. I agree that now is an interesting time to be alive because of such a drastic change in the last 30 years.

QUOTE I found quite poignant a while ago its a little loose to the OP but still has relevance - Since the Tunguska impact in Russia in 1908, despite plagues and two World Wars, the World’s population doubled in 60 years. Then it has doubled again, in 50 years to the present 7 billion. Quadrupling in a little over 100 years. Just doubling of human population had taken one thousand year periods up until the 20th Century. Industrialization including the Haber process – creating the Green Revolution – is the cause. Today, industrialization and advanced technology is now idling millions of young humans leading to the violence we see. The sudden connectivity – bringing all humans into close cultural contact has stressed many cultures not prepared to adjust and tolerate diversity.

https://www.universetoday.com/38125/how ... -on-earth/

[rktic]

And to the old guys:

1) Stop being grumpy and nostalgic and believe in the youngsters, maybe that is in fact what they need

Where are the grumpy bits in this thread?

[chava]

And to the old guys:

1) Stop being grumpy and nostalgic and believe in the youngsters, maybe that is in fact what they need

Where are the grumpy bits in this thread?

That was more a general comment, really. Maybe mostly to myself!

[The_G]

Millenials get a bad rep, but really they were f***ed by the boomers, who created economies without stable employment, societies without welfare and saddled them with massive debt.

They're not a bad generation at all--often very creative and thoughtful, I find. But yeah, they can be a bit all over the place from our perspective.

Also, looking for shortcuts is not a millennial thing. I'm gen X (I think) and I looked for shortcuts to making music until one day I finally realized that's bullshit, there are no shortcuts. I'm happier now.

[innovine]

The questions are always specifics rather than techniques. How can I do this specific bass sound and bassline and kick drum and .... How do I make this whole track exactly like Brayer or Pfarter or whoever.

Meh, it can be that those are just the easiest questions to ask, or to expect an answer to. What kind of questions would you like asked instead, that aren't already answered by a simple google?

[Lost to the Void]

Because when you give very specific answers to these very specific questions you aren't really learning anything beyond parrot fashion repeating of numbers.
And invariably the personnel get back to me saying "it didn't work" because they don't understand the basis behind the techniques so they can't adapt or improvise.

If you understand EQ, or envelopes or filters or whatever, properly then most of these specifics become irrelevant because you have the grounded technique to deal with it or work it out yourself.

It's one of the reasons I stopped doing guest lectures at universities.
Year by year the questions just got increasingly stupider and more and more they just wanted to know how to specifically sound like whoever.
"What presets do you recommend to sound like blah"

My best mate is head of media at Mquarrie University in Sydney. He basically said every year the students get stupider and stupider but also more entitled. It has become very common now for students to complain to their parents about getting bad grades and then the parents inevitably come in and want to know why their kids are getting bad grades (most of the time it is because they are not doing the work, not attending lectures or plagiarizing) because they paid blah blah for the course and expect their money's worth.
There are other factors at play here too of course. Universities have to make profits and it eats in to acceptance grades and stuff. That's a whole other discussion.

[willemb]

Leaving music production out of this, in my job I work with and train a lot of younger people. I find them inspiring, strange at times, but I don't feel like sharing information makes them lazy or looking for quick fixes. People of my age (35) or older are often protective of experience and knowledge they've gathered. I like the attitude where younger people aren't afraid to ask questions or afraid to sound stupid, and likewise aren't afraid their knowledge and experience. A lot less pride and ownership around knowing (how to do) things. Often the answer to questions they ask might be "it's a little bit more complicated than that" but I applaud younger people for their drive, enthousiasme​, and having no shame when it comes to reaching out for help, or helping others. All this with a refreshingly positive outlook on things.

[Lost to the Void]

Well I certainly have no problem sharing experience and knowledge, so that`s not an issue at all for me.
And there are of course exceptions, those who have really used the unfettered access to knowledge to get the right mindset, and I love dealing with these people.

It also might be a bias to media and the arts, people just driving for the fame/popularity ticket which skews the type of people I personally deal with.

[P0607r0n]

It has become very common now for students to complain to their parents about getting bad grades and then the parents inevitably come in and want to know why their kids are getting bad grades (most of the time it is because they are not doing the work, not attending lectures or plagiarizing) because they paid blah blah for the course and expect their money's worth.

It's hard for some to realize, that they are simply paying for access... To knowledge of teachers, and their help, for access to labs, and instruments. You gonna get money worth from buying a bicycle only if you'll ride on it to places.

[dubdub]

Hi Jos,

like where this is going. Need to append some words on Nietzsche.

youtu.be/UbWAj2drGdE

Alain de Botton is a bit of an hack. He turns every philosopher into a self-help guide. To do that he has to take serious interpretative liberties, often completely butchering the philosophers system. Which would be fine if he presented it as his own self-help-theory based on XXX but he doesn't tell people that his interpretations are extremly liberal and that what he's saying often has very little to do with that the philosopher was actually trying to say.

[rktic]

Alain de Botton is a bit of an hack. He turns every philosopher into a self-help guide. To do that he has to take serious interpretative liberties, often completely butchering the philosophers system. Which would be fine if he presented it as his own self-help-theory based on XXX but he doesn't tell people that his interpretations are extremly liberal and that what he's saying often has very little to do with that the philosopher was actually trying to say.

Your point of relevance to the context is missing.

[MattAltmanMusic]

I would say to the millenials to reduce their stress and confusion :

1) Stop focusing on happiness as a goal in life
2) Stop focusing on a 'career' (maybe you will just get a job and that's fine)
3) Change yourself before you start changing the world.

And to the old guys:

1) Stop being grumpy and nostalgic and believe in the youngsters, maybe that is in fact what they need

Regarding the waning quality of todays productions due to impatient millenials wanna-be's. Well, obviously you forgot how much cr*p was produced back in the 90s - and the producers were just as impatient and often took the easy way out (buy Roland gear, sync up, there you go).

THIS

[jordanneke]

I will chip in here.

I'm a teacher, and my job has changed dramatically in the last 15 years. There has been a seismic shift in accountability for performance in the last 20 years (or since I was at school myself).

We seem to be solely responsible for students' success. Once it was the students themselves who were responsible for this, but now, if a student isn't achieving the A grades that their parents (or indeed the student's themselves) think that they should get, usually the major question is this.

'What are you going to do to help my child?' or 'Here's what you need to do to help my child', rather than 'What does my child/ I need to do?'

Not only this, but now in schools, we have to
-Plan lessons, taking into account students' individual learning styles
-Provide rubrics which detail EXACTLY what the students' need to do in order to achieve a high grade
-Provide marked exemplars of work
-Produce extra help writing frames which are essential 'fill in the blanks'
-Not take off marks for late work
-Fill in any assignments for each class online, rather than the students be responsible.
-Praise, Praise and praise some more

All of these things take responsibility away from young people. When they fail, it's not their fault. They are special and deserve things now.

Note - I am obviously talking about every single human born after 1984, but I hope you get my point.

[PatrickHughes]

I think rather than focusing on music producers as a whole you could look just at production quality of the people who actually make music for a living. The total number of people worldwide who produce electronic music for a living is astronomically small and the fact that producing music is more accessible to the masses only drives the competition to fill those few limited "full time positions" even more.

Even if you think the average millennial producer of today isn't very good and is too impatient and lazy to be good, it is a fact that millennials as a whole have driven the professional quality higher and risen the bar for electronic music as now there are more people than ever competing for the same number of limited "full time positions".

[Lost to the Void]

, it is a fact that millennials as a whole have driven the professional quality higher and risen the bar for electronic music as now there are more people than ever competing for the same number of limited "full time positions".

If you are to claim facts you should probably provide some form of proof. Statistics or something would do cheers.

[PatrickHughes]

, it is a fact that millennials as a whole have driven the professional quality higher and risen the bar for electronic music as now there are more people than ever competing for the same number of limited "full time positions".

If you are to claim facts you should probably provide some form of proof. Statistics or something would do cheers.

Songs 20 years ago used only a handful of different instrument tracks and the only automation if used at all would be the produce recording himself twisting the knob on a synth live. With modern digital and software synthesizers there are a larger number of sounds for a producer to choose from that straight up didn't used to exist. Song quality was limited by the tools in existence at the time.

Look I get it that everyone has their own individual preferences and nostalgia will cause some people to always think old things are better, but as a whole look at the top charts and see that the most popular songs of today have evolved and are more complex, more polished and filled with techniques and sounds that weren't possible in the past. If the old styles of electronic music were truly better than it would still be topping the charts and not the modern styles which have evolved today.

[Lost to the Void]

So no facts then...... just anecdotes.....

And some weird wombling about old music and charts.

Songs 20 years ago used only a handful of instrument tracks?
Erm. You realise multitrack recordings is also an old studio standard, even going back to the tape years there was tape sync via timecode, and midi cc automation is as old as sequencers.......
Have you ever been to a recording studio?

32 and 64 channel desks have actually been in existence for more than 20 years.

I won't bother pulling apart the rest of your stuff, it would be too easy.

What are you talking about?

Progression through technology is just progression through technology.
Access to equipment allowing more people to reach a higher standard is certainly a reality, though proportionally there is still just as much uttershite. Just spend an hour surfing beatport charts for the utter audio bilge to realise that.


Good musicians will always be making good music.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make.