Ableton Forum

You ever feel like too many of your ideas are just approximations of other peoples'? Curious how different people deal with this.

Newsflash: All your musical ideas have been done before, or are derived from something which has already been done before.

Yeah, I get thinking philosophically about this to the point of paranoia. The way I see it is, we are just vessels taking in input from what has already been said/thought/done/written, but the trick is to recombine all of this in an original way. Unless there's some otherworldly factor that we just can't see, we're incapable of creating something completely out of the realm of what's been done. I think the way that anything evolves, art or music or whatever, is that someone comes along and makes a modified version of what already existed or reorganizes existing elements into a new unheard of combination.

I wish I could explain this better; I've lost my ability to explain things concretely, so excuse my abstractness.

timothyallan wrote:Newsflash: All house music has been done before, or is derived from house music which has already been done, better.

fixed for more accuracy!

This being said (trying to be a LITTLE more concrete, bear with me), in the case of music, I find that one's best bet at turning out the most original stuff is to operate at the structure of the music rather than the exterior. I once heard a musician (and a pretty good one at that) say "it's all been done before." And stylistically this may be true. But there are so many sequences of notes and rhythms that have never been recorded before (in theory, there must be trillions). I don't think coming up with a new style is as feasible (unless you're catering to a crowd like the gabbers, where one sound effect can justify an entire genre), but I guess I'm speaking from my own strengths. I can see my stuff fitting into specific genres, but at the same time, I think I write in a fairly uncommon way, so that compensates for my inability to invent some new genre.

if it sounds good or was fun to make who cares?

good artists copy, great artists steal
- Picasso

I stole every lick of mine from Chuck Berry.
- Stevie Wonder

Think of it as a language analogy. Very few people can be credited with creating new words. While those are certainly achievements, the greater bulk of achievement has been in how pre-existing words are used, how eloquently they can be organized to create something of beauty.

Music is really no different. I didn't invent sonata form; doesn't mean I can't write a string quartet in an original way. In the end it's how we organize the materials.

Tone Deft wrote:if it sounds good or was fun to make who cares?

The guy who did it first.

Baron von Case wrote:

Tone Deft wrote:if it sounds good or was fun to make who cares?

The guy who did it first.

honestly though, I think house music has to be the hardest genre to be original in. can anyone think of a genre more generic ?
mercifully, 'bad' house music is easy to forget.

not trying to hate on house producers, just saying kudos to you if you can make 'good', memorable house music.

Shillelagh Law wrote:can anyone think of a genre more generic ?

Country and Western.

so the only thing more generic than house music is Country & Western ?
ya, I can agree with that

I guess you guys don't have neighbors who listen to Tejano then…

maybe we should all strive to make music that can't be classified under any existing genre.

So many good answers here, I'm addressing more of the creators perspective on the creating (or biology experiment, however you want to abstract it) here. I don't know... these thoughts I find usually come before staring the endeavor of creating and not after though.. for me anyway.

Fun is a super thing to keep coming back to. I usually use working as a more meditative process but when I over think it like this it always comes back to fun. Great thoughts here folks.