[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Backhousepro

Just an addendum to my first post —

I think that musicians do themselves and their music a disservice by going the DIY route (even though my livelihood now depends on it). Aside from the loss of chops and musical growth resulting from switching focus to engineering (which is also a lifelong pursuit if excellence is your goal), our music loses the added dimension provided by people who really have a passion and talent for recording and mixing — people who's skills are the result of a lifetime developing their craft — as opposed to those of us who took the crash course looking for the quick route to a professional sound, hoping to produce a record while our music is still relevant.

Don't get me wrong, I love having the ability to realize my music without depending on others, but I now think of it as nothing more than demos or sketches, and long to hear what it would sound like if it were recorded by the likes of Bruce Swedien and produced by Quincy . . . imagine what one might learn from such an association . . .

Another personal beef I have with musicians, and sadly this includes myself, is that we're too quick to use the technology to put each other out of work in order to get a larger piece of an ever-decreasing pie. By asking for less and counting on the machines to fill in the blanks, we devalue our profession and eventually obsolete ourselves. Look at music libraries — lucrative for a very small number of people while eliminating large numbers of studio musicians and recording sessions. Instead of say a local advertiser paying a composer a &500-$1000 for an original composition and booking studio time and musicians, they buy a CD for $60 and hire a kid fresh out of recording school at minimum wage to cut and paste. And people who give it way for free in hopes of getting paid later . . . well, we know how that goes; why buy the cow etc.

All in all, I think that a DIY album is a good experience — one that will hopefully bring you full-circle and back to the notion that when it comes to creating music, the more the merrier. This subject reminds me of a quote from the translation of the I Ching that I think is relevant:

Knowledge should be a refreshing and vitalizing force. It becomes so only through stimulating intercourse with congenial friends with whom one holds discussion and practices application of the truths of life. In this way learning becomes many-sided and takes on a cheerful lightness, whereas there is always something ponderous and one-sided about the learning of the self-taught.

Here's a question:

Has anyone had a number-one hit that did it all themselves? And by themselves, I mean wrote, performed, arranged, recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered entirely by themselves — no help from anybody anywhere.


-B-

I thought you were making some great points (they're still great points)... I thought the quote from the I Ching was particularly persuasive.


And then... we get go your final measure of value and merit...

A number one hit?

You don't get it.


At least, not in the moment you wrote that. But, like I said, some great points along the way... a good journey, but you ended up at Walmart instead of Satori...


[this is just friendly teasing... there is no one, singular way, of course...]