I have always felt that musical inspiration works a lot like genetics. Fascinating to think about.

This is scary accurate.

I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to remakes haha - I think attempting fully accurate remakes is amazing practice for training your ear both musically and production-wise. It forces you to figure out your own techniques in order to achieve certain sounds or overall atmospheres

Got a chance to listen, you've got an awesome sound man, love it

Looking forward to seeing this debate unfold - I find this question hard to answer, quantitatively at least... Producing music and playing tangible instruments both involve an insane amount of passion, process, dedication, & refined technique, all of which are required for true artistic mastery in any field.

At the time of writing, I've been playing piano for around 12-13 years and I found it hard to start producing at first. It's a totally different monster with a totally different set of rules, like any extremely complicated instrument you could pick up and mess around with. Anyone can play the piano, anyone can produce music. When the argument is brought up that "anyone can make music on a computer", I bring up the argument that "anyone can make bad music on a computer", just like "anyone" can play something terrible on a piano. In both cases, the dedication to the craft makes all the difference.

So this being said, I think the only right way to measure and compare both is to take into account the time and work involved in mastering the two, which, imo, is the same for both.

I only started to get anywhere a few years after producing music. After fully dedicating to it over a long period of time, it sort of becomes a part of who you are. That is what's driven me so far, I think the key is that you genuinely need to care about what you're doing and you need put a lot of love into your music. Once you do that, you'll start to see results. Focusing on results themselves is pointless! Focus on what makes those results happen.. keep pushing yourself to learn more about what you're doing, and keep pushing yourself to love what you're doing!

Here's a very brief overview of my relationship with music over the past few years as I've gained more experience:

Before I started Ninth Parallel, I was making terrible music under an alias (I won't reveal), and all of the songs I uploaded would get less plays than the numbers you stated in your opening post. Something traumatic happened in my life and music was the only thing I could confide in, and I began to grow an extremely close bond to the creative process (this was after two years of producing). Each time I go through something traumatic in my life, the first thing I do is believe music will be my way out and to a better life. I always trust that my music will help me become a better person - anyways the first song I released under Ninth Parallel after my first existential crisis, called 'Reentry', got thousands of plays and I was so shocked! And I knew that I was finally making music that deserved any attention in the first place.

While my perception of music has completely changed ever since I wrote Reentry, and music is much more meaningful and influential in my life, I still learned a lot in that initial period of time. It's been a few more years and now I've achieved dreams I never thought I'd be able to achieve. The most important thing about this though is to let your goals keep evolving. I've played shows with Madeon and had an official remix for Porter Robinson but those things are in the past now. The ideas and goals I have now are so much more vibrant. You just need to dedicate yourself to your craft and put your entire being into what you do.

If you're unhappy with your current progression as a producer, or your lack of interesting ideas, you are obligated to push through that if you want to get better. Make this your goal. Once you achieve this goal there will be other, more daunting goals, but each one you conquer will make you stronger and more fit to keep breaking down those walls. Always push yourself to keep learning!

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Sylenth is versatile enough to be a go-to synth in my opinion, every electronic sound in my song Infinitum was made with sylenth