Being innovative without compromising on quality is not easy these days, but certainly not impossible. I think that my urge for doing that alone isnt what seperates me from others in the scene, but rather how I choose to try and accomplish that. Everyone approaches innovation from a different viewpoint, so most of us end up being unique even if we don't realize it at first. Our brains mostly get excited by fresh experiences, so it's almost fair to say that as long as you legitimately enjoy what you do you're probably already innovating to some degree.

With that being said, I dont think that someone who cannot see you as a unique person / artist will have much constructive feedback to offer, so be selective about what they tell you. Having your efforts passed off as being just like everyone else sounds barely helpful to me.

I found that motivation and demotivation always come in cycles as I learn more about producing and art in general. Mussar posted a great picture that illustrates this well:


The main thing that helps me overcome negativity is to remember why I am doing music: Fun. The more fun I'm having while creating, the more ready I am to sit there for ages and work, it works almost without any effort at all. When you first find out that you can be better at producing and notice your own faults, it can initially bog you down for a bit, but after a while you learn how to fix it and it starts to become more fun than before since now youre doing a better job and enjoying yourself at the same time.

Another thing I can recommend is to keep your life as stress free as possible. Stress might put your brain in a state called cortisol dominance in which youre unable to be creative and begin fostering negative thoughts. Try things like relaxing daily or meditation. Take walks every day. Talk to others about things that stress you out so that you can deal with the thoughts and put them on the side. You can't be efficient without feeling motivated.

@Babasmas Noone was rushing. He made a mere suggestion.

I don't see what point it would be to be honest, we already have custom statuses, you can put whatever you like in there.

This is the effect of digital distortion when played back under 32-bit floating point (where you are not necessarily losing the information, it's just not being reproduced by your speakers although it's influencing the sound) and when it is being rendered out to 16 or 24-bit audio. Everything above 0 is cut off, so it's no longer coloring the sound with the frequency information it used to have.

That's partly why I recommend AGAINST digital clipping and FOR distortion/waveshaping plugins - you can often replicate the same sort of dynamics and tonal characteristic of a clipped sound without having to redline the information. Clipping can have a good effect, when used effectively, but you need to remember that if you're not working with analog audio you can't do the same sort of warmth and saturation that you can by running a super hot signal into a tube compressor.

When youre distorting the sound with a Waveshaper, youre redlining the information, which gives you additional harmonics and chops off dynamics. It is the exact same thing as bouncing down a too hot signal to 16bit (no effect until 0 dBfs threshold is passed). Most distortion works by redlining the information and then doing something with it, so youre pretty much always doing the same thing, adding harmonics and coloring the sound. If you want it to sound more analog and warm like a valve, just use a rounder shape.

Waveshapers can do the exact same thing as just letting your sound hit 0 dBfs, so I thought that's what we were talking about all along. Whether you wanna get the clipping from bouncing the sound down to 16 bit or by using a Waveshaper is pretty much your choice to be honest, I just prefer Waveshapers because it works live without bouncing anything (result is the exact same thing).

Depends on the sound you're going for. In layman's terms clipping reduces the dynamics of a sound and adds additional harmonics to it whenever it passes the threshold (0dBfs). Does the sound need that to work? If it brings you closer, use it. You can't actually produce additional harmonics just by EQing the sound differently, so it definitely counts as a valid technique.

The dynamics you keep hearing about are mostly relevant to the final master of the song, clipping off the transients there isn't always beneficial (again, depends on what you are going for).

instead of searching for them online, (which to be honest, defeats the purpose a bit), get a field recorder and do it yourself.  It's way more satisfying and educational.  Will be the best $200 you've spent in a while.

I can only recommend this aswell. I don't record that much myself, but whenever I feel like it could be interesting I just turn my zoom on and do something like crumble an empty chips bag next to it, put it on a clap and see what happens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6SMQ14RjmI

I was a huge deadmau5 fan and came across this video ages ago. I later rewatched this video in 2010 and got really curious, I wanted to know what the program on the screen was. Eventually I found out it was Ableton and found tutorials for it, but I didnt know how to get the program. At the end of 2010 I bought my copy of FL Studio and with spring 2011 I had my first couple songs made. I've just been teaching myself by reading up on things, experimenting and analyzing other songs since then.