I would be willing to argue that for some, technology is enhancing creativity. Before I found out about electronic music, I had no confidence in my artistic ability. I thought I would never learn an instrument, never be a performer, and basically killed my childhood dream for nearly a decade. Once I discovered Ableton, I realized that all the time I spent getting comfortable with a keyboard and a mouse wasn't useless - I can turn that into music! Putting iMaschine on my iPhone gave me a way to play the drums in a way that I was comfortable with, and removed the barrier for entry that held me back.

Human beings have always found ways to distract themselves from doing the things they want to do, because humans are afraid of two things: 1. Failure. 2. Change.

Being an artist forces you to fail a lot, and the only way to stop failing is to change. If you're not 100% committed, your subconscious will look for ANY excuse not to do it. Which could apply to anything (school, work, exercise, etc), to be honest.

you're just reinventing the wheel.

I think this is one of the hardest things for people to realize, especially if they just start rushing into the rabbit hole of sound design. When you're just starting out, you haven't fully developed your taste yet. Stick to the simpler stuff - samples, presets, and basic waveforms (Saw/Square/Sine/Triangle) going through basic filters (low pass/high pass) - and you will naturally start deviating away from certain sounds and towards others. That's gonna be the best time to start honing in on what you as an individual artist will become.

Just ignore him, he's a troll. Chatroom-type experiences are fine, and don't do any of the things he alleges they do nearly as much as he says they do. I spent most of my formative years hanging out on webforums and chat rooms, but not once did I ever feel like I was "missing out" on something. In fact, the only times I've ever felt like I was "missing out" on something because of social media in any form was when I was physically at an event like a show or a convention and decided to go leave the area of the event and/or go back to my hotel room to rest and checked my twitter feed or whatever.

It just goes back to the same sort of thing that has been brought up every time he tries to crap all over someone else's idea for a better way to interact with the website outside of your browser - if you're truly as incapable of shutting off the internet as he's claiming, just don't even sign onto this forum and only make music! Cancel your internet subscription, lock your phone in a box, and only connect to the outside world when you want to release content. Having the internet on can totally distract you from making music, but the KIND of stimulus is hardly relevant. You can get just as addicted to a webforum as you can to a chat room or your Facebook if there's enough people posting regularly (take Reddit, for example).

For those of us who have some self-control and a sense of personal responsibility, a chat room is just a great asset for communication, tech support, and even promoting content. The only people who would have a trouble with a dedicated chat room like IRC are going to be the people who would have found any excuse not to make music, because they're not really that committed to it. Trying to remove other people's ability to effectively communicate just because you are incapable of using it appropriately is just plain silly.

You should also be noticing that they're the same rhythm when you take off the metronome. Here are the exact same patterns I just showed you, recorded out. First the 70 BPM, then the 140 BPM, both with and without a high hat hitting on every quarter note to mimic a metronome. If you're not hearing something like this, something's going wrong.

And instead of answering your question, I'll provide another little experiment:

Go pick a future bass song and bring it into your DAW. Set the BPM of your DAW to the BPM of the song. Build a basic drumkit that copies theirs, and find a moment where you have a full drum loop. Copy the beat exactly, then you tell me if they play the kicks on beat or not.

I agree with the advice in general, but advice like this could appear anywhere and apply to anything. Not relevant to music specifically.

So we shouldn't be giving it? Please stop posting stuff like this (I see you doing this thing in a lot of threads), you're contributing absolutely nothing to these conversations. If you don't like the stuff people post or have nothing constructive to add, instead of making some snarky remark you should just not post in that thread.

To get on topic, I have to agree completely - Going to the gym almost every single day has been one of the most helpful things for me as a musician. Getting enough exercise helps you sleep better, keeps you feeling healthy (which improves your focus), counteracts the hours and hours of sitting you're gonna be doing as a producer, and it's a great way to clear your head. I go to the gym at least 4 days a week, plug in my headphones, and just spend the whole time I'm working out analyzing the songs and asking myself questions about how I could incorporate the things I hear into my own music. My phone has a "Gym Thoughts" note document on it, and every time I get an idea or realize something about a song I just type it in and continue my workout.

Exactly! Here's a good little exercise to help you understand it:

• Make a simple drum pattern at 70 BPM - kick on the 1 and 3, snare on the 2 and 4. Listen to that on loop a few times. First with the metronome, then without.
• Change the tempo to 140, and put it so you have a kick on the one and a snare on the three. Listen to that on loop a few times. First without the metronome, then with.

Notice anything?

If you have to force yourself to produce music, there are a few questions you should ask yourself.

1. Why do I want to make music?
2. Who am I doing this for, myself or others?
3. Is this something I really want to be doing with my time and/or the rest of my life?
4. What do I want to get out of making music?
5. Do I want to put in the amount of effort and work required to make music?

If you're struggling to answer any of those questions, you probably shouldn't be thinking about producing until you can write down your answers. Either you'll figure them out and have redoubled your commitment which will help motivate you to push through, or you'll realize that you're trying to force yourself to do something that you don't actually want to do, and you should look for what can answer those questions.

That being said, there's nothing wrong with just being a hobbyist producer who picks up his DAW when he's bored, makes a couple of loops, dicks around with some sound design, and puts it back down to go about his normal life. Make sure you're not trying to make this into something it isn't, and that might remove the sort of negative emotional attachment that keeps you from wanting to produce.

If you can answer all those questions, and you're still struggling to wanna sit down and write some tunes, then you're deep in the throes of Resistance. Go read The War of Art and/or Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. Those books completely changed my life as a musician and an artist, and I couldn't recommend them enough to anyone who is interested in getting serious about any artistic endeavor.

I brought them all into ableton to give them a look, and it seems like most of them are hitting at about -0.5 dB. But I don't see any of the obvious signs of distortion when I look at then nor when I listen to them. The samples themselves have little imperfections that I think are supposed to be from the vinyl or tape recording or whatever emulation they used. There are a few (4 and 6, actually) that go over 0.0 but i don't see any clipping when I turn them down.

Maybe that's what you're hearing?