Going back to the OP, maybe not if I had to deal with a family and make every note count, but imo music doesn't always need a "purpose". Sometimes music is the purpose, just testing what you can do in a DAW and making something that sounds cool.

Is making stuff that sounds cool more important than the other things you could be spending your time on? I'm curious if you're a full-time musician, or if you have a different career that you care about.

Family life notwithstanding, my career contains deadlines and other challenges--not always posed by my boss or my clients, sometimes it's just because I want to get a paper done in time to submit it to a symposium I want to talk at, etc. (Think broad career arc.) These things compete for my time with music, and if the music isn't really saying something--if it isn't going to have at least as big an impact as my career work--it probably won't win that competition. This has made my music better. That was the point of the OP.

Throwing the political tones of this thread aside, I also have to adult, work a lot (brainy ethics stuff), and only have an hour, if that a day during the week to focus on music.

Even without words, I think instrumental music can convey strong emotions. Add certain instruments to those emotional tones and mental images will start to form. For example, certain trumpet sounds can sound militaristic, grungy guitars rebellious, harps angelic, etc. Classical and cinematic music is great at this.

Sure, without lyrics, the exact message that you are trying to convey might be lost, but that is also where things get interesting. Just as political views can vary wildly from one person to the next, so does how one perceives music. For example, some people find death metal to be soothing and something they could fall asleep to, while others might find it chaotic and harsh.

It would be interesting to submit listeners to a politically charged instrumental and then survey their perceptions afterwards to see how that correlates to their various political leanings.

I thought of another way to phrase the OP:

When I come home at the end of the day, there are things I have to do or want to do. They fall into a prioritized list or hierarchy. Here they are approximately in order of importance to me:

• Husbanding/Daddying
• Cooking/household chores/home management
• Career-related project
• Fixing stuff around the house/home projects/woodworking
• Working out
• Music
• Reading/learning
• Playing chess

You notice that “Music” is quite far down the list. Like most other things on the list, music can’t be done whenever I feel like it: the more important stuff has to be done, my kid has to be in bed (or if I’m singing, out of the house) and I need a sizable chunk of time free. This pushes music even lower down the list, and sometimes off the list entirely. (And that’s before I even include the stuff I do outside the house, like grocery shopping or taking my family to the park!)

What this means is that often when I work on music, it’s competing with more important things I should/could be doing. This has caused me to take the music itself—the songwriting, the themes I’m writing about, etc.—more seriously.

But it also means I struggle sometimes to see the point of making music at all. Every item above music in the list is more important, and many of those items are more important from an objective standpoint, not just to me personally. So music ends up looking kinda silly…”You wanna strum a guitar and make some pretty songs? You dumb hippie, why don’t you go do something productive?!” That kinda thing.

Hah, yeah "Flow" is one of the *foundational documents* of the company I work for, plus I've got a copy on my bookshelf. (Good call on that one!)

The stuff higher up the list from music isn't always stuff I can choose not to do, but it just about always stuff I love to do--even a lot of the household chores. That said, I still get a kind of second-order happiness from doing things I don't like but which are important/necessary. In other words, music isn't some island of pleasure in a sea of wretchedness for me; it's just one of many things I like doing but which isn't as important as most off those other things. Thus why I 1) often don't see the point and 2) feel the need to make extra-meaningful music if that's how I'm going to spend my time.

I'm troubled with this topic after years of making music as well. There are several other things I could do at a professional level and they would turn out great. Or I could make yet another semi-ok song that nobody cares about.

Quote from: Bertie South on February 03, 2016, 03:01:13 pm

I don't think there's anything wrong with considering a creative outlet one of your priorities. Sure, some people seem content to live as passive, unthinking drones, but self-expression and mastery of skills are legitimate needs, at least if you consider personal happiness to be important (which it absolutely is).

I like the idea of music as being an important creative outlet.  I'd like to tie my music into my current emotions and experiences, so that it serves as sort of a diary, but I can never figure out how established artists seem to do this.  For example, I live in the woods, and a fog rolls in. How do I translate that into a synth? Or finish a song before the fog is gone? Is that something artists even try to do?

I am most inspired by the music I like, or maybe one of my synths. How is it good artists seem to be inspired by unrelated material? Maybe my life is too easy and uneventful for this idea to work.

You can't be something your not.

There's nothing wrong with trying to do any of what you said, you just have to figure out a way to solve the problem you're having. And you do that by writing down what you want to write down.

The professional musicians might not have the luxury of doing what they want, even though they think they do. This is entailed by the music they make and what eventually happens to it. Unless they make some pretty personal stuff and give it away for free or sell it, they're still taking a risk.

On the other hand, if you're doing this more as a hobby or, as a few mentioned before, not doing this entirely. You're still creating the music as it brew inside of you. It's just  not manifested yet.

I come from a culture of many excellent musicians, and they all have day jobs. At least the ones from the 1950's and prior. And the ones who would do music as a work, were incredible.

Now, i am not saying that i don't have dreams of being a dubstep dude who gets paid well to create, but, after my experience going on tour and doing the whole travel thing, it doesn't seem like it would be very fun after a while. I'd have to be well taken care of and get paid enough from many angles, to sit in a studio to make music and then support said music.

At some point, what you create will have some purpose. Even if you're not spending as much time as you ought to, you're still doing music.

Sounds like this is may be an existential question projected at music.

No one blames you for doing the things you gotta do, and in time, those things might shift into a better schedule. Time helps in figuring things out for you.

I like the idea of music as being an important creative outlet.  I'd like to tie my music into my current emotions and experiences, so that it serves as sort of a diary, but I can never figure out how established artists seem to do this.  For example, I live in the woods, and a fog rolls in. How do I translate that into a synth? Or finish a song before the fog is gone? Is that something artists even try to do?

Interesting question. I'd say yes, maybe not (always) in such a specific way like you've suggested there, but sure. I'd guess using external inspiration to create music is something you get better at as you develop as an artist.


I think it can also be something that happens unconsciously. I don't know that this example demonstrates my point, but take something like Black Science Labs by Teebee. Listen to a track life Lifepod and tell me it doesn't kinda figure that Teebee is from a northern Scandivian country..

Same here, I feel like it's common on musician's forums to see people hating on their crappy jobs or lives, but I like my 9 to 5 and the rest of my life. There are other important things I could enjoy doing, but music is an entirely different world based on emotions that can't be quantified or analyzed (not exactly anyway). The challenge of making something that goes beyond normal reality (getting heady here) has a certain allure to it.

This might be a problem that affects people who make EDM more than people who make music where they write and sing lyrics.