It's the price of getting older. We cling to what was ours but there will always be a new generation and they are also right. They will be where we are in 10-20 years so why not just let them be and enjoy what we had. It is still alive. It doesn't die until we doEvery previous generation says so. Every new generation thinks they got it right.
Cant it be though, that the 90s were amazing, in general, the early zeroes slowly halted it and we’re in decline ever since…
Can’t we be right, and not just grumpy old men?? 🥹![]()
Totally agree. I wasn’t saying you can’t sound different. I kinda left it up to interpretation (probably dangerous lol). But not to put a too finer point on it. The price of software and ease of it meant so many people got into it, the dance music industry (and ambient etc too) got full of lots of people doing it which with a more crowded market can sometimes make it harder to find those who sound different, ie just searching Spotify or whichever platform I found it really hard to find a different sound ( seems a bit easier now tho)I disagree Bobby. Software gives loads of options and choices, they just choose for the exact same few sounds. My Time Warp main lead synth, it’s pretty cool right? Almost Airscape vibes (I think).
It is simply from sylenth1 with a lot of reverb…
Just to give an example, you can sound ‘different’, if you choose to.
I will add Thrillseekers , Cosmic Gate, Transa, Armin, Solarstone, Envio, Ron Van den Beuken and even Darude. Speaking of which the other day , Giuseppe Ottaviani tweeted about his change of style recently and how he was bored and wanted to make something fun. I told him that it's ok to do fun things but if you do fun things then he will lose his identity. I don't think he took it well. I can't recognize his songs now , it could be anybody.Im surprised so many people are mentioning modern producers - thats been the downfall of the scene for me in the last 15 years or so,most producers dont have a unique sound or style. Its either that or so generic you dont have a clue who made the track.
The obvious ones for me,back in their heyday :
Dumonde
Ferry Corsten
Push
Airwave
Matt Darey
Lange
PVD
Signum
Darren Tate
Marco V
Without getting too off-topic, I would personally blame the A&R people specifically. They'll bin diamonds in the rough, while signing the most generic music imaginable, purely on the basis of "sounding professional". Heck, I would argue nothing has been as harmful to artists' creativity quite as much as the obsession with getting a "professional sound", to the point where I wonder if we all have this collective delusion that our music will make us millionaires if it sounds enough like money.Without being disrespectful to 'the new guy', I think it is indeed a little bit funny to name people like Allen Watts.
What I find difficult in the debate, is that music labels don't seem to hunt for uniqeness, so it stimulates the 'watts' to just come up with another generic template 'are you affraid of 138' trancer with yet another 16th note arpeggio in the same synth that everyone used for a decade. The chance of having a bit of a career in trance is simply a lot bigger when you copy what all the others do... That's quite sad.
When an artist comes up with something that's not made all the time, labels reject it (think of Narel's tune).
Agreed. One thing I quite like about recent developments is that nowadays its fairly easy to start your own label as an artist, and so what you end up with is a lot of "little indie shops" so to speak or hobby projects like our own TF:R, who focus on creativity instead of " big bucks"I would personally blame the A&R people specifically. They'll bin diamonds in the rough, while signing the most generic music imaginable, purely on the basis of "sounding professional"
Well, most likely it's not fun because he has taken an objective decision to go full blown EDM now that's not fun or hobby it's a business decision pure and simple. He is living in a unicorn world if he thinks that going full blown EDM is not a business decision just trying to get more fans., Giuseppe Ottaviani tweeted about his change of style recently and how he was bored and wanted to make something fun. I told him that it's ok to do fun things but if you do fun things then he will lose his identity. I don't think he took it well. I can't recognize his songs now , it could be anybody.
I honestly think where one can best see how technology affects people's taste in music, is in where & how people listen to music. In the 80s and 90s, MTV made a lot of musicians go "Okay, but will this song make for a good music video?" In the 00s, ringtones were a lucrative albeit short-lived cash cow. And now, since the early 2010s, social media platforms have been dictating the rules of the game, so to speak. That, I think has mattered more than how the music itself got made.Totally agree. I wasn’t saying you can’t sound different. I kinda left it up to interpretation (probably dangerous lol). But not to put a too finer point on it. The price of software and ease of it meant so many people got into it, the dance music industry (and ambient etc too) got full of lots of people doing it which with a more crowded market can sometimes make it harder to find those who sound different, ie just searching Spotify or whichever platform I found it really hard to find a different sound ( seems a bit easier now tho)
I know less about the video and mtv side of things but am sure it played a big part as have read such.I honestly think where one can best see how technology affects people's taste in music, is in where & how people listen to music. In the 80s and 90s, MTV made a lot of musicians go "Okay, but will this song make for a good music video?" In the 00s, ringtones were a lucrative albeit short-lived cash cow. And now, since the early 2010s, social media platforms have been dictating the rules of the game, so to speak. That, I think has mattered more than how the music itself got made.
Though I will say this about hardware vs software: bragging about "analog quality" or "analog warmth" is red flag for me. Even with the actual analog gear at hand, there is absolutely no guarantee you will recapture that same magic as your old heroes, simply because their prior experiences with the world at large back then, were so radically different from what yours have been. Moreover, the obsession with nostalgia I think sadly has contributed to wavetable synthesis and additive synthesis - both existing purely in the digital realm - to remain neglected artforms and largely unexplored territory.