I don't generally post in this thread but something here reminded me of something that's always bothered me.
I have this cousin, Brian. He makes tracks pretty regularly and it's more of a hobby for him than a creative outlet. It's all strictly for fun he says. He's uploaded some stuff to Soundcloud and he just puts whatever in the title/description box. He has no avatar there, no identity, and something like "shitster" as his profile name. This cousin once came over to the house where another cousin of mine named Weeks lives to pick up something he left there. We work on stuff together and sometimes it's there instead of over here. Brian is Weeks' older brother and started working on music before Weeks did but he's never really gone anywhere with it (almost all of his tracks are mediocre emulations of new prog house). He walks into Weeks' room and Weeks is on his computer, working this really slick Pete Standing Alone-esque melody in a sampler with a lead I gave him among a flash drive of like 200 different samples. I'm sitting on his bed. Brian says hello, very quickly points to the screen, says "okay...you've got a bunch of shit just cluttered all over the place there" and laughs. Usually he likes to grill us on how we produce our stuff and our creative process, which is generally "you need to use ableton live" and completely discrediting all concept music and any sort of brainstorming idea (an experiment we'd mentioned to him was that we'd written 1000 potential track titles, picked the ones we'd liked and then let the music be influenced by the title and he continues to mock us for this). Eventually after talking for a while and showing him a couple of the things I'd worked on just for fun (as he does his entire musical output), he becomes really serious out of nowhere. He has a problem with the song naming thing in general. "Deadmau5 doesn't waste time thinking up names for songs, he just picks them at random....Your songs don't deserve names, songs don't deserve names anyways, none of them do," he says. I'm curious to know why and I ask him, but he sort of just stumbles around his words. I ask him if he likes progressive rock music, to which he replies yes. I tell him about Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall as just two simple examples, and I say "wouldn't you think that with all of those themes going around, tracks like Brain Damage or One of My Turns deserve a name?"
He pauses, seeming confused, and quickly segues straight into why our process is stupid. Why our intentions are stupid. Why I'm stupid and why his brother, who has a lot to say but has not said a word during all of this, is stupid. It's made completely clear there's nothing to debate. We don't really say anything and he just kind of says the same stuff over and over again. He eventually calms down and Weeks gets up and retrieves the thing Brian needed and with few words exchanged, Brian departs. Weeks sits down and closes the DAW without saving. I try to say something but he says with a serious level of apathy and depression "I'm used to it, everyone dicks on me in some way and with Brian it's music, that's the way it is."
I think we watched most of the first season of Sliders after that lol.
Anyways, it was ever since we became as capable as he is that he's been more serious when he bumps into us making music or the conversation gets brought up, and it's always antagonistic. He himself almost seems a little defeatist and maybe that's the reason he doesn't seem to want anyone else to succeed making whatever they want. I don't know. I just know that it has had an impact on Weeks and for all the talent he has when it comes to arranging melodies, he has no idea how to put them together at the end of the day and I think Brian in part caused that.
Don't know why a person has to be like that.
TL;DR: my cousin thinks it's somehow wrong that we're taking music seriously and thinks our notes and loops are "too busy", it's irritating and it really wrecks the mood to keep making something.
Okay...now...wait for fog machine.
![:]](./images/smilies/icon_grin.gif "Happy"){kind=icon}
