[LAU] Some thoughts on making electronic music

[Jostein Chr. Andersen]

On Tuesday 02 June 2009 09.11.41 Ken Restivo wrote:
> Some words of wisdom from a local electronic musician:
>
> http://www.generalfuzz.net/blog/?p=486
>
> He doesn't use Linux, but his point #2 is one of the nice side-effects of
> Linux being off the beaten path: there isn't the distraction of entirely
> new synths and plugins coming out every day. So it's easier to focus on the
> tools that are already there.
>
> Of course, there's another problem replacing it: the potential distraction
> of endlessly tweaking the system instead of making music on it.

Great advices, and like his #1 too. As the matter of fact: I decided last fall 
to focus on #1 and #2 in order to be more productive. But I have to admit that 
I spend way to much time for tweaking the system and nosing on new apps and 
stuff.

I was much more productive in the late seventies and in the eighties: I used 
to record guitars and vocals and bounce the tracks between two stereo compact 
cassette recorders. When I had a little more money, I got a 909, FB-01 , a 
JX8P (wonderful synth) and a KORG SQD-1 sequencer, but still into a compact 
cassette recorder or two. Not much of equipment and the record quality was 
poor - but it was more than enough for making demos and doing stuff. A local 
radio station in Oslo, where I lived at the time, was even playing 6-7 of my 
songs in a program in '88 or '89; still recorded with SQD-1 and cassette 
recorders. Even back then, the local radio stations did compress the music so 
hard that everything sounded like shit, so my equipment was sufficient for 
that too.

Today, I have everything (and much more) I dreamed of thanks to the myriad of 
wonderful Linux audio apps and gizmos, but the productivity is like shit. It's 
time to concentrate on #1 and #2 and just make music.

Thanks for pointing this out. :-)

Jostein