Why do you make your music?

[Niveous]

It seems like an easy question. I know that BLT probably has a trillion one-liners at the ready to answer it, but I would like to hear everyone's answers on why they make the music that they make.

Here's mine.

My style of music is very lo-fi, minimalistic acoustic rock with very dark lyrics. I feel in love with the sound of acoustic guitars back in junior high school. I was taught how to play on an acoustic and even though I owned an electric guitar, I still radiated to the acoustic sound. The minimalist arrangement comes from a mix of reasons. One is the lack of a band. I have struggled over the years to keep a band together (whether it be my fault or the fault of others). Another reason is my love of chords. Somewhere down the line, I became more fascinated with chords than scales and stuck with that. The lo-fi aspect comes from my lack of production skills and I would love it if I could find someone who wants to produce. I think I would make more music if I didn't have to think about the technical aspects of recording. The dark lyrics are my thing. I like telling stories in songs and I feel like there are thousands of stories to be told. Why tell the same stories as everyone else? So, why tell the darker ones. I feel like so many people shy away from them. I can write a sweet love song and so have a ton of other people. But how many people have written sounds about a man trapped in a house due to fear of a sasquatch outside, or about a man obsessed with the meaning of life who dissects birds and then his date. The stories may be dark but they are vibrant, creative tales. I love writing them. Occasionally I do tamer songs but I have to do them in a different way. It's all about the roads you take.

So why do you make your music?

[Billy's Little Trip]

QOTD: Cuz if I don't, I'll ....

[Teplin]

Why tell the same stories as everyone else? So, why tell the darker ones. I feel like so many people shy away from them. I can write a sweet love song and so have a ton of other people. But how many people have written sounds about a man trapped in a house due to fear of a sasquatch outside, or about a man obsessed with the meaning of life who dissects birds and then his date. The stories may be dark but they are vibrant, creative tales. I love writing them.

Now I really want to hear your stuff, Niv. Love the song concepts, are either of them online in a form that I can hear? It seems like we have a lot of ideas in common when it comes to writing lyrics. Ultimately, I write what I want to hear. I don't want to write a sweet love song because I don't want to HEAR another sweet love song. The world is drowning in them, and they don't interest me anyway. Give me something that transports me somewhere I haven't been before, that creates a vibrant new world in my head. My taste in fiction leans towards the exotic, strange, whimsical, and dark, so it's no surprise that I gravitate towards those kinds of songs.

Music is very visual for me, so I use different instruments and sounds like paintbrushes to create my little slice of alternate reality. I enjoy putting it all together like a jigsaw puzzle, it's very satisfying discovering what fits where.

Writing a comedy song feels like a puzzle too, but more with the lyrics than the music.

[Niveous]

But how many people have written sounds about a man trapped in a house due to fear of a sasquatch outside, or about a man obsessed with the meaning of life who dissects birds and then his date.

Now I really want to hear your stuff, Niv. Love the song concepts, are either of them online in a form that I can hear?

The song about the sasquatch is "NIV" by Loiano. I wrote the song for Dre's RPM album last year. I didn't title it though.

The song about the dissector is "Before a Date with Emily".

[Spud]

This is a hard question, Niv.

First, one must deal with the root question "Why do you make music?" in order to get to the next level of why you make it the way you do. At least I do. Although I have been thinking about it since your question came out, I am not yet ready to respond. Expect a book in January.

SPUD

[HeuristicsInc]

The lo-fi aspect comes from my lack of production skills and I would love it if I could find someone who wants to produce. I think I would make more music if I didn't have to think about the technical aspects of recording.

Did you find our "Ottoman" collaboration fulfilling? I'd be up for doing that again, if it was what you need!

I'd better answer the actual question later!
-bill

[JonPorobil]

I've been thinking about this one since it was posted... There's really only one answer, and it's deceptively simple.

Because I must.

[Hoblit]

Spud is right for pointing out how one 'why' has to be answered before all others.

Root of the question, the very first WHY.

I don't believe I ever made a conscience choice to make music. I just loved music from my earliest memories and even got a toy guitar when I was like 6 or 7. I don't think my 'why' is ONLY music related. I think there has always been a performer inside of me even if I took a long break from it.

Answer:

I make music because I'm full of artistic ideas that necessitate an outlet and always have been.
I started because I idolized my cousin growing up and he picked up playing bass in orchestra and so I followed suite.
I continued because it felt right and it felt good.
I continue because it feels right and it feels good.
I love to perform because it is an outlet for my alter ego. A place to do and say all of the things that would be completely unacceptable in my regular life.

[jb]

The whole big "why" question is boring and the answers are too full of "cosmic profundity" for anyone other than the person at the keyboard to really give half a crap.

So in the spirit of Niv's question, which he demonstrated how to answer, here's my reply.

I make my music because of my mother, who forced me to play 'cello in 3rd grade, and against whose insistence that I not suck at 'cello and whose refusal to allow me to quit I rebelled by also taking drums and not quitting them out of spite. I make my music because of my best friend in 6th grade, Andrew Espenshade, who peer-pressured me into thinking Quiet Riot was cool (I once knew all the words to "Love's a Bitch"), and because of my beloved grandmother who, in response to my incessant begging, bought me the LPs of Men At Work's "Business as Usual" and that faddish Pac Man Fever album and said not one blessed word when I played them all day every day for an entire month while staying at "camp grammaw".

I make my music because of an Atari 2600, an Atari 800xl, and a desperate lust for a Colecovision I'd never obtain. Because of Weird Al's "In 3D" and Billy Joel's greatest hits, and my friend Shane who you all know who loved 80's electronica and had this towering stack of 45rpm records that I was totally in love with and jealous of and who showed me how Pop Goes the World.

I make my music because of the steel drum in "Every Little Thing She Does" and the bucket of sound in "I Know You're Out There Somewhere". I make my music because of the pounding rhythm of "True Faith" and the alien landscape of its video. I make my music because of the wordplay and melody of "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and I stack harmony on harmony because of orchestral brass and the angles and anguished heavenly harmonies Howard Hanson's choral piece "Song of Democracy".

I make my music because of the moving bass part in the second movement of Dvorak's 9th symphony and the achingly beautiful winds that float on top of it. You can also lay blame at the feet of Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring", Faure's "Elegie", Gorecki's 3rd, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" with Dawn Upshaw singing, Joni Mitchell's "Ladies of the Canyon", Peter Gabriel's "So", and Midnight Oil's "Beds are Burning".

I make my music because of all this and more, seeping in through eyeballs and ears, processed by a brain soaked with coca cola, ice tea, beer, kool-aid and tang, shot up with pixie sticks, watermelon, sugar cane, and lubricated with McDonald's chicken nuggets, black eyed peas, hotdogs, baseball, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, LA Story, Go Bots, Space Ghost, Automan, t-ball, scratch-n-sniff stickers, free HBO weekends, and hormones.

JB

[Märk]

I wasn't interested in sports, so I had to pick up something to impress the ladies. Tony Iommi's guitar sound gave me the chills as a kid, so I wanted to play guitar. Got bored with trying to learn other people's music, so I started writing my own.

Pretty simple, really.

[Spud]

Hahahaha, JB. You're so full of shit.

And I mean that in the best possible way.

[Teplin]

The whole big "why" question is boring and the answers are too full of "cosmic profundity" for anyone other than the person at the keyboard to really give half a crap.

Yeah.
I think the original question wasn't "why" in the sense of "why do you make music at all?", but more like "why do you make your music in particular?"

Why do you write G&G songs about high school? Why do you record political psychobilly with lyrics in middle english? Are you lo-fi because you like a lo-fi sound, or do you just have poor equipment? That sort of thing.

Hey Niv, thanks for the links. Your songs have a lovely air of menace.

[Ross]

I'm gonna take jb's model of niv's model to answer this question.

I make my music because when Bob Dylan walked on stage alone with his guitar 20,000 people stopped dancing and sat and listened. To prepare me for that event my dad played classical radio (he especially love romantic and 20th century music), I had older siblings and french horn lessons. Once I could read music, I started trying to write it. I make my music because Steve Rea and Bill Coffey were cool. I make my music because some guy I hardly knew in Junior College heard me strumming one day and asked if I ever plat picked. I said, "What's that?" and the next day he brought me a mix tape of Neil Young. I make my music because playing guitar alone was easier than finding a bass player. I make my music because it makes me feel better to pick up a guitar and play it at the end of a hard day. I play my music because of years of being at a campfire where music connected people. I make my music because I have dreams of others hearing it and being moved.

I think that pretty much covers it.

EDIT: PS @ JB - That Gorecki thing is AMAZING! one of my favorites. I swear I go minutes without breathing when it is on.

[roymond]

I make my music because ...
- I love sonic effects, both pedestrian and novel
- I am obsessed by arrangement
- I am underdeveloped in lyric writing
- I've found a place where the music uses me to make itself
- I've found an audience that accepts it for what it is

[signboy]

I make my music because I need to make something, and I'm worse at everything else than I am at music. It comes out the way it does for the same reason a goalie might fall over during a save.

[HeuristicsInc]

Hey, I just remembered I wrote something on this topic into my blog a few years ago... here it is:

When I was younger, before I even really thought
about making music, the songs I listened to on the
radio - some of them had very interesting, odd
sounds in the beginning, but after some number of
seconds the odd sounds would disappear and the
song would kick in. And I was always kind of
disappointed when the odd sounds weren't
incorporated into the song at all; the song would
be more or less standard sounds after the intro.
And I thought, "if I ever make music I'm going to
use the odd sounds throughout the whole thing and
make them a part of the song."

...and today I remembered thinking this, and it is
exactly What I Do.
How cool is that?

That helps to answer the question. Also I am a software engineer and so my mind works well with computers, so using software is easier than guitars
-bill

[Teplin]

When I was younger, before I even really thought
about making music, the songs I listened to on the
radio - some of them had very interesting, odd
sounds in the beginning, but after some number of
seconds the odd sounds would disappear and the
song would kick in. And I was always kind of
disappointed when the odd sounds weren't
incorporated into the song at all; the song would
be more or less standard sounds after the intro.
And I thought, "if I ever make music I'm going to
use the odd sounds throughout the whole thing and
make them a part of the song."

Ha! I can remember thinking the exact same thing.

[ElaineDiMasi]

I think that I make music because I cannot ignore it when I hear any, so I have to participate. I make music with cryptic lyrics, dissonant voices, open fifths, lots of rhythm and lots of colors because that's what grabs me by the base of the spine. I make music that isn't like that just to see whether I can and find out what makes it tick. I tell stories that are about myself because I've never been anywhere else. I'm better now than I used to be at flying these songs to places I haven't been.

Oh, and I'm fickle! Having a crush on a new song every ten days gives me "variety" that I don't have to go looking for elsewhere...

[HeuristicsInc]

Ha! I can remember thinking the exact same thing.

Awesome. Glad to hear that wasn't just me.
-bill

[ujnhunter]

1. Bitches
2. Money
3. Fame

Holla!

[jb]

1. Bitches
2. Money
3. Fame

Holla!

How's that going for you?

[ujnhunter]

How do you think? I am the MF P.I.M.P.

it was a joke you know...