How to

I sometimes get turned off by electronic music when it hits me that the tune I'm listening to could've been banged out in five minutes on a laptop.  There's good and bad electronic music, and it's not always possible to tell what's throwaway and what an artist really put a lot of effort into.  With the massive proliferation of digital tracks I'm sure that some of what we hear online was put together really quickly from some bog-standard samples.  I came across a couple of videos that, in their own way, attest to this.  One is obviously facetious, the other is more telling though.  The latter is of an artist called Huxley who's been challenged by Factmag to put a tune together in ten minutes or less, and he basically manages it.  He's definitely got skill and talent, and I'm by no means arguing that anyone could do what he does.  But there is also, I think, a meaningful difference between being able to put a house track together in a few minutes and really putting together something unique and musical that's worth going out and obtaining.  And not just obtaining, but that's worth spending your time on, and that doesn't have that cheap almost plasticky feel to it. I can't really define what that feeling is, but I think I hear it sometimes and it's definitely a turn-off.





Here's a real Deadboy track and, to me, it sounds like something that a lot of time, thought, and effort has been put into.  I hope I'm right:



Sidenote:  Noticing that a lot of "comedy" videos on youstube are basically repeating the same old traits, including the Deadboy video that starts this post.  It's getting old!