did you...

[Andrew Tarpinian]

On Jan 4, 2010, at 10:42 AM, Dave S wrote:

> On Sunday 03 January 2010, Andrew Tarpinian wrote:
>> See I have been struggling with this, with music, with art. Who is it
>> for?
>
> I started getting somewhere with my music when I decided to just  
> write it for
> my own enjoyment.  I found that other people started to enjoy it a  
> lot more
> too when I did this.  (Including tunes that I thought sucked but  
> played to
> them anyway.)
>
> It's true, when I'm working on a track these days, I am thinking  
> "will this
> work for a DJ to play?", and so I do end up structuring it a little  
> bit around
> something that can be built into a DJ set.  I also stick to pretty  
> standard
> BPMs.  This is when I'm doing my dubstep-ish kinda stuff, anyway.
>
> So I am writing to a genre (though dubstep is actually an incredibly  
> loose
> genre - there's loads of people doing very interesting things with  
> it around
> the edges of what's going on in the middle), but the single most  
> important
> thing is that I enjoy myself while I'm writing.
>
> Once this release I'm working on is out of the door, I'm definitely  
> going to
> break a whole lot more of my own "rules", including scrapping ideas  
> about
> "genre" and particular BPMs and so on.
>
> Influences, yes.  Rules, no.  (Or something like that!)
>
>> There are things that can be good enough for you but not for  
>> others, and
>> things that are good enough for others but not for you. What is the  
>> divide?
>
> The one in _your_ head which is currently stopping you seeing that  
> the divide
> is imaginary.  :-)
>
>> it is all just a compromise? One can say rely on yourself as the  
>> prime
>> audience, but that can be just as hard. As well as there are many  
>> documented
>> cases of artists working in to much of a closed environment and not  
>> able to
>> judge their work properly.
>
> It's true that this is difficult.  I have a small-ish-time DJ friend  
> who's
> opinions I really value, and who nearly always gets back to me in  
> much less
> than 24 hours.  I always send him stuff before I send it to anybody  
> else, and
> I take his feedback seriously.  He includes nearly all my tunes in  
> his online
> DJ mixes, which are becoming reasonably popular.  :-)
>
> I've found that building up one or two of these kind of producer <->  
> DJ
> mutually beneficial relationships has really worked well for me.
>
> So I guess ultimately I *do* care what "other people" think of my  
> music, but
> first and foremost, it's for me, and only for me.

All of this is very good :)

Guess I just need to get my head back in the game