You may have noticed that I gradually stopped uploading music here. I figured, after such a long time I probably should explain my reasoning a little. Pour out some emotion on virtual paper, I dunno. But in essence, my life was taken over by college last year and that was what I focused on the most. In 2022 I defended my bachelor thesis and that wiped out my interest in just about anything. I tried to stay creative then but it wasn't easy. Some songs were better than others but I started feeling like I'm losing steam. And then in the next 2 years came ahead the masters thesis. Went much smoother but writing an almost 100 pages long book took up a lot of time too. I was madly depressed by the prospect of having to find work soon. I eventually did. It's not the best job in the world but I feel good doing it so I'm having a slow recovery. A slow, but mixed one.
It's not just a matter of a lack of time for me to make music only. I came to realize I was too hung up on other people's opinions when it comes to the crap I was creating. That was literal poison for me. I kept comparing my stuff to others and took criticism very hard. I stopped making music for myself in essence, I was making it to appease to others and what they might think about it in some way. People wanted me to be creative, make stuff, yes I'm aware, but it just didn't make me happy anymore. I made my last song, "We'll Meet Again" under a lot of emotional pressure. I kept having reouccuring dreams of a girl since about a decade and I figured I'll try to make a song "for her", if that makes sense. And halfway through it loses steam imo. It's not perfect by any means. I may have high demands of myself or ironically too low ones, depends on the day. I don't know. But point is, I was way too overthinking that nobody really listens or responds to my uploads except a minority of folks (to which I am extremely grateful. Firespace, Mikulski, Pedregulho, Electroblick, my heart goes out to you guys for faving, reuploading and taking your time to listen to my stuff. Love y'all like family <3). Before I really make something good again, I have to learn to enjoy doing this myself once again.
And stop relying on filling up some quota or whatever! That's probably the primary reason why I feel the way about making music once again. In 2020 when I was leaving a really depressive slump (yes yes that's a freaking circle at this point I get it, now shut it) the idea of having a record label where I could share my stuff onto Spotify and other media was extremely appealing. But every dream has to come to an end (or does it have to?). The label is pretty much out of control right now, distributors remove uploads of people on a whim, I get asked what's the issue but I straight up have no control over it either. I grew extremely apathetic over this whole shebang because it only made me feel like crap. Some may have made a few bucks on sharing their works there but oftentimes it was more trouble than it was worth it. And in my case, with an enormous discography at this point (I mean, 8 albums and like twice as much singles and EPs?) when you saw a tune you made have less than 10 views over a few years, you just wanted to shoot yourself in the head. Oh, the YT link doesn't work because the distributor got hacked or scammed us once again? Wow! What a f*cking twist...
And on a side-note, something that made me really disenchanted was people's approach towards AI. When primitive AIs like Melobytes came to exist, they were SO MUCH FUN for me. It was harmless fun. You could generate a silly melody, laugh at it, sample it or remix it. The sole idea an image could be translated into a weird, dream-esque song was just so fascinating to me. Agag can confirm what I'm talking about if you get what I mean.
But then when AI got more advanced and GPT more "annoying" as some would label it, many self-proclaimed artists shat their knickers because it would apparently rob them off their work or outright steal it. Now don't get me wrong, I strongly condemn making money on AI generated stuff going off a lazy prompt. But when I use AI as a tool to help me obtain samples or create cover art for my releases which I wouldn't be able to design otherwise because I simply am not a painter or graphical designer, is that really so evil? Is it so harmful to just goof around in Udio or Suno and extend your never finished songs? If I don't make money on this then I don't have to feel bad about it. I think the human input is very important here. If I inject into an AI something I made myself so that it can alter it, then add my own twist to it, I think the human input outweighs the AI's contribution. As an example, take my Vol. 9 cover which I've done ages ago but didn't use so far.
I made this by inputting a heavily edited image of a Super Mario Bros. rom hack with some photo I took myself as an example. The text is not generated either. So in short, is AI really this bad? I don't know, not for me. It's the people as always who just misuse it. And I don't have to feel bad about making less music if I can just let Suno give me ideas how to continue a song I've already made. But alas, I cannot share it to anyone because not only would many people hate it, but also many sites restrict it.
Nonetheless to summarize, I need to start enjoying making music for myself again, stop caring about external sources and just do it again for myself. As a kid I had a Soundcloud account which had a limit, then I asked a friend to make a website which eventually died. A lot of my songs from before the Newgrounds era, I just keep them on my MP3 player and computers because they're children of mine as anything else I've made. I don't take critism well because I'm not being paid to mix each sound properly, like I give a gunk if a snare is 0.002dbs too quiet, most musicians have mixers who are paid for correcting such artifacts, I don't need to do that. And if someone cares more for that than for the actual composition, arrangement and instrument choice, then I'm at a loss for words what people even want from music. I consider my peak to be in 2021 when I rediscovered Four Eyes and made the EP named after it personally. It wasn't even a difficult song to arrange, I did it in an evening when I came back to college while sipping on a good ol' Żubr. I even had a beta test at 140 BPM before I turned it into what it became in the end. I like listening to some unfinished betas of my annoying tunes, they sometimes feel so different and you end up wondering what could've been.
At the end of the day I can say everyone just needs to find a niche they enjoy and if you don't vibe with something for one reason or another, find out why, you got nothing to lose anyway. Maybe I will make music again properly, but first and foremost I need to care about it, and care about ME and only MYSELF enjoying it first and foremost. That was what kept me afloat back in the day and probably might in the future. So, that's it from me. Stay safe and enjoy being creative, don't let anyone bring you down and just do what you enjoy. Long as it doesn't hurt anyone.
SouSTAR
I dunno man, if someone post something in public, people are entitled to give their opinion.
So I'll just give me mine : AI doesn't have its place in arts. Even if it's for samples that you will edit or simple album covers. It's not about money, it's about the fact that companies found a way to make a profit on struggling people once again, and this time, it's artists.
Of course it's easy, but what's the point to trade easiness for personality? Of course it will take time to draw, make music and stuff... You are expressing a part of yourself, it's what art is all about.
It's harmless fun, yes, but the more you use AI in *your* works, the less they become yours. And so your work lose your personality and become just "edited samples"
You may disagree, or maybe find some truth, I don't know. I thought AI would help me in my writing once, but I regretted using it because I ultimately felt like I was sabotaging my work. I wrote these words for a reason. I wrote this scene for a reason.
It was harmless fun too, but in reality, the thing I was harming was my work.
Also, Newgrounds is pretty anti-AI, so yeah. Different spaces will have different opinions. In the end, it's the same thing again : Big corpo profiting from people's and their customers/users defending them because "it's their choice" or "it's harmless".
Jeansowaty
That might depend if you consider your art as a way of living. I sorta took music as an escape from reality if that makes sense but it never would be able to help me financially or something. I should also clarify AI can be useful for ripping out samples, not necessarily for just generating crap - makes it easy to obtain some clean samples of a drum loop for example. I often liked to take apart songs in order to recreate them and learn off that, especially when vocals made it more difficult lol. I think it depends how you approach it ultimately. I miss the days of Inferkit where it would like, turn a story you gave it into complete nonsense. In some way, maybe that's the key, I find OLD AI when it was beyond primitive actually hilarious, unlike modern pristine and sterile stuff.
Nonetheless my post wasn't really per se about being some big AI defender because I really am not, more like I simply wanted to just air out anything I had in my system altogether since a long time. My main highlight of this post was that I kept getting hung up by other people's opinions, which well, at the end of the day may still be tied to your response. You're totally cool to think the way you do and I get it, I merely just believe I need to start making stuff for myself once more and grow to like it again. Because like you put it, by focusing on the reception, I kept sabotaging myself and my output. Simple as that. Have a splendid day.