Musicians VS Coders

[davidlovesbeta]

Hi, as my username suggests, my name is David. I am a non-musician just really intrigued by Singapore's culture and this forum seems to be the leading place for musicians to hang out. =D Great job James, if you are reading this.

I have a very strange observation which I would love to air.

From my limited experience while picking up programming languages on my own, there are numerous noob posting questions / snippets of their codes each day and it is not unusual for veterans and well basically everyone to chip in. So it feels kinda supportive and nurturing. Beta testings and demos usually receive a fair amount of feedback too.

However, it is barely evident in sections like the open mic over here. And this really puzzles me seeing how "stereotypical" coders are more "introverted" than musicians. Are musicians more attached to their creation? Or do they just care less about others' creation?

Any opinions/insights will be gladly welcomed so please do share =D

:evileace out:evil:

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

Interesting thread in a long while.

Welcome to here!

Over here, over the years, indeed theres not much coders who do music passing by here. I did came knew someone from here, having experience in Csound and building hardware modular synth

Theres another member round here who does max msp stuff as well if i remember correctly.

For me, iam learning max msp and also dissecting monome apps to learn from it occassionally. But then,coming from a guitar background with no programming experience, its pretty hard trying to look at codes and symbols while balancing time to do musical things with coding, not to mention the struggle at times to understand what goes on behind each line and when debugging a patch.

Even though there might not be much coders round here, but i believe they are around, in other forums somewhere and doing their stuff.

What are the kind of programming you're into?

 

[Brenkoh]

What are the kind of programming you're into?

Perhaps the ts could enlighten us on what kind of programming you're into.

My guess is maybe he's an application programmer. I do come from programming background with c#,java,python,bash background too But I'm mediocre, not like those geniuses or prodigies who can kill you with a few lines of code. to top that off, no # // comments at all which leaves you to guess what the fish the person is trying to achieve.

Are musicians more attached to their creation? Or do they just care less about others' creation?

I think the issue is musicians want their stuff to be heard and they will focus their time on 'marketing' their own music. They don't really have the time to check out the pieces of other musicians unless it's easily spotted on this site (e.g. home page of SOFT) or when they happen to see a particular youtube video on facebook. After all it doesn't really benefit them seeing how good of a guitarist/bassist/drummer that person is. with the popular saying.. 'where got time???'

 

[davidlovesbeta]

What are the kind of programming you're into?

I'm just a humble learner of django[web dev language] and objective-c [iOS dev]. Just something I do during my free time.

I think the issue is musicians want their stuff to be heard and they will focus their time on 'marketing' their own music. They don't really have the time to check out the pieces of other musicians unless it's easily spotted on this site (e.g. home page of SOFT) or when they happen to see a particular youtube video on facebook. After all it doesn't really benefit them seeing how good of a guitarist/bassist/drummer that person is. with the popular saying.. 'where got time???'

I don't think time is exactly the issue. Any threads on the Open Mic sub-forum easily have over 30 views and most are without comments. If they made the commitment to open the thread, it is safe to assume that they are at least slightly interested in the song being "advertised". It's amazing (to me at least) that these threads does not have more "you suck" or "keep at it bro"... I kinda thought that there would be more passing comment, given how open/expressive musicians seem to be to an outsider like me...

Perhaps one of my underlying assumption that everyone here does music is false. May be the viewers of the Open Mic sub-forum are merely scouts/headhunters then =/

 

[carboxymoron]

And this really puzzles me seeing how "stereotypical" coders are more "introverted"

As you pointed out, IT-related online communities are very active and healthy. This is like saying fishes are "introverted" on land, but are more active and healthy in water.

I think the issue is musicians want their stuff to be heard and they will focus their time on 'marketing' their own music. They don't really have the time to check out the pieces of other musicians

This is the nice way of saying we are all selfish bastards. We will keep pushing our material on other people (like this, subscribe that, follow here) but majority won't bother checking other material out. Of those who bother to listen, most will only listen halfway*. And out of those who listen all the way, not all will respond / comment at the end. So getting any feedback at all is a huge achievement.

* My recent Bandcamp stats are 20% listen to the first few seconds and then close the window - either not interested or didn't wait for it to load; 45% listen to part of the track; remaining 35% listen to one full track. On SoundCloud, the feedback rate is slightly better, because the users/listeners tend to be community-minded musicians as well, and it's part of the culture to comment on others' works in progress.

And lastly (in my opinion) the signal to noise ratio is far too high. Lots of people come on to plug one YouTube video and never come back, and it's mostly low quality pop covers.

 

[blueprintstudios]

I'm not a musician nor a coder.

on the topic of quiet/inactive Open Mic section , unless if your thread is being "replied to" (seems active) , then more people will view (singaporeans will queue for something that has a long queue). otherwise they may have linked in from their facebook spam. otherwise the following factors is based from my own observation :

"constructive criticism = no comments. "

"if you got nothing good to say have a cup of STFU/if abusive language get ban = no comments "

"Song A - keep it up! Musician starts putting Song B C D E F how is it? how is it? becomes too tiring/got better things to do = no comments "

So unless it's really really good or controversial (like what stomp.com.sg likes to do, stir sh!t then gain a lot of participation.), otherwise nobody's REALLY checking anyone out unless it has a female band member with a cleavage, wears a miniskirt holding a guitar or wears heels playing drums.

 

[PatheinRaindropMoe]

heh, over here, cannot take things seriously nor use it as indication of the community we have in singapore.

Anyway, comparison aside, theres hackerspace locally, TS, you might wanna check it out, if havent. They have meetups occassionally. I came to know of them coz looking for arduino folks locally.

http://groups.google.com/group/hackerspacesg

 

[davidlovesbeta]

Thank you all for adding to the discussion

As you pointed out, IT-related online communities are very active and healthy. This is like saying fishes are "introverted" on land, but are more active and healthy in water.

heh, over here, cannot take things seriously nor use it as indication of the community we have in singapore.

Hmm..i think, and i hope that what both of you say is truely the root cause. seems sensible too...

@blueprintstudios i think you have a point there too...

And I think one thing that I overlooked when starting the thread is that music is definitely more subjective than codes, although in a sense both are really expressive and subjected to individual flair. And I guess if John Lennon meets Michael Jackson, they wouldn't really have all that much to say to each other about their music....

 

[Raiyne]

And lastly (in my opinion) the signal to noise ratio is far too high. Lots of people come on to plug one YouTube video and never come back, and it's mostly low quality pop covers.

I noticed the subtitle of the Open Mic forum was "Showcase your music here."

Perhaps we should encourage that point a bit more by making it originals only? And move covers to a different section.

 

[davidlovesbeta]

but even as it is, there is barely enough volume to keep readership up...
Segregating it might just makes it worst.

 

[davidlovesbeta]

=blueprintstudios

Re-reading your reply after some time...
What if the admin makes it mandatory for each user to have only 1 thread?
The primary reason why people keep posting new threads is to gain the 'headline'.
When the owner of that thread link his updates / new youtube cover, his thread 'gains' viewership/reply count. And is bumped back to the the top. if this 'norm' is practiced, the more serious threadstarters and the users themselves would benefit.

Of course then the policing of the forum becomes an issue as people might endlessly/mindlessly bump their threads without adding new cover or what so ever.

 

[centralcatchment]

IT threads are different from music threads. In IT threads, people ask each other for help on very specific things, and they get answers because people know that this will make it easier for them to get help also on very specific things.

When it comes to demos, it's very hard to critique. First, everything is subjective. It's very hard to tell if people are fishing for praise, or they genuinely want advice on what's right or wrong. Somebody asked a question once about an album cover, and I thought, "lovelovelovelove it, let's just treat this as a genuine request for advice, because if it is, he gets what he wants, and if he's just fishing for praise, he'll learn a painful lesson and stop irritating me". So I told him what I thought and there was an awkward silence after that.

It's much better to ask people what they think of your tracks face to face - comments about music are typically vague and need to be clarified face to face. Some songs, you can say "the chorus" and two different people will think about two different parts.

There's basically one main use case for putting up music and intros on a forum like this, and that is to direct people to their soundcloud / bandcamp / youtube sites. Then people can go there and put their comments up there. Somebody mentioned that music will not get comments unless it's really good. That is actually OK, because there is too much music made these days anyway - might as well cut it down to the few ones which are really good. Comments will not generally improve a musician. If you're good enough, you can find other really good musicians to work with you, and they will make you even better. If you need to be told what to do to make your own music good enough, your ears are probably not good enough for you to be a good musician, or you are probably better off just listening to a lot of other peoples' music because that's the best kind of music education out there anyway. There is no substitute for listening, feeling and thinking about music. Practicing for 6 hours a day alone will not solve the problem.

You can also ask IT sort of questions on forums like this, like what gear do you like, what software should I use. Otherwise you should just make your own music, and "debug" it yourself by asking yourself, what do I like or not like about it.

 

[davidlovesbeta]

IT threads are different from music threads. In IT threads, people ask each other for help on very specific things, and they get answers because people know that this will make it easier for them to get help also on very specific things.

It's much better to ask people what they think of your tracks face to face - comments about music are typically vague and need to be clarified face to face. Some songs, you can say "the chorus" and two different people will think about two different parts.

Very true, music is definitely infinitely more subjective than coding. And face-to-face feedback is definitely more valuable.

I think the noise-to-ratio explanation may still be one of the best explanation though.
Afterall, sites like flickr / deviant art showcase similarly subjective materials and participations/discussions are not entirely invisible....at least for the better showcases

 

[blueprintstudios]

personally I still stand on what I said, but ultimately it's not about the rules of how the person who posts + his/her content is being managed. it's the quality and attention worth of the content. some love covers, some think covers are a waste of time and prefer originals, yet the originals are not as good as the cover, or it sounds like a ripoff of another original (which people would prefer a cover song)
people start to look for the whole package, the looks, the voice, the talent, the sex, the networking/marketing these days in music.

and like what centralcatchment mentioned "Fishing for praise" or even fishing for attention. click like on my facebook, bla bla bla. etc. the quality of marketing these days is being measured by how many likes you have on your FB even which doesn't pay the musician anything except for mark zuckerberg.

as for your suggestion ,which is why facebook becomes convenient cos you're "discovered" on soft, but for the "latest updates just head on over to my FB and screw soft.com.sg" from here on until I got something new to spam or something to sell on soft and this points at those people who just posts their stuff and doesn't actively contribute nor participate. but SOFT would still be the long lasting portal for local music out of the past local music forums I've seen so far.

question now is , if there was a megastar discovered on soft.com.sg would he/she still pull up and encourage more to start from soft.com.sg ? would his/her manager/record label allow her to name another entity (a.k.a soft) ? cos from what I've learned, certain bands love to have "controlled exposure" to only associate with "high society" people once they get to a certain height. but would still come back to SOFT to spam the next gig or next "prestigious" USA tour they're having etc.

 

[davidlovesbeta]

@blueprintstudios:

what's the equivalent of high society? in your perspective.
Sounds like most amateurs/musicians that post on the open mic forum don't really have a good rep in the eyes of most that have replied.

 

[blueprintstudios]

> what's the equivalent of high society? in your perspective.
I have no idea as one of my many mottos is "Ron does not give a love about fame only sound."
it's just this fine white line that says "this is where our affiliation/association stops until the day we find you of use again." you know that nerd that has all the answers to exam questions? no one's hanging out with him for the december holidays after the copying is done. it's abit like that.

I haven't listened to open mic for ages actually, but my belief is if I hear people talking about it/hear it without trying, it must be popular/good, or just good marketing. heh.

 

[blueprintstudios]

btw to those who feel like I make local musicians seem like an ingrate. feel free to prove me wrong heh. really, please, I insist.