Has producing changed the way you listen to music?

[nylle]

I can turn 'it' on and off at will.

with enough liquor or weed SO CAN I

[kaiori breathe]

For me, a lot of the mystique of my favourite artists and songs has been taken out by learning how to produce.

I've only been seriously into it these last 3 or 4 months, and naturally the first thing I wanted to do was to try and recreate some of my favourite sounds and tunes. So I made the reese bass off'f Lion VIP and was very happy with it, made a nice tune with it in. However the next time I listened to the song it just didn't have the same feeling as when I first heard it, with no idea how any of the noises were made.

So, in a bid to keep my record collection as special, I've taken to producing house music, which I almost never listen to, anyone else feel like this?

The way I listened to music changed twice.

The first was when I started learning theory, for a long time I wasn't able to just sit and listen to a song anymore, all I heard was GMajor, F#/Dminor, Am7, Cadd9, and I'd be listening to melody lines and constantly have a narration on the harmonies that were occurring or the intervals being used, it was kind of like for everything I heard the theory would put a word on it in my head, and so I'd miss out on the listening experience a little and get distracted by what was happening. In a lot of ways it was great, really helped me get to grips with musicians I looked up to quickly, but it did hinder a lot. Eventually it faded of course, and I think a big reason for it happening was because of the information overload I was forcing on myself I literally devoured every piece of knowledge I could find for months at a time. I seriously had no life for a long time, I just devoured musical information. But like I said it faded after a while when I'd learned the stuff and wasn't constantly reading about theory and it wasn't constantly on my mind as a result.

The second big change to the way I listened to music happened when I started learning to produce. I became obsessed with how every little synth sound was made and when I was listening to tunes I'd be analyzing it again, trying to dissect how everything was made, again, similar situation, it was a great help in that it helped me get to grips with a lot of sounds pretty quickly, but equally it did distract me from being able to just sit and enjoy music. Again I think it happened because I was overloading myself, I'm not somebody who does things by half, if I sit down to learn something, I seriously learn the shit out of it, I will buy every piece of literature I can find on the subject, I will scour the net and I will spend every waking second digesting the information until I'm sure it's there in my head and securely in place. When I got to the stage where I felt the information was there and I'd learned a great bulk of it I calmed down once again and stopped overloading myself with information and the problem faded once again.

It sounds like you might be experiencing something similar, really getting obsessively into producing because you love it and overloading yourself a bit, personally I don't think it'll do you any harm if that is what's happening, but it sounds to me like you're genuinely passionate about learning and sometimes when your learning great bulks of new information about something you love it can feel like you're also destroying the thing you love, but hopefully for you it will fade as it did for me - if indeed you are going through something similar to what I did.

If you want to keep certain tracks special the best thing you can do is try not to over listen to them, I write music predominantly just to have something special to listen to, the irony is that in the writing process I end up hating everything I write because of over playing it. I've learned not to listen to my tunes when I finish them anymore, for at least a week, then come back to them when I won't obsessively play them on loop.

Hope something there helps.

[nowaysj]

Was just a passenger in a car with an alright sound system on a Christmas day drive, and I was nodding off, but I started to hear all of the dynamics manipulation in this track. I started to hear it, after all these cocksucking years, I could actually hear it. HAHAHAHA.

Yes it changes you. I don't even know what that track was, or even the time period or genre... just dynamics.

[gravity]

yeah i have very little respect for most dance music now.

[hutyluty]

If you want to keep certain tracks special the best thing you can do is try not to over listen to them, I write music predominantly just to have something special to listen to, the irony is that in the writing process I end up hating everything I write because of over playing it. I've learned not to listen to my tunes when I finish them anymore, for at least a week, then come back to them when I won't obsessively play them on loop.

Yeah, that is definitely some good advice there, I am guilty of getting an album I love and hammering it out for months on end until it's lost it's appeal. The tunes I write are predominantly to give me something to listen to, and when you listen to a song you wrote yourself and you are taken away from all the intricacies of thinking how it was made, then it's a great feeling.

I don't know what music you listen to K. Breathe but I have found that producing a different style has really helped. From not trying to sound like the artists I listen to constantly, it means I analyse their music less and (to me) it seems like my tunes have got better (someone who actually listens to house will probably disagree).

I can turn 'it' on and off at will.

with enough liquor or weed SO CAN I

When pissed enough even bassline/brostep sounds good

[amphibian]

Oh yells yeah.

Production has made me analyze music so much. To my detriment? Definitely not. It's like I can hear with greater clarity.

[Depone]

Yeah definitely... Its like, i used to study 'Media' ages ago back in school. and as soon was i started to take films apart bit by bit and analyzing them, it took the fun away from watching movies. Its the same with music to an extent. I tend to listen to non dubstep day to day, to keep it interesting.

[pete_bubonic]

I can turn 'it' on and off at will.

with enough liquor or weed SO CAN I

[hasezwei]

production turned me into a music gourmét, a sonic connoisseur, an annoying elitist. and i like it that way.

[nylle]

Yeah definitely... Its like, i used to study 'Media' ages ago back in school. and as soon was i started to take films apart bit by bit and analyzing them, it took the fun away from watching movies. Its the same with music to an extent. I tend to listen to non dubstep day to day, to keep it interesting.

oh man i totally feel you on taking any kind of 'media analysis' class and then trying to watch tv or movies
im a journalism major right now and i just got done with a 'theories of mass communication class'
in short, i can't take the news seriously anymore

[Dystinkt]

I just get annoyed now when I hear the brutal electro patch.