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after listening to burial tunes i find it impossible to produce.

i actually stopped listening to the first burial album for ages because i instantly felt insecure about my own tunes when i did. I don't get this with any other music, i play in live bands as well as messing on my computer and i don't have another album in the world that has this effect on me..


anyway, anyone else get this with burial (or any other tunes/albums)?

i know what you mean but you've to try to turn the insecureness into motivation. I also listen lots to burial and i think i could make that stuff too. i only need to know the tricks and tips.

I had it rly with prodigy.. for me its rly genious music and sometimes its hard to hear your tracks back and then their tracks. Just make music. if you can transform it into motvation, your sounds will be only better and better and better and maybe later even better then burial or prodigy in my case. Try to enjoy it again

peace !

i hope i helped you a little

yes burial is nice, but at the end of the day,u have to make ur own stuff.
burial is good for his style
but its not what i wanna make

Really? Has the opposite effect on me - it shows what's possible in music.

Little Boh Peep wrote:Has the opposite effect on me - it shows what's possible in music.

Same here.. and also reinforces that I should keep making my own sound, not what I think people want to hear.

thesis wrote:

Little Boh Peep wrote:Has the opposite effect on me - it shows what's possible in music.

Same here.. and also reinforces that I should keep making my own sound, not what I think people want to hear.

yeah, i end up getting quite inspired and 'studying' the tunes - trying to figure out how the sounds have been made / techniques that have been used etc

not to imitate put just to add to my own abilities

thesis wrote:

Little Boh Peep wrote:Has the opposite effect on me - it shows what's possible in music.

Same here.. and also reinforces that I should keep making my own sound, not what I think people want to hear.

Straight up - Burial makes me want to produce every time i listen to his album - I read the interview on the Hyperdub site where Burial says...

"I'm not that into tunes that are so sequenced that all you can hear is the perfect grid, even on the echoes. With those kind of tunes, sometimes I just hear Tetris music, i always know where i am in the tune so i cant get lost in it, no rough edges in some tunes even when they try hard to sound rough."

Food for thought if you ask me.. and the main reason why I am utterly addicted to the first album.

it can be a bad idea to compare your tunes to others - at least from a production point of view. I try to listen to music without my production hat on as much as possible nowadays

I don't think B Lam was saying he wanted to make his tunes sound like Burial's, but simply that, when there's music as good as Burial's out there, then what's the point?

I do sometimes get that, but you need to channel that into work/motivation/results.

And it's definitely true that, if Burial teaches us anything, it's be true to your own sound.

And why the fuck didn't I come up with the whole crackle thing? Doh.

Whineo wrote:

thesis wrote:

Little Boh Peep wrote:Has the opposite effect on me - it shows what's possible in music.

Same here.. and also reinforces that I should keep making my own sound, not what I think people want to hear.

Straight up - Burial makes me want to produce every time i listen to his album - I read the interview on the Hyperdub site where Burial says...

"I'm not that into tunes that are so sequenced that all you can hear is the perfect grid, even on the echoes. With those kind of tunes, sometimes I just hear Tetris music, i always know where i am in the tune so i cant get lost in it, no rough edges in some tunes even when they try hard to sound rough."

Food for thought if you ask me.. and the main reason why I am utterly addicted to the first album.

it can be a bad idea to compare your tunes to others - at least from a production point of view. I try to listen to music without my production hat on as much as possible nowadays

yup--Burial's stuff makes me wanna go and make some dark ambient stuff. im not sure if he makes his own soundscapes or uses samples for them but yeah, just makes me wanna do that... his grooves are interesting also but i wouldnt get critical or start comparing yourself to anyone else....thats why theres so many wobbles and copy cats about.

i find it quite hard listening to music without my 'prodduction hat'. even when im telling people why i dont like a praticular song i have to describe in a technical way...'only 1 osicilattor' non production people aka freinds just give a funny look when i say stuff like that.

changed pc's/soundcard's and now everything sounds different...i have to retrain my ears again which is shit. need a mac for sure but thats a different topic.

Yeah, it's true. Good artists (I consider Burial an artist because the music is ACTUALLY ABOUT SOMETHING, rather than just a bunch of near identical 'me too' wobbler tracks) inspire and intimidate at the same time. Leave you frozen for a while.

I think people are too hung up on production around here. Make music that's about something and find your voice. Find what it is you're trying to express. Not just your empty production style. Not just showing off your mad edit skills. Not just trying to be more impressive than your last track. Find what it is you're trying to say. If you're not trying to say anything, stop it at once.



Music about something lasts forever. Music about nothing withers and dies along with the scenes it adheres to.

two oh one wrote:Yeah, it's true. Good artists (I consider Burial an artist because the music is ACTUALLY ABOUT SOMETHING, rather than just a bunch of near identical 'me too' wobbler tracks) inspire and intimidate at the same time. Leave you frozen for a while.

I think people are too hung up on production around here. Make music that's about something and find your voice. Find what it is you're trying to express. Not just your empty production style. Not just showing off your mad edit skills. Not just trying to be more impressive than your last track. Find what it is you're trying to say. If you're not trying to say anything, stop it at once.



Music about something lasts forever. Music about nothing withers and dies along with the scenes it adheres to.

that is a quote and a half!

i agree completely and its the reason i've got so many half-finished tracks
- i start something, sounds good, keep going, getting a flow going, then i'll come back to it a few days later and throw it on the backup pile probably not to be seen again

all because the music was just music for the sake of it, a quick creative buzz but no meaning, no soul !!

i had similar trouble when i was learning to play guitar years ago... i was listening to some great music but my insecurities about my own playing made me turn my back and stop listening to that music, it really pissed me off that much. not good at all. i nearly sold my prized guitar...luckily i changed my mind.
its part of the process of making tunes,you've gotta continue making what you might consider to be shit cos everytime you do it your gonna learn summat new. keep at it dude

both burial and fanu do this to me. i don't necessarily wanna make that style, but it's so original and and has a lasting effect after listening to their music. eventually i get over it and use that as inspiration for production. i really feel that too many people focus on making tight sounding tracks without any musical depth. don't limit yourselves like that.

I think the beauty of Burial's first record is the fact that he recorded it all with one of the most limited software setups you can imagine - all of it was done in a single sound editor (Soundforge I think).

Stuff like that's really made me think about the advantages that seeming limitations can provide sometimes...

A few years back was building up quite a decent little home studio and getting really, really into it - lotsa long nights click, click, clicking away - but then started going out with this gyal who eventually moved in with me. She fancied herself a musician too, but being younger didn't have the experience I did, so got frustrated quickly when we tried working together. After a while I didn't even try with her and that added to the tension - to the point where she said she didn't even want to hear me making music.

Needless to say I was f*cking bummed out for a while... stopped making any beats for 5, 6 months... but you can't put out the inner fire and after a while I DL'd Hammerhead onto my work PC and started making beats again; then loaded up FL and started doing the whole thing again (still at work ) and found that the time I'd spent using barebones stuff like Hammerhead tightened up my game immensely.

So I'd say explore deliberate limitations, like making tunes with only one synth plug and a drum seq., and switch it up from time to time but keep it simple. After a while those limitations make you even more of a master.

I dunno if i buy that burial uses soundforge thing... I mean, apparently he has close mates that don't even know he makes tunes.. how would what software he uses get leaked......

And i think to make tunes, ultimately you just have to forget what the rest of the world is doing, i get depressed/confused/make shit tunes that way.. I just try to design my own sounds and that generally keeps me happy

Check it:

M: Explain about the production set up you use…

B: I’m not a ‘musician,’ no training, nothing. So I was always scared of people who had studios. Heroes of mine like Photek suddenly became Rupert Parkes in his studio, telling everyone how he did it. The magic got a bit lost.

B: So I thought to myself fuckit I’m going to stick to this shitty little computer program, Soundforge. I don’t know any other programs. Once I change something, I can never un-change it. I can only see the waves. So I know when I’m happy with my drums because they look like a nice fishbone. When they look just skeletal as fuck in front of me, and so I know they’ll sound good.

M: So you don’t use a sequencer?

B: No.

from http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/2 ... urial.html

I'm sure he's probably enhanced his rig since last year, but who knows?

ah i see

cheers mate

lol @ this quote from Burial in that blackdown interview

"Digital Mystikz and Loefah’s stuff is so good they make me want to stop making tunes."

lucky he persisted i guess

Indeed... lucky for us!

I also feel that way (almost overwhelmed) by a lot of Loefah & Mystikz tracks. The first time I heard "Horror Show" it gave me goosebumps - so simple, raw, and heavy...

Alphacat wrote:Check it:

M: Explain about the production set up you use…

B: I’m not a ‘musician,’ no training, nothing. So I was always scared of people who had studios. Heroes of mine like Photek suddenly became Rupert Parkes in his studio, telling everyone how he did it. The magic got a bit lost.

B: So I thought to myself fuckit I’m going to stick to this shitty little computer program, Soundforge. I don’t know any other programs. Once I change something, I can never un-change it. I can only see the waves. So I know when I’m happy with my drums because they look like a nice fishbone. When they look just skeletal as fuck in front of me, and so I know they’ll sound good.

M: So you don’t use a sequencer?

B: No.

from http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/2 ... urial.html

I'm sure he's probably enhanced his rig since last year, but who knows?

i really don't see how he could have produced that whole album just using soundforge whether he claims it or not. it's a nice program, but i don't see how it can be used to make a full track let alone a full album. you need a sequencer to make music...also if all he uses is soundforge, then that would make him 100% sample based.