i studied and worked as a graphic designer at the start of my career, and i still do a lot of design focused work, and i feel like my head is most always in the realm of aesthetics. and then my career moved more into game development, and found a new focus on technical skill and process. i feel like this is very common, you find yourself artistically motivated and you want to learn to do a thing, and on today's internet you will find endless resources on how to achieve a particular aesthetic, or improve your technical abilities. Learn color theory. Learn to draw the human hand. Learn to build a finite state machine in gamemaker. Learn to sidechain your bass in ableton live.
so many of the audio people i talk to just want to discuss sample libraries or wwise or whatever. which i get! it’s an easy way to make conversation, and i do genuinely enjoy talking about these things a lot of the time.
but like for example, i don’t think i’ve ever said out loud that the reason i love the clarinet so much is that to me it feels like being in a forest during that part of spring when all the little leaves are starting to emerge from their buds, quiet and curious and hopeful.
or that f# minor is my favorite key because something about it just resonates so deeply within me, it pulls at my heartstrings and make me want to cry, but it’s that good kind of sadness that makes you realize how lucky you are to be experiencing being alive.
i don’t talk this way a lot because it feels overly sincere, and i’m always afraid i’m going to make people feel uncomfortable with my sudden flood of feelings, hah. so i talk about technical things more, which sometimes can lead to me thinking about music in an overly technical way. and sometimes i can get so caught up in that way of thinking that i forget why it is that i really love making music.
sorry for going on a long screed on your post @geometric , lol. but i think you’ve hit on something very real here. i’ve been feeling pretty uninspired lately, and i think it’s because i’ve just been thinking about music in terms of things like building interactive music systems and finding the best sounding reverb and that sort thing. i gotta start focusing on the emotional side of it again, get that spark back.
