Tips
As an Audience Member
* Enjoy what you like or love. Don't let anyone's opinion(s) on one thing prevent you from liking it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they can't force you to share the same opinion as them.
* Support smaller creators from the underground (such as your friends) like you'd support mainstream creators who are playing shows and presenting at convention centers. Not everything is about the mainstream, so the underground also deserves light as much as you give it to the mainstream.
As a Creator
* You have a higher chance of releasing a track yourself rather than on a label because your creativity isn't limited.
* Make whatever you want to make, and release whatever you want to release. Sure, it's vital to listen to your audience, but don't make yourself their property by devoting everything you do to their "schedule" or demands.
* Only listen to your audience for serious aspects of your content and not for anything but.
* Always take constructive feedback, but don't appease assholes only because they don't like one smallass thing in whatever you've created. Unless you plan on turning it into something fully-fledged, you are not obligated to make changes in a 16-bar loop that you made for the sake of experimentation. The changes are only taken into consideration if the thing you made is destined to be a full thing.
* Use whatever tools you can get your hands on however you want to use them, not whatever people demand you to use in a way they expect it to be used. If you want to use FL Studio Mobile, go for it. If you want to apply OTT on the master track with maximum expansion (upwards compression) and maximum [downwards] compression, your call. If you want to extremely squash your entire mix into a clipper, who the hell is stopping you? You just need to know how to get creative with your tools.
* If there's no sign of a certain kind of music you are thinking of but want to hear, be the change you want to see and make that kind of music. It might not take off as a "known thing" in weeks, but give it time and you might make it go from a fake genre to a real genre, just like how Chime himself coined the color bass genre and how another producer coined the future riddim genre.
Takes on the Music Scene
Creation
### Tutorials
// When you really think about it, a majority of music production tutorial videos simply tell you how to make music with titles worded to make you think otherwise. They kinda just tell you the "right" and "wrong" ways of making music despite it being an open form of art for humans.
A lot of production "tutorial" videos I've watched are oftentimes videos that tell you what to do to make a certain genre of music in the "right" way. Some other videos I've watched [which are labeled as tutorials] are the exact opposite where it's just the person breaking down a small drop loop and not actually telling you how to make whatever the genre their drop was made under.
Do you get an insight of how someone made the track they're showing? Absolutely, since you can get to know what went in their head when making it. Do you actually learn *anything* from it? From my experience (or from the way I see it), no, because it's either you are obligated to do the same stuff the OP does, or you are left confused on what you could do for your own music because there's nothing to take away from it. The best that I could suggest is making music production tips that actually give the viewer ideas on what they can do for their own music without considering them as the "right or wrong way" of making music.
### DAW's: The issue with DAW ranking videos
Oh yeah I have a moderate amount to say about this one.
// Ngl in my honest opinion, DAW ranking videos—unless it's made obvious in the title that you're ranking them based on your own opinion and not fictional "facts" that nobody provided—are actually cringe as hell. Stop encouraging people to quit their DAW they're used to using.
Very tough part of the meat to chew on, sure, but I don't think it should be uttered more than once when I say that DAW ranking videos and the "DAW wars" drama are all fucking garbage. All DAW's, while they function very much differently, are good at one thing: outputting and producing sounds in a laptop.
Sure, depending on its noticeable difference in feature sets of a DAW it could probably alter the way you make music, but going to the DAW of the latter will *never* improve or degrade your music compared to what you've made from the DAW of the former. I can say that as a person who's used Caustic 3 as my main DAW (on Android and Windows), I've noticed a drastic change in my sound after switching from Caustic to Tracktion Waveform because I can get to use 3rd-party plug-ins like instruments and effects and not be physically crippled of a low 14-track limit with only 2 effect slots per track, but after trying out Reaper for several days now (which you might've heard about me doing from my Notepin post), I can also confirm that my sound stayed the same between Waveform and Reaper. The only thing that changed is how I use a DAW with everything being different from Waveform.
When someone asks "What's the best DAW for people to use?", the answer should never be a specific DAW that's mentioned, but rather a question:
What DAW do you think is best for your own needs?
As a creator, there are multiple choices for DAW's, you just need to try them out based on what you do, what you want to do, and what you intend to get out of a DAW. That way, you don't have to be misguided by whatever someone else uses...which brings me to my other point: don't use a DAW just because someone else does. Yes, that DAW may look dope as fuck, and I get it.
FL Studio looks dope as fuck. Ableton Live looks dope as fuck. Pro Tools probably looks dope as fuck despite the over-prioritization in the graphics using realistic images. Reaper looks dope as fuck depending on what theme you use. But the graphical looks shouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind when you choose a DAW. You have to focus on functionality and the UX.
### DAW's: The DAW's I've used
I've used Waveform for the past several years ever since the Tx era (specifically I used T7) as it was the first free DAW I came across. However, after noticing some issues with Waveform [that I've pointed out in said Notepin post: I went to Reaper as, despite being paid for only U$60, it has the WinRAR license for its trial where it doesn't get crippled of its functionality or features after it expires, but rather gives you a pop-up window telling you to purchase the DAW every time you open it (which you can simply close out, and it only opens once). That and it's one of those DAW's where it's the Linux of music production. You can literally theme it to where it looks like other DAW's, such as FL Studio, Ableton, and Audacity (not even fucking kidding, it's extremely customizable in all other regards as well).
Tastes
### The bullshit music ranking channels
There's a post from KETAMIND/FRVME PRFCT that I saw on Bluesky ( in which they said the following:
I will never understand music ranking channels
In the same vein I also never understood concept of them either (and still don't). I honestly think they are pretty pointless because...
// They just scream the same "My opinion about this DAW is an actual fact about the DAW, trust me bro" kinda energy where people think that the artist allegedly makes "bad music" only because of the opinions projected as "facts". Obviously nothing wrong with having an opinion. Just don't be a self-centered dick about it by saying that your opinionated observation about an artist is something that actually happens from the artist and admit that the music you're ranking isn't your kind of music. Artists owe you nothing.
- My quote-repost ( I very much stand by this take (I don't care if it's a hot take or not).
I'm sure that this has happened before it permanently ceased operations, but after the halt of Never Say Die Records, we've gotten into an era where people are doing "music rating" videos on artists' music, mainly on Disciple and Disciple Round Table. Some of these are genuine, but some are just on the Karen side of demanding. This portion is basically from "enthusiasts" who pretend like they know what they're talking about (which I also want to believe that they know what they're talking about) but really are just saying things about a track just to have an unneeded crashout over the intentional production decisions the artist takes.
This is not to say that having an opinion about something is "cringe" or anything, but you might as well be mocked for being an elitist as if you know much of what an artist you're "giving constructive feedback" knows...or at that point be that artist's ghost producer. Like dude what does a random-ass track you're "reviewing" have anything to do with "Dope-ass Clouds" being a slur you decided to make up? Everyone can like and not like things and say stuff about it, but sadly within today's society, it takes a lot of effort for a person to learn how to at least be respectful towards the artist and their work and it's an easy choice a person can make to be an ass about it. As much as I hate saying this as it comes off very dismissive, you can give actual constructive feedback on it, but if you're not the one making the music you're "reviewing", don't bother being an elitist know-it-all. None of the artists you listen to owe you anything, and they most likely don't even know you either.
### Why I listen to music
Ranting aside for a bit, most of the time I listen to music whenever I do anything such as gaming, making art, or making music (which is very odd considering that I need to HEAR what I'm doing), but sometimes I listen to music to take my mind off of stressful situations I've been through (which I might put in a playlist).
I also listen to music because I like hearing what people have been making of the genres I'm interested in, and I'm always itching to hear something I've either never heard of before or have missed out on.
Labels and Collectives
This might be a series of hot takes, but when it comes to labels, there are two things I hate in the regard.
### Limiting creativity of the artist
A lot of labels are pretty closed off from creativity. What I mean by this is that when you go and submit a track to a label for a potential release, it'd get rejected unless you make the changes to the track that mean making it sound from how you intended it to sound when you made it. In Paper Skies's Discord server, someone about his release "Operator" not getting on Disciple Afterlife vol. 2 mentioned that,
He had the opportunity to put Operator on v2 that color bass comp they did but he turned it down because they wanted him to make the first drop similar to the second drop and he felt like that would be too much of a gimmick.
...which made me come to the conclusion that in order to get a track released on a label, you have to sacrifice your creative decisions for the decisions of the label. Otherwise, it stays rejected. There might be some labels that don't have that mindset, but I hope that labels don't go this route of taking away creativity.
### Demands
After the shutdown of Never Say Die, Disciple—while I could somewhat understand because of it being an industry-standard/corporation-level label—has been held at such a high pedestal by their "fans", but I can't even consider these listeners as real fans because all they do is complain about every release they don't like (and it's a 90% occurrence that this shit happens without fail) and have the duality of saying that they "fell off". They have an ego inflated enough to be blinded away from the fact that Disciple owes them nothing, so they're going to keep putting out music from artists regardless. Again, no hate for opinions from the listener, but if it means being an ass, they have the option of going to another label. Otherwise, they can stop yapping up a nothingburger about how Disciple "fell off". I honestly do NOT feel bad if anyone gets offended by this as I'm getting pretty tired of seeing someone complaining about a deadass horse they hate but are too chronically-online to go elsewhere.