I find a lot of people here can play one or 2 instruments extremely well (esp. guitar and piano) but don't have any clues on how is a song being actually produced. No offence but lots of those people still think that a song is produced via those Beatles era way. People are not aware and taking the advantages from the advancement and accessibility of studio/ mastering/ computer/ DAW + virtual instruments etc etc to produce better music. Instead, their mind are still stuck with producing local church quality music (no offence, but i mean like gather a few people and find a keyboardist, guitarists, a drummer, a bassist) and think that they can start "composing" and "selling" music. That's sad because after decades after the Beatles era, we're still making those thing they'd call "songs" and I'd call "very very rough demos"...

Better technology and gears doesn't guarantee better music, but if you choose to ignore them you're most definitely not going anywhere far. I'm referring this to people who plays a bit of instrument and think they're making music already. They're actually making very rough demos. I'm talking about grabbing all the available technology and techniques to equip yourself with the ability to compose, create and produce studio quality music.

Let me put this in a simple way - if you record a demo with guitars, keyboard, drums, bass, and maybe some strings, plus the vocals (the typical local way), and send it to any A&R guy, it's rather hard to stand out from all those demos that they're receiving each day, unless you've got a super wonderful melody and they'll buy it and get someone else to produce it. And if you've got the same great melody, but nicely recorded and arranged in the proper DAW/ sequencer with the proper production techniques and effects, sounds, samples, etc etc, it's a lot more likely that people would buy your demo. It's not really that expensive (of course, relatively) to produce such studio quality stuffs at all, just that most people choose to ignore it.

I'll give you an example - the late 90's and early 2000's were the era when Cheiron Music of Sweden conquered the whole pop music scene (I'lll leave you to do the research). I'm not saying that they're making the greatest music in the world, but this is the example that I've always tell people. The reason they're so successful was because, well of course, some nice hooky melodies, but most importantly, top quality production. They'd always send demos that are very near to the final mix and they only needed the recording artists to provide their vocals on top of it. Once they've got the vocals ready, the music is always ready for sale. If they started out making rough demos with simple piano and guitar strummings, basic drums and strings, it's almost impossible for their demos to have got noticed by big artists, because at the end of the day, the labels would know that these are rough demos that they'd still need someone else to fully produce and arrange it to become what'd be the final sound and final mix.

I'll give you another example - RedOne, also from Sweden, recently kinda popular for having produced and sell records for Lady Gaga (Just an example, not that I liked his music or song, but let's just focus on the process), arranges and produces his composition on his Logic Pro almost entirely on his Mac (of course he does have a decent studio with decent hardware) and get the final sound ready before bringing them to Gaga, who'd later on meet him up somewhere in a NYC studio and get the vocals done in a day or two, and get the rest of the minor parts done and mastered there. Same goes for David Guetta, and actually most producers in the Western.

Well I guess if you're too stuck with playing live band music then you probably won't get what I mean. I know...

This post has been edited by denis_t: Oct 1 2010, 09:46 AM

little ice is damn right - technology can take away creativity! I remember there's an era, probably the 2006- 2008 in the EDM scene, especially in trance music where technology suddenly became so accessible and everyone started producing music that sounded very similar, using the very same samples, presets, effects, etc etc and the whole trance scene just suddenly became so repeatitively boring..people didn't event bother to create something different.

The accessibility to all sort of technology also means that more crap music willl not be filtered and got into the music industry. Suddenly everyone just became music producers.

@la bella - I don't quite understand what you're trying to say (sorry, haven't been able to sleep since the past 30 hours) but I know you're quite right in all those things you said!

@hidzwan - I agree with all the stuffs you said. I never denied the importance of the fundamental of a great song. I was just suggesting that it's a very helpful plus if you could produce a ready to go and up to standard demo. Of course they're still bands in the US who can write really great music but can't produce everything by themselves, but they don't just stop there, coz these people would usually have their stuffs nicely produced in the end by hiring experienced producers instead of being happy with those very "live band performance" standard records.