I know I'll get downvoted to hell for this but if you take the time to read this, I hope you'll get a better grasp of where I'm coming from.
Secondly, I don't think EDM as a genre is bad. The producers are the ones that are bad. The producers do not know how to use the tools that are given to them and so they misuse and abuse their tools.
So let me start with a tiny story. Many people asked me to critique their tracks in the past and my number one complaint was not that it was horrible. Some tracks we're well produced. It's just not... Memorable. I knew the moment I was done listening to the track that I was not going to remember it at all. No lasting impression... Just noise. Noise that you'd be okay with leaving on to play to fill the silence.
And I have this problem with huge producers as well. Of all the producers I listened to, only Skrillex was the one who seemed somewhat memorable. But even his newer work is less so.
I don't even want to get started on the huge artists that suck so bad.
So i sat down and did some thinking. I thought back to when I was a part of a band... I mean a 5 person band: drummer, bassist, guitarist, vocalist, and me, the keyboardist and lead guitarist. Of the 6 songs we wrote, I wrote 5 of them. And they were ALL MEMORABLE. All of the songs were so good! (I really wish I had them recorded, but I wasn't a producer back then, and all video demo footage was lost)
I thought about my inspiration for my music back then. It was a lot of classic rock. Things like Beatles, their solo albums, led Zeppelin, Queen, David Bowie, a little bit of Journey, Prince, etc. My god their music was great. I know that comparing Prince to someone like the Chainsmokers is like comparing Kobe Beef to a store bought steak, but there's reason a lot of people like Prince and not everyone likes Chainsmokers. Prince's music is well written and emotionally charged and varied. You can tell when his music is seductive, angry, sad, and even happy enough to dance to. Chainsmokers is just screaming nothing.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized this. Those guys weren't spoiled with the choices of instruments and VSTs that we have today. They used what they had with their guitars and amps, drums, etc, and they made music. And they had to make good music, because everyone had the same tools that they had. They had to learn to play their instruments and sing, write awesome memorable melodies and harmonies, learn to create atmosphere with only their instruments, emotions and so on with the little they had.
Their music was much better because that's all that they had to focus on. They didn't have to focus on sound design. They weren't spoiled for choice with VSTs. They wrote good music FIRST, then focused on the details.
Now with EDM producers, it's the exact opposite problem. We're spoiled for choice with VSTs, and now we focus so much on sound design and not enough on the music. Theres no emotion at all. It's just DANCE and JUMP. That's the problem. And let me clarify that you can still dance to sad music.
It's like good music isn't even a prerequisite to being a good artist anymore. It's all drops and builds now, with breaks and shit. Let me tell you something, if the only part of your song that is interesting is your drop, you need to write better music. Your entire song needs to be interesting.
That's what I mean when I say producers don't know how to use their tools. They don't understand that making good music often has very little to do with sound design. Sounds get dated very fast. Good music is timeless. Remember when people thought Star Wars sound effects were the best thing ever? Hell remember 90s techno? That got cringey pretty fast while Prince's music still sounds good.
Try taking some time away from the DAW and write music on piano/guitar only. If your music sounds good on only piano/guitar, when you translate it into your DAW, it'll sound better.
Tl;Dr: stop focusing on sound design and focus on writing better emotionally charged music.
Submitted August 02, 2017 at 06:32PM by TruCrit https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/6r7ip3/edm_sucks_and_heres_why/?utm_source=ifttt