So. Where do we go from here?

[MLC_BassPlayer]

I'll share a conversation I had with my 31 year old daughter.

I'm in an outlaw country band. We recently played two shows at two different venues in the college down where she received her undergrad degree. I commented on how well received our non-mainstream country set list was received (packed houses, lots of energy and happiness in the crowd).

She replied that there are lot of kids (!) these days that are fed up with "modern" country and wanting to get back to the old school country sound and feel.

So maybe for some of you it's a location thing, genre thing or demographic thing. But music is very much alive and well in certain locations and crowds.

 

[bucephylus]

Just to be clear about my OP: I did not mean to imply that the music scene is suffering. I have lots of gigs with good musicians, playing shows that are well received. I was intending to discuss the increasing gap I see in what audiences are familiar with.

 

[bucephylus]

I would say pick a niche / style / schtick and lean into it.

+1 That seems to be the truth of it; and possibly what I’m struggling a bit with.

 

[Ellery]

I'm mad about that too. I'm going to keep complaining until everybody changes for me.

 

[LBS-bass]

Just to be clear about my OP: I did not mean to imply that the music scene is suffering. I have lots of gigs with good musicians, playing shows that are well received. I was intending to discuss the increasing gap I see in what audiences are familiar with.

Audiences have always been familiar with what they have heard elsewhere.

When I was young, we didn't listen to our parents' music. We hated it. It was big band stuff, with maybe some watered down mellow jazz-like stuff tossed in. Or maybe it was old C&W. Whatever, there was a huge gap between what we wanted to hear and what our parents listened to.

Generations since do not have that. They've been hearing the music WE grew up with on radio and on television and on the intercom in the supermarket and everywhere, including their own living rooms, from day one. There's no rebellion against rock and roll.

So the brush you can paint with as a live player is a lot more broad than it used to be. You have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for only modern hits to keep a younger crowd entertained. I think that's a piece of this you're missing.

I played a show last year where all the 20 somethings got up and danced to Hendrix.

 

[gln1955]

Generations since do not have that. They've been hearing the music WE grew up with on radio and on television and on the intercom in the supermarket and everywhere, including their own living rooms, from day one. There's no rebellion against rock and roll.

We played a gig a couple weeks ago and a twenty-something couple came up close to the band and were really digging the 70's and 80's tunes we play. Talking to them on break, they said they grew up with that music in the house and at the time thought it was current. They really weren't into any of the stuff coming out now. So yeah, good songs done well with a bit of showmanship can reach a pretty broad audience.

 

[hooky_marr]

+1 That seems to be the truth of it; and possibly what I’m struggling a bit with.

There's always going to be people, even from the supposedly 'right' demographics, who haven't heard 'their' current music.

I'm of the MTV / MuchMusic generation (and watched those weird local music video shows before they existed). To a great degree it was music video that stood in for a lack of Top 40 radio where I grew up - the local rock station only played 60s/70s hits, did a 1950s retro lunch hour show, and relegated 'new' music to a once-a-week slot. (Now, all my new wave teen hits are 'oldies,' sigh.)

But the effect of that was that our generation had, for better or worse, a 'national' radio station of a sort, so we could discover current pop and other genres.

Now, contrast that to people I knew who grew up in small towns with just spotty local radio, some local TV (unless they had satellite), no great local record stores, etc. What ended up being popular near them was very different.

And people like my parents, who were young in the 1960s, but didn't listen to "sixties" music, rather, collected Broadway cast recordings, comedy records, rhumba, classical guitar, and Irish folk. Not into the Beatles one bit!

I myself tend to like new music that reminds me of old music, rather than stuff that is truly challenging, and I can't get into stuff that is just whiny/breathy autotuned mumbling over beats, with no trad song structure or strong melody. Tame Impala's stuff is arguably a little experimental, but he's also influenced by his dad's record collection which is why there's a stronger melodic focus, for instance.

I guess that's the only way to get people to listen to old music - remind them of who inspired the new music?

 

[Jeff Scott]

The amusing part of all this is that the days of popular music with "human vocals" are probably numbered!

AI is making steady leaps every week, and soon you will hear computer-generated "vocal performances" that have been 'intelligently-designed' to succeed in the marketplace.

I hope it sounds better than all the whiney, nasally stuff I hear these days.

 

[superheavyfunk]

I was intending to discuss the increasing gap I see in what audiences are familiar with.

With what YOUR audiences are familiar with. Some of the audiences I play for are quite familiar with modern stuff but have no idea about anything before 1980 because they were born in the year 2000!!

 

[Ketbass]

Agreed. But, what I’m saying is if any of my gigs play the Steve Lacey material in most of the local clubs hereabouts, there are maybe 10% of the people there who will have the slightest concept what the tune is.

This might be an Ohio perspective though. I would agree that younger people are into something “different” but so said everyone In the 20’s when Jazz hit the scene. 50’s when they were doing this “hip shakin’ rock and roll”. Devil’s music for sure! Times change and in this country there is no such thing as preserving the past as in a lot of cultures around the world. As a country we can barely remember what happened last week.

 

[micguy]

I play church gigs, and never have I been busier as a musician. If I could be 2 places at once, I'd be playing twice as many gigs. There are only so many Sundays in a month....

 

[MrLenny1]

Since Covid hit there is almost no work for bass players in my area. Bars have gone
to Acoustic solo/duo's. Even Jam sessions too.
Local agent does not want to bother booking bands.
Ski areas that want to get a band in have to hire the old rockers because
they are no younger guys doing this.

 

[Eric Huber]

There are top 40 stations they just aren't on the radio any longer. This is one reason that I prize my subscription to SXM. Channels such as Octane bring newer rock music to me; some of it is really good. I could however live without the rap-rock it's just absolute garbage to me. Sorry.

 

[logdrum]

As a grandparent, I hear the music the grandkids are hopping to; and Zero of that playfare involves actual instruments, other than a computer keyboard.

That is not my experience. We have also exposed our kids to a lot of creative and improvisational music when they were little. My son listens to some new groups of new original music, usually played live. He has tuned me on to so many artists and groups. My daughter has started to be a new classical music nut. Yes she will go to a Jonas brothers concert or some new country but she also listens to Gamelan, Ethiopian Reggae and Dub and some underground Korean pop.

You have to go beyond the US and the UK. Also I do not consider synths, Eurorack modules etc as NOT being instruments. They are. And it takes special skill to play them. So much new music and styles are being played but yeah they are NOT on the radio. EDM and house are best made by Analog synths played live.

 

[FullumMusic]

A small quibble that belies perhaps some misunderstanding. I took issue with this phrase in your first post but ignored that; I will flag it now.

"generated with computer keyboards"

Nobody is sitting at a computer keyboard to make music. They are sitting at a keyboard to run the current standard equipment that's needed to record music. And they use computers for playback, too. If you see a computer on a stage, it's playing backing tracks.

Those of us who use digital technology to create music use keyboard controllers, which are often (but not always) laid out like piano keys, and give us access to a wide variety of sounds that we want to use to play music. That's a keyboard that has to be played, in some way or another, just like a piano. The way you have phrased this makes it seem like you believe digital music is created by programmers who use text strings and numbers to evoke what that want people to hear.

Nope, digital creators are playing an instrument, too. It's an instrument that puts many different sounds at their fingertips. Whether that's good or bad as a way to work I guess is up to everyone to decide.

As a creator of digital music you’re partially correct and partially wrong. Yes, most times you see a laptop on stage it’s running some sort of track or sample trigger mechanism. Yes, a lot of digital music creation is created using some sort of midi controller (piano keyboard layout or pads to tap on.)

However, sometimes I am drawing MIDI notes into the piano roll, or selecting notes in sequencers using my mouse. I nudge them on or off grid using the arrow keys.

And sometimes live on stage, I’m not using my computer to play back tracks. I am essentially live-producing music on the fly.

I’ve made digital music creation devices that use accelerometer and gyroscope orientation and distance meters and touchscreens to create audio. No piano layout to be found.

There’s some amazing people who do live coding music, where they’ll literally type programming language code into their computer real-time and create music live with code.

And most DAWs will let you use your computer keyboard as a note input tool if you don’t have a midi controller.

I even made a program of synthesizers and drum machines and sequencers and FX that can be run on my computer and streamed on Twitch. And the program connects with the stream’s chat so anyone who’s watching the stream can type text commands into the chat and control the parameters of all the devices, essentially collaboratively live coding.

So yes, many of us do use keyboard keys and mice or trackpads, or strange bits of technology that aren’t “proper musical instruments” to make music, and it can be wonderful.

 

[LBS-bass]

And sometimes live on stage, I’m not using my computer to play back tracks. I am essentially live-producing music on the fly.

I’ve made digital music creation devices that use accelerometer and gyroscope orientation and distance meters and touchscreens to create audio. No piano layout to be found.

Did you notice I said some, and not all, are laid out like pianos? I used to sell AKAI samplers to beatmakers in Philadelphia, you're preaching to the choir here. There are far more sophisticated tools now than were there when I was in sales. But I didn't think we needed a microscopic view of digital editing, which is what you're doing moving notes around in piano roll view on Logic, to address the misconception I believed I was addressing - that most music is now somehow composed by a technician as though it's data entry.

You can also write notes on a digital score, which is very much mixing old ways with new ones.

 

[HelpImaRock]

The American Monoculture Experience was manufactured and overrated. We've gone back to microcultures and we're better off for it. There's something for everyone.

 

[factory presets]

kids these days still like rock and it even seems to have overtaken hip hop as the music of the day at least for a while.

But did the audience abandon hip hop or did hip hop abandon the audience? Loud, aggressive rock music and drug dealing gangster fantasies push a lot of the same buttons. But rap been moving away from that for a while now. Pusher T notwithstanding.

Which is too bad because the whole turntables as real instruments debate seems like a worthy sidetrack in this thread.

 

[JakobT]

Possibly just my perception; but, it seems lately as though gigs involving bass instruments are diminishing.

It’s just your perception.

 

[WestyBassBob]

But did the audience abandon hip hop or did hip hop abandon the audience? Loud, aggressive rock music and drug dealing gangster fantasies push a lot of the same buttons. But rap been moving away from that for a while now. Pusher T notwithstanding.

Which is too bad because the whole turntables as real instruments debate seems like a worthy sidetrack in this thread.

I think hip hop just finally played itself out a bit. What old is new again.