This got me thinking....



I saw a bit of advice the other day on the computer music boards - there was a geezer on there saying that he didn't know what sort oif music to make, because his tastes were so eclectic. i thought haha i know what u mean mate, im into all sorts. and then this other geezer posted this bit of advice:



'My solution to this has always been to try and figure out the answer to this question:



"If I could listen to a band that doesn't exist, what would I want it to sound like?"



That seems inane, but really there isn't any band that sounds just like the band I really want to be listening to. So I try to make that record.'



I thought that was genius, and so true!!



This got me thinking that everyone is influenced by something in some way some how, either musically or in yourt life.



so my questions to you are:



1) what would you list as the major influences in your life and or music making? what inspires you?



2) If I could listen to a band that doesn't exist, what would I want it to sound like?



and heres my answers to get ya rolling:



1) inspiarational and influential? my family, my friends, my girlfriends, other music, quality scenery, weird things like a wet tuesday afternoon in november in woirthing - theres so much emptiness and nothingness going on its amnazing. and emotions inspire me as well - good or bad.



2) hehe, i'd like them to get me going, to chill me out, to make me think, to make me shake my ass, to take me to another place. oh, thatll be the chems then X-D



but i'd like it to sound like the drums of manitoba, the basslines of chic, the space of trojan records and the melodies of ulrich schnauss :)

DELETED

What a great topic.



But it will be so hard for me to answer , especially the first question...cause if i had to list all the things that inspire me....i can be inspired by a flower in a green field or whatever. Also i dont make music....but things can be inspiring to write about ( I do write poems sometimes and i play the guitar a bit....) But things that REALLY inspire me are feelings that i get. I think feelings are the most beautifull things on earth....but also the most fucked up , confusing and often anoying things....Sometimes i feel SO MUCH that i think i'm going to explode. And to me that is....wonderfull. Even when i am really sad , depressed...i still think that this feelings are beautifull. And when i walk here in Tokio with The Chems on my headphones , i feel so much , i feel so much happyness that i can be here....to me that is inspiring. And the feeling that i get from music.



Also things that inspire me are emotions, things like crying , laughing and that sort of expressions. Altough u usually cry because your sad , i think crying is such a beautifull emotion , and also laughing...to me laughing is like breathing. I need to laugh a lot , else i cant live.



Another thing are big happenings in my or somebody that's close to me life....for example , when me and my ex BF broke up , when i first went to Japan or Paris or NY , When my grandma died....this is so inspiring to me but thats probably beauce of the emotions and feelings that come along with that.



So for me , it's all about feelings...feelings and emotions.



But i can also be inspired by things like , a musician in the subway , a lost teddybear of a 3 year old on the street ( yeah i know that sounds weird ) , just a glimpse of sunlight on a rainy day....little things. But this are just the main things....every hour something happends that inspires me. Cause there are just so many inspiring things!



As for question nr 2...



I'm not a good music-maker altough i'd love to , and as i like so many style's of music i'm not gonna say " it has to be this or that " but i would try to make something that expresses and shows my feelings 100 %...sounds and words that just express what i felt at a certain moment , a certain point in my life....because my ( well everybody's) feelings are so BIG and overwhelming and beatifull , eventhough i migth be sad , that i just want to share that.



Allright i might talk a little bit no-sense here , but it's hard to explain.

WOW good questions.Hmmm well..



1) I mostly get influenced by sadness or anger what drives to music. I'm not a musicmaker myself but I would love to produce or remix something, or DJ a bit. That's what I do for myself when I feel sad or angry.

I love singer/songwriters and electronic music. Musical inspirators would be the Chems, Prodigy, Beth Orton, Marike Jager, Spinvis. The last two are Dutch like I am but I would probably do lyrics in English cause my English is better than my Dutch.



2) What would my music sound like? I think I would try to make an album like Daybreaker by Beth Orton but with electronic music. Flightcranks single Amazing is also a good direction of what I would like my music to sound like.

Although I love dancing I don't think I would like to do dance music because so many other bands can do it better than I ever could and when I try to make dance music I always fall in already made patterns like cheap house or drum and bass.

Wow, so far everyone's got good, thoughtful answers. And I just have to make a couple of comments. What really struck me was anType's first paragraph, and how his inspiration is filled with contrasts: the stark, melancholy abandonment of an empty city that harbors no human contact, and the delicate and pure beauty of nature that is (imo) always in danger of man's interference. If you think about it, when you see an abandoned building or in a case like Chernobyl, how a structure once breathing with human life and importance is sort of being taken back by nature, those contrasts are stacked right next to each other. It's really quite a fascinating and insightful way of looking at two things that are so opposite in so many ways, yet becoming so integrated over time. If I'm making any sense. I still haven't consumed all the morning's coffee!



Anyway. On the first point.



I find that for me, the inspiration to make music comes and goes in waves, and there are long lulls inbetween. The inspiration comes from all sides emotionally, physically, creatively, inside, outside - and having the time to sort it out and put it into song. The songs I submitted to the forum cd are anywhere between 2 and 4 years old. Mostly written when I was either a stay at home mom, or when I was only working a job a couple days a week - and I had plenty of time on my side, and I was getting myself back after being emotionally down and "away" for a couple of years. It was like being reborn, and the best way for me to channel all these feelings of coming to terms with myself was through song. This isn't to say I am not inspired during the long lulls between creating music - perhaps I'm just waiting for a wave of creativity to hit me, and the time to devote to making music.



I know this sounds terrible, but I find that when I make music it's a very selfish thing. The time consuming aspects of making music takes me away from the people that matter the most - my family. Inspiration and support from family plays a big part, but at the end of the day it's just me trying to wrestle with my creative demons or whatever, and the only way I can justify my time away from family is if I make constructive use of that time. In turn, if I am unhappy with my music, then I can't really say that creating it was worth that time away from my husband and son. So another lull begins.



So a bit about me. I have a pretty strong musical background, I started playing music when I was 5 and a half, and I find that writing songs can be easy sometimes. But writing good songs is not. To me, writing music is like finding love. You can't go searching for love, and you can't go searching for creativity and inspiration. These things have to find their way to you. And they do eventually. In time, in time. I can't force it or rush it. It'll come eventually, like all things. I'm not bothered that I haven't seriously sat down and created music for a couple of years. I may be uncertain of when the next wave will come, but I know that when it does, I'll have more at hand than I know what to do with. Just biding my time really.



So onto point 2: If I could listen to a band that doesn't exist, what would it sound like? Well - that's sort of a loaded question really, because I think it's subject to what kind of mood you're in while going into it...



Oh - my long windedness is going to be cut short. My father-in-law just got here!



(not like I didn't get carried away and type too much already! To be continuted, I guess)

Im trying to make music now, but i havent made a single song yet; in fact, i dont even know what syle of music my stuff will be. :( . But like Whirly said, i cant go looking for creativity, it has to find me. So, until then, i cant really answer either of those questions, but if i ever can, i will.

Many, many peoples on the world think, that creating the music is very easy and funny. In fact - compositing, creating and so on is very very hard work. You know, it's said, that if You have an computer, and a little time, You can record a song withouth a problem. But even really noncomplicated house or pop songs are very hard to involve and create. Even if You have talent to comopisting this is hard thing. I trying from years to composite somtihing, but only made some themes. But You know what? I think the peoples, who really play a music, must be talented - strongly talented. You must to have some power and really good knowledge about musical aspects. You must to know genres...You must know, how to build up the track...the rules. Without this, You just stop after a few hours, because Yoy will be thinking, that it is shit, and gonna start to create another theme. It's very complicated process, very....and that is not for just everyone. On the world there is very small amount of peoples, artists, who really make a very good compositions, very good music. The rest (hmm, about 80%) are a posers, carrer-peoples, who make music just for the many and fame...and those artists are making th e most shitty music, wchich, absurdally, hearing the most peopples on the world. :)

Some awesome posts here.



Have to agree with equinoxe here. I've always found song structure the hardest part of making music. I put a few things together, think "yeah this sounds cool", get to the minute mark and think "right, now what?". Theres been times where I've come back to the track 3 months later and actually finished it. Its like what whirlygirl said, for me the creativity comes in waves. I could start making a track one day, get bored and think its not going anywhere, but then return it a few days later and turn it into a masterpiece!



Major influences for me musically are Lemon Jelly, Leftfield, U2, the Chems (although not as much as they were) and Daft Punk. Other influences for me are places in the world; in the past for example the Yangtze River in China, The Arctic and South America. I like anType's idea of abandoned cities, I have a fascination for remote places, in particular The Arctic / Antarctica, The Sahara desert, parts of Russia like Siberia and Kamchatka, even some places in the UK!! The idea of being in a place away from the masses (I'm starting to feel unsociable now!! ) I think is really cool. Not necessarily living in these places, I like the city, but you get the idea...

excellent - some top notch replies here dudes 8)



trying to think in a non musical sense, i guess some of the main inspirational factors in my life have always been my family - my dad buggred off when me and my brother and sister were nippers, i see him rarely if at all these days, and to be honest with you he's a bit of a dick. but me ma did a wicked job of bringing us all up, and now we're all respectable members of the community X-D (well, not quite but through her just being ace we've all 'grown up' quite nicely :)) so yeh a big inspiration to me is my ma, and a big influence is my dad - kind of how not to go about things hahaha.



also my life experiences - going out clubbing, taking hallucinogens, dancing hard and having a great time - it kind of made me do what im doing know, making music to touch people and communicate with them, and to give them moments of pleasure - i love all that.



antype - i love the way your viewing your two albums, trying to merge all those different styles together, that is totally cool and i hope you succeed because the world needs shit like that. when u do it, ill have a copy please :)



jeanie - dude, you rock 8) seems to me like your totally in touch with the shit that matters, and that is cool :) you'll have to put some of you're poems on here sometime, if they're not too personal :)



joslyn - totally hear ya on the average house/drum n bass tune - it just seems so frivolous to spend time writing something throw away and cheap when you know you could be focusing on better things. not that theres not a place for an average house/drum n bass tune in the world, theres just so damn many of them!



whirly - hah, i knew from your chems forum cd tracks that you must have been playing/making music for a while, they were so well structured and arranged, i knew u must be a 'proper' musician :) i totally hear ya on the creativity in waves thing - sometimes i go for months without writing a tune, just compiling samples and making sounds then all of a sudden bam bam bam outy come three or 4 within a couple of months, its really weird but you just cant force it, it has to be natural, and thats def when the best stuff gets written - not forced, just happening, and in the words of tom chemical 'fresh' X-D which is quite worrying when i want to go into this as a career and am going to be expected to deliver on demand. eeek. i also hear you on the selfish part - when your writing a lot of music you don't have muchg time for anything else, i think thats why im such a failure at long term relationships, 'married to the beat'; or something as one ex said haha, well that and the fact that the last ex turned out to be a lesbian self harmer hehe, but you dont want to know about that X-D looking forward to part 2!!



flaming dead - dont worry dude, i know loads of people who have stacks of tunes unfinished - in fact i was chatting to pete kraymon (an old mate of mine whose had releases in the uk on TCR and stuff) and he reckons that none of the stuff that he put out was actually ever finished!! so dont beat your self up on it :)



anyway, i think ive blithered enough now - here;s some more stuff that inspires me:



the weather - im sure i suffer from SAD, because as soon as the sun comes out, im happy again hehe. think that move to ibiza is just round the corner X-D. - in fact im just gonna put 'mother nature' - the whole gammit, sunsets, sunrise (especially sunrise), cloudy skies, thunder and lightning, awesome views, desolate places, frogs (yes frogs - they rock) - its all good X-D

pleasing someone, or helping them out - i dig it at college when u show a dude a new production trick or whatever and they buzz offf it, thats toitally wicked.

sex - obviously hehehe X-D - actually include intimate relationships with that, because there special

large groups of people having a good time - every time i go to glastonbury i promise myself to return the next year, because its such a kicker watching hordes of people roaming around enjoying themselves. it rocks :)

threads like these which make u see a little bit of how people tick :D

damn - wish we had an edit button - thats an embarassing amount of smileys



heres one more



:-//

I usually find films or artwork influence me. They set a mood which can then be applied to my music and that also works the other way also.

Aw, mippio, thanks a bunch for the kind words! :) Reading about how you perceive my music makes me feel less intimidated when sharing what I've done.



Flaming Dead, ditto what mippio said. There's nothing wrong with having an unfinished thought or idea when it comes to matters of the heart. And that's where the good music truly comes from. Sometimes it's just how it works, and I understand that frustration of not being able to complete anything. It's like not being able to complete a sentence, or having to stop watching a movie half the way through. But look at it this way - if you were to force completion of a tune even though you weren't truly feeling it, is the final product what you really wanted? Dealing with stuff like this sometimes makes us take a long hard look at ourselves and there's nothing wrong with that. It happens I'm sure what you're going through happens to the most prominent musicians... this happened with Prodigy, it's happened with U2, it's happened to the best and worst of us! X-D Just think how many extra, unused and unheard (by the masses) musical works the Chemical Brothers have lying around! Years and years worth probably. And think about how long an idea like Hey Boy Hey Girl sat around before it finally came to fruition when Surrender was being made.

mippio Escribi�:

2) If I could listen to a band that doesn't exist, what would I want it to sound like?

So to bring this back to my unfinished (ironic, isn't it? I was just talking about that! X-D ) first post before I was interrupted.



What I really really want in my music is not a particular sound, it doesn't have to sound this way or that. I don't want my compositions to fit into a particular genre of music - I find that limiting in both the experience of creating music as well as the finished product. To me it's about an idea and working around that and seeing what I can come up with, what elements I can come up with to create a certain atmosphere that best describes what I feel. I know it sounds vague, but... that's the best way for me to put it. The idea can come from being happy, angry, sad - whatever emotion or whatever I find inspiring when the idea first comes.



From a production standpoint, that's a whole n'other ballgame! I am a stickler for aesthetics and symmetry. I'm the same way when it comes to drawing or painting, as I am with my music. I like balance within music because I feel it makes it more aesthetic and symmetrical. Yet at the same time I find these particular things like aesthetics and symmetry to be... what's the right phrase... a hinderance. I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to music and art and that in itself can be very limiting because it's hard to rid yourself of such a rigid mindset and be free and experiment. If you can understand what I mean. But I realize that production skills come with practise, dedication, and time. I think production is the next logical step once you've mastered the creation of a song.



So anyway. I want to elaborate on what I mean by musical balance. For example - the remix of Spiritualized "I Think I'm In Love" *to me* is musically balanced in arrangement, production and execution (finished product). The original song is very beautiful on its own, with it's instrumentation, psychedelic undertones, the allegory in the lyrics - but it is organic in the sense there are little to no effects yet when you listen to it the atmosphere is as big as life itself. And once the Chems got ahold of it and added their magic hand of electronic goodness - the result was the perfect marriage of organic and electronic, and a song that seemed to reach far beyond the largeness of life to the wide open spaces of the universe (no, that's not the drugs talking.) I can safely say that right now, that remix of I Think I'm In Love is perhaps one of the most perfect songs I've ever heard. If anything's an inspiration, it's that song. I don't want to make music like that really, even though I'm flattered when people say they can hear the influence. But what's in that song is the kind of balance I want to achieve if I had the resources and know-how.

Well said Whirly...i always like the way how you describe and explain things!



Sex....aaaah yes. How can i forget....sex is a very inspiring thing aswell....!!!

When u have sex with a person that you love with all your heart , it's not just about getting an orgasm and smoke a sigaret after hehe...it's such an emotional , beautifull thing....it's the closest u can get to someone , physically and emotionally...just being there with that person , in a different state of mind sort of...Yeah. It's a beatifull BEAUTIFUL thing really...That feeling u have when u have sex with somebody you love more than life itself , it's probably one of the bets feelings ever.

And even if u have sex just for the sex , it still can be a beautifull thing. Just that need , that desire .... Yeah man. Even if u have sex and it's something u regret in the morning with a big hangover , i think that is so inspiring...I never had that happend to me but if i talk with my girlfriends and there telling me their story's , that is so beautifull. Their emotions and the regret , so painfull...but so inspiring.

Yes. Sex is a beautifull thing. Not always , not for everybody.... but in my life , it is.



Oke this is probably the most personal post i ever posted hahaha.

hahaha!! Jeanie's mind is in the gutter. But it's a beautiful gutter. ;)

her mind is always in the gutter X-D

:'( Nah....here i am posting something beautiful and deepgoing and you guys are telling me my mind is in the gutter...Thanks a lot :'( :(

We're just playing with you Jeanie! ;) We know you're bold enough to say what other people are most likely thinking. All aspects of love are a beautiful thing.



I agree and understand every bit of what you wrote about sex.



Don't cry. ((((( hugs )))))

I know i know... ;-) But i am just...bluh. Just one of those days haha ;) Nevermind....influences. Yeah.

be thankful - at least yours is a 'beautiful gutter' - mines a soiled one, fuelled by midgets with strap ons and donkeys in lingerie :?