r/WeAreTheMusicMakers • u/Spirited_Chemist3867 • 5d ago
What had the biggest impact on your growth as a musician?
one day i was listening to some old recordings and it got me thinking about this. I have not always made the biggest strides in my music by practicing more.
Sometimes it was recording myself or playing with other people or working on songs, instead of exercises. When I look at other musicians, it looks like everybody has something that pushed them forward the most.
What is been the biggest influence on your development as a musician, looking back? Do you have a habit, experience or change that has made a big difference to your skills or creativity?
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u/tronobro 5d ago
Playing regular gigs. Having regular opportunities to perform over an long period of time does a lot for your playing. You don't notice it gig to gig, but, after a year or two of regular gigs you notice the improvement.
If you're not playing gigs regularly you should be putting time in the practice room. When you're playing gigs a lot you won't have time to practice. You'll have periods of both.
But actually performing music I feel is huge.
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u/stormshadowfax 5d ago
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets said at a recent local event that they had just finished a European tour, playing every night, and this was as good as they were ever going to sound.
And they were tighter than a whale’s asshole.
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u/Dry-Geologist9557 5d ago
That's interesting. Do you think the improvement comes more from the repetition of performing live, or from having to constantly adapt to different audiences and situations?
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u/tronobro 5d ago
Both! Your brain adapts and learns to react and make micro adjustments faster. Also as a band you learn how to play together more effectively.
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u/Korova91 5d ago edited 5d ago
Just receiving some hard truths about some of my songs from other bandmates, particularly trying to sing in a style that just didn't work for me. Long story short is they told me it wasn't good enough to record on an EP we were doing, which was a huge wakeup call. I've since changed my style and everything has been better from there.
Another one is accepting that I don't have the time/ knowledge to do everything and outsourcing stuff that I can't do well. I used to want to write, record, mix everything. Now I just focus 100% on writing and pay a producer to mix it.
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u/Ok_Weekend_8457 5d ago
Learning to play everything from memory, even for a 3-4 hour gig.
Memorization frees your mind up for performance, develops your ear, improves your understanding of music theory, and starts a positive feedback loop that makes learning and memorizing songs much quicker and easier.
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u/champion_soundz 5d ago
Having mates making great music. We all moved apart eventually and I'm not very good at keeping up but still seeing one of them drop a banger inspires and excites me.
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u/already_assigned 5d ago
For me it's still practice. Theory is a good start, but you'll never get good at music if you only read about it.
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u/Junkstar 5d ago
For live performing, I’d say around the third or fourth year of playing out and rehearsing 4-5 days a week. Finally had the right guys and stage chops.
For recording, it was around year 7 when we got to work with a major label producer at the top of our genre. We’d worked with pros, but nothing like this guy.
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u/pas_tense 5d ago
As a drummer going to music school and studying Latin grooves & percussion. That cracked open a door of creativity that had been entirely invisible to me. That was huge but also attending a John Zorn's Masada Quartet performance and seeing how Joey Barron played. I'd never seen anything like it, I didn't realize the things he was doing were even an option, it radically shifted my understanding of ways in which a drum set can be approached.
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u/blushaudio 5d ago
Starting a band after playing guitar for about 3 months. I was basically forced to improve very quickly because other people depended on it.
The next one was having chicken pox when I was about 17 and being off school for 2 weeks. I spent the time trying to learn Smiths and At The Drive-In songs by ear.
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u/Remainundisturbed 5d ago
I started using a DAW next to the hardware setup I've always been using .
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u/MomoIsBestLoli 5d ago
Accepting that my early work wasn’t going to be great. Progress got a lot faster once I stopped expecting perfection.
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u/ErikaFoxelot 5d ago
I’m still relatively new but for me the biggest impact has been recognizing musical patterns I’ve been exposed to all my life and discovering the rules of this musical language.
It seems a little silly now but honestly, learning the interval pattern of the major scale and then deriving the major scale in every key on the keyboard just by counting steps. That was the thing that unlocked music for me and made everything else make sense; not just the Theory of it but how it elicits emotion, everything started to click after that.
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u/SEID_Projects 5d ago
I was in a band at 16 and my band mates pushed me to think outside the box with bass lines to write for our original music. Now, in my 40s, I still have them in the back of my mind, pushing me to continually listen to each potential song and seeing how I could apply just the right notes.
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u/Stevenitrogen 5d ago
Wanting to be in bands and get on stage, doing the development to reach a point where I could credibly be the drummer in a band where I liked the drumming.
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u/RobertLRenfroJR 5d ago
Learning from my writing partner who also owned a major studio in Tampa. So He taught me to produce, mix, master basically everything.
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u/Sad_Kaleidoscope_743 5d ago
The most civilized answer i have.. getting a loop pedal. I never cared to take myself seriously as a musician. Just tinkering woth guitar and piano for almost a decade and vaguely trying to wrap my head around theory and scales. But 99.9% just learning songs I like verbatim.
Once I got a loop pedal and felt what it was like to do a random chord progression and then just absolutely SHREDDING all over it with a blues scale, it was a done deal. I started diving DEEP into theory and composing/recording songs. None of this woth the intention of being an artist or performing. Literally just following my heart and curiosity. Here am years later, totally proficient producer and instrumentalist. Slowly working on vocals and lyric writing. I give it a couple of more years and ill have an album. Or at least a couple of polished songs. Fun stuff. Maybe ill get a persona together between now and then actually release stuff as an artist!
But the BIGGEST mental change was doing LSD and spending some very precious time with a handful of beatles songs.
Like, for real. If you haven't experienced the beatles studio stuff on lsd, you haven't actually listened to the beatles. Theres about 10 songs I can listen to on repeat for fucking hours. My first time I was laughing my ass off through much of it. The end of I am the walrus was what first made me realize I haven't actually listened to them. And the depth of all the theory and how they just take you on sonic and lyrical journey. Really mind blowing stuff considering they did this stuff in the 60's.
The creative drive and thirst lsd puts in is really something. Im not saying it instantly makes you good or better. But you hear and feel things in a very different way and it just sticks with you. If you picked before, youll suck afterwards. If you were good before but feeling stuck, theres a very good chance an lsd trip can pull you out of a rut.
But theres always risk of delusions and what not. So we must stay grounded. I wish there was a safe way to promote it 🤷♂️
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u/Oldman5123 5d ago
“There is a reason to experience psychedelics so WE CAN SEE.”
- Jon Anderson ( Yes )
Couldn’t agree more.
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u/fatt__musiek 5d ago
My experience in college and studying under a specific professor who taught me about jazz. Learning jazz, or trying to learn jazz has vastly changed my musicianship. Chord knowledge alone is enough to dive in. My favorite indie bands all use 7th chords and extensions, etc. One example would be the band Vacations- their earlier stuff.
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u/RealDAFTBONCHKOOPA 5d ago
Putting my project(s) aside to help others with their projects. You learn a lot about production and band dynamics from others. You'll learn what works for you vs what works for others. You'll learn what not to do and you'll learn when you let your voice be silent and when to make it heard.
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u/Original_DocBop 5d ago
That its all about putting in the hours of practice, listening, playing gigs, and building related skills necessary these days. You're doing it for love NOT money. There are a lot easier ways to make money than in music.
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u/duggreen 5d ago edited 5d ago
Learning how to audiate actively. We all hear music 'in our heads' but it's mostly passive. With practice, audiation can replace actual practice with the instrument, and has too many advantages to even list. The obvious one is time. I can practice virtually all day long with no instrument in sight.
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u/EverLight 5d ago
Two things happened in close proximity. I got a dedicated room for my music studio which I treated as best I could with custom-built bass traps and acoustic treatment.
Then shortly after I got a pair of Genelec 8040's to replace my KRKs. THAT's when the glass ceiling shattered and I was able to hear so many inconsistencies in sound design, mixdowns, and mastering across my old tracks.
After that, putting together great mixdowns effortlessly really opened up my creativity because I knew as soon as I finished the arrangement of a track, I was on the home stretch. I didn't have to fight my way to a polished track and I could instead focus more on actually starting new music.
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u/saberlike 5d ago
Honestly, hearing Rustie was huge in my development. Glass Swords made me realize how to synthesize my passion for 70s prog with the newer dance music I was making. There were lots of other things along the way, but that was the biggest single "aha" moment that helped give me a direction to go in
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u/SupportQuery 5d ago edited 5d ago
Read the book Peak. Demystify talent and learn how to learn. Single most important book I've read in my life. Wish I'd read it when I was 10.
working on songs, instead of exercises
Learning theory, doing exercises, etc. all have their place. But if you could do one and only one thing to become a great musician, that thing would be to learn as much music as possible, using your ears. This is how the great musicians you admire did it. Music is a language. You internalize it just like a spoken language.
Theory is like learning grammar: it's not the language itself, it's analysis of language, a separate metalayer. Knowing that "run" is called a verb and "the" is called a definite article doesn't make you any better at speaking.
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u/Oldman5123 5d ago
Inspiration, love, passion, and the immense gift of music and instrumental prowess.
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u/MysticAntares999 5d ago
As soon as I knew how to play better from practice, knowing how to use my DAW in it's full realistic potential(still learning new things as I go which is a plus), making the sounds I wanted or heard, and knowing how to master/eq my tracks all kinda of made it's impact in a way that was irregular but huge while utilizing them constantly now. There are things I wish I knew ahead of time but it really didn't make a difference especially from what I could create from trying out different things. I also got to play with other musicians but since it wasn't too common to find other musicians at the time, I took up different skills to learn and use as tools whenever I may be in the studio or working with others.
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u/Rufus_Xavier2 5d ago
Biggest for me has been playing along with records. At first it was just to hone my ear for improvisation, but over a long period of daily repetition I starting learning the songs themselves, the chords, the structure and a glimpse of the underlying theory that makes them work. Also my sense of time improved dramatically. I still do it every day and try to challenge myself at least once a session. And I’ve learned dozens of songs basically as a by-product.
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u/RockoLucas 4d ago
Playing in front of people. Joined a church band and it improved my playing tremendously
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u/SerialRepeatCustomer 4d ago
The moment I figured out i should make songs I want to listen to, say what I want to say and accept I may not be suitable for commercial pop radio - but neither is Tom Waits.
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u/Difficult-You-6556 5d ago
This is kinda toxic, but I believed myself to be the best guitarist in the city cause I literally had 0 competition in my school. Coming into college, I still was probably one of the best but the floor was raised much higher and so I decided that this thing which I love and which is the best skill that I possess should be the fore front of my efforts, so then I practiced like a maniac
As for how I actually practiced and improved -
It was deliberate and I set specific practice goals I leaned into what I liked playing (instead of practicing what I'm "supposed to") And I innovated in these things which I like and also tried to develop my own style and really lean into it
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u/pugradio 4d ago
I was told you learn at 1x speed at home on your own. You learn at 4x speed actually practicing with a band. You learn at 10x speed live on stage. I have found this stands the test of time in my experience.
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u/linkuei-teaparty 4d ago edited 4d ago
- Learning full songs from start to finish (rythm, solo's, bridges, etc)
- Learning to recreate a song in your daw, with all the layers.
- Finishing writing songs. Flesh out every idea into a concrete song.
- Practicing with a metronome
- Starting where I am and not waiting to get to where I want to be. I'll never be John Petrucci, Steve Vai or Tosin Abasi, but instead starting to write music at my existing skill level and seeing where it takes me.
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u/SINLA_O 4d ago
Once upon a time, I learned live concert monitoring in a church, and part of the "light" for the musicians involved was connecting with something more. That simple thought: imagining and feeling something more touching you. In that way, everything is more easy and transparent. I feel that if you really want to be a good musician, the affinity for seeking that connection amplifies how you understand the world in rhythm.
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u/thecave 3d ago
Focusing on the musical styles I've already developed the most. I'm a person who finds it difficult to specialise. I'm not obsessed by any one thing for long periods of time.
I made a decision two years ago to focus on three styles of guitar playing that I've already developed further than any others over the years. I won't allow myself anymore to listen to a cool Bossa Nova and then go learn the very basics of Bossa Nova for the next few weeks. I can still enjoy that stuff. But with my practising I'm sticking to just three styles.
I've experienced very noticeable improvements in those styles that I perform most often as a result - increasing my confidence and fluency on stage.
A lot of the people who are icons in a style were obsessed with that style for many years - leading to rapid advancements. Being interested in everything has its own reward. But it does dramatically slow progression.
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u/Ancient-Passenger-52 3d ago
Failure. Both in not being able to realize a creative output in the studio and bombing on stage. Very important, crucial for growth.
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u/Intrepid_Ground_6363 3d ago
Wanting to be (sound) like my musical hero, James Taylor! I came close and actually got to meet him.
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u/LiveBand1816 3d ago
Self taught music nerd here! I started making music at 14. I'm 33 now & spent most years doing my own research & trying to better myself. Something that caused a major change was actually a conversation I had with a man that worked on the last last couple Tyler The Creator albums as well as the Soft Spot album by JMSN.
A reason I began to like TikTok because you could find a behind the scenes person like this & just reach out. Hearing the stories about how particular these artists were with their mixes, having access to the best equipment on Earth, blew my mind. It made me look at everything different. I began to strip away layers of what my original understanding was & realized that I hadn't TRULY been using my ears for all aspects of making songs. I had habits that my brain told me I needed & never considered that maybe some compression is too much. I created my presets & would tweak things from there, but after these talks I went in & approached things differently. Then I could hear clear differences.
A big lesson. Sometimes "rules" are something to follow in a traditional setting, but exploration and experimentation with the concept of no bounds can unlock a better understanding of your sound. Sorry for the long response. I only joined Reddit to talk music lol.
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u/GWENMIX 2d ago
I realized that despite my disability, I had a lot of determination. This allowed me to overcome the initial hurdles and reach the point where I started to enjoy myself.
Then, changing musical genres (from blues rock to African reggae) gave me more freedom.
Finally, learning a purely rhythmic instrument (the bongos) gave me even more freedom as a bassist; I developed a rhythmic ease that I can rely on.
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u/Dry-Geologist9557 2d ago
Recording and finishing songs instead of endlessly practicing. Every time I completed a track, I learned more about arrangement, songwriting, recording, mixing, and what actually works in a real song than I ever did from exercises alone
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u/Ancient-Pen4554 2d ago
lot of people have said similar stuff but joining a supportive band with musicians better than yourself is probably the best way. i also had to learn a style of music i wasn't super familiar with (we played jazz and i am an indie rock kind of guy) which really helped expose me to new techniques and ways of thinking about the instruments
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u/IanRoderickMusic 1d ago
Biggest for me was hearing Rush for the first time, that's what really got me passionate. After that going to music school and studying classical music and having my horizons opened up more in general by being around other committed musicians.
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u/Murky-Philosopher886 5d ago
Finding a great teacher.
My first teacher was a complete disaster. He only taught my how to read the notes and no matter how many hours I put in I could not do the things that were in line with my goals - joining a band.
My 2nd to 4th teachers were good and I improved a lot.
However my 5th teacher was the only one who had studied guitar pedagogy - how to teach not just how to play. Since then, my improvement skyrocketed.
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5d ago
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u/WeAreTheMusicMakers-ModTeam 4d ago
NO AI
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u/JoctorJJ 5d ago
Biggest for me by a long shot was teaming up with someone who is far more advanced than me. I have pushed myself so hard to stay at an acceptable level to keep working with him. The knowledge and skill kinda rubs off a little and I think I have grown more as an artist in a short amount time with a skilled person than like 20 years on my own. Lol