there is a common motion, that the work that an artist does at the beginning - sometimes even unreleased demos, jam sessions, bootlegs - is amongst his most genuis, and it's only a downfall from then. or, artists that created great music for years, suddenly start to suck, and their music is not much welcomed anymore by their core fan base. i have to say that this holds true. a lot of artists lose their spark, sooner or later.
how does it happen? well, i knew many artists, directly, and i've followed many artists, and, actually, it happened to me too. so i knew where the problem is.
artists are individualists. they have to be. they don't like to follow rules. they follow their mind, their own mind. you can see that at the beginning of most artists work, that there is a breaking of former rules, of breaking free, making things different to their contemporaries. they are hated for that at first; but then celebrated for that. for being different. for going their own way. for being themselves. this holds true in rock, in techno, in punk, in any music scene basically.
so, artists tried to break free. eventually they found their way. their own way, as i said. they are now liked for this, and they have a following for that. they often have a clear idea what they did not like in music of others, that was before. certain musical concepts they wanted to change, or new ones they wanted to create. doing music in different speed, rhythm, production. or in a bigger picture, different mood, thought, feel.
it is going fine and well. but then, at one point the following happens. a new conviction, a new thought enters the artists head. that he 'can't do' what he wants. that, he too, has to follow a rule. the rules.
he was celebrated for doing what he wants, not caring about the rest. but now he thinks he cannot do this.
there are various reasons for that. but i would say it just happens. i can't fully explain why this happens.
maybe when i give examples for this, it is clearer what i am trying to say. a rockband might play totally wild, chaotic, punky music. not caring about the conventional sonic rules, and at least trying to abandon then.
but at one point, they to start to adopt the accepted music rules in their music. the common harmonies, melodies, rhythm, lyrical concepts, and such. they feel they can't just play what they want. they feel they to have use the similiar elements, methods that their contemporay bands have.
or in hardcore techno, this was most visible too. so many producers started out as all-out past 200 bpm gabba heads. eventually, they ended up doing the same boring techno-, housestyle music as all the other producers (i don't mean switching to house to be bad. but if you do house as everyone else, it is).
i can also give an example of my own music. when i started making music, i hated that even in hardcore, there was a type of groove, "funk" basically, a focus on the rhythm, on dancing. i hated that. thoroughly. i wanted to make music that was completely not "groovy", undancable. 'moveable to', but not dancable to. movable to in the sense you could've jumped around and shaken to it, but not danced.
but at one point i too felt i "had to" add the 'techno' groove to my music. to make it dancable, to give it a flow, a common rhythm.
i can't say why i though that. but it was there. so i started to get in this groove crap too, and former listeners of my music said how they were annoyed by this change.
this doesn't mean you shouldn't evolve or change. but this is not evolving, but devolving. if you change, change into something new, or rather, change into something of your own design. if you change to do what other people already did, you are not changing, you are conforming.
so this is the problem. artists, at one point, think they "have to" do something. that they "can not" do what they really would like to do. that they have to fit in to a specific style, concepts. that they cannot just leave all rules behind. they that cannot do what *they* want. in *their* own way.
it's tragic; it happens to almost everyone, to the best of us. but, i believe, it's a tendency that can be fought.
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