i know there aren't anywhere *near* enough group hugs and feel-good vibes, so i'm here to spread more (this is a joke. the joke is that there's a pretty feel-good culture here, though i don't think that's a bad thing.) therefore, this space is being reserved for saying what you think your strengths are in music. there's power in knowing your weaknesses, but the same goes for your strengths.

also, feel free to tell others in the thread what you think their strengths are! we can be overcritical judges of ourselves, and sometimes a kinder reality can come from another person.

to start off, i think i have a really good sense of harmony, voice leading, and rhythm. i can pull of polyrhythms, and i can arrange organic-feeling harmonic progressions that smoothly weave between keys while keeping some spicy extended tones around.

idk i just put down notes until it sounds alright lol I still do this

hmm, i think emotion is at the top of my list. even when i'm making something that could be considered obtuse or weird (which is fairly often), i try to also infuse it with some emotional component. i think my music has basically always been like this for 20+ years, long before i got weird. the other thing is texture, i put a lot of detail into individual textures and i like layering up something densely textural and to me that's a strong point in my own work. oh, and i'm good with working outside of tempo.

glitch aesthetic obviously on this list. i kind of made that my thing. i've talked about this a bit before but as i started experimenting more, i felt like i was treading exciting new territory that set me apart from my peers, in the "uniqueness/unique approach" standout kind of way, whereas i felt sort of average in a sea of folks incredibly skilled at harmony, melody, phrasing... so, to me, it's not only my favorite thing to do but it's leverage. it's something uniquely mine that i can be proud of, and "glitching things out" is completely integrated into the way i write at this point. writing something that sounds nice and then fucking it up, or creating instruments with changes in their sound that deliberately screws with what would be considered conventionally desirable. my voice is my greatest asset, i guess is the best way i could put this.

i am confident in my ability to bring out the truest and most tender voices of all synthesizer

i dont think i’m specially good at anything but everything that i write is unapologetically honest for better or worse lol

I can make duty 1 pulse sound alright

my favorite skill, whether or not I am especially adept at it or not, is learning things, new things, techniques, just picking up bits here and there... actually one thing I think I am particularly good at is not being afraid of copying something haha, at least around here it seems that way

I'm still working on being able to convey a variety of emotions, but I think I'm okay at making cute, happy sounding music.

I think my sense of harmony and creating interesting chord progressions has also improved a lot

Fucking around and finding out

i think, although i am still learning to mix, i do my best to bring out the best from default musescore sounds 😎

establishing a motif in a song and staying with it/coming back to it.

also, in terms of collabs or remixes of my own tracks, making very different parts glue together nicely.

so I wld say my strength is ~arrangement~

recently, i've started to just spam chromaticism and pray it turns out well
_{(it never does, even if I think it did turn out well)}

spotting flaws

versatility, i guess - i can make stuff in a ton of different genres, and it usually comes out alright :3

maybe mixing too? i'm no professional mixing engineer but i like to think i usually make good mixing decisions, and my mixes are often quite clean

I'm good at writing a singable melody, and at setting a scene with atmosphere or song structure.

I think my favorite musical skill is I have a good imagination when listening to music that allows me to make connections with it and an appreciation for many different styles of music. I am your fan

I love all of these so much

perhaps i think pitch bends

- Metal and prog metal stuff... I'm becoming cliché, so I'm trying more jazzy stuff miserably failing.

- Identifying and emulating the most dopaminergic elements from weeb music... (look at the line above about the "becoming cliché" problem ;_; ).

- Melodic tri ^^ (which extends to sine waves)... which has also become very cliché plasmacore now.

I think rhythm has always been my strongest skill, since I've taken drum-lessons for 7-8 years in total. Odd meters was kinda mysterious when I first came across it, but I quickly learned it's foundation and demystified it. I have perfect pitch, a gift I really take for granted and makes it hard for me to understand how tough music is for those without it. That has helped me get into music without really learning tonal theory, and made me learn musical correlations in my own way unconsciously.

I think one thing i excel at is writing about my emotions, feelings, thoughts, etc. Some of my best songs are just things i wrote are pretty much musical lesbianposting, venting, ramblings, etc.

Something I also feel more confident with is sound design, like i can come up with how I want something to sound without too much hassle and people compliment me a lot when it comes to that.

- memorable and unique melodic lines and hooks, at this point i feel like i'm pretty good at laying down an interesting chord progression and being able to quickly come up with something catchy to go on top of it

- versatility, not sure how much i've shared here but i've dipped my toes into a lot of genres and have influence from a lot of places (chiptune, synthwave, city pop, cinematic, ambient, jazz), and i think i'm also pretty quick at learning how to match a new style

- sound design workflow, after all these years i've gotten quite fast at manipulating samples to make them do what i want, and at making a mix that i'm happy with in either FL Studio or REAPER

over the years, i've noticed that i can be pretty good at coming up with a strong melody - at least at the start.

i also think that i'm good at making solid grooves and rhythms. groovy music is my favorite kind of music, and it shows through my songs

Percussion, that is the one thing I don't struggle at all with as far as music goes. All else is quite full of trial and error and probable frustrations, but drums just come out and don't fight back lol

I'm best at energizing music, I've always noticed how my tracks lift other people's spirits, I've never cared if it turns out good or not, the whole joy is in the process of making it.

sound design and harmony probably

I like to think I'm pretty good at making beats and grooves, and pulling interesting percussive timbres out of a variety of sources.

I'm also comfortable with thinking about sound design modularly, so I can adapt well to tools like Pure Data.

Shoehorning in obscure vocal samples where none are wanted.

Spamming chords, is the best thing that i do.

I'm confident in my melody game, main drive of everything I do

Can make some nice grooves too

i music

what i'm best at is submitting no more than 1 entry per major.

kinesthetics maybe

improv & playing by ear

fart modulation sound design probably

creating a 20 second earworm that i end up looping for an hour straight with my full attention

i don't have absolute pitch and my relative pitch is questionable (i mix up fourths and fifths very often), but for some reason i can tell the key of songs almost instantly.

it's not synesthesia but it is kind of like "colors" in a way. i tend to naturally latch onto the A~C major/F#~A minor hue, and composing outside of those keys usually gets me out of my comfort zone (i don't think i've made a full piece in F major/D minor before!)

wondering if anyone else can just tell the key of most songs but otherwise has no perfect pitch!

my ultimate fear: being kind or complimentary to myself.
I am doing this specifically to fulfill something my therapist was making me do before my life got extra fucked up.

I think I'm pretty good at making bizarre time signature choices sound normal and making fucked up rhythms that feel groovy. I am proud of the depth of variety I am capable of (applies more to non-BotB work, but it has its place here too) and my ability to blend disparate influences fairly seamlessly.
um. I know I'm always told by musicians better than me that I'm a good bass player, but that never comes up here. Many people also say nice things about my vocal abilities... which also never comes up here.
I can teach music in a classroom setting, which I'm learning more and more is not as normal and natural to people as I think it is. Someone should let that be my fulltime job instead of summer only!

My main power is that I am very fast at clicking the mouse to place notes and sounds.

Weird time signatures and cranking out a song ever couple days

Prob finding chord progressions/melodies and arrangements. Sometimes my mixing is good, at least i think?? Also i can figure out how to play something in relatively short time (with some practicing), which helps getting what i have in my head onto a DAW (in most cases).

I'm okay at FM sounds with OPL3 specifically and making music that changes modes constantly, even without a proper knowledge of theory or modes in general

Music Theory III, I failed Music Theory IV (true story)

Laying down some strong disco-adjacent melodic basslines, rhythms and programming FM patches, that's something I've used to feel relatively confident in (can't really say much about present time because I've probably gotten rusty)

I tend to be pretty good with transcribing stuff and note accuracy, probably as a result of having perfect pitch (which makes it far easier than it is for the average person). In terms of composing, I tend to focus a lot on basslines and chord progressions, so I consider those my strengths (at least, a lot more than making melodies and percussion is).

i don't know

maybe the belief that i could probably make anything i wanted to given enough time (and i have spent a lot of time trying to make a lot of things) and not being particularly dissuaded by failure

at first i was like "oh so you aren't ESPECIALLY good at anything, you just practiced a lot" but thinking about it more, i guess most people give up way before they accumulate enough hours on anything

edit: the above isn't very musical so uh good at lyricless lyrical melodies

i think i'm good at making strong, memorable melodies... from lots of time trying to write pop music... i think i'm pretty good at building chord progressions that have emotional payoffs... i think i'm pretty good at song structure. basically good at writing little pop songs. oh and i can put together a sick beat

the obvious answer for me to give feels like Output, but also i'd like to pretend i have something more to offer to this world than the amount of ""content"" i ""produce"", so i'll mention that i feel like i have a decnet knack for combining disparate samples together into a cohesive piece, it's how i started making music and i think it's something that i've really honed in on over these 8 years of puttin stuff out there (it's not super present in my output on this site, but that's partly cuz i don't want to get in trouble with the copyright police here lulz)

- I'm mostly good at rhythm. I always love trying to add percussions to a tracker and manipulate them.

- I love to play a breakbeat with a different note (instead of C-5) and try to match the tempo by increasing/decreasing. Alternatively, I just chop the beats each and slap them in a tracker, or I just use the offset effect.

- Sample abusing!

Drama. If it sounds epic/ dramatic/ cinematic/ etc, I can probably do it well. Vice Versa applies too, if you asked me to write something calm and happy, I'd struggle.

countermelody. No matter what genre I'm writing, I'm going to add it. A lot of it comes from studying bach midis from sites that look like they were coded by a toddler. A bunch comes from my castlevania obsession.

AND YOU BETTER EXPECT A HARPSICHORD TOO

I guess I'm getting good at learning/stealing. Listening to a song, picking a nice trick up and adding it to my repertoire. To be honest when I first use them it's so obvious from where they come from lol. But let me make one or two more songs and they become my own.

making ambient soundscapes

Saucing it up

As someone that more or less brute forced his way into understanding music, I'd probably have to say that I've gotten a lot better at creating good soundscapes in my music and toying around with different instruments that work well with each other.

The fact that I've had an extensive speed composing background (thanks, ThaSauce's One Hour Compos and Battle of the Bits in general) also keeps me on my toes with making decisions really fast and committing to them, and top that with me slowly getting better at the piano (and using it to my advantage when making music these days) could potentially make for some super interesting works.

Now if only I could apply this to a new song for Battle of the Bits....

I wonder

dunno, i'm still learning :D
kinda curious to know what people think i'm good at though

dats a good question

Rock sounding stuff, I like making heavy in-your-face punchy songs, but I do know how to make some slower songs

making a melody
then making it again but slightly better to play towards the end

instrument design and maybe long-form composition

No idea.
In trackers?- Nothing at the moment since I am still learning.
Beepbox/and its mods?- Soundscape-like thing with a hint of music?

I really don't know.

big sounds, even in trackers (nna and auto-vibrato spam)
also dialing in volumes and stuff to make something sound nice to the ears

nowadays, I think my answer is learning new bits of musical language and integrating them into my own voice without compromising what makes my voice unique

to arceus higher up on the thread, you have a good sense of momentum, of groove, of dialing in a feeling and committing to it

being myself

sound design maybe
(and harmony possibly)

I actually have something very similar to what goluigi's got going on; hearing the first chord of a song and instantly knowing it's in the exact same key as another or part of another song. it has the same "sensation" to me. I don't know what the key or chord is called much of the time, but I identify them correctly. so, figuring out most songs by ear and improvising along is pretty easy/quick, even if I mess up a few intervals at first

like A-zu-ra, I've "brute forced [my] way into understanding music". I think I'm good at sound design but terrible at mixing. like a lot of people here, I focus a lot on rhythm. and messing around with samples is always fun