in the spirit of this thread, where we are talking about our musical strengths, i'd like to open a discussion about what we would like to improve in musically.

in addition people who consider themselves strong at something can give advice and feedback to others.

this isn't meant to be defeatistcore or anything, just like the other thread isn't meant to be toxic feel good positivity

I'll write my own post later

to me, more deftly wielding (and recognizing, i.e. ear training) elaborate extended/jazz harmony is always on the list but has tended to feel too daunting to attempt - i guess it's not been much of a focus lately anyway but it's still something i'd like to put time into in the future. i guess what i'm after is more intentionality. amassing more specific knowledge to deploy. this has been a desire of mine for forever and i've just focused on different stuff instead

writing/phrasing less "on the barline" is a big one. this also feels like a weakness in my own process, at least where stuff at a tempo is concerned; it was pointed out to me in piano lessons in college and haunts me to this day, sorta

similarly putting more rhythmic detail into my overall arrangements - this is a matter of more carefully phrasing from bar to bar, and more than anything perhaps a product of the way i usually write, which is to skeletonize one part first then add the rest. maybe the answer is to be more malleable with my skeleton

being more in touch with the 'body music' aspect. i tend to lean more into 'heart music' and 'brain music' to the possible neglect of body. i guess i'd say rhythm is broadly the point most ripe for improvement for me

Being able to write more music in a shorter amount of time. It would keep me motivated and allow for faster improvement in other areas.

Though, in a way, I feel like I'm saying I would like to improve at "everything", since improving in any area would probably contribute to speed.

Yes

i wish i didn't rush my songs. i have a lot of really cool ideas but a lot of the time they end up underdeveloped because i tend to make stuff really quickly instead of taking it slow.
some of my best songs turned out to be that way because i actually decided to spend more time working with them.
about that, sometimes i would rush a song then re-release it with many improvements until there's like 8 different versions.

one area of music i couldn't do much yet is orchestral stuff. i fear that my attempts will sound really fake compared to the real thing or at least some really good attempts of replicating the real thing.
i know some VSTs and kontakt libraries are good but it's also how you use them, along with how you write the songs around them.

maybe i shouldn't worry much about this because there's this whole thing called synth orchestra where people used synthesizers to convey the sense of such sounds and atmosphere without necessarily following the strict limitations of it.

i feel like my melodies have gotten way better lately, and so my chord progressions have become less "lost". still i see people do complex jazz fusion shit and i still feel left behind compared to some of my peers. maybe i shouldn't compare myself to them and instead focus on my strengths first.

harmony., but a specific effect of it which is difficult to achieve. that being, to surprise, but in a median way- i see a surprise across a tonic to be not so surprising thanks to cultural foresight, and a surprise generated by complete random chaos or intentional harshness to be unsurprising by premeditation. there are specific routes which bypass, as much as possible, both ends of that spectrum using subtle subversion and piecemeal of cultural elements.. the result from my experience is something deeply, insidiously unsettling, where it's either very clearly dark or has a beige, serene surface but stalks from inside its own skin without ever communicating its presence.. its difficult to do this so i need to research and experiment a lot
ex., rufige kru "ghosts of my life", james ferraro REREX1 & KFC city 3099 toxic spill pt1, graham kartna loop tube, adam f "metropolis", derrick may "r-theme", vangelis "reve" "sweet solitude" & this

, and from this site warlord "trojan moon pit" (im certainly interpreting these songs the wrong way but it's no comment on their artists)

1) developing ideas. my tunes sometimes turn into hodge podges of different ideas that lack cohesion. this has likewise plagued me for a long long time.
2) coming up with a unique sound that doesn't sound like ass lol

too much to fully list, but i suppose the biggest things are:

- getting better at translating ideas to a DAW/tracker, as i'm very slow at that, and i'm not always sure how to capture what's going on in my head without a piano (and because i avoided writing music for years, i struggle with writing down whatever i play on piano as well).

- drum programming. my drums at the moment are...functional, at least, but i'd like them to elevate my music rather than just function. after Summer Chip i'm thinking of transcribing people like Ziggy Modeliste or J Dilla to get a better handle on what makes good drumming.

- general sound design. for reasons already mentioned, i avoided this stuff for a long time, so i have a lot of room to grow here. i'd love for sound design to feel so natural that it didn't feel separate from working on melody/harmony stuff.


but yeah, there's also stuff like mixing, mastering, orchestration, etc. but i think that the other stuff listed is more important, at the moment.

starting and finishing somg

the mixing process, especially with Daws cause I haven't made a Daw song in so long. Any tutorials or guide would be appreciated

Sound design: At one point I thought I knew the ins and outs of Famitracker, but the Famicom Grand Prix put me in my place lol. I wanna get better at FM/Sampled music as well.

Jazzier chords/modulations: I've gotten to the point where I'm kinda sick of Japanese pop progressions and want to branch out to cooler/beautiful progressions and key changes/modulations that sound good.

Longer songs: I get too focused on the smaller details like effects and the "perfect" sound for instruments, so I never end up making a song longer than 2 minutes cause I'm either just sick of it, unmotivated, or afraid it won't turn out well.

learning theory or something idk lol

I'd love to get good at recording and mixing someday... I've been putting it off for so long

Part of the reasons I was so drawn to chiptune is being able to make music while avoiding all that, but I'm hoping to start incorporating more instruments of mine.

i'd like to improve my listening skills. i've come this far with doing very few covers, if any.

i cannot count the amount of times i have had song ideas that i cannot actualize due to a lack of the knowledge and intuition to try to produce such things. instead i have found myself discovering some pattern, and then staying with it and too much in my comfort zone.

with originals, even if you can't realize the "exact" vision in your head, you can kind of fudge and get away with alternative options that still sound decent. in other words "transcribing" the idea in your head. and by all means, there's something to be said about explorative music composition as opposed to "transcriptive".

i'd say transcriptive composition is where you clearly have a vision of the song in your head, and know exactly how it's structured from the getgo, and the composing tool is just a means to put that vision into reality. from what i know, vince kaichan and kfaraday tend to write music in this way.

i've mostly approached writing music from an "explorative" point of view. meaning, that usually I don't really know what the song is going to be from the beginning, and mostly just mess around with sounds and notes and then i come upon something i like. then i just keep doing this until maybe i actually have a song at the end! I'm pretty sure that most of the time my initial tempo setting, groove, and feel for a song is completely different from the finished version

not that there's anything wrong with this total "wing it" approach. but there's something deeply satisfying and soul-fulfilling when you had an initial vision and then actualized it into reality. not to mention it requires more precision. i think i can count on my fingers the amount of times i've actually written music that was directly in my head (sakura drop soraing and bounce about in the bouncy ball (e)bowl(a)

are two times i can think of knowing what the song was going to be mostly and then actually getting it down). maybe the value here for others is try your "other" way of composing.

back to covers, the process of writing covers is completely different from originals. while certain things are up to interpretation and it depends on your goals, i personally want to better understand how the songs i like and listen to are constructed. of course i've done this with tracker modules but those are easy because you can just see all the notes. i'd like to bring in more influences into what i write, and honestly I don't think I've recreationally listened to tracker music in 6-7 years (except for my recent 2 week nostalgia binge of s3xmodit ohc music). and with non-tracker music, you have to use your ears! and not just for the notes, the instrumentation too (i personally struggle the most with drums and chords/harmony. and then even if i have the composition fleshed out in my head or even in a tracker or daw, i get bogged down with sound selection)

this requires a level of deep work i have not undergone. as a teenager, i was writing music as a distraction from reality and to make new friends. while i enjoyed hearing others talk about musical concepts in depth and would occasionally noodle around with certain ideas i personally found interesting (gyms always had something he was diving into and simply being around him made me a much better composer lol), i wasn't interested in really sitting down and deeply engaging with music beyond just "fucking around and finding out"

i think even if i still keep preferring an explorative compositional style, having more diversity in my mental reference library would make my future pieces even better

in my life, i'm at quite a bit of a crossroads. for years, i actually dove into some other pursuits because THOSE were not allowing me to write music. but now that i've completed and made progress on those pursuits, music has been on my mind again. i'm not even sure if i want to commit to music yet, but this time the focus has shifted. now, i'd like to actually deepen and broaden my repertoire. for me, that would be really breaking apart and understanding music i like and then seeing how that influences what i write. i want to challenge myself far more, write less for just validation and social acceptance, and continue to enjoy and have fun with music

getting a banger tune in my head, then (often) can't properly recreate it :|
(off topic but how does one start to learn to transcribe (mainly video game) music? ik botb is more or less focused on originals, but being able to transcribe vgms i hear would be nice)

also, listening to more genres. I've listened (& done) too much "generic chiptune" that doesn't really have a distinct genre, and i think having different genre ideas under ur belt can ...probably improve the overall tune. ---
off topic x2, but one time I participated in one of Prestune's (i think it was, idk) battles, and it was like creating classical music. i did submit something but due to said lack of genre knowledge, my entry was about as far as classical music got while somehow being "classical" . rip.)

i have so much to learn i don't really know where to start. ultimately i would like to be able to play jazz and compose counterpoint.

for me the big struggle has always been to expand the types of chord progressions/movements I use, breaking out of certain patterns, and how to summon ones outside my standard range of comfort more readily. (Genre and mood based OHB are great for forcing me to do this as long as the genre and mood are outside what my comfort zone covers most readily). I exist in the valley of "too much music theory knowledge for to be a laymen, far too little to be a master" but that's not really a pro or a con, just a fact related to the above. Brushing up on tonal and jazz harmony would be a benefit to me on some level, I haven't had a theory class that I wasn't teaching (mind you, very basic stuff to young kids) since 2008.

This is an odd one, but I need to stop putting CERTAIN FEELINGS into my work (this pertains to OHB in particular but can extend elsewhere). One of the obstacles I sometimes face is trying to ignore How Do I Feel/Want To Feel Now in service of a song that could otherwise be more appropriate or more interesting in the context of "my catalog" of music. The real solution to this is, again, doing more genre and mood based OHB or private study and to get the feelings out with something else first. Hard to make something happy when I wanna... uh... do things unhappy people do.

The other thing that I have long struggled with is conventional forms for music (i.e pop), but that's actually something I have had major breakthroughs with the past few years and especially this year. I'm only mentioning it because it might be worth remembering for people that sometimes it's just easier for one to make 13/8 to 5/4 latin jazz and death metal influenced glitched out ROMpler music than it is to make catchy four on the floor europop. Our perceptions of complexity, artistic maturity, etc are very biased to a weird set of conventions put forth by a collective idea outside ourselves, and I think it's worth examining that idea internally... that is for another thread though. My point is just that sometimes weaknesses lie in places that a composer might view as "beneath" their level of perceived mastery.

i'm in strong agreement with your last paragraph bgo, i find it particularly challenging to write A Good Pop Song or a Dance Music Structure even though those are things that are like "more easily perceptible" to most peoples' ears. to some extent it depends on one's own proclivities and habits and workflow and influences, *but* overall i will say that stuff is way harder to achieve than one might expect. really gives a newfound respect for those who do it, after you try and replicate it yourself. it ain't that easy

- enjoying the process of computer music production
- my understanding of microtonal chord movements / voice leading
- vamping on and developing single ideas for longer
- being able to put more into a work before feeling like i need to be done with it (probably related to bullet #1)

- bigger picture ideas, following through on musical form and spending more time developing ideas
- using loops
- DAW workflow

definitely relate to wanting to be able to execute song ideas.That! but generally i feel so aimless when i make music that it's hard to even have Concrete Ideas... so really i'd like to improve at knowing What i want to do & being able to do it, when starting a song

also +1 to talen's point about cohesion that's been something i've been wanting to work at for a while. also drums, chord progressions too...

actually i Want to make music that's not cohesive / "disjointed" & "aimless" but in a way that's intentional... & be able to make other things intentionally too

I've been struggling for years to get more into the jazzy stuff, especially jazz-fusion.

I'm trying to add variety and not being stuck into the "power/prog metal guy with weeb influences"... well, the weeb influences will still be there, since my favorite jazz fusion style is Japanese -Mario Kart 8 or Casiopeia, for example- and the strong influence it still has in j-pop/anime music. I love Latin jazz also.

My entries that get away from the "upbeat prog metal with a touch of anime" style are the ones that have performed the worst (not counting OHBs), but I'm not giving up.

I was laughing hard at BubbleGum Octopus' comment:
"it's just easier for one to make 13/8 to 5/4 latin jazz and death metal influenced glitched out ROMpler music than it is to make catchy four on the floor europop". I want to make more 13/8 to 5/4 latin jazz and death metal influenced glitched out ROMpler music! ^^ . For example, the very first time I tried trance for the traNce 163 major it strangely went quite well.

As a bonus, my favorite jazz-fusion Japanese artists: SOIL&"PIMP" sessions, Casiopeia, TRI4TH, CroMagnon, Hiromi Uehara, Chihiro Yamanaka. Masayoshi Takanaka, J.A.M., Yoko Kanno and many others I'm missing.

while the flame of emotion roars on within my heart, my brain succumbs and melts in the heat.

i am always overcome with passion whenever i have an idea to begin a song. but somehow, it all fades the moment i click "new score" and meet the empty white page.
this happens a lot more recently. maybe i am burnt out or am feeling limited in regard to skills. to fix this i am consuming much more music in hopes of creating a new root to once again begin the creation process.

im sorry that this is not a very specific answer! but all the good ones have been taken B)

making actual harmony parts and backing rhythms with more than 3 channels. usually I just arpeggio-and-go, but as I’ve started experimenting with larger module formats like XM and stuff I’ve realized that I’m really bad at making good sounding harmony and chords and stuff.

another is just making my songs longer. my main issue is that im so used to making shorter loops for video game songs that making a longer composition between 3-5 minutes feels like an impossibly sometimes

efficiently using music software

i mean i freaking learned how to use vim to the point that now i can't use a regular text editor..................

Mainly percussion, but I'd also like to get better at writing suitable melodies. Half the time it feels like I'm making a solid tune with no melody and then just improvising a melody atop it to make it feel complete, and I'd like to be better at making the melody really belong with the song and influence it's direction.

trying to bring more meaning to the compositions and bring more iconic melody. A lot of the time when working on a track for so long, its working but it feels to me like put together bullshit. One thing I have been thonkin is singing over the songs.