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Comment by marricks | Hacker News Reader

I tried this a few years ago and it was addictive and amazing. Highly recommend.

I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up.

Imagining hearing one of your family members just start singing to themselves without any background music, does that feel uncomfortable? Would you sing along?

I think to many the answer is clear, music, as well as many other endeavors are something to now be enjoyed but not created. And oh boy do we get to enjoy the “best” music and “best” films and “best” books on demand.

And along the way we lost the large bits of ourselves which created and enjoyed together. So, in short, 10/10 would do the tutorial again.

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I can only respond anecdotally but from where I’m sitting, the DIY music world has never been larger or more diverse and younger people are a huge part of that. Friendly digital recording, platforms line SoundCloud, YouTube, and Bandcamp, plus the magic of internet communication platforms have broken down so many barriers. There’s a micro-sub-genre for every mood, combination of styles, level of production, topic, and day of the week. I’ve been performing and releasing music for 20 years and I’ve never seen so much happening at once.

Im seeing everyone stuck inside screens in consumer mode, and when playing instruments it’s for YouTube popularity contests doing cover songs or showing physical prowess and definitely copying some already cool thing, and definitely not showing us the mistakes made along the journey , just the gloss of a perfect performance…

A neighbor kid started crying when he could not ride the bicycle the first time like his online hero did perfectly.

This is a messed up transition time of some sort, no doubt we will make some cultural choices to free ourselves of this tyranny of our own mentation.

There’s certainly a lot of that but it’s still a version of music being part of our lives, even if the people trying to participate in musical “me too” experiences aren’t creating what we’d all consider art. These things have always existed, they are many people’s way of engaging with the things they love. What’s new is our ability to share it and see others do it.

Besides, popular music has existed in a “perfect performance” place for, what, two decades now? The virtues of imperfect performances are lost on most people. Speaking as a performer and occasional producer, I simultaneously enjoy the imperfections in my favorite albums and invest serious energy to purge them from my own releases, so I get it.

None of this changes the fact that DIY music scenes are thriving. Physical album sales are healthier than they have been in years. Playing guitar seems… cool again???? None of these are bad things, even if there’s one too many videos 14-year olds playing perfect Dimebag Darrell solos on YouTube.

> music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up.

Recorded music, and our reaction to it, has pretty much crushed that. On the one hand, it's marvellous that I can listen to Jussi Bjorling or Maria Callas any time I want, but we then tend to criticise anything less than "the best". Heck, the process of recorded music has often deceived us: the Wrecking Crew made most of the great US pop/rock albums of the late 50s and 60s[1].

The net result is that when people break out a guitar or sing, we tend to critique them harshly. Why listen to a mediocre performance when we could have perfection? And, of course, who wants to perform when you'll just be compared to the recordings of the best ever?

[1] An enjoyable documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrecking_Crew_(2008_film)

> the Wrecking Crew made most of the great US pop/rock albums of the late 50s and 60s

as it happens, that movie is my Substack post for this Friday, complete with YouTube playlist for all the music mentioned.

I just, this afternoon, talked to an old friend who played in a jam session with Hal Blaine!

Internet exceptionalism is a phenomenon to watch out for in all parts of life. The internet surfaces the top percentile examples of talent, and if we aren't careful we can find ourselves unhappy with anything less. Worse yet, people find themselves unhappy with their own talents and equipment in comparison.

This feels overly pessimistic to me. Since you mentioned pianos, they are big, unwieldy, expensive, and require maintenance. They were a household staple if none of that was an issue for you. There are cheaper and more convenient paths now, and tons of content online to learn from. If you want to play music, there's never been a better time.

> If you want to play music, there's never been a better time.

People used to learn from… people. In fact, many people prefer that still.

And I’d say, I’d rather have a dozen friends who play music and actually want to hear my music than have the potential to get a million fans I’d end up rather not meeting because it’s just awkward and unnatural.

I’m not sure what your point is. You still have those options.

>I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up.

Music fandom used to be a bigger part of lives after that. Pop/rock stars were royalty. Now with all the other stuff competing for eyeballs it's just another thing. Aside from a much smaller music-obsessed demographic, most teens could not care less today.

This seems to ignore the phenomenon of people paying to sit in a parking lot outside a Taylor Swift concert?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/05/15/taylor-swift...

That's more about the ticket price, and just going to have some fun with friends (plus the trend), than the music. People do similar shit for iPhone or console launches, movie premieres, social media stars, and so on.

> Before the radio a piano was a household staple

Uh, maybe for wealthier households. Definitely not the case for people who grew up a bit poorer than average. Piano upkeep is not a trivial expense!

That's very true. However people on the poorer side did what they could historically (see cigar box guitars, washboards, jug bands, singing, tap dance).

I strongly disagree. My lower class sets of grandparents both had pianos. Other family members had violens, accordions, portable little organ things. Making music was the norm before the radio just like the original poster said. Do you think classic blues pianists came from rich families?

Honestly I think I just misread "before the radio" as "before the internet" and didn't realize it until it was pointed out a second time to me. I don't actually know what life was like before the radio, even my grandparents would have been too young for that.

That's a single generation. What about before then?

Guitars, mandolins, just singing together…

And no pianos.

Half of households had a piano:

https://daily.jstor.org/what-player-pianos-meant-to-american...

So… good point it was middle class status symbol, but a huge number still had access.

My real point was music creation was more a part of people’s daily lives.

We were poor as dirt. We had a piano. It got tuned once a year at best

There's now the meme that one guy will bring a guitar to any event and start playing Wonderwall, lol.

I was at a Wardruna concert a few months ago, and the artist had a (somewhat awkward because he doesn't like speaking English) speech about this very thing, he encouraged people to make music, to sing to their children, to bring less manufactured, casual music back into people's lives.

> Imagining hearing one of your family members just start singing to themselves without any background music, does that feel uncomfortable? Would you sing along?

No need to imagine, pretty normal at my home. (Sometimes I am that family member.) And to answer the questions, no, and yes. (And none of us is a trained musician.)

But I agree, we (as a society) lost a lot of that. I have a feeling that it's cultural; I strongly suspect that in some countries people sing a lot more.

I guess it will depend on the family/household too. A friend of mine (same age as me) grew up in a house where everyone sung, and used to have huge family gatherings based around singing together. All his family played at least one instrument.

My parents, on the other hand, had exactly zero interest in music. I grew up without any music in the house (no radio, no recorded music, no musical instruments).

After I left home music became one of my main hobbies, though I've always felt far behind many of my peers (many of whom at least had a few piano lessons in their youth). Slowly making progress, though I've always struggled with where to start with singing (since no-one in my house sang, I'm very self-concious doing it).

IIRC Paul McCartney grew up listening to his father play pop tunes in a room full of guests and family members. It was a rich musical environment. As Paul got older, he started playing pop songs for the guests just like his father. It's interesting to learn that this was a common social activity back then.

This was my house growing up. All my siblings, including myself, learned music and instruments we picked out. It helped that my mother had a degree in music, but still. At 40 I find myself singing out loud without music often.

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