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Comment by yzzxy | Hacker News Reader

I really, really hope this is satire. But I think it may be serious.

The author is pushing the same ideas in other places (sorry for the signup-walled Quora link):

http://jeffmeyerson.quora.com/Musicians-and-Engineers?srid=p...

As the OP appears to be the original author, I will ask the following: Do you really believe the "engineer mindset" is the best way of thinking in all situations? If so, why are engineers not the top musicians in the world? Many engineers are/have been in bands. But the majority of successful musicians follow at least some of the "bad traits" you list. Wouldn't the basic laws of consumer choice and capitalism bring "engineer musicians" to the top of the charts every time if those habits were really bad?

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This is the author.

It isn't satire. Have you ever tried to write electronic music with a group of people?

Yes. I will hurriedly agree that the process is not perfect. But your followups to that first axiom are a little insane, and will alienate almost every musician.

You basically argue musicians should act more like you. Do you really want a world of yous? Because I don't, I believe there is room for every mindset. If you really want to improve electronic music production, try starting with the users. Find out what their needs are. I would hesitate to separate you from your users, but you appear to do that yourself in this article.

As in many industries, we settle for the best music we have. I posit that our music would be better if it were written with some engineering principles.

Yes there are many good engineer+musicians. But I've never seen a group of musicians use a KANBAN board.

I have successfully done so. One huge question: why would it be advantageous to scale groups of composers? Many people can do more than enough with no collaborators at all.

Example: you have a minimum-sized team that can work on that Trello board. One person for each column. After putting 20 songs through the assembly line, you find that things are getting bottlenecked at the percussion engineering part, and you are missing deadlines. So you hire another percussion engineer.

It's like a service-oriented architecture. If there is a lot of demand on a service, you spin up another copy of it.

Whats needed is better instruments, not better software. The problems of writing electronic music with a group of people is best solved by getting everyone sync'ed up over MIDI with their own local gear, and having at it .. you know, just like any other band over the years.

have you put in the time and achieved the musical results that warrant the kind of bold statement you are making?

I've written an album that's on Spotify, and several hundred other songs. I've probably put 3000-5000 hours into writing and thinking about music.

I'm continually proud and disappointed with my own results. I know I could do more if I was working with a team.

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