# How long did it take you to get "good"?



## tokatila (Aug 21, 2014)

After listening this excellent advice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY#t=65) I was wondering how long did it get you to get "good"?

Did you feel that there was a "tipping point"/10000 h etc. when your music/sound started to sound "professional" and things got easier instead harder? And how did you notice it? 

Of course learning never stops, but in my opinion having intermediate skills in anything is the worst, since you know how much better experts are and how much you are missing, and still unable to perform to your liking.







I know this is a difficult/controversial question and at least somewhat subjective according to tastes and personalities. Some are never happy and some poor souls are too happy (majority of people, but likely a great minority on this forum.)


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2014)

I think Malcolm Gladwell got it right in "Outliers". App. 10,000 hours.


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## JerryS (Aug 21, 2014)

Hmm. 1) The 10,000 hour thing is at best some kind of median for professionals and worst obviously false (some things take more time, others take much less). 2) More importantly, I think that there is a huge danger when things become easy. People stop growing and just cruise. In fact, that probably happens most of the time. Sometimes, if they have a group of wannabes that looks up to them, they are satisfied. Other times, a mutual admiration society does the trick. If you find yourself seriously involved in a mutual admiration society where you tell others how great they are and they reciprocate, you should seriously ask yourself whether you have stopped growing. Chances are you have. Academia is filled with people who pride themselves on a few books they wrote decades ago and a few admiring grad students are enough to keep the game going. They say that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies are filled with people telling each other how great they are despite the fact that most of them haven't done anything in decades. In short, growth is never easy. If things are easy, you are usually not growing. Of course, sometimes you have to make sacrifices to keep things hard. Not always easy to keep life hard. Sometimes you have to take a pay cut for the thing that lets you grow. Sometimes the wife objects!


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2014)

Well of course it is a median. Geniuses progress faster than modestly talented people in the same amount of time. The important message is that getting good takes a lot of time and hard work. The easy to use tools only take you so far.


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## JerryS (Aug 21, 2014)

The premise of the OP is that things are hard then become easy, not easy then become hard. I accept that premise.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2014)

What a revelation


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## JerryS (Aug 21, 2014)

Well, I have no idea where the "easy to use tools" reference came from. And Gladwell certainly wasn't the first to say getting good requires hard work. My comments were directed at those who have put in 11,000 hours.


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## dcoscina (Aug 21, 2014)

I'm still working on it.


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2014)

My problem with the first post is that he is asking about when it begins to sound "professional" and at the current point in time that is such a low standard as to accompany highly skilled people but also include people with little talent and knowledge who nonetheless are getting hired to do enough paid work that they can truthfully say their music sounds "professional",

And I mentioned the tools ls because undoubtedly, hey make the work easier but not necessarily better.

Anyway, in the end, regardless of the era, the best perhaps80% of those who tackle can ever achieve is competent and decent as in every era there are a relatively small number of those who are just on another level from most of us. Ten hours, ten thousand hours, or ten million hours and I still could never have become as good as James Newton Howard.


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## vicontrolu (Aug 21, 2014)

5 years or so of composing music on a daily basis made me feel more confortable at it.

Doing the calculations its about 11.000 hours. I really thought putting a number on this was kinda ponitless but its relatively close to my experience. 
Must be coincidence.


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## gbar (Aug 21, 2014)

I have no idea. I too am "working on it", and composing orchestral music is a brave new world for me.

I saw a video of Danny Elfman, though, and if his experience is common, it doesn't get easy He said it starts out fun, and it ends up satisfying, but the middle of every project is like being in prison


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## jensos (Aug 21, 2014)

Not to sidetrack the discussion, but is there anyone else here concerned that his/her lifetime won't be sufficient to even reach the minimum level of skill they strive for...?


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## SDCP (Aug 21, 2014)

30 years. Not kidding.


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## JohnG (Aug 21, 2014)

Probably a common feeling but, for some, "good" is always the next level. Material one felt was good in early days may not seem as good later.

Sometimes I think I'm writing something decent and then I hear Arvo Part or Bach or Phillip Glass or Thomas Newman or....

...and then I have something to think about.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Aug 21, 2014)

I think I got good after 13-15 full-time years or so. More than 10k hours, that's for sure! So much of what it takes comes from experience (expect for the truly gifted, of course), from writing for so many different scenes, with many directors/producers chiming in with their suggestions/ideas, and writing so much crap! :lol: (I haven't lost that habit, I'm afraid). If you have a modicum of talent, *writing every day *will get you better faster than most other endeavours, but maybe not, and maybe 'fast' is not the point.


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## Daryl (Aug 21, 2014)

I think that there are five stages:

1) You know nothing.
2) You know nothing, but think you know everything.
3) You know some things, but think you know nothing
4) You know some things, realise how much you don't know, and hope that nobody else notices, whilst you try to learn as much as you can.
5) You know everything.

Nobody is in category 5. :wink: 

D


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## José Herring (Aug 21, 2014)

Worry first about being effective. Then make that as good as you possibly can.

History is littered with composers who were good. But, very few could actually get their music to speak to anybody.

If you're good and effective then you're considered a genius. 

But, if you just worry about being good two things will happen. 1) you'll never think you're good enough, and 2) You'll always be judging yourself by another persons standard, whether it be a teacher, a peer, ect.... That's the road to absolute madness.

So first, think to yourself, am I saying what I want to say? Then make it as good as possible. Then get better from there until your music finds it's audience.

Almost everybody I've heard is good enough technically to be a professional. All one has to do is turn on your tv or go see Guardians of the Galaxy to realize that. 

The most common criticism that you'll get is that "you're not good enough". It's so common and so pervasive in the field of the arts that it's almost normal to hear it. You're not good enough. You suck... ect..... Then you realize that, the truth of the matter is that there are composers that are effective, and there are those that aren't. And, it doesn't matter how "good" somebody is compared to some mystical arbitrary ideal, all that matters is that can your music deliver what's needed, when needed. 

Plenty of good composers that have been relegated to the dustbin of obscurity simply because, their music, no matter how good, just became irrelevant to the period they were living in.

I've made the mistake in the past of giving criticism of others work. Until I realized that I'm just criticizing from my own viewpoint, and that in the end was just opinion.

I myself have suffered the brunt of the highest praise, to the most down right hostile remarks about my music. It use to bother me, then I realized that another's opinion whether good or bad, doesn't really matter.

Of course their are technical considerations. But in the end, the technique serves the expressions.

Thus, go for the expression first, then get it as technically good as needed to make it more effective. But other than that, chasing some arbitrary standard of good, in a field that is almost 100% subjective is a waste of time.

Play Justin Beiber to a 14 year old girl and play her Shostakovich just after. She'll tell you who she thinks is good.  Ridiculous example. But one just to illustrate that you really need to set your own standards and worry first about what you think is effective then make that as good as you possibly can always realizing that you can always get better, but at some point you'll realize that, it's good enough, for now


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## EastWest Lurker (Aug 21, 2014)

Daryl @ Thu Aug 21 said:


> I think that there are five stages:
> 
> 1) You know nothing.
> 2) You know nothing, but think you know everything.
> ...



I like it


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## Allegro (Aug 21, 2014)

jensos @ Thu Aug 21 said:


> Not to sidetrack the discussion, but is there anyone else here concerned that his/her lifetime won't be sufficient to even reach the minimum level of skill they strive for...?


Not MINIMUM per se, (as 5 years from now, I couldn't even dream about being what I am today) but the skill level I strive for is somewhere in the "you're crazy, go to sleep" category. So a couple hours ago, I was thinking about giving my imaginary kids (if any of them decides to do what I am doing) a head start. So its basically 1.5-2 lifetimes. Not sure where it goes though. :lol:


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## rgames (Aug 21, 2014)

Asking what it takes to "get good" implies that there's a destination state where you arrive and then coast downhill, as the image shows. People who do that, in my estimation, are destined for mediocrity at best.

The people who really are good rarely coast. They're constantly climbing uphill. Sure, they may take a break here and there, but not for long. If you see more hills but choose not to climb them then you've lost your passion. If you can't see any more hills to climb then you've fallen into egomania.

Success is determined by the combination of talent and struggle, not any particular achievement or status.

So I guess the first step in "getting good" is accepting that you're never as good as you want to be. Talent takes care of the rest.

rgames


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## RiffWraith (Aug 21, 2014)

20 minutes, but still learning. :D


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## MichaelL (Aug 21, 2014)

Daryl @ Thu Aug 21 said:


> I think that there are five stages:
> 
> 1) You know nothing.
> 2) You know nothing, but think you know everything.
> ...



+1

Five decades, and still working on it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 21, 2014)

I'm still working on trying to stomach Malcolm Gladwell. Getting good will come later.


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## re-peat (Aug 21, 2014)

I was born good. 
Not articulate maybe, but good.

_


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## Arbee (Aug 22, 2014)

The better I get, the more I realise I don't know and the better I realise I should be, so the bar keeps rising and there is no point of arrival. What a completely futile and yet obsessive and seductive way to live :lol: 

.


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## G.E. (Aug 22, 2014)

If you set some very low standards for yourself,you can get very good in no time. :D


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## jensos (Aug 22, 2014)

G.E. @ Fri Aug 22 said:


> If you set some very low standards for yourself,you can get very good in no time. :D



Hanging out in a place like this one, that's pretty much an impossibility...


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## AlexandreSafi (Aug 22, 2014)

I personally don't label myself as such...
As a composer, I only care about good ideas. Getting good, or the probability of it, happens exactly at each moment you realize your ideas aren't good enough yet, until you indeed find some that are good (that you can only "feel" are better, as it is your most important business as a musician), and confirm to yourself you were right in being hard, ambitious and patient on yourself - a hard man's own pleaser... The negative capacity, humility, persistence & intelligence to shoot more ideas down recognizing it's not good yet, than to actually seize the first quick ones thinking "this is it"... It's the ability, through your own taste & musical identity, to distinct as well good & bad music that's made by others as when it is good & bad when it's in the spontaneous moment of creation by "you" - The 10000 hours, for which i can't speak myself, is a truly well important notion, but i believe the abstract (& free-willed) skill of self-criticism & self-awareness (which we apparently are all supposed to have since child's age) to be even more so and can get you there, and give you a taste of "good", in some cases, faster than the 10000 hours...

-AS-


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## Bohrium (Aug 22, 2014)

Sombody once said:
"Creativity is not to be afraid to make mistakes, art is to know which ones to keep"

I can't remember who that was ...


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## SymphonicSamples (Aug 22, 2014)

RiffWraith @ Fri Aug 22 said:


> 20 minutes, but still learning. :D



Come on Riff ... If you said 25 minutes I would have believed you , but 20 minutes is pushing it  .... It's an interesting question . In many ways it depends somewhat on the level of proficiency someone wants to obtain in any given field and what you deem as "Good" . Clearly 10,000 hours of time spent by someone who's extremely focused and makes very productive use of that time will achieve more in that span of time than someone who doesn't . The better you are at something often means the more you expect from yourself . Some things get easier as you progress , some things become harder . To be in the same league as for example , Composer A , it may take a lifetime of hard work , but Composers B may be much less . I'd strive for Composer A , and see where the journey takes you because it never ends


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## cmillar (Aug 22, 2014)

hmmm..... seems like every time I buy some new sample library I extend the time it takes to get 'good'.

I have some great libraries of which I've barely scratched the surface of what they're capable of producing/realizing. 

So, as far as 'being good' with producing music with today's technology, the 'getting good' time period never stops.

As far as 'being good' insofar as being a competent, versatile, eclectic composer..... that's a lot of study, hard work, and many years of 'getting at it'. One step forward, two steps back.... reach a new plateau..... feel like you're a novice all over again..... have some success..... have some failure..... reach a new plateau..... feel like you're actually getting somewhere.....self-doubts one day..... ego is stroked the next..... listen to Mozart or other masters and realize what music's all about....... keeping knowledgeable about current music..... past music..... etc. etc.

More importantly, I agree that it takes many years to achieve what could qualify as real artistry... years of experience must take place before one can truly feel comfortable calling themself an artist.

Hell, what do I know? But, I'm starting to feel more like a real qualified artist after 25 years of composing and a wide range of musical experiences.


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## Simon Ravn (Aug 23, 2014)

gbar @ Thu Aug 21 said:


> I have no idea. I too am "working on it", and composing orchestral music is a brave new world for me.
> 
> I saw a video of Danny Elfman, though, and if his experience is common, it doesn't get easy He said it starts out fun, and it ends up satisfying, but the middle of every project is like being in prison



Wow, I never saw that quote, but that rings very accurate to my experience :lol:


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