Four Tet's Inspiringly Simple Music

Electronic musician and producer Four Tet shows how making music can be simple, fast and fun. Use this as inspiration if you're stuck in a rut.

Go check out the full Tape Notes podcast episode – it's well worth a listen!

[WelcometoJandJ]

Fr, sometimes we bury ourselves too much in the technicalities forgeting that most of the time simple is better.

[peakingmantis]

Normally when you see 14 tracks with big EDM producers it's really 14 groups with multiple tracks inside. This guy really does keep it simple.

[Cableguys]

Go check out the full Tape Notes podcast episode – it's well worth a watch/listen!

[brokenbutterbagels]

"only 14 tracks in total"

me n my finished songs with 3 tracks: 🧍‍♂️

[edubblesspirit]

Hearing him talk in this podcast was so awesome.

His is approach is so lovingly simple it’s nice to see.

[полное_пузо_хинкалей]

four tet is an absolute beast at arranging music. the job he did for madlibs "sound ancestors" is unmatchable

[isaiahromero]

Depends on what kind of music you make tbh. If you make dense layered ambient music for example, you can add as many elements as you want. It's all up to the artist

[neil]

"only 14 tracks" i grew up with a pirate copy of screamtracker on an Amiga😂

[JeSuisDRU.]

Could we have a link to the podcast please?

[secondhandflowers]

It’s so funny how on every music post where the advice is basically to keep things simple, all the comments are overwhelmingly positive whereas on anything that suggests complex processes and hard work the top comment is *invariably* something like “Here’s five reasons why I’ll never, ever do that and also I hate you”. Still good advice and a banging podcast ep.

[Nemouschinten]

"It's simple, not complicated."

[alaukikdj]

Hey what do you think about bitwig studio ?

[ubu-ibme]

YouTube was listening to me… I was literally just talking about this with someone not even 10 minutes ago…

[theafilmssm]

No wonder why it takes 15 minutes, its mostly presets and loops 😭

[LeReubzRic]

Thought you meant 4 tone equal temperament. I am disappointed. ☹️

[sipntea]

just make beats, learn along the way and if you have trouble getting the sound you want, find out how to use synthesizers like vital and serum, you miss 100% of the beats you don't make

[ekspert]

It's cool, but his music doesn't have to be an indicator. Honestly, I don't see much quality and musical value in such productions. This isn't just a complaint against this producer, but I'm not surprised that current music is such crap with the approach of many producers who, instead of composing their own stuff, prefer to steal a melody from 20 years ago

[un_reveur]

I think that he means that 15 minutes they got to make just a base & basic elements elements. And then they spent many many hours of production, making progressions, drops, build outs and outtro. And polishing everything with filters and SFXes. If not, this man is a liar.

[nositrecords]

Sounds like the perfect formula to sound exactly like anyone else... Why even bother to do that? It's better to have 1 original song that you actually took the time to make and thought about than an album's worth of cliché basic crap that a toddler with an Ai can do with a click of a button.

[lightsrecords]

Man should be called 14 Tracks, not 4 Tet though