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Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 6:26 pm
by winston
StacieAnne wrote:First and foremost I think accessibility to into music production can be an unfathomably giant hurdle.
Before I started making music I was genuinely of the belief it was some kind of dark art. This is coming from a place and a time where it was more accessible than ever. There was a wealth of YouTube videos and books at my disposal but opening a DAW for the first time on your own can seem incredibly daunting.
It is a big piece of complicated, powerful software and you have no idea how to do anything on it. Alleviating the big first hurdle for anyone who wants to start making music is imperative.
Anyone can do anything they want (within reason) when they are given the tools to have are inspired to do so. I think if more females knew they *could* make music then there would be a greater uptake of it. In my opinion, it has never been earlier to become a producer.


Pretty much all of the magazines that are female-centric and aimed at girls don’t discuss anything other than clothes, shoes, makeup and hair. Why is that? Is that all females are interested in? I genuinely don’t think that is that case but when you are constantly lead down that path eventually you will follow it of your own accord as you don’t know any differently.
Now, that isn’t the fault of the girls who are reading that, it is the fault of society in general.
A very quick look on the Toys R Us site further confirms this, starting these unhelpful gender roles at an incredibly young age - there is is a Thomas & Friends TrackMaster Treasure Chase Set on sale, next to a Disney Princess Tea Trolley Set, there is a small boy playing with the trains and a little girl playing with the trolley set. This isn’t simply down to the fact that boys like trains and girls like tea sets, there isn’t a person on this earth who is born liking trains sets, they are taught to, by their parents but mostly by society (I count myself as one of the lucky ones who had a train set AND tea set)
Music production IS technical and if you haven’t been raised an environment that promotes technical ability in some way then making your way into music tech or any tech for that matter is going to be exponentially more challenging.

There are also a few incredibly unhelpful attitudes floating around in smallish parts of the industry, not all of it but from time to time I’ll see the old “Why are there no many female producers” meme out there on Twitter (because they don’t understand Logic OR Reason apparently) While I don’t think these memes are shared out of an inherently sexist attitude, they are CERTAINLY not helping address the disproportionate balance of male to female producers. People don’t think of the impact it might have before they choose to share such Tweets.

One of my ex-favourite producers (I flatly refuse to support anyone who has such an abhorrent attitude as Conforce) made a sexist comment about how Lady Starlight should stick to the nail art as she wasn’t very good at music.
Having seen Lady Starlight perform live twice in the last 2 years I can categorically call bullshit on that comment. She is fantastic at what she does and had the whole room jumping. She works alongside Surgeon, you know one of the most highly regarded techno artists there is.
When people who are big in the game, like Conforce come out with comments like that it feels like the industry is being catapulted back to the dark ages. He did receive a fair amount of backlash and people came out in droves in support of Lady Starlight but she is big in the game and has a wealth of support behind her.
What if that had been said to a young female who was just starting out in music tech? I can’t say it wouldn’t have have made me think twice about being involved in music technology. Young egos are fragile and need to be nurtured not shot down by unhelpful attitudes.
i guess the answer to the OP is because women prefer to listen to themselves talk instead. ;)

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 7:07 pm
by Stace
winston wrote:
StacieAnne wrote:First and foremost I think accessibility to into music production can be an unfathomably giant hurdle.
Before I started making music I was genuinely of the belief it was some kind of dark art. This is coming from a place and a time where it was more accessible than ever. There was a wealth of YouTube videos and books at my disposal but opening a DAW for the first time on your own can seem incredibly daunting.
It is a big piece of complicated, powerful software and you have no idea how to do anything on it. Alleviating the big first hurdle for anyone who wants to start making music is imperative.
Anyone can do anything they want (within reason) when they are given the tools to have are inspired to do so. I think if more females knew they *could* make music then there would be a greater uptake of it. In my opinion, it has never been earlier to become a producer.


Pretty much all of the magazines that are female-centric and aimed at girls don’t discuss anything other than clothes, shoes, makeup and hair. Why is that? Is that all females are interested in? I genuinely don’t think that is that case but when you are constantly lead down that path eventually you will follow it of your own accord as you don’t know any differently.
Now, that isn’t the fault of the girls who are reading that, it is the fault of society in general.
A very quick look on the Toys R Us site further confirms this, starting these unhelpful gender roles at an incredibly young age - there is is a Thomas & Friends TrackMaster Treasure Chase Set on sale, next to a Disney Princess Tea Trolley Set, there is a small boy playing with the trains and a little girl playing with the trolley set. This isn’t simply down to the fact that boys like trains and girls like tea sets, there isn’t a person on this earth who is born liking trains sets, they are taught to, by their parents but mostly by society (I count myself as one of the lucky ones who had a train set AND tea set)
Music production IS technical and if you haven’t been raised an environment that promotes technical ability in some way then making your way into music tech or any tech for that matter is going to be exponentially more challenging.

There are also a few incredibly unhelpful attitudes floating around in smallish parts of the industry, not all of it but from time to time I’ll see the old “Why are there no many female producers” meme out there on Twitter (because they don’t understand Logic OR Reason apparently) While I don’t think these memes are shared out of an inherently sexist attitude, they are CERTAINLY not helping address the disproportionate balance of male to female producers. People don’t think of the impact it might have before they choose to share such Tweets.

One of my ex-favourite producers (I flatly refuse to support anyone who has such an abhorrent attitude as Conforce) made a sexist comment about how Lady Starlight should stick to the nail art as she wasn’t very good at music.
Having seen Lady Starlight perform live twice in the last 2 years I can categorically call bullshit on that comment. She is fantastic at what she does and had the whole room jumping. She works alongside Surgeon, you know one of the most highly regarded techno artists there is.
When people who are big in the game, like Conforce come out with comments like that it feels like the industry is being catapulted back to the dark ages. He did receive a fair amount of backlash and people came out in droves in support of Lady Starlight but she is big in the game and has a wealth of support behind her.
What if that had been said to a young female who was just starting out in music tech? I can’t say it wouldn’t have have made me think twice about being involved in music technology. Young egos are fragile and need to be nurtured not shot down by unhelpful attitudes.
i guess the answer to the OP is because women prefer to listen to themselves talk instead. ;)
It's the most Hades like reply I've ever done :)

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 8:09 pm
by [wesellboxes]
StacieAnne wrote:It's the most Hades like reply I've ever done :)
But a valuable insight all the same, thank you.

Which got me thinking, it can't just be the technology aspect as when I was at uni doing video production it was a 50/50 split and the girls got stuck in with camera work and editing easily enough. Throughout my work life I've seen graphic designers where it's generally a 50/50 split and women have no issues mastering Photoshop, Illustrator or front end languages like HTML and CSS.

Then the subsequent post from jordan has hit the nail on the head - these industries aren't saddled with the gender specific baggage prevalent throughout the music industry. I sure you could do an undergrad thesis on the subject but I bet some teenage girl with all the normal self esteem issues going through puberty will see the latest dolled up, fake girl pop group and that will sub-consciously prevent them from opening up a copy for Ableton further down the line.

What would be interesting is finding out the ratio of females in dance music that "made it" who played a traditional instrument in their childhood thus not being so blighted by either gender roles or sexism and receptive to DJ'ing or dance music production later.

As a side, I also think women have got it tougher than ever at the moment judging by the sheer amount of dickhead comments whenever there's a female on Boiler Room but that's probably another topic altogether.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:32 pm
by chava
One way to change the gender ratio in music production could be to lessen the engineering aspect when advertising music courses/education. Even though this has gotten much better in recent years, DAWs still overcomplicate everything and that added with the constant babble about the right synths, compressors, cables or whatever are a major turn-off for most (BUT NOT ALL OF COURSE!!) women. And me as well.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:43 pm
by jordanneke
Are you implying that the female brain can't cope with technical language or complicated DAW's?

;)

Can we draw a line under this topic by saying that there are differences in interests between men and women. Some biological, some learned behaviour.


Some women like techno, some men like to be midwives and I still can't chose a film with aliens or robots.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 1:44 pm
by chava
jordanneke wrote:Are you implying that the female brain can't cope with technical language or complicated DAW's?

;)

Can we draw a line under this topic by saying that there are differences in interests between men and women. Some biological, some learned behaviour.
No evidence for difference in ability; I might have phrased that wrongly. But as you say there are ample evidence for a biological difference in interests. That's why designers might want the production tools to be less technical and more musical (for lack of a better word) if this has to change. I don't know if it has to, but as I personal are not very tech-minded I'd like to see DAW's go in a different direction as well.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:11 pm
by Barfunkel
chava wrote:
jordanneke wrote:Are you implying that the female brain can't cope with technical language or complicated DAW's?

;)

Can we draw a line under this topic by saying that there are differences in interests between men and women. Some biological, some learned behaviour.
No evidence for difference in ability; I might have phrased that wrongly. But as you say there are ample evidence for a biological difference in interests. That's why designers might want the production tools to be less technical and more musical (for lack of a better word) if this has to change. I don't know if it has to, but as I personal are not very tech-minded I'd like to see DAW's go in a different direction as well.
"Production tools to be less technical and more musical" is a strange thing to say imo. Piano is a musical tool, a DAW is a very technical tool, a full HW studio even more so. Having a DAW that's closer to a piano (in a sense that you just open it and start playing) kinda implies some kind of a automated or preset-based approach to making music, which in a way goes against what producers/sound engineers are supposed to do.

Of course it might be fun if you could just turn on a DAW and focus on the musical side of things, but I fail to see how that would both work well AND get results that are unique to you, instead of just sounding like everyone else using the same program, just with a bit different notes and chords.

Not saying DAW's are perfect of course. Nowadays they're very easy to use though, especially since you can google just about any answer for a problem related to a popular DAW. If you know how to use a computer decently, have some kind of a vision of what you wanna achieve and aren't somehow disabled it's not gonna take THAT long how to figure out a way to line up some kick drums and get some synth sounds going on. Making good stuff isn't of course easy, but operating a DAW isn't rocket science.

In any case, if you don't want to focus on the technical side of music you can always find a production partner who does all the technical stuff for you. Ie. do what pop, rock etc musicians do most of the time.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:33 pm
by chava
Barfunkel wrote:
chava wrote:
No evidence for difference in ability; I might have phrased that wrongly. But as you say there are ample evidence for a biological difference in interests. That's why designers might want the production tools to be less technical and more musical (for lack of a better word) if this has to change. I don't know if it has to, but as I personal are not very tech-minded I'd like to see DAW's go in a different direction as well.
Having a DAW that's closer to a piano (in a sense that you just open it and start playing) kinda implies some kind of a automated or preset-based approach to making music, which in a way goes against what producers/sound engineers are supposed to do.
Well, that's the thing. There's no consensus on what producers/sound engineers are supposed to do, but it has (in line with the development of DAWs) become to mean a specific preoccupation with timbre/texture, unique sounds, 'production values', layering etc. If you listen to old acid 80s house classics or the sample-heavy hip-house of early 90s totally different productions techniques were the shit. Even 'playing' the synths as opposed to sequencing could deliver unique results. I know for sure lots of preset-sounding records that still sounds completely different because of absolute unique *melodic* content.

It got slightly off-topic, but IMO techno producers have to get away from this 'engineering' approach in my opinion. It makes everything so bland and inconsequential. Like nothing's at stake. And I do think there's a gender difference there, somehow.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:44 pm
by Donnavs
HELP A GIRL GRADUATE!

Hi there,

For my thesis I am researching the social media within the Techno scene. For this research I need to take a lot of surveys which help me determine the wishes and needs of Techno fans. Can you help me out and fill in the survey below? It would mean a lot to me and it only takes 10 minutes of you time.
Thanks a lot.
(in the top right corner you can set the language to English)

https://nhtv.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/ ... RAMNKO3TWR

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:47 pm
by jordanneke
Donnavs wrote:HELP A GIRL GRADUATE!

Hi there,

For my thesis I am researching the social media within the Techno scene. For this research I need to take a lot of surveys which help me determine the wishes and needs of Techno fans. Can you help me out and fill in the survey below? It would mean a lot to me and it only takes 10 minutes of you time.
Thanks a lot.
(in the top right corner you can set the language to English)

https://nhtv.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/ ... RAMNKO3TWR
Only if you answer the question!!! :evil: :evil: :D :D :D

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 12:56 am
by TimBuys
Opens the survey out of curiosity...... Techno is not even on the genre list. Wow.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:00 am
by intrusav
What time of the day are you most likely to take out your credit card and buy a sample cd with a picture of a photoshopped girl in a bikini by the beach on the front cover?

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 1:27 am
by lauren
intrusav wrote:What time of the day are you most likely to take out your credit card and buy a sample cd with a picture of a photoshopped girl in a bikini by the beach on the front cover?
3am onwards

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:01 am
by winston
intrusav wrote:What time of the day are you most likely to take out your credit card and buy a sample cd with a picture of a photoshopped girl in a bikini by the beach on the front cover?
who buys a sample cd? do these people not know about the Russian internet?

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 4:10 pm
by nacorcb

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 6:54 pm
by Hades
StacieAnne wrote:
winston wrote:
i guess the answer to the OP is because women prefer to listen to themselves talk instead. ;)
It's the most Hades like reply I've ever done :)
I'm pretty sure it's possible to find 1 or 2 other ones that are just as lengthy, Stace.

am I allowed to make the side-remark that even though I might write lengthy posts,
I'm certainly not the type to love listening to myself talk ?

I write lengthy posts because I feel it's the only way I can seriously reduce the risk of being misunderstood.
It's as simple as that.
But I do also have a non-stop stream of consciousness kind of mind,
which sure doesn't help either... :oops:

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 6:11 pm
by rmac
Forgot about this can of worms that I opened on here lol

Looks like there are some women that are leading the charge on this:

https://youtu.be/hhsakItP6tw?t=43s

(its actually a bit NSFW warning)

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 12:08 pm
by chava
For the feminists still left in this thread. This will cure you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:57 pm
by RWise
chava wrote:For the feminists still left in this thread. This will cure you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54
Such a savage debate. He absolutely rekt that strawman of an interviewer.

Re: Why don't girls like techno?

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:45 pm
by rekindyl
Bitches love techno.