Theory follows practice, always. That idea holds true generally, I think, but in the realm of music, I’m prepared to stand behind that statement 100% - theory follows practice. The oldest surviving written music is about 3,400 years old. The oldest surviving instrument? A bone flute that’s around 40,000 years old. 

I can’t say for certain, of course, that there isn’t written music from the intervening 36,000 years that either didn’t survive or that archaeologists haven’t found. I’m just showing some receipts before I make a broader, less strictly historically supported statement: I’m pretty confident in saying that prehistoric human beings were jamming out for a long, long time before anybody had the idea to formalize the structure of what they were doing. And people likely didn’t start formally criticizing music until even later. A very early example might be Plato calling the Lydian mode “useless” (direct quote!) and “weak” (paraphrasing) in his Republic in the 4th century BCE. 

Okay, stay with me! Why am I talking about this? To make a point: people have been making music for a whole lot longer than the haters have been hating or gatekeepers have been gatekeeping. We are supposed to be making music, ok? This is ancestral. In case you were looking for some kind of pseudo-scientific, pseudo-historical, pseudo-philosophical basis for music being fun, this is it. 

A few thousand years later, the tools, sounds, and distribution of music are pretty different, but this idea is the same: gatekeeping is stupid. Early humans didn’t start making music to get rich, to build a personal brand, to sell sneakers on the side, or to get a good review. They did it because making music feels good. And it still does! So why is anybody making it their business to tell anybody they shouldn’t be out there enjoying this amazing thing that is, I’m just going to go ahead and say, our birthright?

Even stupider than gatekeeping on the basis of how someone’s voice sounds or how they look is gatekeeping on the grounds of the gear they’re using. Like, are you kidding me? Somebody doesn’t deserve to make music until they stop using their DAW’s stock plugins? Or until they switch to analog gear? Since when does the microphone matter more than the person singing into it? There are far more examples of great artists breaking through and finding success in spite of limited means than there are mediocre artists who made a hit purely because they sang through a vintage U-47 into 2-inch tape. 

That goes for education and experience, too, by the way. Everyone has to start somewhere, and newcomers are usually the ones who surprise everyone with some crazy idea a more formally trained artist wouldn’t think of. 

The era of digital music production has put better and better tools into the hands of more and more people, and it’s easier than ever to make a great sounding recording of music. We think that’s a good thing around here, and we hope our plugins help producers and other music makers bring their ideas to life. Get out there and make some music, even if you do it like a total caveman.