What kind of musician am I?

[DiZ-Inmotion]

I'm a generally new musician to the fandom that writes rap songs about small, multicolored horses. The thing is, I don't really make my own songs, I write lyrics over other people's songs. I have their permission, of course, but I don't really know if that counts as making music.

Is it really my music, if it's not really me making the actual music part?

What kind of musician am I, if I'm a musician at all?

[Freewave]

Sounds like you are a lyricist.

Some people write and sing/rap words and that's their focus. Some people like Feather may or may not be full on musicians and may just be "vocalists" but that's not discounting that they may influence the direction on a track. Some hip-hop producers in this fandom (like mycutiemarkisagun and formerly voodoopony) make the beats but don't touch the lyrical portion at all. You also have remixers and cover artists who may not do something original but find ways to play with the original track and recreate it in interesting ways. There's dj's who only mix other peoples tracks together but take people on musical voyages and create music in their own way through second hand means without making a single track of their own. There's also engineers and producers who make that rough track sound really nice.

Each may stick to a particular style of limited musical composition or they may float to whatever they want to do atmo but don't discount that each different way isn't making music in some way. They are all musicians, even if they only stick to one particular means. What elements you add to the music you helped create is what you are truly responsible for but to the listener a lot of the time that final track you hand in is the end result, whether its all yours or very little. So make sure to give credit when and where its due if you're remixing as that's only fair if you only did a portion. ;)

[DiZ-Inmotion]

Sounds like you are a lyricist.

Some people write and sing/rap words and that's their focus. Some people like Feather may or may not be full on musicians and may just be "vocalists" but that's not discounting that they may influence the direction on a track. Some hip-hop producers in this fandom (like mycutiemarkisagun and formerly voodoopony) make the beats but don't touch the lyrical portion at all. You also have remixers and cover artists who may not do something original but find ways to play with the original track and recreate it in interesting ways. There's dj's who only mix other peoples tracks together but take people on musical voyages and create music in their own way through second hand means without making a single track of their own. There's also engineers and producers who make that rough track sounds really nice.

Each may stick to a particular style of limited musical composition or they may float to whatever they want to do atmo but don't discount that each different way isn't making music in some way. They are all musicians, even if they only stick to one particular means. What elements you add to the music you helped create is what you are truly responsible for but to the listener a lot of the time that final track you hand in is the end result, whether its all yours or very little. So make sure to give credit when and where its due if you're remixing as that's only fair if you only did a portion. ;)

This makes sense. Thank you. Now, to post things with confidence!

[Freewave]

I will say if you are creating a vocal song from scratch you are likely being:

composer
lyricist
vocalist
sound engineer
mixing/mastering engineer
marketing
visual artist

and a whole lot of things inbetween (including guitarist, pianist, drummer, etc that may be depending on the individual instrument you are using) so its really remarkable when people are doing what you would normally need a team of people for in a professional setting. It may make the output "amateur", but I'd like to see most big name bands do all these steps without a label and by themselves and see how far they get.