Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician

100%, the time pressure and collaboration is what made things fall into place. It’s what made me realize that I have to keep at it, rain or sunshine, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to complete what I set out to do.

As for the follow-up: I have been very much focused on writing and programming this year, and haven’t felt the itch to make music, but I can feel that I will take it up again soon. However, I have been keeping up my practice time and been reasonably steady at writing my blog and the enormous iceberg of notes underneath.

I see the same approach working for me in writing (being prolific, producing a lot of garbage, layering and juxtaposing and experimenting), although I am an absolute amateur and at the beginning of my journey.

The point of having copious amounts of free time is interesting. I often wonder about exactly the same follow up as you: what makes this sustainable?

I did produce most of my music while having a full time job after coming back from the sabbatical. It felt like having a 1-2h window before breakfast and some longer sessions in the weekend was extremely more effective than spending entire days without a clear focus. Further, once I did get about 20 songs released and « leveled » up technically, I found that the studio time tended to yield more bang for the buck. That could just be a technical thing: I got a bit of gear that made recording my hardware and my mixing so much easier (SSL UC1 and UF8 and a ERM multiclock).

One to two hours (not that that’s not a lot of time, but I don’t have children) a day adds up really quickly if you keep a consistent output. I kept a similar rhythm this year for writing and I’m about to pass 800k words written in my vault. That’s about 800k words of garbage, but it’s impressive nonetheless :)

In about 2003 I tried something very similar, except I time boxed a song. I had to spend an hour and a half and each song could only take 15 minutes. That ended up being incredibly fruitful.

You don't have time to think, you just go stream of consciousness through whatever comes to mind. Drums are weird? Too bad, there is no time, go with it. Throw in a 8 bar synth or piano loop. It's not good? Well, there isn't much time so on to the next thing.

This ended doing a few things for me. For one, there was no second guessing anything. You just made what you made. For two there was no pressure to do a good job. You can't do a good job you are just rushing through. That lets things just flow. Thirdly it allowed me to try a ton of things that I wouldn't normally try. There was no wrong answer. All three are kinda related.

I made some of my favorite songs that way and they are songs I still love. I later applied this to writing a technical book. I forced myself to write for 5 minutes a day, everyday. Sometimes it'd be 2 hours and other times it'd be 5 minutes but I got the book done and it became pretty popular. (also had a monetary penalty if I couldn't write on any particular day).

I really love this way of working. Just time box and go.

I can't understand this at all.

I've been playing piano for 50+ years. Still practice every day. Play in amateur recitals. It's fun, but hardly relaxing. It's a lot of work, concentration, and study. And as I get older it gets more challenging because of physical limitations (movement, eyesight, hearing) that I have to work around. My fingers don't work like they used to, and sometimes I have to decide to leave out a note, or move something to a different hand, etc. Painstaking note-by-note and phrase-by-phrase analysis.

Memorization is also tough.