I love this because it takes making music out of this mysterious creative process to something that anyone can do much like writing an essay.
Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
61–70 of 82 posts
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#62This feels like the kind of workflow that would fit me. My problem, though, is the "reviewing material I've already put away" part. I feel like I'm hoarding stuff rather than saving material for reuse. Any advice on how to get out of that rut? I'm thinking I just need to introduce a "review" phase where I habitually go through previous stuff. Oh... in the middle of typing this I realized a big stumbler for me! I don'…
> I think I've just convinced myself why I should have a bounced version of everything I do in a "parallel folder" so I can quickly preview stuff and only open the actual project when I want to use it.
Huh. That would be a wicked feature for a DAW to have built in. Like how photoshop generates thumbnails of the complex document within.
I think I know why they don't, and that's because some songs take a while to render, but I think it would be possible for the 98% of actual usage. I'm not sure at which point you would generate them, on save I guess? Maybe it can be like videogames, where auto-saves are frequent and don't process the preview audio, but a "full save" could contain the full preview clip.
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#63I've been making music for 20 years, just noodling mostly. I've made some tracks that friends of mine love, but I don't want to do it professionally. I just enjoy the relaxation involved. 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…
How did you apply a monetary penalty to yourself?
There's https://www.stickk.com/ which uses a referee system. You designate a referee and they have to corroborate your reports.
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I just enjoy the relaxation involved. 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 s…
I've been playing piano for ~25 years. I pretty quickly gravitated away from learning existing pieces towards composition and improv. I'm slow at reading sheet music and can't sight read, but for playing new songs I can generally just look at the chords and get something at least close enough to sing over right away. Just messing around making stuff up is a lot more relaxing than learning by rote I think. Of course I…
Learning pieces is usually frustrating for me, playing improv is relaxing and fun. I have definitely optimized toward improv rather than reciting songs. I have a bag full of chords, progressions, and scales, and I do whatever I want with them. I'm not trying to record an album, so I'm not too fussed that occasionally it's a little incoherent or wandering. I'm just trying to enjoy the act of musicing.
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#65That is exactly how I feel as I write my dissertation. Writing has always seemed mystical to me. I always thought it required a certain mood. Now I follow a process:
- Select a topic / part to write about
- Write for half an hour without worrying about quality
- Analyzing my writing and summarizing the main points
- Making the text more understandable by reorganizing the thoughts
- Text editing
My productivity has increased following a chore.
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#66I have several artistic lives. My first one was in graphic design. I've studied it in college and done it professionally for many years. At first it was fascinating and artistically fulfilling. Each new logo was a small new adventure. I've worked on them for weeks, I fought with clients to keep my ideas, It took tons of effort from me and from them to achieve something. Through the years I became so much better at lo…
do I? great question…
I was listening to npr today and there was this guy talking about a book he has written on the artistic similarities of Prince and Charles Dickens. Apparently they had similar patterns of production, both extremely prolific, working on multiple major works/albums simultaneously and generally accepting a non-perfect result (subjective idea I know), and just publishing constantly etc. To beat the perfectionism creeping in I have tried to simply finish the song in one sitting. If I have to go back it’s always weird and difficult and of course my patches are not all the same and totally un-recallable with analog gear. Some of the best stuff comes by forcing a lossy non-revertable approach. Instead of polishing, just go at it again. Your best song is the one you have yet write and all that…
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#67I also wonder if writing music was chore-like due to the genre the author chose, specifically four-on-the-floor techno music that has largely fixed and repetitive structures? This music is meant to be mixed by DJs, after all, so consistency is really key to a lot of the techno genre. Of course, there are very creative divergences in this genre from artists such as Four Tet and Floating Points. Would the author still…
I think so, yes. Back in college, an Anthropology professor told our class "a culture is a set of ready-made solutions to common problems". It's one of the best definitions of anything I've ever heard. In music, I think genre is the same thing. If you sit down try to make "music", you are faced with just an astronomical number of choices to make before you get to a finished compositions. What instrumentation? Acousti…
That's a wonderful definition, I'm still turning it over in my mind a day later. I like how it provides a "why" for culture, with a pretty grounded reason. I tried to locate the origin of it, but just found a bunch of paraphrasings without attribution. Any idea where it originated?
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been playing piano for ~25 years. I pretty quickly gravitated away from learning existing pieces towards composition and improv. I'm slow at reading sheet music and can't sight read, but for playing new songs I can generally just look at the chords and get something at least close enough to sing over right away. Just messing around making stuff up is a lot more relaxing than learning by rote I think. Of course I…
Learning pieces is usually frustrating for me, playing improv is relaxing and fun. I have definitely optimized toward improv rather than reciting songs. I have a bag full of chords, progressions, and scales, and I do whatever I want with them. I'm not trying to record an album, so I'm not too fussed that occasionally it's a little incoherent or wandering. I'm just trying to enjoy the act of musicing.
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Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#69I've been making music for 20 years, just noodling mostly. I've made some tracks that friends of mine love, but I don't want to do it professionally. I just enjoy the relaxation involved. 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…
> I just enjoy the relaxation involved. 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 s…
Do you ever improvise or play from lead sheets? I feel like it's a different feeling from reading sheet music and many people find it more enjoyable. Personally I'm a fan of playing along with stuff here https://chordu.com/. It definitely isn't perfect but it works.
Re: Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
#70"Inspiration is for amateurs" - Steven Pressfield in "The War of Art" I think he mentions something about honing your craft so you're prepared for when inspiration strikes. I imagine it's not that different for musicians or programmers.
Billions of people have lived before us, long traditions predate us. The chances that you've had a single original thought in your life is virtually nil (philosophy is a great example where a failure to learn what's old usually results in repeating the same old mistakes). By learning what came before, you are much better prepared for discovery.
On the other hand, 7% people who have ever lived are alive now. The great philosophers of the past lived at a time when the global population cumulative population was much lower, as was literacy and education in general. I would argue there should dozens of socrates or lao-tzu level philosophers walking around right now.