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Simplicity
🕑 Added 2021-04-30 00:13:41 +0000 UTCSimplicity has become my biggest focus in recent times and it's been a piece of advice thats been thrown at me for years. But in reality, that skill is something that comes with time and experience.
Simplicity comes with the accumulated realisation of necessary and unnecessary parts. Learning what is needed and what may not be needed., and having the confidence to take out what isn't. And the best way to do this is through failing... lots.
DO LOTS. MAKE MISTAKES NOW. LEARN FROM THEM.
The idea of QUANTITY over quality when you’re learning is a great one. The more you DO, the more you'll fail, and the more you'll learn. Volume is your friend right now. Not that kind of "volume". But the volume where you work on new things more. Repeat yourself lots. And craft the subtleties. In music this means trying not to sit on the same 2 or 3 songs for months on end. I've done this a lot myself. But you are hindering yourself by doing so.
My mother is a painter and I did an exercise with her the other day where we painted robins with water colour. We didn't paint one robin and fine tune the details for the next 3 hours. We painted 6. In fairly quick succession. And surprise surprise, with each robin, i got better and better. It was then that the details started to become necessary to look at. But as a baseline, the work was at a much higher standard already. If I had sat and worked on the first one the whole time, I would be trying to detail something that wasnt any good to begin with. I believe the phrase is "You can't polish a turd".
The skills you learn with repetition are invaluable. The subtleties and the details will become more refined, as will everything else along with it. A solid foundation will be formed and it will make room for you to naturally become more creative and experimental.
I'm writing this in order to remind myself as well as offer some sort of wisdom.
Where are you at right now, whats holding you back?
Comments
BLANKE
So glad to hear it. I feel that, i really do. Its a good exercise. it doesnt have to be forever but its good to practise.
BLANKE
do youre best to push through. it might take a bit of time to build that skill up. the idea it to try and have at least a skeleton of a song which you can revisit, if not just an idea. that you can build from. resist getting stuck in a loop. be prepared to accept and move on. though if you continue to struggle building further, then that might be something you need to focus on.
J.T.
Exactly what I need to hear and keep hearing. Sitting on one or two songs for months is exactly what I'm doing. I'm making progress, but I know it's not as much progress as I would/will make from running through the whole songmaking process, beginning to end, again and again and again. Love your analogy of painting the bird, that was a super helpful image. I started a new "bird" today that I'm hoping to have done by the end of the day :)
Amber
My problem with quantity over quality is that some projects are intro/build then nothing else. Other projects are just drops. Very few are completely arranged songs.
BLANKE
yessir this happens a lot and its how i got to where i am so there isnt a right or wrong but there might be a more efficient haha. I know thats just how i work but i can also get ideas down quickly, and the magic often comes from the time spent after the initial idea is laid. But the volume is how to solidify your foundations to be able to branch off and explore.
Amero Demetri
"In music this means trying not to sit on the same 2 or 3 songs for months on end. I've done this a lot myself. But you are hindering yourself by doing so." This is extremely relatable. One thing I realized is this tends to happen especially when I try to force myself to work on specific projects, rather than working on something my mind is set to.
BLANKE
Haha thats a lot of demos and a lot of ideas, youll never finish anything that way! do lots but also dont overwhelm yourself and never finish anything. The trick to working in volumes is to be able to balance it with completion. Doesnt have to be immaculate but you need to get good at the whole process not just the beginning part!
BLANKE
Glad to hear it!! It's definitely something i need to remind myself.
BLANKE
This is a very annoying area to be in! But also a very exciting one. So much progress is being made every month, every week, every day. You get to look back and see how much ground you've covered in a short period of time! Keep plugging away.
Alex Donka
I think I’m at a point where I just need to write a new song every day for like a year so that I can get really good at the workflow and forcing myself to be creative within a timeframe
I absolutely love that you posted this today. It's something that I just started to internalize and work on and reading this just really solidified that
I feel like the hardest part for me is being stuck in that frustrating grey area where I’m still learning and getting better everyday but my music just isn’t where I want it to be yet. Either way you only truly fail when you give up so it’s best to just keep pushing and eventually something will come of it.
