#56

Hello, welcome! This sounds like a familiar and no-fun spot to be in. Some thoughts as a fellow-traveler in learning this balance:

  • Even though my superego wants me to be able to have a live set all ready to go, I’ve noticed that for me, music-making is firstly soul-nourishing and rejuvenating, and I’m happiest when I remember to sit down with my synth or my laptop without larger goals once in a while.
  • Because of this, I’ve really fallen in love with improvising; starting from scratch, following my intuition and just “playing” (even if that means messing with parameters on a chorus plugin rather than making melodies). So far most of the music I’ve finished on my own comes from improvising with the record-light lit. My ultimate goal is to be able to balance this improvisation with a more focused, longer-term aim, but I’m still in the place where I have to remember my first bullet point constantly. I’ll get to more “composed” things when I get there, and life is long enough that I will.
14 Likes
#57

Granted I have nowhere near as much experience with making music as you do (I just started using modulars this year) but I also struggle with this to a fair extent. I’m a perfectionist in everything I do so that’s inherently seeping into this hobby as well (thinking I need to understand music theory, algorithmic composition, etc). I’m starting to take a step back from that pattern of thought though and trying to remove those really unnecessary requirements that I’m imposing on myself. That’s beginning to allow me to have more fun when I do sit down in front of my synth. Also, don’t compare yourself to others as far as creative output. It’s hard not to but at the end of the day I think it’s kind of useless and only serves to further discourage you.

2 Likes
#58

you’ve already got some FUCKING STELLAR responses so i won’t go in depth as it’s repetition. but at the least, try to remember to bring breath (consciousness thereof) with you into anything you do, particularly creative/physical pursuits. relax your shoulders and breath. there are no mistakes. just a big learning process.

and if you are always exhausted then how on earth would you not enter the recording space feeling just that?

5 Likes
#59

I’d take the pressure off of yourself. If you really want to perform live, you will. Gear change isn’t always a good thing, as you know, but if the equipment doesn’t get you excited then move on. If you are excited about it, then perhaps doing some focused technical studies will help shut off the critical part of your brain. Spend some time learning what your elektron boxes can do and explore some specific feature. While you’re doing that, you can record it in case anything happens that sounds good.

Something else that can help is emulating a song you like, either as an exercise or compositional tool.

Beyond that, maybe bigger changes are needed, which could be lifestyle based or even a new job with shorter commute.

5 Likes
#60

Everybody works differently, but I personally have to get up early to work on music, because after work I’m usually too tired, or have to cook dinner, or I’d rather spend time with my partner. So a couple years ago I started waking up really early, making sure I have enough time to get ready and have a good 2 hours to devote to working on music uninterrupted, and it’s been a great routine for me.

2 Likes
#61

try going to bed shortly after getting home from work and, over time, carving out a space in the morning for doing music stuff.

i work a pretty physical job and sometimes don’t get home until one am. this can mean being up as late as four, or waking up as late as 2 pm. recently i switched to fewer shifts (cuz my build is almost finished!) and am trying to get up at 8 each day. success has varied but i’m much happier giving the freshest of my energies to music as a priority than just squeezing it in at the end of the day (or unproductively pouring hours into it while already exhausted / frustrated).

slightly more expansive / OT discussion:

@dan_derks underscored a paradox of making music in the contemporary world: it can detract from your self-care routine – but self-care is ESSENTIAL to the process, particularly for the more technically-oriented modes of music-making most folks around here practice, which generally don’t benefit from the muscle memory (accessible even in exhaustion) that more traditional instrumentation is built around. there’s a broader question at stake here re ‘art as luxury’. certainly you don’t need comfort and excess energy to make art, and certainly art often exists in the absence of these amenities, but being cozy, refreshed, and well-fed makes things run more smoothly.

2 Likes
#62

I respectfully disagree. While I cannot deny the benefits of living mindfully and healthily, no amount of meditation or long walks will make up for a lack of energy and time. Part of me is especially skeptical of the current preoccupation with these kinds of concepts as they often feel directly related to or wholly integrated with the recent loss of social safety nets, job security and purchasing power among most individuals. Time and energy are finite resources and making music requires a LOT of them! If your lifestyle doesn’t leave any available for you, it may be of interest to evaluate it and see what you can change - which is almost certainly a privilege for most people.

As the years have gone by, my ability to produce music and play shows has declined with the increased responsibilities and work hours I’ve gained - I take mental and physical health very seriously but all the exercise and vegetables in the world will not create something from nothing. I make do with whatever time I have available (generally saturday and sunday mornings, and that’s about it) and try not to worry about falling behind or periods where I produce very little.

As someone who played violin for most of his life, I also completely disagree with this assessment, but that’s a whole different story…

6 Likes
#63

can you share any practices or structures you implement that help optimize these sessions? i sometimes feel a little anxious at the start when sitting down after a few days off.

2 Likes
#64

to clarify: it’s not my position that one plays best while exhausted, or that instrumentalism is just muscle memory. i mean that i find hours at the piano infinitely more satisfying / leisurely when exhausted than i find hours at the octatrack trying to remember the signal flow. one makes sound regardless of how you’re feeling – the other can be foiled by a forgotten mute floating in the software or mismanaged file storage. just trying to tease out the differences between the modes of music making // the types of energies they require and draw attention to the specialized nature of the question – maybe a bit clumsily.

violin! neat!

2 Likes
#65

I think it’s a matter of preference, but for me, I find myself least cluttered at the beginning of the day - I tend to sort of build up anxiety about the things I “have” to do as the day goes on. I can’t really capitalize on this during the week because of work, so the weekends work best for me. I try to make a habit of working on music and other personal projects after I get up over a cup of coffee. Obviously, some people hate working in the morning, so YMMV. I think the trick is just being able to set aside blocks time for yourself when you actually have energy - I’ve never really been able to integrate creative projects with my other responsibilities - they’re just so unstructured in comparison to chores, work, homework etc. Again, different people are going to have different preferences.

Also, @yams regarding technical v. instrumental work, I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s more a reflection on my own experiences playing instruments, which have been fraught with frustration. For me playing an instrument is often just as unforgiving an experience as the technical side of things, if not more so. One of the reasons I became more interested in electronic music in the first place.

3 Likes
#66

I’m going to do a huge dump here, because this is a topic that I’ve obsessed on for 20 years now, and I’m new here and have relative anonymity.

Literally every decision I’ve made for the past 20 years has been in service of my craft - getting gear, getting time to work on music and process, getting access to venues and outlets for any external validation and encouragement to keep going - playing live, getting on compilations, releasing my music, touring, whatever. It’s gotten me pretty much nowhere other than personal satisfaction, pride in my craft, and a life well-lived pursuing the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. “Want” is even too soft of a word; it’s obsession, pathology. I wish I had gotten hooked on almost anything else, honestly!

My wife and I had a kid a year ago and I’m coming up on 40 terrifyingly quickly. I have less free time and energy than I’ve ever had. It’s funny, too, because in my twenties I was always obsessed and anxious about having more time to work on music - I had nothing BUT time! Hours every night! Entire days on weekends and holidays! Hilarious in retrospect.

In spite of all of this, I’ve actually been more “productive” - in the sense of actively finishing and releasing work that I’m satisfied with and proud of, and that gets a reasonable amount of external validation via reviews, sales, opportunities, and live bookings - in the past 2 years than any time prior. A few things that have been indispensable are:

  1. Mise en place. My entire studio is set up so that I can walk in that room, flip on a few power sources and the entire room of equipment is online and ready to work. I can go from dark, dead room to sequencing an entire room of equipment and multitrack recording with safety recording to tape in under a minute. This required spending money on a bunch of unsexy, un-fun things like multiple patchbays, more cables than seems humanly possible (and this coming from a modular synth guy!), label makers, power strips, racks, desks/stands/shelves/etc., thru boxes, direct boxes, reamp devices, etc. over the years. Any time I get a new fun piece of gear, I must figure out how it should best connect into this ecosystem for actual productivity and ergonomics. But once that’s squared away - and I insist on keeping it all squared away - I cannot articulate how magical, intuitive, and user-friendly my studio is. It’s one gigantic instrument. I could make an entire song with my eyes closed.

  2. Discipline will trump inspiration every time. I make myself go into the studio to work at least 3 weeknights of the M-F stretch whether I’m in the mood or not. This is after dealing with family, domestic obligations, and so on, so it’s rarely before 9 at night. Sometimes it’s a total exercise in futility - last night, I wasn’t feeling inspired at all, and I ended up dicking around with fighting a cheap SQ-80 I recently picked up to accept CC’s from the Cirklon. It kept locking up. The parts I wrote were stupid and irritating. Then I went to bed. But for every night like this, there’s a night where I get in there not feeling any particular inspiration or drive and end up stumbling on something amazing that keeps me wired like I just did rails of coke, I’m so excited and inspired. Monday night it was a mild breakthrough for patching up a few drum sounds that I had in my head and wasn’t sure quite how to pull off IRL, until I did and was fist-pumping the air and programming awesome sequences with them on headphones in a quiet house. What I came up with from that experiment is already turning into a song that’s so cool it’ll probably go on my next record. It’s like exercise - you just have to get in there and do it, on schedule, whether you feel like it or not. [If only I could do the same with exercise, but I’m working on that too]

  3. Working life is full of so much downtime it’s absurd. Life is one big waste. I’m all about leveraging whatever portable, on-the-go tools we can, and GOOD LORD there are SO MANY NOW. In 1999 I bought a Roland PMA-5 so that I could work on jams while walking around my college campus. It ate batteries like a bitch and people thought it was a palm pilot. I’d work on songs between classes and dump them into my MC-505 back at my dorm room. In the early 00’s, commuting every day on the metro in Washington D.C., I used it and a Yamaha QY70 (later upgraded to a 100). Later in Chicago, I’d rock the Nintendo DS with the Korg cartridge. I had an hour on the train going to work every day, and home again - that’s two hours of jamming and writing tunes that I could come home and patch up to way more sophisticated instruments! When iOS hit, it changed literally everything - sunvox, etc. in my pocket with headphones. Unreal. Even way back with an iPod touch it felt like the future; now with an iPhone XR coming to me tomorrow, I’ll literally have a computer in my pocket that’s more powerful than the iMac I bought, what, 5 years ago? There are SO MANY TOOLS that you can use to take advantage of public transit time, lunch break at work (I’m looking over at the OP-1 next to my work keyboard right now), waiting rooms anywhere, solo lunches, flights or train rides, evenings in bed after holiday visits to family, etc. Avail yourself!

16 Likes
#67

IMG_0465
IMG_0465.jpg3024×4032 2.61 MB
Lunch time!

5 Likes
#68

I have a nice collection of incredible music apps on my iPhone 8+…

I forget to use them because I’m on here…

2 Likes
#69

The thing I meant to include but left out is

  1. DEADLINES. I used to think they were the ultimate artistic boner-killer because I’m Kevin Shields, man, I’m going to spend YEARS perfecting one track. That’s stupid. I’m not Kevin Shields and neither are you (btw, Kevin, if you’re out there on lines, I love your work, but it was all downhill after “cupid come” tbh) - I’m a working prole slob with finite time, energy, and a tiny window of opportunity. Nothing makes me make time for creativity like having a looming deadline. Nothing! Book that live show no matter how low-stakes, tell someone you’ll get them a track for that online-only comp for their vaporous net label, whatever you need to do to have something that looms over you like “hey, dingus, you’re not going to play “Red Dead Redemption 2” until your’e done with that track!” It’s funny how you’ll find and make time when you’re under the gun, and how you’ll waste time when you have all the time in the world.
4 Likes
#70

This is, in my opinion, the most important thing. I can’t count the times that I have both A) Been super inspired to try some patch or idea or record some melody, only to later realize I’ve spent 2 hours making garbage, and B) Woken up in the morning, felt totally uncreative, just knew that nothing good would come of turning on my instruments, doing it anyway and having something totally awesome and unexpected emerge from the session.

12 Likes
#71

Some helpful advice here: https://thecreativeindependent.com/guides/how-to-balance-full-time-work-with-creative-projects/

5 Likes
#72

recently realized I can sit at the modular in a wide variety of different head-spaces and doing so is massively beneficial to my creativity as it’s less about operating from a “set point” of ideal energies / balance and more about massaging myself into the desired state through the synthesizer . many discussions on synthesis signal parallels with meditative practice. many meditative traditions gesture toward particular ‘goal states’ and even contain different routines for achieving different goal states. if my relationship to the work is indeed a meditative one, i ought to be able to use it to induce or compliment a wide variety of different moods.

parallel here between “creative versatility” as in “from any context” and “creative versatility” as in “in service of any context” (technical skill versus general readiness to rock // find time to rock). really uncertain which I’m talking about, even.

concrete example: fresh off work banging around w/ new equipment in a “oh yeah these arpeggios have me hyped and expelling the last remnants of my energy for the day” shifted into “really I ought to go to bed… let’s do some tedious trig programming on the octatrack to tame the extremities of this sequence until my shoulders sag irretrievably”

hope this helps anyone who often finds themselves “too x to y”

META GARBAGE

this fits within the broader topic and I’m generally adverse to creating new threads (clutter!!!) – particularly in the more abstract sub-boards but maybe I’m misjudging?

7 Likes
#73

This book, written by the head of documentation at Ableton, has been massively helpful to me in terms of developing and working through my process. It’s not particularly technical but structured more like conceptual problems and answers (how do I start, how do I finish, etc).

image
68431D63-9E39-4322-B527-5D88F29CEB74.jpeg1000×665 43.6 KB

You can sample some of what’s inside here: https://makingmusic.ableton.com/

15 Likes
#74

Good point just having time doesn’t always mean you produce more. Sometimes you need a forcing function

4 Likes
#75

This looks like a good read. I particularly enjoy this section, I’ve found this to be a very important part of being productive:

https://makingmusic.ableton.com/arbitrary-constraints

I’ll definitely have to pick up a copy.

It reminds me of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies:

3 Likes