#46

Thanks for sharing. Nice to be able to see how you all deal with this. Time is my greatest enemy. But lately another insight has dawned on me: What being a parent taught me is that having less ‘me time’ forces me to take more risk and be more practical. One of the practical things I do nowadays is using my living room for modular jams, instead of a rehearsal space downtown. Saves time, money and I have my own fridge at hand for refreshments. Simple yet effective move, totally supported by my wife.

By taking more risk I mean accepting shows, while knowing I have little preparation time for these live shows. This made me rely more on my skills and intuition. And by doing so I found myself doing more exciting/spontaneous and less predictable studio and live sessions. My music is now simply a more ‘direct version of me’ instead of the previous ‘over-thought, over-polished version of me’. Last Saturday I did a project in an art gallery in Germany. Six musicians (piano, hobo, guitar, voice, 2x modular synth) were matched as duos and trios by means of drawing lots on the spot. In 6 rounds of 15 min each we would jam and improvise. The excitement of the unknown and unexpected generated great energy and great music that night! So my point here is: be brave and put yourself out there. Schedule a date ahead that suits the family agenda. Don’t prepare to much. Focus on the energy of that moment and make it count.

12 Likes
#47

after looking at my post from yesterday, i realized i hadn’t really added anything to the conversation. so i thought about it some more today and below are my bullet points for how to deal with parenthood and your creative tendenices:

  • make sure you carve your ‘me’ time out in a way that is most conducive for you and your family. i find when everyone is asleep (evening/morning) is typically best.

  • when you do have that extra hour, or whatever, available to make music, stop for a second…and think about if you’ve done something nice for your other half recently. if not, spend a moment to do something for them. it doesn’t have to take a lot of time; maybe a cup of coffee, a sweet note to put in their purse/wallet, etc…just do something for them and they’ll/you’ll be happy that you did.

  • don’t ever ruminate because you’re not making music. this is when things can get hairy.

  • set small attainable goals and focus on practice, not perfection.

  • finally, unless this is your living, don’t take it too seriously and learn to enjoy the act of making.

cheers / congratulations!

life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

:heart:

17 Likes
#48

I LOVE this topic. I know I spent a lot of time early in my parenting journey feeling like I was the only person trying to balance music and family life, as silly as it sounds. Thank you all for being so open about your experiences, and to those struggling currently: we’re all at different points on the same wheel, and we’ve all been where you are, and the funny thing about parenting is how sometimes the frustrations that seem like they’re going to keep going on forever will just flip in an instant and you’ll wonder what you were so stressed about in the first place.

This is such a great point. When we had my son, I felt like I’d somehow “lost my mojo” because every time I would finally get a chance to sit down and make music I couldn’t get anything useful accomplished, until one day it dawned on me that my workflow generally consisted of at least 15-20 minutes of plug in, set up, fire up the DAW, load up the tracks, on and on and on…

So my next session I didn’t play a single note. I built templates, I built macros, I reorganized my workspace to facilitate easy setup and tear down of every instrument, I recabled and rerouted every in and out to minimize situations where I had to swap cables or instruments or effects. I did all those things everyone always tells you to do in every other post but I never really HAD to do because I’d never had another human being who needed me for literally EVERYTHING to stay alive before.

And the best part is that it didn’t just give me more time to make music, it gave me more time to be able to STOP, save, pause, let the kiddo crawl on the MIDI controller for a bit, and enjoy the moments that are going to stick around long after Soundcloud folds for good and the time comes for this new generation to get their bleep-bloop on.

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#49

Guys thank you very much for your sincere and heartfelt replies. I am moved

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#50

I think this is a great topic and Thank you all for your stories and examples!
Such a big change in life as becoming a parent requiers some adaptation, of course. But it also opens a new world and vision to it.
This is my little fatherhood and music creating journey:
I became a father back in 2005. Before that little miracle (and my second daughter in 2009) came into my life I’ve been playing in different bands, mostly guitar, been on a bunch of tours and all that time consuming activities.
Me and my partner lived on a island called Gotland back in 2005 and rented an one room apartment that had a big roomy kitchen. Every night I sneaked into that kitchen, whispered different sounds into the built in microphone on my crappy PC and made songs by those samples in Fruity Loops. That was my gateway to making music on my own. I create sounds (and sometimes stuff that I can call music) with almost a meditative purpose to keep me sane. I have to go into a room and escape from everything except creating every now and then and my family are aware of this. But my setup are also built around these prerequisites so I can go into that room and leave it quickly without being an absent father…

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#51

So my baby is born…and it’s the best and scariest thing I experienced in my whole life. Thank you all and wish you all the best

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#53

So picking this up a few months later, just saw this post. I have a 20 month old and I was worried about losing time for creative stuff. Like a lot of you probably, I just can’t not create, if I don’t do it for a few days I get grumpy, its like exercise for others, but for me I have to play music of some sort. I have found that since his birth I’ve actually been more productive and creative than I have been in a really long time. It really forced me to not waste any free time when I get it and I got really focussed about making stuff instead of meandering. Its also no coincidence I jumped into modular right after his birth as the workflow of that environment really suits me better now. I used to sit around and write guitar riffs or just noodle. My ideas wouldn’t become fully realized until I showed them to a band, so I was always depending on other people to get stuff into motion. With a child the one thing that does dwindle is your ability to do stuff and leave the house, however its not that much different if you are at home, because after bedtime and they aren’t still an infant, you do have a few solid hours at night.

Because modular is so fleeting and improv based, it fits my timeframe perfectly now. I usually spend about an hour or two in the basement from about 10pm to midnight , work up a patch and record it, live to stereo mix with no overdubs. Treat it like a live performance. I’ve recorded almost everything I’ve done thus far. Just in 2018 I’ve had enough material I’ve liked to put up 3 records worth on Bandcamp. Eliminating the overdubbing was key. That takes so much effort and has always caused me grief because I get so picky about it.

Oh, I drink lots of coffee and force your self to do stuff even when you are tired.

Anyway, that’s my experience so far.

3 Likes
#54


k-blamo at el nopal press
tonight los ángeles
*me and laura been married 25 years
got two kids- 21 and 17
making music as k-blamo

7 Likes
#55

And are you playing live? I am going thru a similar experience right now but thinking about buying an octatrack to be able to recall and mangle live my improvs!

#56

I am playing live, yes! I just kinda re-focussed the types of gigs I’m doing. I only play in one rock band that requires rehearsals, but aside from that everything else is improv based, and requires much less, if any, rehearsals. I’ve yet to play solo modular, but if I have the opportunity to do so, I will. I still enjoy playing with other people, and doing solo stuff is scary to me still. But its definitely something I’d like to do.

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#57

This is exactly my experience. I have less overall time to do stuff, but I feel more productive because I don’t mess around. I pick a task/jam/idea/chore and go 100%.

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#58

I sleep less.

I have a 6 year old son and a 14 day old daughter. I work from 7:30am to about 5pm. I have an old cottage to fix. But music and programming for the stuff Monome make and using electronic instruments keeps me sane, as does fixing motorbikes. So I don’t sleep much.

10 Likes
#59

Thought I’d pitch in my 2 cents. I;m in the same camp (4 y.o. twins and a 5 month old). The problem I run into is that I only have brief snapshots in time to get at the modular, and sometimes its days between sessions. When I do get back to system, I find that most of the time is spent “re-learning” what the patch I had created before is doing. Most of what Im trying these days is to do slowly evolving pieces with lots of crossmodulation. Unfortunately, this means that when I get back to a ptch and decide that I’d like to change what one or another part of the patch is doing, It takes forever to figure out what is modulating what and which parameter I need to alter.

I have started writing patch notes as I go along, so hopefully this will help.

1 Like
#60

A couple of thoughts to add here (I’m a parent of a 2.5 year old and a 7 month old). Definitely my experience of time has changed completely as a parent. Every minute gets accounted for it feels like. And, especially with two kids, there’s just never quite enough time to do everything you want and it’s easy to feel like you’re neglecting the kids, the relationship, the work, the “third-space” hobby pursuits, the friendships, the exercise, you get the idea. It’s easy to get into conflict around time-management.

Also, home life constantly changes as everyone grows. It’s beautiful and chaotic!

Ok, some little practical thoughts.

  1. I agree that little modular set-ups are wonderful for getting short creative bursts going (and because you can daydream about patches easily during other parts of your day). I actually got into it partly out of the idea that I needed a solo-hobby that would allow me to stay home most nights.

  2. I have my set-up adjacent to my kitchen and I really enjoy tweaking little bits of a generative patch while, say, waiting for a pan to heat up or making stock.

  3. At first I used headphones -out of a desire to not annoy everyone. But my partner actually requested that I NOT use headphones so that I could be (a little) more present when I was messing around with the thing and could feel more connected to my hobby. Occasionally, of course, it is time for headphones.

  4. Both my older and younger daughters seem to enjoy being around the synths (and the older is starting to enjoy patching and singing into effects, etc).

6 Likes
#61

Same with my 2 (soon to be 3) year old. She loves playing with the cables, controls etc. ‘Daddy’s strange music’ as she calls it :smile:

With time being so precious, one thing I am learning for a modular/eurorack system is to try and minimize modules that use a menu based (or ‘hidden’ controls) interface. Make Noise modules are perfect as they have a ‘mode-less’ design philosophy.

I think that is also why I loved my BAM instantly; the interface has been carefully designed and considered. I haven’t needed to look at the manual (other than to check which algorithm is which).

1 Like
#62

Does anyone has any “musical” past times for younger (less than 1 year) kids? When my kid is really fussy it often gets better when I start to play “air drums” while approximating various drum kit elements with sounds coming from my mouth :wink: I thought that speaking to him should work the same but no, only when I start to sing and/or create rhythmical sounds he calms down. So if anyone has anything then please share and if this will also help me practice music then even better :wink:

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#63

I remember mine really liked to listen to weird experimental music when he was really little. But to calm him I don’t know. Tried white noise or sequences from the modular but that never really worked.

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#64

father of a six year old here, it is starting to steady out in the music dept. it helps immensely that my wife also has her own creative pursuits and doesn’t begrudge me my synth time if I am considerate about putting time in with her and the family. mostly I drift down to my pile in the basement after bedtime, and I can get a couple hours in, although last night, with nowhere to go today and on a roll with what I was working on, I ended up staying up till 2 o clock. worth it!

2 Likes
#65

Funny you mention this. I was just noticing my 6 month old seems to really get a kick out of any sort of fast “percussive” sounds I make- seemingly more than talking or when I am trying to amuse her with intentionally funny noises. Have not tried this when she’s fussin’ around though! I wonder if this is a common developmental thing.

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#66

Might be the case, I guess the drum sounds are much easier for baby to parse than human language :stuck_out_tongue: Also playing guitar often helps with calming down but not as much as “air drumming”.
And about white noise it probably depends on a baby but I found that it actually really helps him to fall asleep. Right now I am the noise generator with inbuilt vowel filter but maybe sometime I will check how he reacts to Doepfer A-117 :smiley:

1 Like