Advice for Creators Facing Empty Project Files

Photo: Polina Kuzovkova

“Waiting for a good idea” is never a good idea. It’s hard work that makes things happen. Great ideas don’t just show up – they are uncovered in the process of doing the work itself.

Instead of dramatizing the struggle in your mind, sit down and create. Writer’s block isn’t any inability to write. It’s a situation where you don’t think your writing is any good, or at least not good enough to show others. It’s a perspective held by the writers themselves.

Consider the possibility that you’re not a very good judge of what’s good or bad about your own work.

The only way around writer’s block is through it. You have to get the ‘bad writing’ out first before you can get to the good stuff. Stop thinking and worrying and imagining how bad you are and just do the work.

I’ll never forget going over to a friend’s house to collaborate on a project. I didn’t know he had cats and started sneezing soon after arriving, as I am quite allergic.

“Do you want to hold her?” he asked.

I looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“Sometimes the quickest way around an issue is directly through it,” he replied.

I’m not sure that’s how allergies work but I do see the wisdom in his reply.

The smallest attentive audience is enough to put you as a creator on the hook for making something that matters. That smallest viable audience is easier to attain than ever before.

We have the tools to reach people—the internet makes them more available than they’ve ever been before. So long as we keep showing up and keep publishing our work, it’s a matter of time before our tribe shows up.

Your audience doesn’t have to be the entire world. If a small HVAC business has 200 clients, that can be more than enough to sustain it if it’s the right clients.

It doesn’t matter if 99% of the world ignores your work. What matters is that you care for and create with that 1% in mind. That’s what makes a satisfying and prosperous career. Keep at it and your influence will grow over time.

Make the supposition that your work actually matters. Work with the thought that your creation is actually affecting someone positively. That’s the best intention you can have.

Lighten the cognitive load - decide who you are and what you do. Don’t waver. Own it. Love who you are and love your work, no matter if it makes you crazy once in a while. Just decide to show up every day and do it. Choose to find the smallest viable audience, and create exclusively for them. Make magic in the small, then repeat the process.

Creative Advice from Christopher Willits

I came across an interview with ambient maestro Christopher Willits recently. I found it really inspiring. Unfortunately I don’t know where I sourced this from, so apologies to the journalist for re-printing it here without permission.

This is pure gold in terms of creative advice. (All emphasis is mine.)

“For me, creating music is a process that happens as it needs to through listening, discipline and play. It’s about listening to the moment, being present with the energy I’m feeling, and the sound I’m expressing. It’s about setting space to explore, and follow my heart while just being real with myself; setting boundaries, drafting deadlines, and knowing when and how to take meaningful breaks.

“Creating is work. It’s a space I set through discipline, yet I surrender control. Creating consistently takes patience and persistence, letting go of expectations while fueling the fire to complete the process.

“When I compose, I begin with an open mind focused on a feeling, or an intention, a space I want to create with the music and share with others. It emerges through disciplined play. I feel where the music can go and let it come through me in whatever way it wants to.

“Often the music flows without any effort and sometimes it’s like solving a puzzle. The key is to stay out of judgment while discovering the path forward. I envision the space, energy, narrative that the music wants to create and let go of any expectations of how it gets there, and even if it gets there. It’s like setting out towards a destination, but the focus is on the journey, the process, and less about the outcome. When the process embodies the product, the music completes itself.

“Music is medicine for both the artist and the audience. When I’m creating, it’s very autobiographical in that the process is teaching me something, and that becomes encoded into the music. I’m expressing and processing feelings and stories that seem to elude words. At the same time, it’s not about me at all; the music is moving through me, expressing something more universal than my own story.”

Creative Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert is a novellist who has written a bunch of books I’ve never read before, but I have heard of the one that drove her to fame, which is Eat, Pray, Love. I came across some writing advice from her recently which is 100% pure gold. Here it is.

• You’ve been doing research your whole life, merely by existing. You are the only expert in your own experience. Embrace this as your supreme qualification.

• Every writer starts in the same place on Day 1: Super excited, and ready for greatness. On Day 2, every writer looks at what she wrote on Day 1 and hates herself. What separates working writers from non-working writers is that working writers return to their task on Day 3. What gets you there is not pride but mercy. Show yourself forgiveness, for not being good enough. Then keep going.

• Be willing to let it be easy. You might be surprised.

• Use radically simple sentences.

• Don’t worry if it’s good; just finish it. Whether or not your project is good, you’ll be a different person at the end of it, and that’s always worth doing.

• Whenever you can, tell stories instead of explaining stuff. Humans love stories, and we hate having stuff explained to us. Use Jesus as an example: He spoke almost exclusively in parables, and allowed everybody to draw their own lessons from his great storytelling. And he did very well.

• Your work doesn’t have to be any particular length, or written for any particular market. It doesn’t have to even be seen by another human being. How and if to publish your work is a problem for another day. For today, just write.

Just do your shit

Faye Cornish

The lesson of today is: no one really cares.

What I mean is, don’t get all bugged out or fearful about trying something new or different because you’re worried about how it will be received or judged. It really doesn’t matter.

Most people won’t give a shit because they are totally and completely consumed by their own life and what they are doing at that moment and what they are planning to do next. Admit it – this is how you probably operate, as well. You kind of have to just to get anything done. Anyhow, when it comes down to it, the majority of people won’t care about what you’re doing.

 The people who do care will either applaud it, or think it’s meh and carry on with obsessing over themselves.

Those who applaud really are the only people you need to give a shit about. They are potential fans, collaborators, and co-conspirators and therefore should be cared for and respected, or at least are worth having a conversation with.

Just do your shit.

Emotional circuitry: making music in the 21st century

Photos by valentin müller and slim emcee

Is it easier to create music today compared to earlier generations? One could make the argument it is in light of the technology we have at our disposal.  

To begin with, we are no longer restricted to a music studio to record. Mobile technology has made it simple to bring the studio practically anywhere and to record at any time. 

Additionally, for those making electronic music and music with the computer, we now have all sorts of gadgets that make it easier to sound good. Scale filters ensure our melodies hit all the right notes (if we’re playing keys). Quantizers help lock our rhythms to a grid, so no percussion strays out of time. We even have autotune, so singing can be artificially locked into key. 

All this adds up to an easier, more streamlined process of finishing songs, right? Absolutely. 

But are those songs any better than those created by previous generations? Not necessarily. 

While technology has allowed people with little to no musical training to jump in, it doesn’t necessarily mean ‘hits’ are being cranked out any faster than they have in the past. I’m not trying to be elitist or to cast shade on people making music without “proper musical training.” Nothing of the sort. These little technological helpers have lowered the bar of entry to a point where anyone with the will can begin making music with a little self education and an exploratory mindset. This has given an immense amount of people a lot of joy and stress relief. Music is medicine, both for the artist and the listener. 

What I’m trying to get at here is that just because composing and finishing a track is somewhat easier than it used to be with the shortcuts technology affords doesn’t mean you can more easily strike creative gold. 

Yes, technology can give us some shortcuts, but what makes music memorable is rarely what these devices can deliver.

The x-factor that makes music cherished by others is the emotional force behind it. Emotion comes strictly from the human mind — at least it has up until now (that may change in the future). Emotional substance is what lies behind the hooks that grab us and pull us along for the ride.

Emotion is heard most easily in vocal melodies because they use the human voice and language, both of which can readily transmit meaning in an intuitive way. But emotion can be transmitted by any instrument if the musician plays it the right way. 

Sometimes something really simple can have a lot of power. A well thought out sequence of two or three notes in the right placement can transcend simplicity to speak deeply to us.

It all starts with the timbres used and the melodies assigned and deployed with care and feeling. That’s where the magic comes from, and has from the beginning of human creativity - an artist making conscious choices of what they wish to say and how to say it. Sure, technology gives us a few shortcuts, but if emotional resonance is what you’re after, it all starts with you. 

For Jeff Tweedy, Writing Songs IS Finding Meaning

Great podcast here: Malcolm Gladwell interviewing Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy about how he writes songs, supporting his recent book on the same topic. 

Like a lot of artists, what stitches Tweedy’s songs together is intuition — linking the seemingly random events of life; drawing together the themes to create a tapestry that somehow makes sense to him. This bit at the end really jumped out at me.  Jump to about 40:00.

As Tweedy mentions, often, we are too busy, stressed out, and worried to actually observe what is going on around us. We have a million things vying for our attention, and many times, they succeed in distracting us from our immediate reality. 

But when we do take the time and make the effort to actually see and experience reality, it’s often telling us a strange, fascinating, and beautiful story. 

That story is being told  all the time —  we just need to stop what we’re doing and pay attention.

I’ve always believed we as humans are meaning-seeking creatures. We need to make sense of the world we live in.  We need to let our brains do that — to find the meaning. Meaning makes sense to us — far more sense than randomness and ambiguity and chance. We’re designed to do that.

So don’t be such a nihilist, ok? 

Who's the Genius - the Artist or the Observer?

jean-michel basquiat

“All human creativity is a desperate attempt to occupy the brief space or endless gap between birth and death.”

What’s the difference between good and bad art? 

I’m reading A Year with Swollen Appendices, Brian Eno’s 1997 memoir. (In February, a 25-year anniversary edition is being re-published.) 

It contains a terrific essay about placebo cures. Eno explains how though there are believers and critics, the fact remains — placebos cure about 30% of patients scientifically administered the false cures. 

He then recounts the story of Melody Maker music critic Richard Williams, who in the 1970s was sent a John Lennon + Yoko Ono record to review. The first side was normal enough—five traditionally arranged songs. The other side was more unusual—20 minutes of a pure sine wave. Just a long, unwavering, unaccompanied tone. 

Williams wrote his review, concentrating the bulk of it on side B, noting how bold Lennon and Ono were for putting out such brashly stark, minimal music. He later learned the second side was a test tone, used to calibrate and detect abnormalities in record players. 

Was Williams’ experience with the test tone any diminished, knowing the sound over which he rhapsodized was unintentional? 

What composes a satisfactory art experience? What makes it good for some observers and poor for others? I’ve explored this topic before.

Thinking about the believer and the critic, it becomes clear—it’s less about the stimuli and more about the experience going on inside the patient/observer. 

“We can say that there is nothing absolute about the aesthetic value of a Rembrandt or a Mozart or a Basquiat,” Eno writes, just as there’s nothing special about the sugar pill the doctor gives the anxiety-ridden office worker. In the end, anyone who can convince you by any means, including outrageous fakery, that what you are about to experience is THE CURE to your issues can be called a healer. Anyone who can convince you that this thing in front of you IS art is by definition an artist.  

Art says as much about us as it does about the artist. We as observers believe the myth. We drink the Kool-Aid. We willingly give the art its power and we’re under its spell. It’s a dance between the artist and the lovers, the creators and the observers.

“Is the act of getting attention a sufficient act for an artist, or is that a job description?”

— Brian Eno

We're all just amateurs, and why that's a good thing

blazing sun, playa cerritos by c.o.

Being an amateur is important. It’s not a mark of shame, it’s just reality. That’s where we all are when we start out—amateurs. We’ve got very little experience, but we have heart, and passion, and very defined palettes. That’s why beginners are in a terribly good position. You can always get more experience, but you can’t easily manufacture (or beat) pure and genuine drive coupled with good taste. 

Austin Kleon has covered this pretty succinctly in Show Your Work, but it bears repeating. 

“Because they have little to lose, amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results. They take chances, experiment, and follow their whims. Sometimes, in the process of doing things in an unprofessional way, they make new discoveries… Amateurs are lifelong learners, and they make a point of learning in the open so that others can learn from their failures and successes.”

— Austin Kleon

There is a very real latent energy or untapped potential that lies inside each of us, if we are open to it. If we listen to the little voice. And once we start listening, it begins to get louder and louder… and if we foster it—if we let it get loud enough to be heard by others—then real changes starts to happen. It all starts with listening to ourselves and believing in what we hear. 

I re-watched Rushmore for the 100th time last week and re-discovered this. 

from shoot angle

Just because we don’t have experience in something and feel like we have no idea what we’re doing doesn’t mean we can’t make a meaningful contribution. 

“I have no concept of knowing how to be a musician at all what-so-ever... I couldn’t even pass Guitar 101.”

— Kurt Cobain

The very act of creation is sometimes so alienating and strange, especially when we begin to craft a discipline around it and force ourselves to do it when we don’t feel like it. That’s when we start facing the inner obstructions—our limitations, our frustrations, our distractions, our addictions… It can all come out when we sit down and try to do that one thing. This is why creation can be difficult. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the struggle.

“Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position. ”

— Stephen King

Good craft doesn’t always feel great at the moment we’re bringing it into the world—ask any mother around. But we keep doing it with knowledge our skill and end product will improve with time.

Downsizing and upscaling

This week has been one of re-focusing my creative practice. 

I am pairing down my modular set up (it’s always changing, so that’s nothing new) and at the same time I re-acquired the Elektron Octatrack MkII. 

The OT MkI was kinda what got me back into making music after taking about 10 years or so off. The MkII actually feels quite different, which I like. It feels better, smoother. The MkI was a bit clunky. I noticed that the moment I unboxed it. It didn’t have a nice “feel” to the buttons and sliders. There was a certain… clicky nature to it that didn’t feel as “put together” as other equipment. I immediately compared it to the MPC 2000, which was the first “professional” piece of audio gear I got early on in my career. It was super put together and felt solid in comparison to the OT. The software and workflow, too, was vastly different from the MPC, which was also a sampler, but one that approached sampling and audio manipulation from a very different angle. 

That said, I kept the Octatrack MkI for 5+ years and used it extensively. After moving to SF, I did have a period with the Maschine, but the fact that it used it’s own software that wasn’t quite a full-fledged DAW always put me off. It had weird limitations in terms of importing samples and using it to, say record guitar or outside instruments. 

The Octatrack had an insane learning curve, and was also limited in different ways. That led me to Ableton, which is by far the most unlimited instrument out there. You can do anything and everything with it. But playing with hardware is a hell of a lot more fun. 

Getting Modular

Starting off with modular was like a revelation. It forced me to think about music differently. I was finally collaborating with something outside myself. 

I’ve now made 3 albums with the modular, in conjunction with Ableton, and I really am proud of them. But now I want to move on. 

Coming back to the Octatrack, I’m seeing it as a different tool. Before, I was basically treating it like a DAW, where I was trying to do EVERYTHING in a track with those 8 tracks. Now that I have other synths to work with, and I want to try to use the Octatrack more like a tool for looping, sequencing, sampling and processing audio and midi. I’m excited to get into it, and especially to use it in conjunction with the OP-1, Cocoquantus, and modular.