AM I BETTER THAN MY TOOLS?... ARE YOU?

bedheadproducer

@ToMess said:
Tools are for work, my music gear are my toys

I agree and disagree. Music gear are both toys and tools. I think it can be work if you do it for money...let's say you are an engineer or producer for pay, recording other musicians....then it can be work, but if you are recording an album of your own material, it should be both work and fun. I think playing guitar is fun. My guitars are at times toys...but to get good at guitar I had to also be disciplined and practice things that were not fun....to get to have more fun. If you don't have the discipline to also do the work and not just the fun stuff, chances are you will only reach a certain level of expertise. Using software is fun....twisting knobs I have no idea what they do can be fun up to a point, but sooner or later I have to have the discipline to read the manual or somehow learn what I'm doing. That's not fun...but it's rewarding and leads to more fun. So again...it depends on if that is important to you like it is to me.

ToMess

@bedheadproducer said:

@ToMess said:
Tools are for work, my music gear are my toys

I agree and disagree. Music gear are both toys and tools. I think it can be work if you do it for money...let's say you are an engineer or producer for pay, recording other musicians....then it can be work, but if you are recording an album of your own material, it should be both work and fun. I think playing guitar is fun. My guitars are at times toys...but to get good at guitar I had to also be disciplined and practice things that were not fun....to get to have more fun. If you don't have the discipline to also do the work and not just the fun stuff, chances are you will only reach a certain level of expertise. Using software is fun....twisting knobs I have no idea what they do can be fun up to a point, but sooner or later I have to have the discipline to read the manual or somehow learn what I'm doing. That's not fun...but it's rewarding and leads to more fun. So again...it depends on if that is important to you like it is to me.

Yes, they definitely can be tools. For me personally they are toys, as i dont make music for a living, nor have much if any desire to do so.

bedheadproducer

@chandroji said:

Thank you so much for your incredible good post @bedheadproducer ! 😊👍
There is much truth and wisdom in your posting. I think it is worth thinking about all this. At least I feel quite addressed! I also find it hard to finish musical projects for some reason , which is of course unsatisfactory.

Maybe one day I will contact you personally. Many thanks for your friendly offer to help if you can. I appreciate that very much. 🙏😊

Hey man...no problem!...
I'm glad someone can get something from my outflowing of words.....I don't write this stuff for my ego...I'm specifically motivated to help people, because I'm a biproduct of much help myself....hit me up anytime!

[Deleted User]

@bedheadproducer said:

@LinearLineman This is not directed at anyone specifically, but from the general issues I see most people have that stop them from finishing anything....INDECISION.

HOW TO RISE ABOVE THE TOOLS THAT CREATE INDECISION AND FINISH SONGS 101:

oF course we are better than the tools we use. I'm a musician...I can make music with a tin can and my voice, a fork, a window, a kazoo, it doesn't matter....however, the tools allow us to take ideas in our head and create something tangible, but before this what one needed more than anything was people. If you take 12 percussive instruments, no matter how primitive, what it took to make that into something magical , were other people to play these ...like a small drum circle.

So for hundreds of years, the only way to record music, whether just a beat or a full orchestra band....it had to be notated or written down. It wasn't until the phonograph that we started documenting sound as recordings and this changed everything and the music business/the recording business was born.

It wasn't until recently that anyone of normal means, could afford to record something that was worth keeping. 4 tracks were great sketch pads, but unless you could afford an expensive reel to reel and a mixing console and the mics and cables to go with it, that you could even compete on any level with the recording industry. And so creative musicians that wanted to document their ideas and songs, had to earn favor with a record company and literally sign away their rights to their music, in order to get these songs onto a permanent medium that would sound great. There was no such thing as creative freedom in those days, because you had producers babysitting bands and creative decisions were made by professionals who predicted what would sell on the open market. So if your music ideas were too out there, too original, you would get shot down by your producer and that was that.

Synths were all hardware back then and again, were for people that could afford them.

So, skip forward a tad and it was the Alesis ADAT digital recorder that first started to really make owning a recording studio, semi affordable. You still had to be able to afford a mixing console, but now, you could make recordings that rivaled the big studios, for practically pennies. Oddly enough, this was also the beginning of the end, for many studios....

Shortly thereafter, Roland came out with the first affordable digital hard disk recorders that were mass marketed.
I owned their first 8 track, then the VS 16 and the VS 24, by which time pro tools and Cubase started to proliferate, VSTs were born and then suddenly almost ANYONE could afford to make great sounding records.....all it took was lots of practice. If you were a multi instrumentalist, with the help of drum machines, you could make music, for the first time in history, without anyone else but yourself.....and at a high quality. Nobody was buying records anymore by then, but that's besides the point...lol

So now we suffer from the exact opposite problem as before......we have too many tools. Should I record a dubstep song tonight or grab my guitar and record a folk song, or should I make a hip hop beat? Should I sing or make an instrumental? Should I use and old analogue keyboard I have or fire up the sampler(another huge innovation that changed how we make music) or should I fire up a VST? Should I use a wavetable virtual synth, or subtractive synthesis? Should I run through one plugin with 500 sounds until I find inspiration or should I tweak the knobs and design a new sound?

Here is the issue....as long as you keep asking yourself, which options shall I use, and are indecisive, nothing will get done. So your tools essentially can bog you down with too many decisions and not enough time to try out all the options....so what is the solution? You get in the habit of getting started and saying yes to the first options that spill out instead of mulling over whether to use them. For instance, fire up a synth.. limit yourself to 10 sound auditions...I don't care where you start...on patch 155 for all I care. Then say "I"m going to write the verse or chorus to a song and this will be my first instrument. "

Pick a tempo....stick with that tempo. Pick a key...stick with that key. If you feel the need, pick a genre.../.let's say pop or rock. Then lay down 4 bars of a riff. If you must, keep laying down 4 bars of a riff until you find something you don't hate....set a time limit...like lets say 20 minutes. Then go onto the next step. Create a beat behind your riff. Change it if you want but set a time limit so you aren't there all week. Then lay down a bass. We are talking 4 bars here, for christs sake you can do this! When you are done with all the instrumentation, ask yourself, what would sound great before this or after this, as a part or section. Then you are on to your next task. Force yourself to finish 3 parts, an intro, a bridge and an outro, maybe even a solo section. Then arrange the parts into a song and call it a day.

It doesn't matter if you do it ALL in Korg Gadget....or all in Cubasis, or all in any one piece of the many softwares you have. The idea is not quality as much as finishing something ….creating something tangible. Limit your options, the harder it is for you to finish anything. If the above mentioned process takes you 80 hours, then limit yourself to 4 parts, drums, bass, vocals and one other part. The more difficult it is to finish, the more options you take away. Make a two part song, with an intro and an outro...that's it. The idea is to finish.

Then when you are done, repeat the process...remembering ambitions you gathered during the last recording. So if you ran across a kick drum you thought would sound great, but had already decided on another one for the last song, use this as motivation to start the next song. Keep a record of all your "what ifs" and over time, try them ALL!
But for God's sake, finish something....and more somethings than you ever have, by limiting your options until you get a flow.... a regular output. And from this regular output will emerge a wonderful thing.....quality. Quality songs, riffs, parts...quality songs, mixing, quality albums....your life's work. But each accomplishment is a lilly pad to the next accomplishment. Occasionally you can give up and say "screw this, this just isn't working" but more often than not...finish....at all costs.These finished products are the building blocks of your future expertise.

I know absolutely brilliant musicians.....they can play any style, know the most complicated riffs, have all the equipment and plugins in the world and a the drop of a hat can come up with amazing parts....but the never or rarely record any songs. Wny? too many options and not enough limitations based on goals that need to be completed. People hate deadlines.. and deadlines are ultimately flexible, but why do we have them?SO SHIT GETS DONE! they are a limitation on time. That limitation creates a need to finish within the limitation imposed.

So all this bitching and moaning about the tools we have, is ludicrous when you consider that 500 years ago you had two choices....work on a farm or die and musical studies and composition were luxuries for people either part of a church or a court where you had the favor of a king or queen that paid for your ass to be a musician. The rest of us made music after working on the farm all day, using very little resources, a handful of instruments and a musician would be lucky if they wrote 5 songs and passed it down to their kids.

So for the first time in history, you have more options that Mozart, the beatles, led zeppelin and Dr Dre....in your hand on an ipad or iPhone. And what do you do with it? Well......you could take a spoon and a bottle, make a clanking noise and beatbox over it and put it on youtube, if it's not beneath you....OR you could spend two days watching tutorials on ONE piece of software and master that first and then set a goal of recording ONE 2 minute song and think to yourself....THANK YOU UNIVERSE THAT I WAS BORN IN THE AGE OF OPTIONS AND DON"T HAVE TO SELL MY SOUL OR ANSWER TO ANYONE CREATIVELY WHO MAKES DECISIONS FOR ME!

I follow my own advice and I"ve recorded over 1000 songs since the year 1986 when I got my first 4 track. I make decisions to limit myself, like recording a full song on a Korg Electribe app, or Korg gadget. Could I have done a song on my desktop without learning a new piece of software first...sure....but would I have? I don't know, but these regular goals, are my search for what I'm missing....to see what else is out there, but at the least I'm getting thigs done and you can too! If anyone out there, can't follow the aforementioned protocol...I can help....I'll coach you through a song by giving you tasks to complete and limitations, so you have no excuse. YOU ARE better than your tools. The tools are a means to an end...what's stopping you is indecision and excuses. (Ignore my whole rant if you are super creative AND productive)

It’s called focus. Limitations help most of the time when the problem is too much options as you pointed but the issue behind is strategy.

Bruce lee called desesperated organization referring to styles as ways to channelling that flow but mastering the Art of life will require more than copy my advices since humans are like water drops and any style could answer all the questions by definition due you can’t catch the rivers flow, just be a cointainer of living adaptabilty

I will try to sintetize the most commonly part of it in flow chart ASAP but models are ever partial and any model, even the best in the world, could be nothing more a golden jail for human self.

The famous lost interview can be useful for someone but remember:

Absorb what’s useful,
Reject what’s useless,
Add what’s truly yours.

bedheadproducer

@Dubbylabby

Well you have some very Zen philosophies. I have a word for almost all that put out. To me it's a flow. I don't think about it..I just do. If I think about it, I get backed up with ideas very quickly, which happens regardless of whether I want to or not. I'm not very good at meditation. I meditate and leave behind thought, when I play guitar and thank goodness for that, but it's an addictive place and I can waste a ton of creativity if I don't always record, so now I only play guitar when I'm creating or performing and as a general rule...ALL jam sessions are ALWAYS recorded.

At a young age I learned how to take a trickle of output, lets say creativity, and turn it from a trickle to a flow. I have no idea exactly how or when it happened. I can only analyze elements of what I seem to do naturally to break down a process. Whatever works for you....great. But if there are any people that want to make new habits a part of their life, so that these habits become smooth and done without much thought, I'd say the way to do this is to reprogram yourself, over time and start with whatever it takes to get the job done.

What I'm proposing is not a new idea. Many teachers have used this to get students to do classwork, projects, write papers...etc. These are exercises, but they are designed to bust the rut of someone that is stuck. And limitations bring focus. There is less to focus on, so the focus can be greater...less scattered. This is how mastery of anything is generally achieved....you break down the bigger picture into smaller digestible pieces and over time all the pieces to the puzzle make sense in a fluid action, where magic is performed without hesitation, fueled by experience, from a relaxed state that must not contemplate, in order to perform marvelously, at peak potential..

No matter what words I use to describe what it is I've learned to do over the last 50 years, I can honestly say, repetition plus experience equals mastery. No tricks, no shortcuts...it's just never stopping that which you do. This pertains as much to social wizardry as it does to fretboard or keyboard wizardry. Anyone who has mastered anything or is close to it or on their way, has most likely spent a ton of time doing it. The objective is to NOT have to think about it. So yes...Is what I'm preaching...is this my way of getting stuff done NOW? not really

...I can easily stop fooling around and record a song because it's a bigger drive that hearing all the tones a synth has.....but do I fool around and not record ? I spend and equal time if not more fooling around. But...I force myself to stop and record without thinking about it. It's automatic, because from one part, my brain begins quickly to think of the additional parts....and I'm greedy. I want to hear the machine when its done layering parts...not the individual parts of a song. They don't do much for me. My brain wants to hear a lot of layers...at once, in some sort of poly phonic, poly rhythmic way that engages my mind... maybe that's just because of the acid I took when I was younger...lol, but most of the time it's quicker for me to make that and record it, than if I were to go searching for it to listen to. So That's why I always get back to recording quick...because I am addicted to hearing the results...

.it's so much more rewarding than listening to myself play single parts. That's a lot of fun....but pales in comparison to listening to complete pieces with gears and syncopation and harmony that it's very much like a live, real time audio drug, that being just a listener of other peoples music alone won't cure that fix I need for very long. Creating is far more satisfying for me. Of course thenI'm absolutely sick of hearing the song by the 20th listen, and then I have to give it away...it's ruined for me. So can I distill what it is I do into some words on a page...not really. But if I had to teach myself how to get to where I'm at now.....my speech above is how I'd do it, because I'm also a product of my teachers and their methods

LinearLineman

@bedheadproducer... Don't confuse you with us! You are as good or better than the tools you use ( really, I mean do you get the most out of your tools before complaining they are deficient. I just like a snarky discussion title... IN CAPS!) you are, self admittedly, obsessed. You have put in the hours and made the sacrifices. You have God given talent. You put your creations where your mouth is. To think that others are as talented and committed as you are is, either too generous, or naive, IMO. But that is the only thing you said that I disagree with.

What you say here:
"Here is the issue....as long as you keep asking yourself, which options shall I use, and are indecisive, nothing will get done. So your tools essentially can bog you down with too many decisions and not enough time to try out all the options....so what is the solution? You get in the habit of getting started and saying yes to the first options that spill out instead of mulling over whether to use them. For instance, fire up a synth.. limit yourself to 10 sound auditions...I don't care where you start...on patch 155 for all I care. Then say "I"m going to write the verse or chorus to a song and this will be my first instrument. "

That is very helpful. Get in the habit of doing and not judging or second guessing. There is always the next creation. You are an improvisor, as am I, Marc. I think if you gave your thoughts on spontaneous generation of music that could help a lot of people
here. I have ranted about it long enough. Time for a fresh perspective on the subject. I do believe that musicians are severely limited in their improvisation attempts because of some fairly easy to overcome obstacles and incorrect ideas about what it really is about. How do you improvise? What is the thought behind it?

theconnactic

We always have to potential to be far better than our tools - that's how we sometimes discover how to use them in unpredictable ways and sometimes magic happens.

[Deleted User]

@bedheadproducer

https://cdn.wealthygorilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Bruce-Lee-Quotes-1.jpg

So agreed.

More focus food for thought/soul...

https://cdn.fractalenlightenment.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/EmilysQuotes.Com-knowing-enough-apply-willing-do-attitude-wisdom-amazing-great-inspirational-encouraging-advice-Bruce-Lee-e1494007294415-696x354.jpg

But if you and somebody needs to follow a path then I suggest business model canvas. It’s just a model so never the Truth but helpful to organize a plan where put your first steps on a journey...

http://blogs.salleurl.edu/emprendedores/files/2014/11/bmcanvas-basic-model3.jpg

[Deleted User]

Idk why the forum doubles pictures and hide others... but anyways, message is sent

bedheadproducer

@LinearLineman said:
@bedheadproducer... Don't confuse you with us! You are as good or better than the tools you use ( really, I mean do you get the most out of your tools before complaining they are deficient. I just like a snarky discussion title... IN CAPS!) you are, self admittedly, obsessed. You have put in the hours and made the sacrifices. You have God given talent. You put your creations where your mouth is. To think that others are as talented and committed as you are is, either too generous, or naive, IMO. But that is the only thing you said that I disagree with.

What you say here:
"Here is the issue....as long as you keep asking yourself, which options shall I use, and are indecisive, nothing will get done. So your tools essentially can bog you down with too many decisions and not enough time to try out all the options....so what is the solution? You get in the habit of getting started and saying yes to the first options that spill out instead of mulling over whether to use them. For instance, fire up a synth.. limit yourself to 10 sound auditions...I don't care where you start...on patch 155 for all I care. Then say "I"m going to write the verse or chorus to a song and this will be my first instrument. "

That is very helpful. Get in the habit of doing and not judging or second guessing. There is always the next creation. You are an improvisor, as am I, Marc. I think if you gave your thoughts on spontaneous generation of music that could help a lot of people
here. I have ranted about it long enough. Time for a fresh perspective on the subject. I do believe that musicians are severely limited in their improvisation attempts because of some fairly easy to overcome obstacles and incorrect ideas about what it really is about. How do you improvise? What is the thought behind it?

Lol....your post made me smile.
I suppose it could come off a little pompous or preachy, The all caps thing. I wasn't speaking to everyone. I was speaking to those that would see my message and find some hope, that not all is lost....that there is a way out of their non productivity....Why? Because I feel blessed to have found something I love that brings me so much joy and is an amazing form of expression, that I want others to be able to have a taste of the jubilation I feel regularly. From completely songs. It's a lot of work to type out all that stuff....it would be easier to just sit back and not say any of it, but after many years of watching great people never harness their creativity but also expressing they envy my ability to be prolific I thought maybe the same thing I have told them, might be helpful here.

I happen to believe creativity can be taught. It often starts with imitation, which if one is persistent, can lead to innovation. But the number one key to doing more, is to get in the habit of doing more. The number one factor to improving is time invested. These are my opinions and call me crazy but I don't think they are limited to just me or like you might say "talented" people. Thank you by the way for your very kind words....but I don't think I'm all that different than most people. Yes, I have taken a small part of what humans can do and pursued being good or talented with vigor, but I believe ordinary people can be inspired to do great things. To me art is a monument to mankind's ability to be great. And I see art in everything I see around me. The way cars are shaped, the design of our clothes, the architecture, the colors and shapes of almost everything we create.

I'm not sure why I can improv well other than one exercise I forced myself to do when young. I would take small areas of the guitar neck and turn on a metronome or drum machine and force myself to come up with variations of rhythms in a small area of notes and not ever repeat myself....for let's say a 4 or 8 bar loop, for 10-20 minutes at a time....like lets say the chords for smoke on the water. I would re arrange those chords as many ways as I could, until I exhausted all possibilities. Then I'd find a new group of notes or shapes..limit myself to those notes and repeat the exercise. I would do this every day, for years. This showed me I could use the same small group of words to say 100,000 things. It gave me muscle memory of variations in rhythm that I could endlessly apply to chords single notes and by doing this all over the neck, taught me a subconscious knowledge of the fretboard and music...so ironically, a lot of repetition taught me how to vary, and not repeat as much.

I wish I had Bruce Lee to help me explain all this. The truth is it's much harder to inspire than it is to push away. I just wish to inspire, but words are more tricky and a bigger mystery to me than most of what I do.