"having fun" music creation approach + question

[Maya Clars]

What do you think, if you take the creation of music too seriously, striving for perfection, for instance, and obsessing over every tiny detail - doesn't that end up spoiling the entire creative process and stripping a song of its emotional depth?? Could it be that an approach rooted in "simply enjoying the process and having fun" actually yields a better result in the end?

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Too much thinking isn't my problem. Playing is fun, and if I record the sound, I want to have fun doing it. Lighting the room in wash lights to strange new worlds. Get some incense going. So I watch the 'smoke dragons' drift slowly in the air. Atmosphere, for creation. Relaxing the mind to produce.

 

[Serendipity Records]

Different approaches for different people. Generally speaking, if you’re extremely frustrated with your musical endeavors, they are probably counterproductive.

That said... Steely Dan strove for perfection to the minutest detail — Katy Lied has bad sound quality (?!). Toto “had fun while making records”, in the words of Al Schmitt. Both groups made some outstanding, creative, and mature music!

 

[Wabatuckian]

For me, perfection ruins the sound.

Nirvana were awesome, and I bought that multi-volume set of rehearsals, home demos, solo recordings, etc. While I love the thump of bass in my Jeep, the tinny solo recordings of Cobain and his cheap acoustic guitar are just as satisfying as the produced products, just in a different way.

That's what I go after. I basically record my practice, then practice mixing the songs with the fewest mistakes.

I'm an extremely precise, technical, logical person in almost every aspect of my life, and I let music be my emotional outlet. If I go getting overly technical and perfectionistic with it, chances are good music will be ruined for me.

So, no. I keep the happy little accidents in, and have no desire to go overboard with the mixer. I'd love to add drums and maybe a bass line, but I'm neither a drummer nor a bassist and don't have the patience nor desire to put them in synthetically. I'm not even sure I could, because some of my songs speed up and slow down. A singular drum track would lose the guitar, and playing to a click track would lose some of the song's soul.

 

[PitchTempoAndriy]

@Wabatuckian — the guitar changing speed does not prevent adding a real drummer or bassist. They can play along to that recording and follow its pushes and pulls; the original take can stay untouched. A fixed-tempo loop is a different problem because it cannot follow those changes by itself.

A small first experiment would be one verse with very sparse percussion, leaving space around the guitar accents. Give the player a reference with a clear start/count-in, and ask for their recording exported from that same start, including any silence. That makes lining it up much easier.

If you later want programmed drums, a tempo map can make the DAW grid follow the performance rather than forcing the performance onto a fixed grid. That adds editing work, though; trying a live overdub on one section first seems closer to the approach you described.

 

[PorterhouseMusic]

What do you think, if you take the creation of music too seriously, striving for perfection, for instance, and obsessing over every tiny detail - doesn't that end up spoiling the entire creative process and stripping a song of its emotional depth?? Could it be that an approach rooted in "simply enjoying the process and having fun" actually yields a better result in the end?

It's a worthwhile question. Worth exploring.

I pretty much insist on keeping anything related to musical creativity: fun.

If I start developing an idea and it's not going smoothly - I don't necessarily quit when the going gets tough - but after some effort, if things are not coming together or falling into place and it becomes drag, I move on. Shelved to be revisited later if I get around to it or some epiphany hits me later.

Same with recording an otherwise finished or mostly finished idea. If it's not coming together relatively smoothly - like my vision of it is not getting realized - just short of full frustration I'll set it aside on either think on it for a while to see if there's a way forward - or just move on.

One of the things that drives my decisions and attitude about this is - at this point in my life - how little time I have for music. I have a demanding job and a busy life outside of music. So when I do spend time with music it needs to be stimulating and enjoyable.

And over analyzing and getting bogged down can be a problem too. I mentioned somewhere else recently - I have a MIL who is a long time accomplished professional oil/canvas painter (abstract mostly). We've talked about the creative process many times over the last twenty-five years. I asked her once: "How do you know when a piece is done?" She said: "I don't"

IMO, sometimes you just have to trust, I think. Don't over-judge. It's good to check yourself and not become obsessed with details. Objective outside opinion can definitely help with that.

But yeah.... my personal motto: "Music is fun"

Or - at least it should be.

 

[rob aylestone]

Even for fun, I have my own standard. My mate keeps releasing our old material from the early 80's. It is dire. Dreadful songs, mistakes only spotted too late in the 4 track process and really terrible tone, because the monitors (or our taste) was clearly very odd. I am glad he just puts his name on them. I have got an awful lot better in 40 years. I think music should be fun, but must also be higher than whatever you set as a quality threshold. Some people write great songs, but play them with bad arrangements or with rotten instruments and sound. Others record really high quality music, that is just not so good. I've had some fun recently listening to famous people's early recordings from the 60's, 70's and 80's - not the successful ones, the fillers on their early albums. Some are truly dreadful. I find that encouraging.

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Talent or technique had nothing to do with success.

some kids back down hanging in the basement of a church in the 80's, were so incredible. I knew some of them would make it, on there music.

 

[rob aylestone]

Listening to fat larry's band doing their one hit zoom on BBC radio yesterday. They mentioned it was kept off the number 1 by a bunch of kids with a reggae song called pass the dutchie on the left hand side. One is a great song, one much less so.

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Rob, neither sound like positive life choices were made.

"fat Larry" "Pass the doobie" or whatever.

 

[TAE]

As Bob Dylan once sang "Good and bad I define these terms quite clear, no doubt somehow...Ah but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now"

as previously said herein different strokes for different folks some strive for perfection and some just spit out perfectly imperfect and it works..

Currently having my mellow harshed by the minutia involved in making all the moving parts work in my DAW set up and it is REALLY PISSING ME OFF!

 

[Wabatuckian]

Too much thinking isn't my problem. Playing is fun, and if I record the sound, I want to have fun doing it. Lighting the room in wash lights to strange new worlds. Get some incense going. So I watch the 'smoke dragons' drift slowly in the air. Atmosphere, for creation. Relaxing the mind to produce.

I have an off-topic question: Is your username based on the Decepticon that changes into a cassette tape for Soundwave?

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Yes.
...Like 7 years ago , when I joined Homerecording.com(not to be confused with 'home wrecking.com'), my nephew was 5 years old. I wanted a silly screen name so I asked the 5 year old. Kevin, said something incomprehensible in whole, but had Laser Beak in there somewhere.
At the time I had a towel wrapped around my head like a turban.
Then I cannot spell worth a damn, so I misspelled 2, but somehow got 1 correct. Still not sure which one. Haha

Minutes after verifying the account I asked the administrator if I could change it, because it was really bad. Admin refused.
I need to look. I saved the PM he sent. I think his name was Rob!

that's my Username story..

 

[LazerBeakShiek]

Lets make it something cool...

A 'Mothman Prophecy' like robot bird that shoots frickin' lazers!

After all I knew it had to be something to do with you..

 

[Gtoboy]

Dumping in my "IMHO": Sound recording (see forum name) can be done various ways for various purposes. Music, film, archival, sound effects, the list go's on. Each of these projects has it's own set of (sometimes dogmatic) general guidance/rules that are both followed and occasionally thrown out the window for reasons that may be, at times, also be dogmatic.
The specific recording of music can also run the gamut from strictly archival (the 'get an exact reproduction of the performance' folks) to the somewhat onanistic ( 'I am creating something exclusively for myself') and everything in between.
If the act of creating the recording is to communicate an emotion or a range of emotions, it can be generally thought of as an attempt to create 'art', for the primary purpose of what we call art is (again, somewhat dogmatically) to communicate something to, well in the case of humans, mostly to other humans.
Even the nihilistic proclamations of just about every musical form generated by every new set of teenagers who loudly state that 'adults don't get it/nobody gets me/everything I do is new and different and I am definitely not trying to communicate anything') is an attempt to communicate. Adolescent angst and disdain for everyone, if nothing else.
So ultimately, to my mind, the recording is successful when the goal is realized- whatever that goal may be.
If it is just to have others judge it on it's merits, the recordist has to first decide what merits they consider important, It can be as simple as the 'rate a record' most common response on American Bandstand, from thousands of teens, when asked what they liked about a current cut; 'It's got a good beat, and it's easy to dance to', or as complex as trying to express the emotional distress from losing a loved one or the snarky insecurity of having to become an adult when one has just gotten good at being a child.
My point is this; if your goal requires that the listener 'catch feelings' from your project, it often times means a pure capture of an original just doesn't have what it takes to fulfill that desire at times.
And it may take a little, or even a lot, of tweaking, modding, stripping and rebuilding to hit that target. I for one, think that it's ok to make these changes if that will help achieve the nearly insurmountable goal of 'connecting' possible and even likely.
YMMV etc.

 

[Maya Clars]

Dumping in my "IMHO": Sound recording (see forum name) can be done various ways for various purposes. Music, film, archival, sound effects, the list go's on. Each of these projects has it's own set of (sometimes dogmatic) general guidance/rules that are both followed and occasionally thrown out the window for reasons that may be, at times, also be dogmatic.
The specific recording of music can also run the gamut from strictly archival (the 'get an exact reproduction of the performance' folks) to the somewhat onanistic ( 'I am creating something exclusively for myself') and everything in between.
If the act of creating the recording is to communicate an emotion or a range of emotions, it can be generally thought of as an attempt to create 'art', for the primary purpose of what we call art is (again, somewhat dogmatically) to communicate something to, well in the case of humans, mostly to other humans.
Even the nihilistic proclamations of just about every musical form generated by every new set of teenagers who loudly state that 'adults don't get it/nobody gets me/everything I do is new and different and I am definitely not trying to communicate anything') is an attempt to communicate. Adolescent angst and disdain for everyone, if nothing else.
So ultimately, to my mind, the recording is successful when the goal is realized- whatever that goal may be.
If it is just to have others judge it on it's merits, the recordist has to first decide what merits they consider important, It can be as simple as the 'rate a record' most common response on American Bandstand, from thousands of teens, when asked what they liked about a current cut; 'It's got a good beat, and it's easy to dance to', or as complex as trying to express the emotional distress from losing a loved one or the snarky insecurity of having to become an adult when one has just gotten good at being a child.
My point is this; if your goal requires that the listener 'catch feelings' from your project, it often times means a pure capture of an original just doesn't have what it takes to fulfill that desire at times.
And it may take a little, or even a lot, of tweaking, modding, stripping and rebuilding to hit that target. I for one, think that it's ok to make these changes if that will help achieve the nearly insurmountable goal of 'connecting' possible and even likely.
YMMV etc.

interesting thoughts! Yeah, if you can achieve the goal, it doesn't matter how you do it.

 

[Maya Clars]

Yes.
...Like 7 years ago , when I joined Homerecording.com(not to be confused with 'home wrecking.com'), my nephew was 5 years old. I wanted a silly screen name so I asked the 5 year old. Kevin, said something incomprehensible in whole, but had Laser Beak in there somewhere.
At the time I had a towel wrapped around my head like a turban.
Then I cannot spell worth a damn, so I misspelled 2, but somehow got 1 correct. Still not sure which one. Haha

Minutes after verifying the account I asked the administrator if I could change it, because it was really bad. Admin refused.
I need to look. I saved the PM he sent. I think his name was Rob!

that's my Username story..

hahaha )) this is a funny story )

 

[Maya Clars]

As Bob Dylan once sang "Good and bad I define these terms quite clear, no doubt somehow...Ah but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now"

as previously said herein different strokes for different folks some strive for perfection and some just spit out perfectly imperfect and it works..

Currently having my mellow harshed by the minutia involved in making all the moving parts work in my DAW set up and it is REALLY PISSING ME OFF!

i didn't know this quote! Hmmm.

 

[Maya Clars]

Too much thinking isn't my problem. Playing is fun, and if I record the sound, I want to have fun doing it. Lighting the room in wash lights to strange new worlds. Get some incense going. So I watch the 'smoke dragons' drift slowly in the air. Atmosphere, for creation. Relaxing the mind to produce.

hahaha i also love to record music without stress, this way you get so much more results

 

[Maya Clars]

Different approaches for different people. Generally speaking, if you’re extremely frustrated with your musical endeavors, they are probably counterproductive.

That said... Steely Dan strove for perfection to the minutest detail — Katy Lied has bad sound quality (?!). Toto “had fun while making records”, in the words of Al Schmitt. Both groups made some outstanding, creative, and mature music!

yeah, I've heard so many different ways people write their music, it's fascinating!