Forced break from music & blogging

It has been a while, due to some unforeseen issues with my brain damage resulting in a intolerance for sound I had to step away from music, and blogging fell to the side as well. They’re just wasn’t enough I wanted to talk about or get out there.

Brain damage is a fickle partner to live with. No matter how hard you work at maintaining your balance, sometimes out of nowhere problems arise. And you never know when they end and how long the good streak lasts.

In order to maintain some rhythm of work going I read more and got my exercise up. Mostly this leads to improvements on the long run. I am currently on the way back and try and listen to music and went out to the cinema for some non action movies on downtimes.

I have also written down lots of ideas which I can incorporate into my music. Which will be soon I hope.

Music gear favorites – Elektron Machinedrum

I really like musical gear, and I must admit I buy stuff too frequently and don’t take enough time to get into the newly acquired tools. Sometimes I postpone buying things for a long time due to the fact I am well aware of this behavior.

I have always wanted a Elektron Machinedrum since it’s release back in , it was an expensive machine and looked pretty complicated to me. So it was easier leaving it alone a.k.a. not buying it.

Around 2016 or thereabouts there was a moment you could buy it at a discounted price from Elektron as it was going out of production. That was the moment I snapped one up.

Then it pretty much disappeared in a cupboard after my initial attempts at getting aquatinted with it. I simply didn’t get it. The thing I was afraid of in the first place. Every once in a while I got it out and forced myself learning the machine. And at some point it started to make sense, very slow and with intervals.

Now I regularly get it out and learn more about working with it. I think its an underrated drummachine and the range of sounds you can get out of it is vast. Also the Elektron sequencer adds to the versatility of the machine and range of options.

It should be on everyones wish list just like the classic drummachines like the 808 & 909. Why ? Because the whole machine was a totally different take on drum synthesis and sequencing drummachines which was not done before. If this would’ve appeared at the time of the 808 & 909 it would result in bringing it’s own landmark stamp on music, just like those classis machines.

We all too often compare alle drummachines after those 2 classis which gave birth to electro , house & techno and shaped dance music for decades. But this machine deserves being viewed as an dare I say independent machine with its own purpose in making futuristic music.

I think it’s time for the Machinedrum to take a more central role as the drummachine to shape future sounds. It’s very capable of doing this.

Embracing imperfection

Perfection is something we all strive for, yet a lot of beauty can be found in imperfection. Perfection is a never ending story, and in pursuing perfection you can get paralyzed and not finish anything.

Finishing and letting go is one of the most important things in life, whether it is in life, work and art. At some point things are finished, as close to perfect as it can be at that moment in time. It deserves to be out there.

What is perfection anyway? Isn’t there always something to strife for? Sharpening your skills and growing into a better artist, person , or professional ?

Imperfection is a beautiful thing, just like happy accidents, or random occurrences. It’s everyday life. Embracing imperfection is embracing life. Everything needs an end, a finish.

Letting go of perfection is letting go of parts of uncertainty, self-doubt and insecurities. It takes more than striving for perfection and never releasing things.
The finish line will be pushed further everyday anyway, and releasing your art into the world will contribute to your growth as an artist in pursuit of the ultimate piece of art. Your perception of perfection, and once it’s there, you will find new goals and pursue your newly minted definition of perfection.

Which does not mean I am there yet, this just hot me when reading and studying psychological reactions on uncertainty, self-doubt and setting high standards for oneself. So I got to work on how I can release my own music faster and with less discomfort about my own skills and my own fight with perfection. And as I am writing this I am still a bit on the fence about the whole thing, while I know I need to do it to get things out there.

Practically this means setting certain deadlines for myself. Limiting the amount of time spent on a piece of art, resources and ideas I incorporate.

For example, and I will take a framework for music as I know this area better than let’s say writing a novel. Take just a few instruments , or even just one. Give yourself a framework in which you will finish the track. Tempo, length, genre maybe and set a limit , let’s say 14 days. Divide this 14 days into a few blocks. A few days for Sound design, recording, arranging, mixing and administrative tasks. Then after you have done all those things, release it. And don’t look back.

See if this framework needs any updates in it’s parameters. Adjust and move onto the next project. In this way you will learn to embrace imperfections and letting go. And you will learn a lot about your creative process as well. Above all you will learn too see the beauty in imperfection. And thus see the beauty in life.

Cultivating ideas and creative resources in music making

As soon as inspiration hits, you want to make sure the idea doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I have talked about working on your skills routinely which will lead to periods of inspiration and productiveness. Everything feels like its effortless.

Make no mistakes, this is the direct result of all the hard work and sharpening your skills. Showing up regularly and putting in the time. As with anything you will get better with practice.

A lot of ideas get left behind. You simply don’t have time finalizing all these great ideas. It therefore makes sense making notes and sketches of all these ideas in a way they form the future working stock. For all the days things don’t flow effortlessly.

There are a lot of ways of locking in ideas for future use. You can write them down, record them on your phone, sketch the essence. The most important thing is that you can remember the initial idea and work on it later on.

I have had a lot of failures in getting a structure set up for getting ideas down for future reference. I settled for pen & paper, advantages over digital forms are the physical actions and ingraining it in the brain.

But when reading it weeks or months later a lot of the time I could not make out what I originally set out to do. Not a big problem as it always has a starting point in it somewhere. But it kind of took away the enthusiasm.

So I opted for a format, a standardized way of writing ideas down and making sure I knew what I had set out to do. I start with giving the idea a title. Then I write down the concept, and the technical side of things. Which tools to use and how to use them. Then I set the length , speed and other characteristics of the song. Last but not least I draw the song in a time line fashion, breaks drops and other things.

In that way I have way more detail and I can work on the idea while writing it down. I can then do preparations and recording later on with more focus.

It has greatly helped my creative proces, as with anything, this way of doing things suits my personality and workflow. It’s just to give you an idea what might work. It took a while for me to get there, bit experimentation will get you there and is half the fun.

Book review – The Tao of Wu

For anyone with a love for 90’s hip hop the Wu-Tang Clan is at the forefront of that decade. Took the world by storm with a unique sound, unique crew off battle hardened Shaolin warriors. Each with there own unique style.

This book by the RZA is part biography, life philosophy and some music and business advice all rolled in one. It’s written from his personal perspective and talking about the various lessons in life, the highs and lows. Especially the combination of various religions, philosophical thinking, lessons learned on the streets and years of honing a craft makes for an especially interesting book.

For some the introduction might be a little too much in terms of philosophical explanations. But once the book gets started with his life story in focus all things flow together.

One of the more interesting things is the way he carved out his set of rules too live by, and ability to changes his views towards himself as he made mistakes along the way.

Its one of those books you will learn a lot from while reading and especially while not reading and digesting the content. You might not see a direct link with your own set of rules but the way of thinking and how his life progressed and lessons learned certainly will make you think about everything he has written in this book. Recommended reading, even if you never heard of the Wu tang.

Wu-tang Forever.

Focus your planning on building habits and routines

Last time I wrote about ways to get insight in how your time is really spent on a weekly basis and how you can get some breathing room into your week. However I did not go into the actual making of the planning itself. This week I will talk about building the planning and what should be the main focus when planning. And no it’s not (always) about efficiency.

Plan with consistency in mind.

We have 1 new goal in mind, something we want to do more and achieve a certain goal in. To get good at something we need consistency in the time we spent on it. So much so that it becomes a habit and is part of our weekly routine. Before it’s a habit , something we do almost automatically, it needs time to first become a consistent part of our planning. And we have to be able to execute a planning.

To make sure this is feasible our planning needs room to breath, not just in time but also purposefully with breaks, rest and recovery space. Only then will we be able to fully work trough our planning. So it’s not about doing as much as possible, but we need to plan for longevity. We need to be able to keep up with ourselves. Consistency is key. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

How do we achieve consistency in a planning ?

We know how much time we spent on things, we also made some changes. Dropped some activities from the list and limited time spent on certain activities. So how do we fit in our new goal ? We have some room, now we partly fill this in with activities towards our new goal. Make sure you choose 3 moments in the week. 3 is the minimum for making something a habit over the long run. Don’t overdo it in hours especially in the beginning. It’s hard work starting something new and will take a lot of energy. So start modest. Let’s say 2 sessions of 1 hour and 1 session of 1,5 hours. Take 5 to 10 minutes break between each 30 minutes. Plan those as well. So how does that look ?

Time ActivityDuration
8:00 - 8:45Meeting0:45
8:45 - 8:55Break0:10
9:00 - 9:30Focus work0:30
9:30 - 9:35Break0:05
9:35 - 10:05Focus work0:30
10:05 - 10:15Break 0:10
10:15 - 10:30 Emails 0:15

Why do we need breaks in our planning ?

We need breaks not just to take a rest and recover, but the most important thing, we need it to let our mind process and digest the things we learned. Rest gives our brain the ability to remember and preserve.

Everyone has a limited amount of energy for doing high cognitive tasks a day. Things like reading a difficult book (or manual), working on solutions to complicated problems and so on.

If you trained yourself very well in these tasks and your environment is at its best (more on this later) this is 4 hours a day. Really focussed work. That takes a lot of energy. To recuperate it means you can’t do this for 4 hours straight without breaks. you need breaks to maintain a high level of focus. And to get out of that chair. So to make those hours count, breaks are essential.

But I work 8 hours a day ?

Yes most people do, and not included time spent traveling. Luckily a lot of work related tasks are not high cognitive tasks. A lot of things are low cognitive tasks preceding the high cognitive tasks. Simply the hours it takes to get a job done.

Finding a solution to the problem is the high cognitive taks, getting the tools out and spending the hours is less cognitive demanding. Yet can still exhaust you without breaks. So when you work, maintain the breaks. Take less meetings. Make sure the meetings you take are to the point, and are not back to back. You need time to process what is said in that meeting and distill the work that comes out of it for you. It might be counter intuitive to say no to people more often. But it will free up your work calendar and it will improve the quality of your output. Thus making you more efficient. See, there is some efficiency to be gained as well.

So in order to save up some energy for your after work activities and your new goal, go and take the same approach for your work planning as well. Take the breaks, don’t overflow your calendar, make sure you focus on what’s important and block time for high cognitive tasks.

High cognitive tasks & their environment.

Things that take a lot of brain power, finding solutions to problems. Learning new skills. Doing the hard things basically, need a certain setting for your brain to be able to focus. the first one being, no distractions. So no phones, no interruptions and ideally no screens. Or no internet connected screens.

Make sure the desk is clean, with just the things you need, and a pen and some paper for taking notes. Yes paper notes, by writing your brain remembers things better. So take any preferred notebook, blank sheets of paper, and start writing. Draw things. Any way that helps you remember the things you want too learn or work out the solution to a problem. And be able to reproduce them.

Set a clock and take a break of 5 or 10 minutes every half hour. You need to practice this. We live in a world of distraction and its not easy staying focused. It takes time. First few attempts might exhaust you.

Weekly planning

Your weekly planning is an overview of important tasks and activities. More importantly plan your rest and preferable take one or two moments in your week doing nothing, making sure you have playtime or just hanging around. The most important thing is breathing room and consistency. Yielding results is far more about continuing working that it is about short periods of hard work on your passion project and then months of no work at all.

And last but not least, have fun !

Showing up – Plan your path towards your goals

Showing up?

Showing up is half the work, which is half true in itself. Because without a rhythm to your showing up, the act of showing up gets harder and harder.

Bit of a confusing sentence right ? Everything in life moves according to a rhythm , breathing is a rhythm , the sunrise a rhythm, you move in a certain rhythm.

So in order to become good at anything, working on that skill needs a rhythm. And in order for a rhythm to become a rhythm, planning it is necessary. Even for people who hate planning. Mostly it is not the planning people hate. But the showing up. Planning something leaves a lot of room for perceived failure, and that feeling is what you want to avoid. Postponing any activity feels bad. Especially an activity you want to be good at, have a passion for. Dream of doing.

So we don’t plan, and set ourselves up for failure. Not failure in a sense that we are bad at the very thing we want to be good at. But failing because we never got started.

So how do we plan ?

People tend not to plan activities, but cram the day as full as possible, doing as much as possible. And call it planning. That’s the opposite of planning. Planning needs room, breathing room. As a person you will not be at your best all the time. Most of the time, how you feel and how your energy flows depends on a lot of things you can’t control. Cramming your days as full as possible leaves more room for external factors sucking your attention and energy away.

The first step, set one new goal

There is a lot things that can be said for having multiple goals, but as we plan for the first time, in a new way, we forget we already have goals in our life. Maybe not goals defined as goals. But time is being consumed. You have your personal life, work, and maybe already a sport or other physical activity you do. All of these things already have a place in your diary and a rhythm to them.

So think of one new thing you want to master, be good at, improve your skills on. For me that is making music. Which always lingered in the distance and I defined it as a hobby, but never put in a consistent amount of time and work. Yet I loved doing it whenever I got around to it. So think about that one thing. Your passion as it is commonly defined.

Write this  down as your focus point for planning.

The second step, measure your real time consumption.

Keep a diary and measure how long every activity in your agenda really took versus how much you planned for it. And make notes on what kind of taks it was. Household shores are tasks you will have to do. And never plan enough time for. Also make notes of how all activities outside of the obligatory ones contribute to your new goal. Be honest.

You don’t plan the binging of this new series on Netflix or any other subscription thing. Note the hours, also make note of how many hours you spent on social media not doing anything towards your goal.

Make detailed notes, how you feel, if you where happy at the end of the day, how energized you felt at the beginning and at the end. Do all this for 2 weeks.

The third step, deleting activities and compressing time slots.

Now its time to start deleting all those excess activities and limit time spent on things, its ok to wind down with social media, watch some tv at the end of the day. But limit the hours you put into those things.

Household shores need doing, get the notes out and see if you planned these realistically or did they consume more time ? Allocate time appropriatly.
Also, plan ahead, do the groceries with a list you made earlier, plan making the list. And so on.

Delete any activities that drifted you away from your new goal, and are not absolutely necessary. Combining these 3 should make room for spending at least a couple of hours on the new goal. Make sure you plan these new activities at least 3 times a week, in order to get that all important rhythm.

Last but not least, plan leisure time. Grab that book, watch that movie, go hang out with friends, do date night , do nothing. Leave room for doing nothing. Plan rest! Really resting is very important, just sitting or lying down. Doesn’t have to take long.

Plan days or longer with no plans at all, play in those days. Do whatever you feel like. Be a kid again. This is a great way for experimenting without limits and ingraining new paths of thinking into your subconsciousness.

Make sure rest and recovery are done in between the ‘harder’ activities that take up a lot of energy. All tasks with a high level of concentration can only be done for so many hours a day. Science has it marked down to four a day, if you are practiced. I will do a separate blog on focussed work. But don’t overdo it on complicated tasks. Especially in the beginning.

The finish

So we now know what we want to achieve. We have the goal. We measured our activities.  We know the realities of executing all tasks in a week. We downsized on the amount of activities and limited our time we spend per activity.

We booked in time for rest and recharging. So what’s next, make a default planning for the week, set a fixed day for doing the planning for next week, lets say Saturday evening. Execute the planning, and keep a diary om the progress.

Next week I will dive into the structure of planning and how to build up a routine.

New avenues – Thinking about the music making proces & other topics

I have been documenting my album journey for the past months. In a weekly format discussing the ups & downs of my attempts in producing an album. As I felt I written all about it I put an end to that series.

But I enjoy rambling about the creative proces a lot, as I do on other topics. I haven’t decided on a format yet, other than the weekly occurrence. I will just let my mind wonder around and see what topic springs to mind.

I am thinking about creative processes for some time now and I found them in almost everything I do, making music, writing software, researching things, cooking. All these things have a few things in common. On the surface its all about the end result, a program has too work, a song finished and a meal eaten. But when you look a little closer, it has everything to do with creativity as well, balancing the ingredients into something beautiful.

Most of these processes are defining the boundaries of the project, or problem you want too solve, searching for the right ingredients and make them work together. And a lot of attempts fail. Is that a bad thing ?

Failure is learning, as with anything you learn by doing. In a society were only succes gets shared it might seem that only talent is needed and the rest is inspiration. And then as some sort of magical cocktail the end result is there.

I know that this is not the case, I have made countless mistakes in my coding, investing, running and musical adventures. The only failure is quitting.

This is not just some bolstered never quit anything mantra. Sometimes things are not meant to be, a chosen field just doesn’t fit, and giving those up for thing better suiting is a smart thing to do. But if its something you really feel you want too achieve just keep going. Because after the initial joy and energy boost of a new endeavor, the energy levels drop whenever things get hard. The results are not what you envisioned, the problem seems unsolvable and so on.

Remember that the passion and the inspiration are the beginning and the end of a circle the rest of the circle is hard work and showing up. Next week I will go into the showing up part and how to create habits that benefit your progress.

The music journey – Making an album (week 29,30) the final report

Running behind is never fun, and whilst it has been fun keeping tabs om my ambitious plan on making an album this will be my last post in this form. I think I have written all there is about my ups & downs learning to use my musical equipment and subsequently produce an album. Which was a bit too ambitious in hindsight. The project will go on and one day the album will be finished.

But as I have said before, aiming high will get you places you don’t get too otherwise. And this is true. The end result is not here yet, but the work ethic & proces is. And moreover its a sustainable rhythm. I keep having problems some weeks with my cognitive energy and imbalance. That’s something I have to deal with on a daily basis no matter what I do.

It has been annoying at times, but this project gave me another thing keeping me busy for the long term, hopefully a lifetime. However fun hobby’s are, molding those hobby’s into projects makes them way more valuable. In experience, in learning and in focus. Hard things are enjoyable. And you can have fun doing it.

So I have 2 modes at the moment, working on my projects, and leisure time. The first category consist of hobby’s molded into projects, whether it be in music, sports or other ventures. The second consists of walking about, reading books , casual listening, visiting people & places.

That distinction makes it easier to plan, and get ideas out. It takes the work out of work and the procrastination out of the hobby’s. It might not work for everyone, but I am sure that if you find a few things in life you love doing, doing it with a bit more focus and working towards goals it’s will be indefinitely more rewarding.

In other words, you will never work a day in the rest of your life. This whole process has given me the insight in what I can do, aspire to, and dream about. It has set the stage for continuous work on my own terms and on my own pace.

In a nutshell this is what I learned to do, and these steps will help anyone wanting to get a hobby or any other pasion project further. So here is a list.

    • Plan your time consistently.
    • Plan 3 or more sessions a week , at a minimin 3.
    • Don’t overdo it in hours , you can only work with a high focus for so long.
    • Write down all ideas. Take 3 at a time for further development.
    • Divide sessions into playtime, learning, and finishing work.
    • Aim high , you might not make it to the perceived goals, but you get further with it then if you aim for easily achievable goals.
    • Always focus on the next step, don’t make the steps too big (that creates frustration in case of the lack of succes).
    • Trust the proces and more importantly yourself.
    • Be strikt not hard on yourself.
    • Yes, showing up (consistently) is half the work.
    • Take breaks and celebrate the little victories.
    • Have fun, and focus.
    • Keep a diary, it will help put things into perspective.
    • And last but not least, record everything.

Just some things I learned, lot’s of them are obvious, the most important thing is keep working at your craft, build knowledge, make it a habit. It will not seem like much progress at first. But it all adds up.

This was it for this series. I will continue writing music related blogs on a weekly basis and will go deeper into workflow, techniques, and time managent in future episodes. I am still figuring out the form factor but I will get started right away.

Thanks for reading so far and see you soon!

The music journey – Making an album (week 28)

I am running behind on my blogs, didn’t have time too scribble about week 28, due to other activities, mostly out of the house. Week 28 has been a week with lots of difficulty showing up. Starting any activities regarding my music ambitions was very hard.

I really value the rhythm I have developed and letting go of that rhythm is hard. It’s the same feeling I get when I can’t run. And that’s not even factoring in the positive effects both have on my wellbeing.

Yet this week has been all about having a hard time getting started with any of the activities I can normally swap between depending on my energy levels. And when I got started I had to give it up pretty fast.

I know its a case of falling down and getting up again, this week however was mostly falling down.

I will write about the previous week at the end of this week, making sure I get some of my Rhythm back.