Why Quit What Works, JD?
As with us all at some point, I am in a terrible sleep pattern. Today, I woke up at 2:30 in the morning, which I chose to accept as a gift.
So I used this "gifted" time to really refocus my AM energy on something useful/musical, because I do realize that I'm not getting to a lot of stuff (thnx fugging phone/YouTube).
Having a daily blog and a huge catalog of relentlessly-released mediocre music out there is also part of the problem, keeping me from getting to a lot of real, better work.
(And following up on the SoundCloud catalog deletion, today I don't really know how I feel about it. But I know that it definitely needed to be done, and it's done, and there's nothing I can really do about it.)
Now, I will not abandon the blog. But I am trying to ratchet the music production down to one decent track a week. Combined with, as everyone else seems to talk about, really reducing the friction and getting into making music. Not farting around.
So for me, this means returning to a process that works for me.
And I can say that I tried it this morning and really did come up with something that's usable as a base for a real track; releasable sound too, not just demo-style.
Earlier this week—or last week, honestly—I wrote a song on acoustic guitar, the old standby, worked on it, and then tried to figure out what to do with it next.
So, thinking about the shortest line, I figured that the only way to get it recorded quickly and simply was Ableton in the clip view.
So I opened Ableton Note on my phone. I knew what the parts were going to be and pounded those out, uploaded that to the cloud, and then used my 6 o'clock music hour to go downstairs and get an arrangement cut-and-pasted in Ableton proper, which took about 30 seconds.
This is my fastest workflow. MPC is a close second, but man, this is fast.
Then I recorded bass and guitar quickly: a run-through with the acoustic, a run-through with the electric, and the trusty Ric bass.
And wow, did it really work.
Why do I drift away from this workflow? I know how tracks get done and get put together, and then I just abandon it all for some reason.
So I'm going to stop doing that under the banner of releasing music. Better music. Maybe even great music?
As I said yesterday, I've got a record coming out this Friday. It's not my best ever, but it's not without its charm. This artful record needed to get out so I could move on to the next thing.
Here's to not only sticking with tried-and-true things that actually work, but remembering them. And then—you know, using them—instead of abandoning them! (so dumb)