Author: Carl

Too many hats, too little time

When you are singer, songwriter, producer, sound engineer and play all the parts there’s an awful lot of hats to wear. There’s a lot of tasks where you will be lacking. Jack of all trades, master at none. That’s ok. Yet, the real problem I think is when you need to be your A&R, label boss, manager and maybe even booking agent too.

You really are bound to fail, aren’t you. So, in some ways there is no reason to beat myself up for not being able to bring all my projects to completion. Very few in the history of recorded music would have been able to wear all those hats and get something done (while keeping a dayjob and being a present parent).

Most had a team to help them out, many had outside pressure that forced them to commit to deadlines etc.

In my case, I think the external pressure is what I’m lacking the most. When there’s a deadline, there’s no choice, you have to ship your work, finished or not. The other day I heard of some independent artist that booked mastering services to be done on specific dates and payed for it in advance. That way there was a deadline that meant losing money if he didn’t send his mixes over.

I’m not familiar with the play by George Bernhard Shaw, but I often think about the quote “‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Not the least, when it comes to all the different podcasts I keep listening too. Frankly, a lot of them are made by musicians that haven taken up some kind of teaching to free themselves from writer’s block by staying busy with something else.

And in a way, writing a blog entry here isn’t that different. Pondering some creative inability instead of writing a lyric.

Just as I wrote a beat/jam a day I think I need to give myself some lyric writing challenge. It’s really a bottleneck for me. A later challenge might be some every other day activity. Creating 15 jams a month with some recorded vocal.

Happy Midsummer, dear reader.

Letting go of opportunities

This morning I put my Critter & Guitari Organelle up for sale. It’s a really cool piece of kit brimful with possibilities. Especially the kind of happy accidents you can’t plan. In my head I have lots of ideas how I should put it to use, but I don’t get around to it often enough.

Having access to a variety of reasonably affordable boxes (we’re not talking Moog One here) – I’ve found it’s easy to become a jack of all trades. When you don’t use them often enough, everything becomes “mental work”, there are no reflexes allowing me to work fast and intuitively. My conclusion is that it makes more sense to focus attention to a few pieces, master them and get things done.

So, I’m letting go of all those ideas for experimentation. Just like in life there simply are too many paths to take. You can’t walk them all. And holding on to a piece of gear for some FOMO down the road doesn’t make sense. I actually wished I had more time to put it to use and really learn the rack-possibilities in Orac. For now, I don’t.

The essence of strategy is sacrifice. Goodbye Organelle – I hope you come to a good home.

Habits are delicate

Good habits are easy to start, harder to uphold. And once you settle with doing 95% of what planned, it’s likely to see those percentages plummeting. I’m just speaking for myself. But it’s interesting to see what happened when I decided to stop posting my jams.

I didn’t stop making them. But I stopped finishing them. And when I think about it, it’s really the finishing part I need to practise. Coming up with ideas is easy, finishing is hard. A half-finished song/jam is a daydream – forever open to possibilities. Finishing is committing, realizing something didn’t turn out great. Wrapping the box up for storage.

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Learnings from jamming

My daily jam-challenge is still ongoing. I make a little beat everyday, but since a few days back I have taken a break from posting them. Making the jams is great practise, I make new discoveries. But naturally it’s not in many people’s interest to look at someone else’s attempts, or push-ups.

I still plan to post them as proof 😉 – but I don’t really see the value of spamming someone’s RSS-feed with something half-assed that I’m throwing together just before midnight.

So far, I’m on my 27th day of daily jams. I’ll push through til 30, but from then on it makes more sense to putting in a bit more work in every piece. To break the stalemate I had found myself in, the challenge was the right thing.

The Op-1 and I had been on a hiatus. But being forced to come up with something every day it soon became the first tool to reach for. I don’t love everything about how it sounds, but I love how fast and playful it allows me to move forward. Ableton Live + Push could of course be just as fast and more powerful. But the great thing about the Op-1 is its limitations that forces you to make decisions and move on. There’s very little room for editing. It’s either keep or re-record.

Forcing myself to make something with no or little idea is interesting. In general it starts pretty uninspired, an-uphill creation. But pushing on, there’s always something unexpected that happens that makes me a bit excited.

Since starting to blog earlier this year it seems I’ve been trying different approaches. At first I wrote more about creative strategies, and lately about the nitty-gritty of music making in my jams. Neither one seems like the right subject for a blog. I’d rather engage in those discussion among peers, such as in the lines forum. I think/hope I can focus this blog on putting my music out in the world, rather than staying in the workshop.

I think I will try to turn it more towards lyrics. Towards feelings and thoughts, in contrast to the jams of the last few weeks that for good or bad have been pretty thoughtless.

June 2: Mon Monotron

The Korg Monotron is a funny creature. Small, so full of potential, yet a bit challenging if you want to create musical pieces that are in tune and keep a steady pitch. In that sense playing it is a bit like the trombone or a violin with floating boundaries between different notes.

Well, listening to Brian Funk’s podcast featuring Adam Rokhsar I got the tip of a free auto-tune plugin called Auburn Graillon 2 Live Voice Changer. And I figured it could be useful for the monotron.

So, all sounds in today’s jam comes from the Monotron, except a clap. While warping the bass note I made the terrific mistake to warp it to 6/8 (6/4?) instead of straight quarter notes. So, with the drums I got this triplet swinging shuffle that was totally unplanned. “honor thy mistake as a hidden intention”.