Have to quote so I don’t break any rules as you know I am a good boy
[quote]The Suck Factor
I was talking to an artist I met the other day & was intrigued that he was not only getting by with his art, but that he was living a pretty good life from it. Most of what he makes sells out pretty fast, and it’s not like he lives in a big city, so I was impressed. Naturally, I had to investigate what made him tick & what separated him from all the starving artists.
I already had learned that he was very good at what he did so I figured that he obviously was born with quite a gift.
well… yes & no…
He definitely had a gift, but it wasn’t as an artist. A least not from the start. His gift had more to do with his ability to plan for what most artists would consider red flags for any artistic pursuit. Sucking.
Where most people would try something once & fail, try again maybe a year or 2 later, failed again, then give up, he didn’t look at things the same way. His art of choice was ceramics, something I tried once or twice and gave up (anyone need an ashtray?). What really surprised me is the story he told me & how he viewed his experience. It’s not the way most of us approach things or define the experience at all.
Apparently, this artist was far from naturally gifted at ceramics. I guess he started off as a hell of an ashtray sculptor himself, but he came from a physics background & instead of feeling like a failure, he looked at his artistic venture in a more scientific way. If one approach didn’t work, he would take note and try again slowly improving his technique. Sometimes it would take 10 or 20 tries just to figure out where the issue in the process was. It seemed that in his mind, he already knew he would nail it given enough time. Keep in mind that he wasn’t even thinking yet about selling or even showing his work. He was still getting the process down.
After about 1000 attempts he was prepared to show his work & people bought it up right away. Some things obviously sold better than others. There was also pricing to keep in mind. He didn’t want a $20 piece to devalue his $500 pieces but he knew he needed both to make a good living. He didn’t really have an artistic conflict about one thing selling better than another because he simply enjoyed the process of creating, not necessarily the specific piece. He knew that his art was a job, a job he could love, but a job nonetheless.
This really hit me hard and made me take a good look at my creative beliefs, my work ethic & my definition of failure & success. Was I willing to try something 10 times? 100? 1000 times? until I had mastered my creative art? If I am being honest, I’d have to say no & the reason for that is that I was defining failure as a certain number of times I don’t succeed. Sound familiar?
Remember, there is a huge difference between the art you make and the art you share. Don’t let the art you are making now deter you. If your goal is to be great at something, plan for a lot of sucking & missing the mark. Try not to let it get you down.
Remember that many people have to go to college for 4-8 years before they are prepared to do what they do well. Can you imagine someone judging their architecture skills on what they were about to accomplish & understand after a week of schooling? So why then would we judge ourselves on our art or music before we put in the proper amount of time? From that point of view it sounds a bit silly doesn’t it?
Now once you become a “natural” at one aspect of music, don’t think you weren’t meant to explore another style just because your work is not nearly up to par with the style you excel at. How about making 100 attempts at it before you judge?
I can give you a perfect example for myself in how I will use this new process. I am not great with many soft synths. My strengths would be Ableton’s Operator, Subtractor (reason), and TAL’s Juno 106 clone. Most soft synths I just poke around on the presets, tweak the knobs I understand & then use EQ, Filter & fx to get an interesting sound. If I don’t get the sound I’m looking for, I go back to the familiar. This, I must admit, slows me down & limits my options.
You could argue that less options is a good thing & I would strongly agree, however I believe that too many options mainly becomes a problem if you are not already skilled or familiar with the tools you are using. For example, you can’t have too many words in your vocabulary unless you have no idea what the words mean & how to use them in a conversation.
What I’ll have to do to get better at more synths is put the breaks on making songs & take a week (or a month) on 1 new soft synth until I can consider myself proficient at it. Then I can add it as another option. I predict that doing this process a couple times will make the process go a bit faster each time as I find similarities and common themes among different tools.
What is it that you can apply this to?
What is it that you think you are a failure at?
Do you think you will still be a failure after 100 or more attempts?
Are you willing to let go of instant gratification to allow yourself to improve at whatever pace is necessary?
If the art you make doesn’t satisfy you, pat yourself on the back for the improvements you made since your last attempt & then refocus on perfecting your weaknesses in your next attempt. When you attempt something new, set aside some time for the “suck factor”. Maybe that’s why they call it suck-cess
[quote]P-Shot (04/10/2011)[hr]The way I look at it is like this: if u want something bad enough, the only way u won’t get it is if u quit. Therefore, never give up.[/quote]
This is the exact same approach that my brother & I take towards writing music.
This all goes back to the 10,000 hrs it takes to be a pro at something. You could relate this back to his 100 times of doing ceramics before trying to sell something to somebody… call it writing 100 songs or spending 10,000 hrs in ableton… all the same thing, but I prefer hours because as the poster mentioned at the end… sometimes he curbs song writing for Sound Design & learning synths. I’d also add mixing + mastering into the fold as well… because you can spend loads of time practicing that as well. Which when you encompass it all… takes a h3ll of a lot of time to get good at and understand.
My whole point in this post is that this is spot on assessment on how to improve yourself as an artist. Take the mindset & attitude that pretty much everything that you do sucks… even if you know it doesnt. The great artists are never satisfied with their work. Wayyyyy too often now-a-days you see producers that get so excited over the fact that they are making music… that they actually believe their own hype that its any good. I don’t care what anybody says… nobody thats been doing productions for 3 months is any good… and if they claim they learned it all in 6 months… then somebody sat there and told them insider production secrets to make the process go faster… and even then they are full of crap.
First and foremost… I make music for myself. So does my brother. We love to make music. We love to play. I don’t do it to be cool, make money or get laid… We do it because we love it. Between the both of us we have almost a full length double CD album of original tracks… But we havnt released anything and we barely post up tracks to our soundcloud… Because we make music for ourselves… We only care about making great music with that pro quality sound. Because in the end that is all that matters to us. Make awesome music that we can enjoy. Hopefully others will 2.
This is where the dip comes in. You get better at writing, sound design, mixing + mastering with every song. And the progress is exponential. Each track is not marginally better, but exponentially better from the last one. It’s this realization that has also kept us from releasing anything. We’ve had offers now from a couple smaller labels for some of our music… but we turned them down. Because getting signed is not what matters to us. Quality music is… and people forget that everything is digitally cataloged today with beatport and online stores… That track that you rushed to get done and sent to every label on the planet and then signed with nobody… Is not gunna get you famous… In fact… in a year or 2 when you are at a much greater skill level… your going to look back on it and wish that you hadn’t done that.
I’ll leave you with this… to end my rant.
“It’s doing things not for fame, success or money, but enjoying the journey rather than the goal.”
In addition to the original post, I must say “Finally! Someone who gets it…”
J
[quote]UnitedVision (04/10/2011)[hr]This is the exact same approach that my brother & I take towards writing music.
This all goes back to the 10,000 hrs it takes to be a pro at something. You could relate this back to his 100 times of doing ceramics before trying to sell something to somebody… call it writing 100 songs or spending 10,000 hrs in ableton… all the same thing, but I prefer hours because as the poster mentioned at the end… sometimes he curbs song writing for Sound Design & learning synths. I’d also add mixing + mastering into the fold as well… because you can spend loads of time practicing that as well. Which when you encompass it all… takes a h3ll of a lot of time to get good at and understand.
My whole point in this post is that this is spot on assessment on how to improve yourself as an artist. Take the mindset & attitude that pretty much everything that you do sucks… even if you know it doesnt. The great artists are never satisfied with their work. Wayyyyy too often now-a-days you see producers that get so excited over the fact that they are making music… that they actually believe their own hype that its any good. I don’t care what anybody says… nobody thats been doing productions for 3 months is any good… and if they claim they learned it all in 6 months… then somebody sat there and told them insider production secrets to make the process go faster… and even then they are full of crap.
First and foremost… I make music for myself. So does my brother. We love to make music. We love to play. I don’t do it to be cool, make money or get laid… We do it because we love it. Between the both of us we have almost a full length double CD album of original tracks… But we havnt released anything and we barely post up tracks to our soundcloud… Because we make music for ourselves… We only care about making great music with that pro quality sound. Because in the end that is all that matters to us. Make awesome music that we can enjoy. Hopefully others will 2.
This is where the dip comes in. You get better at writing, sound design, mixing + mastering with every song. And the progress is exponential. Each track is not marginally better, but exponentially better from the last one. It’s this realization that has also kept us from releasing anything. We’ve had offers now from a couple smaller labels for some of our music… but we turned them down. Because getting signed is not what matters to us. Quality music is… and people forget that everything is digitally cataloged today with beatport and online stores… That track that you rushed to get done and sent to every label on the planet and then signed with nobody… Is not gunna get you famous… In fact… in a year or 2 when you are at a much greater skill level… your going to look back on it and wish that you hadn’t done that.
I’ll leave you with this… to end my rant.
“It’s doing things not for fame, success or money, but enjoying the journey rather than the goal.”
i found that article really good it changed the way i’ve been thinking about stuff tbh i suck and know it lol although quiting is not a option i’m resolved to chipping away at it till it comes good which can be disheartening at the best of times lol
reading that sort of made me look on what i’ve been doing in a different light
[quote]chris17 (09/10/2011)[hr]i found that article really good it changed the way i’ve been thinking about stuff tbh i suck and know it lol although quiting is not a option i’m resolved to chipping away at it till it comes good which can be disheartening at the best of times lol
reading that sort of made me look on what i’ve been doing in a different light ;)[/quote]
I don;t think you suck chris - some of the stuff i have listened too rocks
[quote]slender (09/10/2011)[hr][quote]chris17 (09/10/2011)[hr]i found that article really good it changed the way i’ve been thinking about stuff tbh i suck and know it lol although quiting is not a option i’m resolved to chipping away at it till it comes good which can be disheartening at the best of times lol
reading that sort of made me look on what i’ve been doing in a different light ;)[/quote]
I don;t think you suck chris - some of the stuff i have listened too rocks[/quote]
cheers dude i’ve never actually finished a track though i know people say you should even if it sucks just for experience but i think i’m probally to critical of myself and get to a certain point everytime and the lack of knowledge on how to achieve my ideas kicks in and i bin it lol
been at it nearly two years now and although i have quite a bit of knowledge on how to do stuff and get certain sounds nothing seems to sound right with me when i put it into practise …
I think its essential to finish tracks even if they suck… It can be really motivational to listen to stuff youve done 3-6-8 months ago and see how you have progressed.
Even if finishing it means copying a loop out for 6 mins and exporting it.
you can get so involved in whats not right that you dont learn what is right.
Definitely agree with this one. I think its just a matter of time before any individual that is trying to improve their skills or crafts realizes that all he needs is time (and lots of it). It’s motivating to see other people share this experience, since I’ve been pondering a lot on this subject for some time now. It is so true that your tracks only get better with time. If I look back at the stuff I was doing 6 months ago there is an abysmal gap between the quality of that and my newer productions.
At the same time, I do feel that hiding in your basement with your tracks until you get them where you want might not be the best idea. All of us need some sort of motivation to keep that spark going. Undoubtedly, social recognition is one of the things that drives us the hardest. I’m not taking about thousands of fans glorifying your tracks as if you were an all mighty deity sparkling waves of exhilarating sound everywhere you go. No. I’m taking about that comment that somebody you might look up to randomly posts on you soundcloud one day. Or that response you might get from your best friend when you show him your newest track and he goes: “Wow dude, you do that?”.
I believe that no matter at what level you are you should still open some of your art to the public. If you are humble about it, most people will encourage you to keep going. Encouragement that might give you that extra boost to go back to the studio and spend the next 12 hours trying to figure out how to make that stupid bass sound less like a wet noodle and more like the roaring engine of a Harley Davidson.
[quote]phil johnston (10/10/2011)[hr]I think its essential to finish tracks even if they suck… It can be really motivational to listen to stuff youve done 3-6-8 months ago and see how you have progressed.
Even if finishing it means copying a loop out for 6 mins and exporting it.
you can get so involved in whats not right that you dont learn what is right.[/quote]
[quote]Masseve (10/10/2011)[hr]Definitely agree with this one. I think its just a matter of time before any individual that is trying to improve their skills or crafts realizes that all he needs is time (and lots of it). It’s motivating to see other people share this experience, since I’ve been pondering a lot on this subject for some time now. It is so true that your tracks only get better with time. If I look back at the stuff I was doing 6 months ago there is an abysmal gap between the quality of that and my newer productions.
At the same time, I do feel that hiding in your basement with your tracks until you get them where you want might not be the best idea. All of us need some sort of motivation to keep that spark going. Undoubtedly, social recognition is one of the things that drives us the hardest. I’m not taking about thousands of fans glorifying your tracks as if you were an all mighty deity sparkling waves of exhilarating sound everywhere you go. No. I’m taking about that comment that somebody you might look up to randomly posts on you soundcloud one day. Or that response you might get from your best friend when you show him your newest track and he goes: “Wow dude, you did that?”.
I believe that no matter at what level you are you should still open some of your art to the public. If you are humble about it, most people will encourage you to keep going. Encouragement that might give you that extra boost to go back to the studio and spend the next 12 hours trying to figure out how to make that stupid bass sound less like a wet noodle and more like the roaring engine of a Harley Davidson.[/quote]
will put this into action and actually finish the next tune i start no matter how crap i think it is lol
quite a simple thread but i have actually got a lot from it theres some good advice here:)
Well said lads! Remember the law of attraction, if you sit around all day believing - and reconfirming to yourself - in your head that you can’t finish a track, guess what will happen… you won’t finish a track.
The BEST way to help this is by literally getting out of session view if you’re on Ableton, even if you only have a loop at the moment, throw it into arrangement, put it alongside a track that you like to use as an arrangement guide, then stretch the loop out the same length, take out the areas where the breaks are and just fill in the gaps, start to build from there.
It’s SO much easier to get new ideas down when you’re in the arrangement process, I too understand how easy it is getting ‘stuck in the loop’ on session view and never progressing from that. I literally have to force myself sometimes.
[quote]Roben (13/10/2011)[hr]Well said lads! Remember the law of attraction, if you sit around all day believing - and reconfirming to yourself - in your head that you can’t finish a track, guess what will happen… you won’t finish a track.
The BEST way to help this is by literally getting out of session view if you’re on Ableton, even if you only have a loop at the moment, throw it into arrangement, put it alongside a track that you like to use as an arrangement guide, then stretch the loop out the same length, take out the areas where the breaks are and just fill in the gaps, start to build from there.
It’s SO much easier to get new ideas down when you’re in the arrangement process, I too understand how easy it is getting ‘stuck in the loop’ on session view and never progressing from that. I literally have to force myself sometimes.
Don’t get disheartened Chris :)[/quote]
its not arrangement i usually struggle with but i think thats a really cool tip about streching out a loop and cutting out the breaks etc and fill in the gaps
