thinking – Cornerman

Simple creative tasks, consistent.

Last week In talked about simplifying my setup and designing a proces to be more consistent. This article is more about the proces and why it works. While I am learning to use my music gear I have also set some small tasks to keep things interesting and work on finishing stuff. I do well when I set goals for myself. My biggest flaw in setting these goals in making them way too big. Where my goals far outstripped my skillset.

So I have decided to simplify my goals, or rather just make tasks out of them. so for each week I have set the following goals. With my simple set-up, I will try and finish these tasks every week. You can’t really call the results tracks maybe, but I will try my best to keep it as interesting as possible. within the parameters I have set for myself.

The main goal is learning to be fluent with my simple setup and be able to work on ideas at a faster pace. Science shows that in order to keep yourself engaged the things you need to do to make progress is to have a difficulty sweet spot. If something is too easy, you will disengage. If it’s too hard, you will also disengage. It’s human nature. There is a side note to this, more on that later.

Creating habits is all about doing something consistently and keep doing it. To be better at making music, I need to be making music. Taking into account it should not be too easy or too hard my tasks should be just about doable.

So I will learn and keep having fun and feel excited. Everyone has big goals, but if it’s way too hard we can’t form the habits necessary for achieving them. Last week an already shared some idea around a set of steps to achieve this.

Here is my slightly refined taks list.

1. Create a patch on my small eurorack setup
2. Record loops while playing the patch
3. Take a maximum of 8 loops in the Ableton template.
4. Arrange and finish the recordings.
5. Publish the results.

By sharing them I have also set a nice little reminder for myself to publish things consistently, so people can give me feedback and get over my fear of sharing my musical experiments.

The side note is that every process has boring parts that are necessary to get better. So this means we also need some tolerance for boredom. So if something gets boring at any stage, we tend to go and look for something exciting and new.

The key difference in being successful in getting better at your skill and creating habits is that you embrace the boredom which ultimately creeps into everything. Some stuff just needs doing. No matter what. It’s all part of the process. People who succeed in showing up when feeling bored, or tired or any state that doesn’t fill you with enthusiasm to go to work, people who still show up, succeed.

It’s a bit of a balancing act, creating habits and paving the way towards your goal and being able to consistently work on your goals. The mantra “Don’t break the chain” is a simple way to remind yourself to stick to the plan. If you don’t feel like doing music, go to the gym or any other task you planned. Just remind yourself and repeat this mantra a few times to yourself. It will help to reaffirm your commitment to the proces, and the habit you are developing and maintaining.

Last but not least, we also need to evaluate, learn and make things a bit harder again at some point. So we can work on improvement with some new challenges.

Consistency has helped me with achieving other goals in life, so now it’s time to make it work for my musical journey.

Quantity over quality

One of the things I doubt is the quality of my creative output. Whether it’s my writing, my pictures or my writing skills, I often have doubts about the quality of the work. Especially with my music, and the main reason I almost never share anything.

I really want to change this. I strive for perfection in everything and while pursuing perfection I often trow away ideas or keep tweaking to find it. For some reason I am more easy going in other areas, like writing. Probably because I feel I am somewhat better at it which makes it easier for me to share.

Society teaches us that everything must be ‘perfect’, what this ‘perfect’ is nobody tells you. And while striving for perfection a lot of good ideas are lost and the art of experimentation is lost.

Science teaches us something else. If you want to be good at something, you need to practice a lot. You increase your skills by doing and while doing you learn from your mistakes. By sharing your work you give others the opportunity to give feedback, which is another opportunity to learn.

In Japan it’s very normal to accept the beauty of imperfection, wabi-sabi, the acceptance and transience of imperfection. In art it’s often described as ‘imperfect beauty’ or ‘flawed beauty’ it emphasizes the process of making a piece of art resulting in an art piece that is ultimately incomplete.

We don’t have this in western cultures, which is a real shame. Our need for perfection puts the break on our output. Or as Voltaire said it “the best is the enemy of the good”. Things don’t have to be perfect. In life and especially in all forms of creative output perfection is a debatable concept.

So why do I struggle so much with sharing my music? I think it is because music is very valuable to me. I have so much great memories attached to music. and music has gotten me through some hard times that all my musical output seems pale in comparison, will it ever be good enough to evoke any emotion?

This sounds a bit heavy but that’s how I feel about it. I need to let this feeling go and start sharing my creations. Even if it’s just a loop or an unfinished piece of music. Striving for perfection is something I need to let go and focus on improving by making a lot of stuff. Quantity over quality, in order to improve my skills and let go of my fear of sharing. The quality will come over time.

Less is more

The larger the setup the more options I have. Which I absolutely love. However this also has a time implication, more of my limited time and energy will go into setting up and learning how to use it. I have tried to use a limited set of tools before which quickly escalated into much larger setups.

I am not very good in keeping a small setup and focussing on just that setup. Which is a bit weird as my discipline is pretty good. I can keep to my planning. I suppose this is because I love my toys. I am like a little kid in a toy store which is allowed to play with anything. And this does not yield any result. Just a lot of unfinished sketches.

So this time I absolutely need to keep my setup small and learn it inside out. which will be my focus the coming month. I keep my timelines a bit wider as last time I got frustrated with not achieving my goals. In retrospect I had too many things I wanted to get done in too little time.

This time that has to change. There is a lot to do which will take time. That’s just how it is.

The music journey – Making an album (week 15)

The move to a minimal setup continuous, spend this week with the Moog Mother-32 and the Digitakt. Haven’t recorded anything remotely resembling a song but have been learning these 2 machines a bit better. It’s really funny how my initial idea of minimal was way to big. And now this setup has defined minimal for me again.

In a related way I have started looking at the album project. Which will remain intact. But lacked a sufficient foundation in skills. Coincidently I have been setting up a project at work which needed a solid dive back into the books, mainly the theories on design. From the broader aspect of design down, via design principles down to the day to day design decisions we all need to make.

In order to get that project going I need to build a basic model of all functions in that system, in such a way that it runs from the start. So a lot of effort is going into making the framework and the proces design. The detail will fill itself in later.

This got me thinking on my own proces in making this album, It lacks the correct framework, the basic design idea & concept are there but the music making framework isn’t working yet. I can’t get ideas out of my head fast enough. Especially considering the limited time I can spent with full cognitive functions on making music.

So the focus needs to be on getting to know the tools a lot better and get it to such a level I can get ideas out very fast. So that’s going to be the goal for the next few weeks (al least).

Max MSP project – Open source and the learning curve.

For ages I have MAX/MSP by Cycling 74 installed om my machine and from time to time I am completely obsessed with the endless possibilities which exists in this space. For the ones not familiar with Max, it’s a developing tool for creating anything relating to producing music and integrating visuals. From synthesizers to art installation stuff. And everything in between.

And that’s exactly where my problem manifests itself, it’s just too much. However small I begin, I always get lost. Lost in my own brain to be more exact. And then I stop with pursuing and learning. I have not been able to let it go or start in a direction to try and really push it.

So the idea behind this series is to get more grip on my own learning proces and share everything I learn. I will post it on this blog and I will put stuff in a , yet to put up, GitHub page.

The ultimate goal is to build an interactive looper for live use. A looper which takes the input from my Eurorack synthesizer and takes that input and loops it. Which I can then further manipulate. I will share all my progress (or lack of) , and will share all my notes, first designs and the road when building the patch itself. And ultimately also the music that comes out of the proces.

That’s the main goal , every time I test the patch a series of recordings emerge. I will not share all of them, just the ones at the end of each stage. And that I think are worthwhile sharing.

This might result is a nice collection of useful notes on my own personal learning method, a nice max patch and enough music to compile an album with.

A big project indeed, but by working this way I hope to get into a rhythm and work on it more consistent. On all of it, learning, music and sharing.

Cooperation , beautiful, simple and necessary

Nowadays, and for some time now , your succes is portrait as being of ones own doing. Whether it be work , study, personal life, everything is achieved by the individual. You work hard therefore it’s your succes, and we don’t need anyone else to be successful. This misconception is widespread.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, we can achieve nothing without our fellow man. Everything stands or falls with cooperation in society as a whole. Nothing is achieved as an individual. Yet a lot of people seem to think so. But nothing is just the fruit of ones own labour. It ‘s always a collaborate effort.

You didn’t just study hard for example, somebody teached there , someone cleaned there, someone thought long and hard about the curriculum. Somehow nowadays al these efforts seem to get lost in the narrative. Let’s call them the invisibles of the individual succes. Which then by default is not an individual succes. But a collaborate effort.

This type of thinking comes in all shapes and sizes. Got sick and didn’t fully recover ? You should have worked harder, studying went sideways, you should have worked harder. Missed out on buying a house, worked harder and saved more. And so on. But most of these failures are because of the lack of common goals as a society.

A lot of people think this way because they made it and worked hard , you see I did it, so can you. But in the meantime all the infrastructure that makes the individual thrive has budgets cut and or left to the marketplace. From healthcare , education to the job market , everything had to be flexible and cost effective. With growing uncertainty and loss of function.

Simple example , too long in a flexible job contract and you miss out on the opportunity to buy a house. But yet you did everything ‘right’, worked hard and saved harder. Yet there are no more hours in a day and the paychecks keep getting smaller , thanks too inflation. Lot’s more examples out there , but what pains me most is the beauty that’s in working together is dismissed so easily. We get things done together, working on common goals for the common good. And you learn a lot from each other. Faster and more than as an individual. Everyone benefits.

So talk about your goals, ideas and other things you enjoy and find people to work with, who knows what might be the result, in the meantime we all learn. En start appreciating other peoples work as part of your succes.

Mindset – How to get things done.

Mindset, how to get things done. Whatever that may be! Well I have done a lot of experiments with what works for me and what I should improve when I want to get stuff done. It consist of a few key ingredients. First and foremost is planning. Have a goal , break it down into steps and plan the time, resources and order and start stepping.

Well that’s easy. No it’s very hard. When I first started using weekly planning sheets it was out of sheer necessity because I would otherwise forget everything. It was in place for me to get by on a day to day bases.

Then after a lot of trial and error I got my day to day in order and got myself thinking what do I want challenge myself with. And make a plan. Then I started falling into some traps. First and foremost I planned way too much , too much tasks and too much goals.

Which brings me to ‘rule’ rather recommendation number 2. Plan too little. There will always be something that takes up more time or an unplanned event will destroy your carefully set to do list.

Have no more than 1 great goal at any time in 3 categories. Max, why ? Well otherwise it will get muddy and stuff starts drifting. You can only focus on so much. For example , set a work or learning related goal, one physical fitness and one personal life goal. Learn how to program , run a 10K race and plan a trip. Or whatever you want. There will be lots of other stuff needs doing besides those goals.

It’s also divided into 3 categories for a reason, one is demanding on the brain, one on the body. You can keep those two nicely balanced , your brain needs time to digest newly learned stuff and exercise helps a lot (as does sleep) , the third must be less of a braindrain and more in the way of relaxing.

You have only about 4 hours worth of intens brain work a day anyway. If you trained yourself right.

So keep to do lists small, and allow yourself much needed rest in between. Recovery is key. Only make new to to lists when old ones are fully done. Don’t put notes and reminders for future tasks on existing to do lists , it will distract.

Makes a nice bridge to the last tip for today, when doing work that needs a of your brain power , make sure you get rid of any distractions. Put away your phone, disconnect the internet, don’t open your mailbox. Make sure you fully focus on the task at hand. Make sure everyone knows you cannot be disturbed. Make sure you have a way of letting people know they cannot disturb you during those hours , only for emergencies. And let them know what an emergency looks like.

Make sure you don’t stretch yourself too much in those intensive brainpower consuming sessions. Set an alarm after an hour or two and take a real break. Jus eat something or enjoy a good coffee. Do not let your distractions in, no phone no email no internet. Just time for recovery. Limit the total amount of time to a max of 4 hours or so per day. Start with a half an hour and build from there. It’s hard focusing with such intensity.

I have made all the mistakes having way to many goals , too much on the to do list and every distraction possible at hand. It leads to frustration and anger because nothing gets done within the time frame you planned for it. Not even close. It’s not easy getting razorsharp focus. It needs a lot of training. The mindset isn’t just there the moment you decide it is. It needs training , consistency and rhythm to cement itself.

And for now , rule or recommendation 3, don’t be too hard on yourself. There will be days when everything goes easy , and there will be days, weeks even when nothing works. Just trust yourself and stick to it. You will get there and it will get easier to get your focus back. Make sure you evaluate your goals over time, is it still the right goal and does it need adjusting. Are the steps still the right ones. Have no fear of throwing goals in the bin if it’s not achievable for you. Just start a new one. I have trashed more than I finished. But made sure I learned from my mistakes. That’s why it’s important to evaluate.

And have fun, it’s not always fun, nor should it be. Some goals will be a necessity in order too get forward. But make sure you have fun along the way. And set fun goals, stuff that you know is fun from the beginning. And never give up on yourself and the process.

Zero

Back to zero, this lockdown for me is a forced rethink of what I need to do, or love to do. I have had a forced reset after my brain injury and after a few years I have a pretty solid base. And I got into a rhythm again. I sometimes forget to focus on the goals I have set after my return to the ‘real world’.

After adjusting to the lockdown and getting my head around it, I have spent some time going tru my notes and thoughts just after my revalidation. It was very much focussed around learning and getting some old ideas done. Mostly focussed around creativity and music. It’s has been hard getting started on those things for some reason. This part of my goals has been overshadowed by the day to day stuff I need to do. So I am now need to set some time for it.

This new crisis has also made me think we as a society need a reset, a bold start from scratch, back to zero.

It has also shown the fragility of our system and the need to rethink a large part of it. For me a lot needs to get back to zero. Start to rethink the whole idea of how we need to organize society and how we do things.

The focus on economic growth and keeping big business happy is long overdue. The metrics we use for calculating our output is one of the past. The cost of every crisis lands on the weakest shoulders. Most people haven’t really recovered from the financial crisis of 2008 and are now here. It might seem as if there was a recovery but most people just got back to a level of were they were in 2008.

The main problem is the inability for most people to get there financial situation more stable, workers rights have steadily been downgraded, the gig economy is not one that benefits most workers. And thus most people. Combining this with the every growing privatizing of healthcare , utilities and so on it’s a risk cocktail that has again landed on the same group of people.

The risk for society as a whole has gone up as well, the governments around the world have stepped in at an enormous cost for the future , all in a all in bet for quick recovery. Which might not happen.

So while this is all pretty gloomy it also gives us as a opportunity to force a few long overdue changes. The most important is the mindset about how we measure the wealth in our society. It needs to be a new mix of economic growth , health and happiness of the people and nature. A focus more on the quality of life and things rather than just things and masses of them.

It’s just a thought but these levels of leverage on financial , environmental and human risk our current system is very much unsustainable. Hopefully this new crisis will give way to forward thinking and real problem solving. I for one hope for the best.