creative proces – Cornerman

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.

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.