creative proces – Cornerman

Creative space almost finished

Almost done, a few minor and one major thing still needs to be finished but I can start working on decorating the space and making sure I have a nice workflow. I am taking my time as this is something that needs some careful thinking and experimenting.

I am collecting some nice inspirational pictures from the internet and making a mood board. It’s also great to watch architecture, studio and gallery videos on Youtube fore some insight into how other people deal with space and creativity.

I will however move my desk and setup some basic workstation as soon as possible. So I can start working in the space. This will help me with deciding what I want to do with the space.

Lot’s to do but I am in no particular hurry. On the music side of things I am working on learning Max MSP and designing my output channels. Like band camp, an addition to this website for sharing my music and setting up a Git for the sharing of some of my musical coding and other things people might be able to learn from.

I am also thinking on starting a Patreon page for something completely different, more on that in the future. For now I have plenty of work to do and this will keep me busy.

Building things is always fun, that’s why making music, art & code is at the hart of what I love to do. It just needs a bit more focus. Which I sometimes lack. In other areas I am very focused but with music, art and in some ways code I miss the edge. Mostly because of a lack of energy. Luckily I have writing which helps me gather my thoughts and have a fixes moment to reflect. Not just on this page, but I keep a diary as well.

This brings me back to another important thing in my life, notebooks. I love writing down ideas so I always carry a notebook. I find writing ingrains my thinking much more than when I type it into a note on my phone. Which I still do a lot as well, but I have to make sure I come back to them later.

With my notebooks I don’t have that problem, I also re write notes into notebooks I keep and make sure I reorganize my thinking and add to my ideas. It’s a big part of my creative process. It’s also very relaxing. I find that taking time to do things right gives me better results.

Now I have to go and start building my desk 😉 See you all next week.

Research, into everything, fueling the creative process

Past week has not seen any musical activity, apart from some patches without sound. As I needed a recovery week after a pretty busy week traveling, visiting cities and social interaction. Which always takes a toll on my cognitive energy levels. That is just how it works when you have permanent brain damage.

It’s all worth it, being among friends, family and visiting cool places and soaking in art. All the while trying and stretching my limits a bit. That part of the equation did not go as planned. So this week I had to dial down on some activities like making music in order to recover as quickly as possible.

One of the things I try not to do, is break the chain. Or in other words, I need to stay active in my music making process or creative process on a regular basis. As I have mentioned before, there is no point in going all out for a couple of weeks and then not do anything again for months. That is not how you build habits and get better at anything.

So I have devised a few other activities which I can do and are related to making music and or the creative process in general. One of the things is research.

Applying research to the creative process

What do I mean by research? Well I don’t mean it in the scientific sense. But rather finding books, gear, interesting topics that can spark ideas. This week I have been thinking about design in a broad sense. Architecture, beautifully written code, visuals, and so on.

So I just started out writing some search options, and see where I end up. I love all sorts of mathematical things, most of them go way above my comprehension but there is something beautiful about it. While searching I stumbled upon the book, The nature of code , interesting and added it to my reading list.

While looking around the internet for visuals I found Generative Art. Going further I got into the wormhole of visuals and coding I reconnected with a long term interest in live coding of music, among others there is the coding language Tidal Cycles. Which I watched some video’s on.

Another interesting book on music & coding is Fundamentals of Music Processing.

What do I do with this?

So while we all browse the internet on a daily basis and find cool stuff, it’s hard to do and try everything we see, as there is simply too much. I always get inspired by simple seeing all the stuff people do with all the things out there. And even by just going tru the index of a book I get triggered for new ideas which I can apply to my own set of tools.

It always sparks an idea and an approach which I haven’t thought of or something I can try with my own setup.

I am in no way inclined to start learning something totally new like live coding when I am just getting my head around Max MSP for example. But in all these resources there are pathways you can apply to your own creative process or way of thinking about your workflow. And the most important thing. It keeps my process going even if I don’t have the energy to work on the ‘core’ which is making music.

A new week, learning more Max MSP, Art.

This week I have been learning about Max MSP, especially how to record the audio into Ableton, and work on finishing tracks from within Ableton. This was my small task this week, get sound into Ableton from Max MSP. Using Ableton as a recorder and being able to set some things up within Ableton, like EQ, compression and other bits. I could have just recorded directly onto Harddisk from within Max, but my future system is one where I would like to include Ableton.

The goal of the patch. Record audio from Max into Ableton, 1 track for now but if one works I can easily extend it into 4 or 8, or any other number.

For sound generation I am building a noise source into a simple reverb and a distortion, nothing fancy but just a fun little thing to produce sounds. These are not finished yet, I am miles away from being fluent in Max. It’s really fun however and a never-ending flurry of ideas pops up when coding in Max.

Other things this week, mostly art.

Most of the week I have been absorbing art and traveling, reading books and taking notes. I went to the Kunstmuseum in The Hague, went to see the exhibition “True Colors”, part of the collection of Akzo Nobel, a chemical company which has a department collecting art. A lot of companies do this, as part of their social responsibility programs and to brighten up offices. Luckily we now get to see some of it.

Most of it is modern art and there were a lot of cool pieces on display, recommended. This was after last weekends visit to the NRW-forum in Dusseldorf for die Grosse. Also modern art.

The kunstmuseum is pretty large and they have a lot of Mondriaan as well and they had the exhibition about Mondriaan & de Stijl, the latter being a group of artists, architects and others forming a loosely formed collective discussing the modern arts and writing essays on it, making art and making sure it was published. As per usual the women in the group and close to the group where the driving forces behind the succes. Great to see that they get to be more in the spotlight, well deserved and way too late at the same time.

Everything I have seen lately has led to a large set of ideas, and I just love being in musea, it’s quiet, most of the times, especially during the week. It’s nicely lit. There is beautiful art. What more can you wish for. Not much. A great week all round. Not much music making, but being in the creative process in other ways.

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.