Workflow – Cornerman

Focus & workflow review time.

I have been redesigning my workflow aimed towards gaining more focus. It’s been a while since I last reviewed my daily, weekly and monthly planning. I have a planning as this is important to maintain my energy over the long term.

As you might know I have braindamage which means I have limited cognitive energy. As does everyone else, mine just drops faster and is more unpredictable.

I can maintain energy in such a way I can more or less predict how good my energy levels will be in the next few days. I have a planning system where I track my energy and can see how I am doing.

It’s a pretty straight forward based points system, for example exercise adds one point, breakfast & morning tasks deduct one. And so on. I have done a few weeks of monitoring and taking notes when I was first in recovery, getting to know how much energy activities cost or how much they give energy, like a half hour power nap or a walk. All in all I can “spend” 28 to 30 points on any day, before the recovery takes to long to be able to “spend” the same amount the next day.

Exact science?

This is not an exact science, there are no guarantees I will be able to sustain this load when I follow my planning but the system gives me a fair chance it will. It’s all about probability really. If I just go hard, there is almost a 100 procent chance I will not be able to do much in the days after, if I follow the chances increase significantly, I have good streaks of several months.

The devil is in the detail, once I am experiencing such a good run I tend to get distracted and forget or ignore my planning, maybe not so much my planning, but the focus, as I recently found out when reviewing my planning after a period of rapid energy loss and bad recovery.

Problem of late, focus.

Once I am feeling good I will deviate from my planning, not so much in spending more hours but taking on more projects, ideas, interests. If I am less energetic I am able to focus on the things that matter the most. The most important project, the fun thing, the hard thing. Whatever it is.

If I have a period of more energy, I tend to lose the focus on the most important things, and start looking at other cool stuff to explore. Which in turn makes everything stall. And nothing, or almost nothing moves forward or gets done.

How do I keep my focus, and why do I lose it so easily?

Attention.

It’s all about directing my attention, which is all over the place on a good day. Which is fine. Your brain needs time to explore ideas and wander. In life goals, interests and priorities change as well. There is however a limit to where you can direct your energy, you can’t deliver your best work on all fronts all the time. You can’t learn to play the piano, learn a new language, build a house, exercise, and do the daily tasks at the some high level. At best, if you can even find the energy to do all of this. It will be mediocre or things take forever to finish.

Which is my problem, too many projects, tasks, activities. So the problem wasn’t the planning in itself. It was the lack of direction and selecting the things most important.

Aligning myself to the important things.

I needed to re-align myself with the things who I value the most. I like working on the most. I have older notes which show you can have a maximum of 3 main projects you can manage. Or activities you love to do is a better description as it doesn’t have to include your day job, but as it’s very convenient if you love your job, it’s nice if it fits. So your job is one, then you have your main interest. Let’s say learning how to play the piano. Or write a book, or rebuild your vintage motor cycle. These are all highly time consuming activities which require focus, consistency and effort.

That doesn’t mean they are fun all the time, it’s just the things you love to do.
So I needed to limit my “projects” again. Make sure they are the things I love to do, the things I really want to put energy and time into and make sure I do them consistently enough to move forward.

So there was no need to rebuild my planning, just select the projects and rethink the steps in these projects and align my activities towards these projects. When I am reading a book, the book should fall into one of the projects. When I have reserved a block of focused work, I am working on the selected projects. This sounds easy enough but if I don’t remind myself of the projects and goals, I tend to divert towards something else.

What has changed?

I didn’t change my planning, I did however added a daily moment of reminding myself of the projects I want to work on and not give myself any other option. And have a few notes in plain sight that remind me of the importance of these projects. Let’s see if it helps.

Another reminder.

If I have a period of higher energy levels it’s also important to not extend myself too much, I can do somewhat more, but I don’t want to overdo it. As it will inevitably lead toward a downward spiral. This is true for everyone. You can get consumed in projects and goals pretty fast, especially of they mean a lot to you personally and require a lot of time and effort. Remind yourself that rest & recovery is essential for being able to show up every day and have the highest chance of doing the work. It’s being consistent that is the most valuable in life, not sprinting a few weeks and than crashing. So be hard and kind to yourself, make sure you prioritize rest, recovery and downtime just as much as the work itself.

Enjoy the process, it might not be fun all the time, but the fun is also in the hard bits.

Building a dedicated creative space

Having a space for your creative adventures can be important in maintaining consistency in the process. This past week I have not been doing any actual music making, reading manuals or learning stuff. I have been cleaning out my attic so it can de build into a studio space. Or to more exact, a creative space. As music is not the only creative thing I like to do. Writing, coding & drawing being other creative outlets for me.

Construction will begin shortly and in the end this will be a space where I can put my musical instruments, and other stuff I use to work on my various projects.

Up until now the kitchen table was the place to be, which had a downside that after each session I had to clear everything again. And building stuff up before starting a session.

I can also create specific longer term setups for projects more easily in the new space. I have been thinking about the layout and various other things. But we will see where it ends when all the construction is finished.

Why I need a dedicated space

Lot’s of people can work anywhere. Whether it be on the sofa, at the kitchen table or in any coffee shop in the neighborhood, that is great, but not me.

I need a space where I can go to and everything is available, plugged in and ready to go. It’s easier to start, take breaks and finish things for me that way. It’s also a space which has a lot of stuff in it which gets and keeps me inspired. Like books, art, music and miscellaneous bits.

It also save me the energy I now need to take a few pieces of kit, set it up, have a session and tear it down again. Even just sitting in a custom space and thinking about projects, solutions and take notes is worth having it. It’s a luxury I know. But if you can have even a small dedicated space this will undoubtedly improve your creativity, efficiency and consistency. Just going in for an hour every day is easier when everything is in one place and ready to go.

It’s been a long time coming, so now that it is finally happening I am pretty excited. Next thing will be planning the lay out of the space.

Sampling, an art form.

One of my favorite instruments is a sampler, ever since I watched music documentaries like lola da musica and read magazines with studio pictures in them I was drawn to these magical boxes which could record sound and then be worked into a completely different sound altogether. And make tracks with those sampled sounds.

Sampling is an art form in and of itself, finding samples or making your own as is more common nowadays is a real cool expression of someones insight into music. From the early days of making collages out of existing materials and making it your own with deconstruction and rebuilding out of existing materials has been a legitimate art form. The things you can do with sampling from an artistic perspective are endless. Everyone hears and feels something different and will go into a different direction with the same sample. It’s really intriguing.

Albums like Endtroducing by Dj Shadow is one of the most well known examples of sample based music (all done on an MPC 3000), but most electronic music and hip hop would not exist without samplers. For some reason, and this might be just a collection of nostalgic reasons, music from the late 80’s and early 90’s has some qualities which I attribute to the samplers and more specific the limitations of gear in those days. Maybe it’s the less boxed in way of thinking about genres or simply the case of “If it sounds good, it is good”.

Some of my favorite tunes made possible by sampling, many more can be added but that would make this blog extremely long ;-). So 2 well known examples.

Roger Sanchez – Another change

Dj Shadow – Stem (Cops & Robbers remix)

A lot of these devices are unaffordable these days, things like the Akai MPC 3000 & Emu sp1200, and the Akai S950 are commanding crazy prices. There are some very nice and in my opinion overlooked samplers which can be bought for less money, like the Emu ESI 4000 or the Akai S3000. Even the MPC 2000XL can be found a little bit more affordable. Question is, would you go down the route of these vintage tools or not?

Some cool documentaries

First off some inspiration which could sway you to go the hardware sampling route. Whether that be old school samplers or newer ones. Here is some cool documentary stuff which got me inspired, and still gets me inspired these days. Pretty old stuff from the nineties and some newer things as well.

Rogers Sanchez on making another change

Lola da musica (dutch) Drum & Bass

Lola da music sampling (dutch)

My sampling adventures

At that stage in my life these devices costs more than a couple of months of wages so these were out of reach. Stuff for future dreams.

One of the most intriguing samplers was the MPC, made by Akai. A lot of great music had been made with these. It’s a staple in many studio ever since its inception. What was so great about it, to me, that it was all about beats, rhythms and structures. This had a large pull for me and many years later I bought my first MPC, a 2000XL. By then hardware sampling had fallen to the wayside in favor of sampling with the computer. So this MPC was rather cheap at the time. And I loved it, then it died and I replaced it with another one.

Work & life got in the way and I didn’t have enough time to dedicate to music making so unfortunately I sold it. But it has always held a big place in my inspiration and I always missed it, even just looking at it gave me an urge to make music. The period after these last of the old school samplers died out and all the focus shifted to software in the industry I always looked at it as a missed opportunity. Akai kept developing the MPC’s with mixed success, the MPC-1000 was a nice one, the MPC-4000 was a bit of a miss. Both great machines to be fair. Just overlooked I think.

The last decade has seen the return of hardware sampling in many forms, mostly led by beat oriented devices, such as the Elektron Octratrack, Digitakt, things like the OP-1 (Field), Tracker based stuff like the Polyend, the M8 and so on.

There is a lot to be said for these devices. As you can create whole tracks with just the one device and some sound sources. Which can be as easy as recording stuff on your phone. Looking back at my days with the MPC 2000XL it was time to get a more modern version out of storage, in an effort to further simplify my setup.

Modern MPC’s

The current MPC line up is pretty much a DAW in a box. It’s much more powerful than the old MPC’s which has its downside as you can fall into the wormhole of possibilities just as with a DAW. For me I worked around this by only focussing on sampling sounds from my small Eurorack case and trying to create some grooves with it. Setting limits that way. Nevertheless the MPC one, which I use, is a lot of bang for your buck. Whether it’s a MPC in the classical sense is up for debate. And with the new 3.0 software approaching this debate is pretty heated at the moment.

But I am a firm believer of making a device your own in such a way it fits your workflow and with a machine which has these capabilities this is possible. Might not be for everyone, but there are lot’s of alternatives out there.

I love the new line of MPC’s, especially the one with it’s attractive price point and all the options, it even has CV/gate outs, always a nice feature if you have a modular or any other synth with CV/gate.

My current approach & future ideas.

My workflow is pretty simple, the MPC is there for sampling and editing sounds from the modular, then I make a program filled with the samples from one session. Which gives it an instant coherent sound and vibe, then I make some basic sequences and see what I can get out of it.

All pretty basic, but for now that’s just what I need, for the future the MPC will function as a hub between the MAX map world and the modular, but I haven’t completely worked this out yet.

This was a good week music wise. Hopefully I can continue this week.