Musician Diaries

This one was a pure case of pull. I was just heading to my daily activities of the non-musical kind, when the Muse came straight to me and said: MUSE: hiya, here is the usual song kit for you, today we have a bit of a melody with a bass line behind. You're welcome. Now here's the deal: you can do with this what you've been doing lately, just record the ideas and put them in your huge pile of unfinished stuff, but I was thinking, maybe you can also rearrange your day, and crank out something quick for that weekly thing you've been doing lately? ME: oh shit. I mean, thank you Muse. The song was pieced together in around 3 hours, out of which 40 minutes went to the solo. I had the starting idea for it, opening with a copy of the voice and then moving to something different, and I soon found a second pillar: moving from major scale to pentatonic in the second half increased the "temperature" nicely... The drums again are rudimentary; on

I wanted to try something different for my new sonic output; adding quick and dirty drums, as one simple stepping up from a simple metronome. Naturally, things took longer than expected to set up, but I like the sorta pattern that my production is taking lately; along the week, I try to get some time out of the pressures of the day to get something done, using the "radioactive task" technique that I've described (diy music counts as very hard work that really can burn you out; you're making the work of, by my count so far, 4 different people, plus the overhead of moving from one "cap" to the other). This work advances slow and methodically, following the Toyota philosophy of "going slow to go fast". I'm solving problem after problem without skipping any, and making sure that the investment of time pays off, that I no longer solve a problem and then forget that I did. This way of working gets a bit on my nerves s

An "androginous" Leonard Cohen cover, as I did both the male and female voices -- I wonder what would Leo think about that :p. As i was looking for the guitar tablature, I stumbled upon a couple of other people's covers of the song that helped me choose the arrangements. For example, at first I was going for a simple strumming (rang-a-ranga-rang-a-ranga-rang...), but then I found this cover by a lady where she used arpegios instead, which is a great way to underline the bass riff that is the foundation of the song. I also disagreed with a couple of her choices: for example, the singing style she chose was soul-like, and she had a great voice, with technique and feeling, but this song to me has a confessional tone, like something you wishper to someone in a private conversation (a vibe common perhaps to the whole "Ten New Songs"), and that's the feeling I went for in my voice. Also, she reinterpreted the chords from the bridge ("For the

Guitar Hump (in Alonetone)   I just got me a new battery for the Metal Zone, and wanted to do new stuff with the electric guitar. Anybody who owns a MZ will know that the battery is kind of a "weak spot": if you don't take cautions and unplug it after using it, you will find it dead next time you try to use it. This happens even with the cables unplugged, when the led does not switch on and everything would seem to indicate that electricity is not running. But now that I've removed the lid of the pedal, the battery is easy to plug-unplug.   In terms of process improvement, the battery adds one factor of comfort (avoiding the need for yet another electricity adaptor). To take it one step futher, in the future I want to connect the pedal out to the audio card with one of those tiny cables that are used to connect one pedal next to another.  (I am currently using a full guitar cable, which is a waste: you have to manage that cable, which in the case of audi

I think I've solved enough problems already to commit myself to some kind of consistent delivery. I find it's important, as part of my musicianship, to commit to some kind of consistent finishing things, putting stuff at the door... even if more often than not there's nobody at the other side of that door (but Internet distribution makes things fuzzy on that regard; one element that without doubt helped me conform my decission was a couple of comments I read the other day in praise of a song that I had recorded a year ago and completely forgotten.) My initial premise is: "putting one sonic product out there every week. Out of those sonic products, before February, at least one of them will have to be a full song". (I considering the "week" unit as a container, like I do with this blog's posts, so maybe a better formulation would be "putting out one sonic product IN every week", like boxes to be filled. :) ) Like any goal wo

I've spoken extensively about the kanban board and its benefits for the mental life of any busy person (and who isn't a busy person these days)... I've recently added to my arsenal a second productivity weapon, not so well publicized although it should. The thing I've found is, the kanban board works as a charm for one-time-projects: you have to do this, then that, then the other, and the project gets done. End. Period. Next one please. Kanban is like a todo list with the second dimension added in (The To-Do is a line, the Kanban a plane that self evolves as you understand your work...) But the thing is, like Benson and others say, when you're not using it for one time projects, but for routine work that you have to do every day, a kanban board can feel a bit stupid sometimes. Taking the same post it from "options" to "done" every day... at some moment you become kind of numb, and there's no added learning nor the nice feelin

My systems tend to become complicated with time. Computer folders don't have a limit to what you can put inside, so they can grow without control. Especially when you are trying all kind of different stuff in all kind of areas all the time. A simple solution I've found is creating a folder named /000_previous_system in each of my areas (the initial 000 is to make sure the folder stays on top in the list). What I do is: when I have an idea on how to simplify one of my systems, I put everything I don't remember what was for inside that folder. My systems become that way very simple, no more than 3-8 items per folder, one of them this 000 folder. That way, I can always "fish" later something I remember I worked upon, when the moment comes. It feels like shopping, it gives you a great feeling of wealth entering that folder where so much good work has already been done and you just have to dust it off and put it to work again. I guess this system is simila

There are "push" and "pull" tasks. Most of the people are starters but not finishers because often pulls turn into push, so they give up the effort when it stops being easy, and move on to some other fresh thing. I want to finish stuff, so dealing with this push-pull thing (and noticing when the change happens) is an important matter to me. Something I've been using lately has been setting a countdown timer for nasty tasks. But recently I had a realization about the way I used it that to me felt like turning a sock the other way round. At first, I obliged myself to do 30 or 60 mins of the thing that I hate. The reasoning behind is that, that way, I guarantee at least that amount of advance every day, in a field that is not gratifying but that I feel necessary to pursue. The first questioning of that method came because of the natural division of certain tasks; if a boring "frog" I have to swallow takes me 21 or 25 minutes, it doesn't m

Very sad news. I thought we still had a few years together, and maybe a couple of albums. But, as it happens with the dear people you actually meet, when you've had a long acquaintance and the moments have been good, the pain at some point gives in to a certain state of serenity, of comformity; it was good being alive while you were alive, Mr. Cohen. Last Saturday, in a sort of ceremony of remembrance, I went through YouTube doing a sort of "journey to the seed" thing. Listening to Cohen's works, as memory suggested them, starting in the final album "You want it darker", published only 3 weeks ago, and working my way backwards. Some of those songs never fail to make me cry, and naturally, this time was no exception. Here is the list (the chronology from 1989 backwards is a garbled mess): Steer your way You want it darker Nevermind Come healing Different sides The letters Boogie Street Alexandra Leaving Tacoma Trailer Democracy Ain't no cure fo

Brain plasticity, the great human perk, does not come without a price; there is a toll to be paid in effort (attention is energy), whenever we switch from one "mode" to another. Optimus Prime does not become a truck or viceversa unless he has to, because there is some effort involved in every metamorphosis. That's what make so useful and necessary to find some kind of mental tool that allows you to "zoom out" from one matter and then "zoom in" quickly on the next: "what was that I was trying to do here? Oh yes, I remember now" I've been documenting here my latest efforts to divide rationally my activities into specialized "departments" or "personalities", in wait for the moment when I can hand over gladly the things I don't enjoy doing to some other assistant (In doing that I've found that, the more a task or area of my life bores/frightens me, the more it gets benefitted by some structured thinkin

 He who will define the future must investigate the past, so I like/have made a bit of a mission for myself to go through those VH1 Behind the music videos now and then. The overwhelming repetition that I've found has obliged me to reduce the dosage: BUILD YOUR OWN BEHIND THE MUSIC KIT 1: "Nobody had ever listened something like them before" (Declarations of friends and relatives saying how blown away everybody was) 2: Option A: However, fame soon started to pay its toll Option B (minority): Unlike many other famous musicians, fame did not affect their way of living 3: Tragedy will soon strike in the form of:     A: Drug overdose of a member         Survived? Y/N         Repeat (go back to A)?         Rehab         Relapse? Y (go back to A)/ N     B: Tragic accident 4: So they decided to quit     A: for a while     B: for good 5: Until the reunion came     "We have all matured, etc..." There's something dark about music. Mix it

In wait of (and working towards) that glorious day when I will gladly hand the recording chores to someone more akin to them (I've heard there are even nutjobs who like this stuff), I'm obliged to split my personality in different "hats" or personas in search of expressing my musical creativity into the objective world. I've found making such division clearcut and well defined, "playing well" the game of roles, brings great benefits. In the end it is all about allowing the musician to be on his own with his music, without detours or distractions. The first persona that appeared out of my workflow was the producer. But short after, I've found the need of taking part of the producer part out and creating the role of the engineer, too. The engineer is in service of both the producer and musician, and its role is providing them with the shortest, most Sesame Street instructions to speed up the tech stuff and allow them to go back to their cr

Kanban is chaotic and you sometimes feel like not using it, but a lot of realizations and aha moments come from submitting yourself to its discipline. In my case, here's a funny pattern I found about my musical work: the creation of value coincides with the things I enjoy to do. That doesn't always have to be the case. In any art or industry, a task can be boring for the maker, and yet be the one that is creating the value that we want to provide. For example: spreading the mayonnaise that makes the sandwich extra delicious, is not an amusing task per se, but the result is cool. That's why I found curious that in my case both things coincide. For a musician, the value is created when you produce new sounds. And those are the moments that I enjoy. As I mention here perhaps too often, I don't get any kick out of finding the frequency that causes a hissing in the right snare. I think the people who enjoy that kind of thing are a bit of a nutcase, tbh. A new re

My previous resolution of keeping stuff coming out quickly through the pipeline has very soon turned from a plan to a vision. Obstacles hinder the ship, life has a way of doing that to your plans. I don't see that as a failure, but as an aha moment, a powerful realization. Now I keep that 'keep it simple, keep moving' mentality in mind all the time, even if the circumstances oblige me to take a detour (gosh, here I would need X, so half an hour trip to the Internet to see if X is possible, and if it is, how to actually do it). For the song I'm working on, for example, I guesstimated a very simple workplan: programming drums and print them in the session, 1 day. Recording bass, 1 day. Recording guitar tracks, 1 day. Recording vocals, 1 day. Audio production, 2 days. That's an ideal blueprint to keep in mind, but reality soon conspired against such a beautiful arrangement of things. I intend to make a full reflection about the song when I'm done with

For a long time now I've been living with an inner tension caused by the struggle between two opposing tendencies. Not the kind of creative tension that solves itself in work being done, but the psychologically straining of intending something to be both black and white at the same time.   The ideas in struggle were:   1) The music I enjoy perhaps the most (not the only kind I enjoy, but the kind I always go back to) is one where technique means shit; a guy singing in a goofy way, a guitar that sounds like a door buzzer, can bring me tears of joy or rage, as long as there is feeling in that thing, as long as I hear something genuine and human taking place there. Punk bands of one single, Mr. Nobodies giving all they got, I love that stuff and look for it and dance to it and live for it and can't get enough of it.   2) The music I intend to make, for a long time, has been burdened by something that was almost a "superstition" of technique. I compose easil

Lately I've had two realizations, which have driven me to one decision. The realizations are these:   1) Zeigarnik should have killed me by now 2) Ah, the irony!   In this post I will discuss realization #1. I owe to  Jim Benson , among so many other fruitful insights about intangible work , the acquaintance of the Zeigarnik effect. Here's the wikiquickie:   In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. ( Wikipedia )   Add to that the way I work in my stuff; I once read some work diaries by the poet Giacomo Leopardi, and they were quite alike to my methods, a few centuries later. Example of an entry, the way I remember them: "I take this flower in my hand... (both flower and hand are going to fade away, in the same way life etc..., fragility of beauty, etc...) " The zipping of songs in my head works pretty much like that... I may have the gimmick, a few sentences, what should be the

In my audio production works, I've found the kanban board to be an essential tool to keep focus and sanity. I wonder how could I survive so much time without using it.   The kanban board is one of the few Lean tools that have made a mainstream transition to the personal productivity world (hopefully, more of them will find their way into the masses as time goes on).   The main responsible for this transition is Jim Benson, author among others of a book called 'Personal Kanban', in which he describes the very simple (deceptively simple) tool that the Kanban board is.   A tool is good when it is transparent, when it doesn't get in the way of your work, when it doesn't require extra maintenance (=yet one more thing to do).   The kanban board, in that spirit, has only two rules:   1) Visualize your work   2) Limit your work in process   That's it. As Benson frequently mentions, this is so simple to understand that nobody does it.

Ouch, I missed last week's post. But I think the countermeasure should be easy.   The problem has to do with my adoption of the tickler file, one of the great great great elements of the GTD methodology .   You use a folder per day, and in each folder you put notes. I used to have a note saying something like "Did you write the blog post this week?", which I placed in the folder for the upcoming Sunday. That way, I was sure I had a checkpoint for my weekly post if I wasn't able to get to it before Sunday.   The problem came when I started writing down in other papers some ideas for future posts. Those papers went into the folders too, but their function was not clearly enough defined: finding them means "write this post", or just "remember that you have a blog?". In the middle of that confusion, I must have lost/decided to throw away the original checkpoint note.   So the countermeasure is: creating a new checkpoint note for Sundays, an

As a corollary to my previous post : we are going to use "whatever works" for each process. And isn't that what we've always done? Yes, but with a difference. We are going to document it to make it steady (steady enough to allow us use it as the base for the next steady). In manufacturing there is always a process to follow. On the contrary, in fields like the artistic process, that's not necessarily so. The process can be implicit, never expressed. So there is a fine line, a risk that "yeah, I know" means "I don't have a process for that". Only when you become conscious of a process, whatever the shape it takes, you can start to tackle it. Shit will happen as it is inclined to, and then you have something to improve upon. I find this much more empowering than the 'oh-I'm-a-victim-of-circumstances' attitude that is the defacto alternative. Where am I know: I've established a looser standard for all my processes

Jeffrey Liker warns that the creation of a checklist or procedure is an opportunity as good as any to make one of our brain's favorite mistakes: jumping to conclusions. I've found that to be one of my great mistakes in my  previous approach to structuring my production (strongly connected to other of my top ten weaknesses: trying to standardize too soon, before running through enough iterations just letting the process reveal itself). In a previous post I discussed how simply making conscious that all our processes have an input and an output, and making both explicit, brings in itself a great deal of clarification to any outcome we want to produce. I still believe that; I also said I would discuss what was within that "sandwich" in another occasion. My mistake was related to the way those tiny input-output boxes interact with each other. My unquestioned assumption was that I had to standardize the procedural language within them too. It just seeme

I'm rethinking my production these days, trying to do a lot of things in a different way, just to see how it feels, and maybe getting a clue (the research works in both ways, this is the daily grind side, the other, the issue of my previous posts, the other extreme of the matter: higher levels, why do I exist as a musician, what's my environment and what do I intend to pursue within it). One of the big discoveries of these days, process wise, is the need to future proof my processes better. My musical activity is often attacked by plenty of outside and inner factors, so there can come periods when I hardly do anything. Even long periods, sometimes (the fact that I aspire to consistency does not mean that I can ignore the current situation). After one of those periods, it's very uncomfortable and embarrassing not remembering how did I use to do this or that thing, or even which format I used to keep the process steps. I have a whole storehouse full of reinvented

What's the environment in which we develop our musical 'business'? A society in open decomposition. The pole is melting. The theater itself is in flames this time. Peoples, like individuals, have births and deaths, youth and decay. It only takes a simple look at a window (or 20-30 years of attentive awareness) to see where is heading our exhausted society. Where does that leave the individual who just wants to fulfill his mission, make his contribution in the way he is inclined to? For most of musicians, this dilemma does not exist. They just plug their instrument, start cranking out notes, do their thing, lulaby themselves into oblivion. But those are the ones that eventually cannot keep so much unsconciousness under the rug. I've recently learned the stories of some more fellows I didn't know: oh, sucided? How original. O.D.? You kiddin me! Etc ad nauseam. There is also this other thing, I believe in music as culture; a word with the same root as cultiv

I know too well the risks of overproduction for a musician (and for other artistic enterprises), so I'm comfortable with this being uncomfortable about not knowing where to flow. The song is stuck, waiting for vocals already composed and rehearsed to be recorded. But everything in me resists to putting a new song in the world before being able to give it a more proper "home". As a musician, I've learned to listen to and obey that kind of intuitions. As i always mention in this blog, my guild has an outrageous "job hazard" death rate. Only actors are more fucked up in my view. That is, of course, unless you play it safe. In that case you'll have a nice life and easy digestion, and will produce regularly pieces of neat crap. But I think a musician should not be a manufacturer. A few possibilities I'm thinking of, still in a scramble, are: focusing on finding an ally, and move from there to create a band adding one person at a time. Playing

Not having much to report today, I thought I'd beautify and put in a "factory like" format the current state of my process I described in the previous post. Additional inventory triangles have been added for emphasis, in the parts of the process where they pile up more outrageously... Mostly at the beginning: lots of recordings in all kind of format and devices, riffs, notes, fragments of lyrics, poems that will be lyrics, more recordings, pentagrams, half baked songs... And then demos, one track recordings that can be listened to beginning to end, waiting only for that additional 10-15% that usually comes in my case as I flesh things out. I have to say this state of affairs in itself is an advance from my process in, say 2010, when I was just discovering the magic of real time audio processing, and had a lot of daw sessions in the making at the same time...  the temptation of hearing my ideas polyphonicaly for the first time was hard to resist; that first

I have a song in the works and I'm stuck, which is not a very comfortable state to be. I'm facing a problem I've faced several times before, hopefully failing a bit better each time. My process for value creation, i.e. to convert the "voices in my head" into something worthwhile for another human being, is currently as it follows: Composition Preparation for recording Recording Production "Packaging" Legal protection Distribution Promotion I have recorded stuff before. I can go through the movements. But there is the shadow of lack of purpose at the end, lurking through the whole process. When you are a home recordist, the final step, distribution, is confusing and disheartening. You are limited to post your song in some obscure website (Bandcamp, Soundcloud), and be happy with the possibility that somebody could listen to it eventually. Feels like a guy with a thrash can and a smile telling you "Oh, another finished song! Please

hey are a bit of evil twins those two: in Transport you move equipment or materials without creating value, and in Movement you move yourself without creating value. Egregious example that combines both in the musician world is when you carry a cable from one place to another, hoping that you'll be choosing the right plug for it, otherwise rinse and repeat, with no value created in all that mess except perhaps for your psychiatrist. The solution, as with most of things in Lean, is simple and straightforward: color code! No more looking for the right entry, no more lottery when you have two identical jacks and don't know which one to plug. No more bending yourself over the holes to find the exact place where the cable goes. Better save that energy to feed the expressiveness in front of the mic, the guitar or whatever your weapon of choice is. This kind of continuous improvement would be the intelligent thing to do even if your only role were roadie or so

Hot from the presses, my latest work. Oh boy. Am I corny or what. The thing is: even musicians sing silly things to themselves now and then. The silliest of those musicians, even try to record that kind of silly stuff. In addition to all the rest they have in mind. This is like a little vice of mine, a distraction. But there's a part of me that will always be 5 years old (and probably without that part the others would never get anything done).

Damn, I just forgot about my weekly post and I'm remembering now. Even worse: in fact, I've been intermittently remembering it along the weekend, but then getting swept away by some other thing. Lots of waste there. So in the spirit of kaizen, a modification of my process is in order. In this case, the countermeasure to keep this problem from reappearing starts with a change of standards. In my initial working standards, I decided that this blog was going to be an informal, out of the map thing, and so it was going to be "that thing not documented". That idea, as romantic as it sounded, creates no value for the reader, and can even become a 'disvalue', as this mishap proves. So the countermeasure is including a reminder in my calendar on Sundays; so when things get frantic, I'll still find that warning to write the "broom" post. My hypothesis , considering how stable is my calendar checking process, is that it will be enough to kee

NOTE: this app is no longer available. Sorry... Jam Loops is an app for Android to help musicians loosen up and get inspiration through jamming. It contains bad ass rock loops ordered in gradual speed, to help your mojo get going. The app is free for download in the Google Play Store and can be found here .

lease ignore the un-lean cables hanging on the left side of the screen, and focus on the guitar on the chair. Yeah, that's right, a chair. After some experimentation, this has proven to be the best way so far to get and drop the guitar easily. The empty chair in front is the one I use to sit, and in front of it is my computer with the daw fired up. If every time I want to do something new with the guitar I had to go through the struggle of lifting it from the floor, it would mean endless experiences of the waste of transportation, in the form of struggle on my back and shoulders, and a lot of resistance adding up in a nasty, never declared of feeling of "oh god, not again, I have to grab the guitar again". At some point it can make the difference between "OK, it is what it is, let's move on", and "let's record one more take for good measure", therefore having an impact on final quality. That up-down lifting movement that I

Before I started documenting my music making processes, I have found myself time after time reinventing the wheel. Given that recording, production and the like is not my cup of tea, but something that I will gladly hand over to someone else as soon as I can, I tend to forget what I've learned from one time to the next. The consolation, then, is that this effort of documentation is the last one. At last I have learned how to accumulate the knowledge, the achievement and the failures, in a way that adds up. The stakes will stay there, put in a way in which they are good reminders, even if some time goes by between session and session. The part of this struggle that has taken my attention last week has been recording electric guitars. One of the notorious mistakes I've made along this process has been succumbing in excess to the temptation of technique. Just one more experiment that I had to run, in a way. My initial rationale was "cranking out stuff as quick a

I've been a few days without posting here, therefore infringing the standards I gave to myself when I started this blog. That's what standards are for: to help you differentiate normal from abnormal. When a transgression happens for a short moment, you can consider the occurrence an exception, and try resuming them as usual. But if the occurrence happens often, a change in those standards is in order, as I think it's the case here. It's pointless to stick stubbornly to rules that were created under different circumstances; we have to evolve as they do. As another departure from those standards, this post is for sure going to be way beyond 20 lines, as I want to dump here all the hansei I've been doing these days, and with that set the basis for the blogs' next stage. The thing about the Shewhart Cycle , as with other cyclical structure I guess, is that you can start it anywhere. I don't want to appear as if I knew what I was doing more that I

I  just heard the news of Nick Menza's passing away (I still can't believe I'm putting these words together). I profoundly admired his style, and I want to have a note of remembrance for him here. It's appropriate for him to appear in something called Musician Diaries, as he was a musician who played drums, not just a drummer; that only is a very rare event, in my opinion. His drumming filled the songs of ambiance and, for example, was a key element to the particular sound to 'Countdown to Extinction', the record in which I knew him; his memory, for me, will always be linked to that final earthquake in 'Ashes in your Mouth', where I learned there was another way of playing drums. Short after that, of course, there was  blast of 'Rust in Peace', perfect, precise, a piece of eternity. After him, in my view, Megadeth has had correct drummers doing their thing, but nothing close to his talent and creativity (for example, how I missed his

"Hansei" is a Japanese word that can be loosely translated as "reflection". As an example, some Japanese parents can tell to a boy to "go to his room and do hansei" after he has been naughty. The term has been adopted and made popular by the Lean management system. Companies do hansei. Engineers do hansei after finishing a product, or reaching (or being unable to reach) a certain goal: what went fine, what could be do better? Perhaps, although who knows if I'm stepping into cliche land here, Eastern cultures are more prone to reflection and that's why Lean has been a natural fit for them. Hansei, in the end, can be assimilated to the Study-Adjust stages of the Shewhart cycle . We can all use a little less of doing and a little more of reflecting about the done (I know I can). In fact, I have listened to several Lean practitioners already identify that as one of the main problems in our current world. There is no use in being wonderful

illy me, it has taken me almost 20 years to realize that the hinges of the Metal Zone pedal are screws that can be removed. Well, in my defense I'll argue that actually, that fact wasn't very important until a few years ago. The pedal started its life as a device mostly used in concerts, i.e. meant to be kicked, so there was no need to remove the structure. But as my focus of possibilities has turned more to the field of recording, pressing that huge bulky thing every time I wanted to turn distortion or on off was an absurd and dirty overkill (you can see the spring a bit in the right side picture - really resistant, lots of toil for a hand to handle). This is a classic case of the waste called Movement: motion (or effort in this case) that does not add value. If you can switch distortion on and off by pressing a little nifty button, any other strength used in excess of that is waste, energy that has a cost but does not go into the quality of the final product

As I sorted the other day though my materials folder, for the first time in a long time, with real curiosity and fascination, a division that I was thinking about for a while finally clicked, a general but very handy rule of thumb that helps you classify the jungle. I have this folder called "motifs"; --kinda vague and badly use of the word, but the term 'speaks' to me and that's what matters--. It's the place where I put conceptual ideas for songs, stuff that is in the abstract form rather than actual recording snippets or written word. For example, let's say, I listen to a song with mandolin and synthesizers in a movie and I think "hey, I'd like to compose something with that vibe". That's just an idea for when I'm a mandolin+synthesizer mood, all I need is a reminder. Or matters that I want to expand as lyrics. So here's my aha moment: the composing stage of music creation can happen in plenty of ways, but in my ca

The other day I started a project that is very well suit for the using of 'frozen' materials, in fact that is one of things that most attracted me of it, so happily I ventured, for the first time in a long time, into the folder that contains all my snippets, riffs, jam recordings and whatnot, and which, congruently with my current Lean efforts, is now called "materials inventory". To be more precise, for "materials" I understand any amorphous stuff that hasn't reach the demo state yet. For a long time, I've only been in that folder to drop stuff. It contains, for example, things transferred from two generations of cellphones. Traditionally I've done the transfer only when the memory is running out, so there is a big batch each time. There are also, as it is foreseeable in a musician, plenty of other recordings made in the computer, via the internal mic or a sound card, guitar, keyboards, harmonica, kazoos, a capellas... There's a