Posting Standards

  • I will write every day about my musical activity
  • The posts will be no longer than 20 lines as they appear in the blog's editor. If I feel that I need more than that to explore a certain matter, I'll try to be as brief as possible
  • To avoid overcorrection, I will use the "typewriter mode": I can delete only the final "tail" of what I'm writing, but not going back. I don't want this to become an exercise of style (I cannot afford it, tbh)
  • I don't want to generate inventory: I won't keep a list of ideas for new posts, etc. I will choose each day what I write
  • I intend this to be an "under the radar" exercise. I will do my daily writing when I feel like it,  undocumented in my productivity systems --the great exception--. I don't want it to become yet another chore, start making tradeoffs with myself, etc
No more standards by the moment. Setting too many standards too soon can stifle the process. I'll see what I find and act accordingly.
Someone may notice that my yesterday's post was a comic strip, which has nothing to do with this list of premises. I hope it serves as a demo of what I think standards are for: not to burden yourself, but to know what's within standard and what's not. Yesterday's post was off-standards; if, as days go by, comic strips keep coming, I'll have to either restrain myself or modify the standard.
I like to say that things should be written down, but nothing should be ever written into stone, as reality is in constant flux, and any line you draw is only as good as the help it brings you; yesterday's strip came to me, it was Sunday and I had the time, and if I hadn't taken the idea to expression, it would still in my head, where creates pressure and no one can profit from it. This connects with the intent of not creating more inventory; the immediateness of Internet allowed me to do that on the spot.
So this is a balancing act of factors, the art is learning to draw better lines, to lace them better, and keep an eye on when they are still a guideline or when they have become a distraction.

Popular posts from this blog

Iumring tq gqngiusiqns

Image
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
Read more

Maple Dye, "Unloved"

Maple Dye · Unloved In the peak of the pandemic, when everything was uncertain and scary, two ideas for songs came to me. Or better said, two powerful ideas that lived in me asked at some point for expression in a musical way. One idea was "we'll get out of this shit, we always do. Hopefully the humans will learn something out of this. It will be worthwhile then, even if I don't get to see it". This idea, through the proper alchemies, turned into "When We Make It Through The Storm". The other idea was "we all have to die. If I win this nutty virus lottery, then so be it. The sad part is not that I have to die, but that, if I did, right now nobody would really give a fuck..." This idea was the kernel for "Unloved". I reflected upon my life and found a lot of love had been given by me, but not so much received. My family is not the most mentally healthy and, from year zero, everything under the "love" label was generally just hid
Read more

"Crazy JS Teacher"

This song is so underproduced that it's embarrassing. This time I got the mastering volume right, but a couple of unexplainable cracks and pops sneaked in... arrgg! There was a "pit of misery" moment in there when I was twisting the knobs and thinking I hate my fucking life, so I stuck to the principle of keep it fun, and moved along. Each time I fail a bit better, my processes advance and get richer and more detailed every time, but God, I need a producer so bad, this stuff drains me, it always feels like fishing in the dark with a stick, I'd rather be doing anything else, for example music. In any case, like the other quickies I'm releasing weekly, this is good practice and dexterity; you can figure out a lot a process and do a lot of preproduction, but in the end there is a kind of knowledge that you only get by running the whole process from one extreme to the other time after time after time... The song is something I dreamt. Not
Read more