Musician Diaries

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...