Musician Diaries

I'm usually very unusual in everything I do. Some people think that I do it on purpose, but I think more of some kind of astrological thing. For example, one thing that happens to me often is that I find very easy to do certain things that other people can't even think of, but the opposite is also true. Taking this to the realm of music, I find that the problem I set out to solve and I was writing about in this blog, is only a problem for myself. In a way, our current world is "dying of success"; technological success. Lots of eyes and neurons focused on the same field create excellency on that field, and that's what we've seen in the field of information management technology. I wish we had a tenth of the same achievement in the moral field (and moral, from the latin mores, habits, includes artistic creation). In that realm we are in the most absolute of miseries. It's like a person with one leg of 10,000 tons and the other weighti...

I've just finished doing some mixing, for the first time in ~10 days. I hope this system stays stable, in fact I hope this is the last time I have to do reinstallings in this machine (to which I wish a long and prosperous life, btw). Anyways, so far so good. Each day I feel less certain about the point of this blog. At first it seemed like a good idea because it was something nobody was doing; trying to apply Lean thinking to the realm of musical creation. But the thing is, even in realms where Lean is a more common term, those Lean sites and articles are more often than not preaching to the choir. Their role (and very good at that) is keeping the morale high, creating a supportive community of practice, and also point you to the right tool or the right sensei when you are learning. But in all of them you will find often mentioned that: 1) You learn Lean by doing, not by reading about it, and 2) You cannot "do Lean" to someone. Its about practicing until one ...

Creating music is an organic process, part of which is  uncontrollable and mysterious (as a good mental practice, I take good care of reminding myself very often that here I'm the lightning rod, not the lightning, and I pity those musicians who see it otherwise). I had an example of such uncontrollability this very morning, when in the first mists of awakening I overheard distinctly an instrumental tune. I wasn't feeling particularly musical this morning, in fact I was like "What? Now? Couldn't you come back on Thursday?" Anyways, at this point I've gone through the process lots of times already, so I knew the drill; I can moan all I want about it, and it's true that it's cold outside the blankets, and that I have to pee, and I'm hungry, but that chunk of music in my head at that moment is like a beautiful figure of ice that is melting quickly as I stroll, and in the crucial period before it leaves, all that matters is if I will ge...

It dawned upon me some time ago, and I've had abundant opportunities to test it in this home recording stuff of mine. The unexpected guest in my plans to record stuff was, guess what, inventory! The black beast of Lean. And for good reason. What a source of headache having 25 half baked songs in a folder! You get different formats from different versions of a program, files that get lost (or take forever to be found because they were filed under different systems...) I'm a good finisher in other creative areas (writing, for example). So I don't think it's a case of "quitting when the going gets touth". Rather, the matter with music is that you need to cool off things longer to recover perspective, so easily you start fooling around with a new song while you wait to erase the impression of having listened to the previous 5,000 times in a row in search of pops and cracks. Add to that the whimsical nature of musical inspiration, and you're blown....