diff --git a/content/music-making-week.dj b/content/music-making-week.dj new file mode 100644 index 0000000..edb11ec --- /dev/null +++ b/content/music-making-week.dj @@ -0,0 +1,205 @@ +title = "A week of making music" +id = "doc?20250925-music-making-week" +updated = "2025-09-25T22:57:00+02:00" +tags = ["all", "shower", "music"] + ++++ + +About a week ago, I was in a Discord chat with a couple of friends, and we had a conversation about the process of _learning to do art_. +I mean art in the widest sense of the word: _art_ as any creative work that allows you to express emotions, reflect your human nature, paint a picture of your culture. +This includes illustrations, music, photos, writing... + +Hell, even code could count, if you treat programming as an art form more than a form of engineering. + +The points we went through, roughly speaking, were that you need to be _making_ art to learn to do art, and that you need to make _bad_ art to learn your art well---because you learn from your mistakes. + +In the middle of the conversation, something spurred me to think about my pet hobby, electronic music production. + +{.chat} +> *me:* i SERIOUSLY need to get back to making music, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN THIS LAST TRACK WAS A YEAR AGO\ +> ![screenshot of my file explorer showing the date 2024-08-28][pic:01K60DHWNAEWV8FR8XT4X0DRET] + +I mean, it can't have been a year, right? +Have I really not released any music _in a year_? + + +## It really was a year + +Well, no. +It's not like I haven't been making music _completely_ throughout that last year. + +On occasion, I would fire up [Bitwig Studio](https://bitwig.com) (good DAW!) and fiddle around with writing _something_. +In 2024: a little in September, October, November, then once more in December, and January 2025... and then, silence. +Until April, where I started a couple projects that never went anywhere, but then went silent once again. + +Now, this isn't surprising [if you take a look at my release cadence](https://daknus.bandcamp.com). +For the past three years, I've been releasing one track per year. + +I excused myself that I just didn't have enough time to make more music. +I said to myself that back in my school days, I had more time to play around with music after school. + +Those were excuses, I know, but I believed in them pretty strongly. + + +## Skill issue + +There's another thing that compounded the problem. + +Out of the 153 Bitwig project files I've accumulated over the past five years, I have released 18 of them. +That's like, a 12% success rate. + +Even last year, I started 18 _new_ projects, while releasing only [_one_](https://daknus.bandcamp.com/track/dissociation-rebirth). +That could've been a whole album, had the overall success rate been higher. + +So, why was it that bad? + +I think it's down to a few things. +First, I've been noticing a steady decrease in fresh music ideas flowing into my head. +My past method was to just kind of... wait until I come up with a cool melody, chord progression, or drum pattern in my head, and try to make something around it. + +The problem is that this process is inherently _very_ lossy. +I'm not good enough with instruments and effects to effectively recreate all the sounds from my head exactly. + +In addition to this, my musical imagination is very volatile. +The moment I start fiddling around in the DAW, I recreate the core of the idea, and forget about the rest---that same [rest of the fucking owl][pic:01K616CGN7TEM3VKZ5NQ9M6QDB] that can make a song feel truly _magical_. + +The fact that I use the playback looping feature of my DAW doesn't help this. +I don't currently have a better way to iteratively create nice-sounding instruments, and looping results in the idea getting stuck in your head like an earworm, erasing anything that came before it. + +--- + +I don't know there's anything I can do to help the looping issue, at least for now. +Fixing it would likely require learning to play an instrument, then recording myself play, and assembling a song out of that. +But learning an instrument is, how to put it... erm, _difficult_, and isn't going to fix the broader issue of me not finishing songs. + +You can work within the limitations of looping. +It _will_ influence your musical style, but that's okay. +I can tell you of [many](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MidgdQ3gNLo) [great](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsiaG7dSXVQ) [songs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPL5Hkl11IQ) [whose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0nh3_m-VmM) [styles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjOzJFyRE78) [are](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK1mLIeXwsQ) [very](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q12YnJ_9y4Q) [loop-oriented](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odeHP8N4LKc). +You don't have to be making jazz to make good music. + +What I _can_ work on, though, is my musical imagination. +It would be nice to be able to fire up the DAW and come up with something workable in a short amount of time. + +And in addition to that, finishing things. +Like, _really_ finishing. +Not dropping. +Commitment. + + +## The exercise + +So, during that conversation, I came up with an idea: *I'm gonna be making music for a week.*\ +*One song a day.* + +A week being a short enough time commitment, that it's easy to just _do it_ without even considering pulling out. +An afternoon being somewhat short, but long enough that I could just kinda jam for a bit, write something short, and forget about it the next day. + +And you know what? It worked! + +I started writing music again. +I wrote 7 songs. +They're short, but I like them. +Some, I'd even be down to listen to on an album---and I'd like to polish them up and release them, some time next month. + + +## Takeaways + +A reflection I've come to is that, actually...? +This is probably how most music artists operate! + +As a programmer, I toil every day at solving interesting computer problems. +A coding puzzle a day keeps the bugs away, so they say. +I program every day, solving different problems, working on different projects. +{-Never finishing them, of course.-} +And that's how I become a good programmer. + +So it's natural that, to become a good musician, you write a song a day, and you become _good_. +You end up having songs to release albums with. + +If you write a song every month, you end up with 12 songs in a whole year.\ +If you write a song every _day_, you end up with at least 365.\ +Multiply that by that initial 12% figure, and you can see how much your output would increase. + +Having 365 songs ready means you have a lot _more_ ideas to pick from and explore. +And that's how great albums get made. +It feels liberating to have come to this realisation after trying to figure out a way to _convince myself to release more music_ for so many years. + +And like, _of course_ it works that way. +If it works that way with programming, why wouldn't it work for anything else? + +But, if you haven't done this sort of thing before, it isn't obvious at all.\ +School doesn't teach this. (I know, "what the fuck do you mean school doesn't teach this," but you know it's true.) + +--- + +What's surprising is _just how insanely effective_ the music-making week has been. +Out of the 7 songs I've written, I consider a whopping *3* of them good enough to be released to the public. +That's way higher than that initial 12% figure! + +It could be that I just got lucky, but I think there's something more at play here. + +I believe the cause for this to be that I had to *finish* the songs within the same day I started them. +Had I not needed to finish, had I had the possibility to scrap a song and let a day go to waste, this probably would not have happened. + +The fact that I had to come up with a reasonable structure, involving a build-up and an ending, also helped develop my skills around that. +In the past, I would often get stuck at the phase where I had a loop, but didn't know what to do with it. + +The time pressure forced me to start thinking about structure, and helped me figure out a few nice ways to start, develop, and end a song. + +--- + +Another incredibly cool side effect---which _may_ only apply to experimental electronic music, but is worth mentioning---is that after this whole week, I have 7 whole songs I can steal from in the future. + +Take the music, [paulstretch](https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/) it to hell, add spacious reverb, and boom---an atmospheric soundscape, just like that. +Crank up the tempo, add an amen break, play with the sample's pitch, and you've got yourself a jungle track. + +You can make _instruments_ out of your songs. +Samplers today are kind of insane, and you can do all sorts of wack shit with them when it comes to sound design. + +--- + +An interesting idea that didn't go anywhere: I also asked my friends for prompts. +Words, images, stories to write music about. + +It didn't go anywhere because often times, electronic music is a bit too abstract to even relate to words. +It plucks at my heart strings, but I can't translate it into words and back. + +There are also concepts I don't really map well onto melodies just yet, because I haven't interacted with them enough. +I got a prompt "steampunk," but didn't do anything with it, because I don't really consume enough steampunk-themed works to have a good frame of reference of it in mind. + +[Sometimes it works][page:music/dubio.tree], but not always---and _sometimes_ is a P < 100%. +Guess we just got a bunch of bad rolls this time around. + +--- + +And finally, I wouldn't be done without mentioning the confidence boost. + +It feels genuinely great to have made so much music that sounds listenable, in such a short period of time. + +Finish your works. +You'll thank yourself for it, and you'll feel great on top. + + +## Caveats + +This type of exercise won't work as well for everyone. + +I'd like to mention here that when I started, I was not totally incompetent in making music. +I've been toying around with it for over 8 years at this point. +I mean, [this](https://daknus.bandcamp.com/track/dissociation-rebirth) was my last track at the time of starting this exercise. + +If you're just starting out, 7 days will likely not be enough. +If you don't know _anything_ about the thing you're willing to learn, the beginnings are going to be _very_ difficult. +It's gonna suck. + +I feel like _trying_ and committing for that initial time period though, will be enough to tell you whether you want to continue or not. + +I know I want to :3 + + +## Can I have a listen? + +No. + +...but you should [subscribe to my blog via RSS](/feed/all.atom), to know when you can!\ +I'll be sure to post an update. diff --git a/static/css/doc.css b/static/css/doc.css index b4c6349..1cf2acb 100644 --- a/static/css/doc.css +++ b/static/css/doc.css @@ -114,6 +114,29 @@ main.doc { } } + & blockquote { + margin: 0; + padding: var(--code-block-h-padding); + + & :first-child { + padding-top: 0; + } + + & :last-child { + padding-bottom: 0; + } + + &.chat { + & p:has(img) { + text-align: left; + + & img { + margin: 0; + } + } + } + } + & figure { margin: 0.5lh 0; diff --git a/static/pic/01K60DHWNAEWV8FR8XT4X0DRET-untitled.png b/static/pic/01K60DHWNAEWV8FR8XT4X0DRET-untitled.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000..756610c Binary files /dev/null and b/static/pic/01K60DHWNAEWV8FR8XT4X0DRET-untitled.png differ diff --git a/static/pic/01K616CGN7TEM3VKZ5NQ9M6QDB-owl.jpg b/static/pic/01K616CGN7TEM3VKZ5NQ9M6QDB-owl.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..89fe1dc Binary files /dev/null and b/static/pic/01K616CGN7TEM3VKZ5NQ9M6QDB-owl.jpg differ