I just watched Miles Kvndra’s video: 5 THINGS I learned from making music in 2022. And the point Miles made about daily sessions being the most productive got me thinking as I’ve had stretches this year of doing short daily sessions (e.g. 30-75 minutes) and other times doing only one session a week but for many hours.
The fun thing with the longer sessions is the you can get lost in the process and really achieve a lot. But as Miles notes, it’s risky if your scheduled session doesn’t happen or it’s unproductive.
At the moment I’m back to the short daily sessions and I think overall this is the most effective approach - even though it sometimes feels like you have to stop before you’ve really built some creative momentum.
What are other people habits, thoughts, plans in this area?
Using his terminology, I’m a “plodder” in most things, except purely creative endeavors like making music. I find having a 30-60 min cutoff time non-productive, as I often just start to hit a creative sweet spot around the hour mark. So I’m usually doing hardware sessions Fri - Sun when I know I have longer blocks to work with.
However, I’ve also found the iPad an incredibly useful tool for shorter periods when I want to sketch something out quickly and know I only have a short period to work with. Can take it with me anywhere and no time lost to booting up or connecting cables.
That’s an interesting article. I think what determines if they are a binary (plodding vs bursting) is how much free time one has. And the nature of the free time. For example, I have free time in the late evening most days of the week. But I need to bend over backwards to free up a block of time on the weekend due to family commitments.
I agree on the iPad to take advantage of incidental free time during the week when on the move. I would encourage anyway that owns a tablet to carry it with them for this reason.
I’ve taken to treating my DT and DN like sketchbooks. Sometimes simple loops, sometimes 2-3 patterns songs, but always sounds that feel expressive and in-the-moment. It is a very meditative thing for me.
Nearly every night I am able to spend 20-30min with one of the machines while waiting for the kids to fall asleep. To me the most beneficial thing about this is that they feel like instruments now. Things I can jam with, write with, explore, etc.
I plan to continue this practice as long as my brain will allow and try not to make it something more than it is. That’s my recurring issue with music - I build up the end product in my head and the result is a lot of unfinished “songs”. Personally, I’ve learned more about myself and what music means to me through a short practice. Onward in 2023!
I’ve spent a good deal of time trying to understand my relation to music….as well as this idea of productivity and walking away with something. My reason for treating the instruments as sketchbooks is that often times when we sketch - it’s for a future self. You will make a lot of things that don’t sound right, aren’t your “style”, you think suck, you think are awesome, etc. Keep making it all, no matter how small. You don’t know when you’re going to come back and hear something you didn’t the first time.
You should give it a go. I do a mixture of slowly building tracks over numerous sessions, as well as more sketchy - just having fun in the moment - stuff (like raydomz).
We all know this of course, but the great thing with Elektron devices is that the sequencer saves everything we do (assuming we save the project). So even sketches can become tracks over time without it seeming that way.
They can be mutually exclusive if one has a busy schedule: work, family, etc. In that scenario, if one gets a good daily music making routine happening, then the need to organise an entire afternoon or day to work on music becomes less critical - although still nice when it can be organised of course.
I agree. When I first got DT and DN, I used to sit down on the couch with one device at a time and just make some patterns. Often times, I stumbled upon them later on while jamming or trying to write a song. Just loaded up stuff to see if anything fits, and surprisingly often it worked.
If you feel like you‘re not in the mood for creating patterns, maybe you can make a sound patch that will spark an idea next time. Or just organize patterns/banks or slightly improve some sounds/steps in an existing sequence.
That being said, I personally need to take a bit more time to finalize and record stuff. That’s why I haven’t really done that yet, as it is hard to find the time. But with complex things happening, I need time to fully understand everything involved and get a handle of things. Been inching towards finalizing stuff by getting smaller tasks like improving a bass sound or micro-timing steps out of the way during a shorter session before though.
I was definitely doing best when I made time for short daily sessions. Up to an hour like others have said. And finish each session by having an idea or a few ideas for what to work on next session. This is pretty much the only thing that has got me to finished tracks.
Hey all, thanks a bunch for the feedback to the video - I’m honestly very happy that it sparked such a great discussion.
Also I really like the blog post that @bangonadigi shared, great read. I’m definitely more the “Plodding” person but I totally see the benefits of a hybrid approach as longer session can also spark out great ideas and (most importantly) are a lot of fun if you get lost in the moment and have a nice jam going. I think it is up to everyone’s personal flow which side works better - as the article states both have their pros and cons. I reduced my dayjob to a 4 day week some weeks ago to have now one day for these “bursting” sessions and work on bigger projects. I still maintain the 30-60 min sessions for the other 4 working days and think this combines the best of both worlds. And it makes more room on weekends for friends and family too.
I’d like to just add that the project Exquisite Cops from Jas Shaw (half of Simian Mobile Disco) was made during a pretty long treatment period he had to go through. He only had the strength for fairly short periods of music making, so he lowered his expectations and recorded individual synth lines or drum loops. And after a while, he rediscovered them and started combining several of these recordings together to see how they worked. He ended up with many happy accidents and had a full release.
Same with Matthias Puech whose second album is made of a patchwork of recordings from his modular synth, often combining 2 or 3 stems from sessions weeks or months apart.
Good thoughts Miles,
I have been making music since I was a teenager in the 80ies.
I always enjoyed the process of making music.
If you are making music as a hobby it´s always important and challenging to balance these things out.
Of course you want to make progress, want to collaborate with others, produce an album.
Combining this with a regular job means to know what you can realistically achieve and not overload yourself.
We see all this great videos where people perform so well and it seems like this would happen nearly effortless.
It doesn´t. It´s work. A lot of work. It should first of all be fun and recreational.
I often felt exhausted because there were concert dates that demanded preparation/rehearsal, release timelines…
Many years ago I took a complete break for several years when I became a dad.
I really felt relief but also I missed it very much.
Hey man, thanks for sharing your thoughts! And I really feel you here especially around the topic of exhaustion. It definitely is work and sometimes I’m also getting lost in the “work” part rather than diving into the fun and just get going.
To not overwhelm myself I came to this regular schedule of making music and working on my creative projects. And like you I also take complete breaks from time to time to recharge batteries - sometimes it’s just well need it and when I feel it I pull myself out completely. It really helps when it gets too much. All the best for you!
Interesting topic. I started to do short daily sessions about two months ago and found it to be a much more productive way of working. I might have suffered from quite severe ear fatigue combined with a general sense of progressively getting lost in what I was doing or rather wanted to do.
I actually went over some stuff I did the year before and was able to balance it out in terms of mix, arrangement and sound design.
Obviously time will tell if I‘m on the right track, but to me it actually feels like a revelation. When I‘m listening the next morning, the high and lows are not completely out of place as they used to be when I was doing really long sessions and overall it does not feel like I need a notepad to write down all the things I‘d have to change when listening the next day.
