That’s a hell of a cliffhanger!
I bought this book this week, after reading this article. In the introduction the author cites research that shows the average college student stays on task for 65 seconds, the average office worker 3 minutes. That same office worker is lucky if they manage 1hr of a work a day.
I read Deep Work and The Shallows a fair few years back, and I quit social media in 2021. I think I have regaind some of my capacity to focus, but I’m not the same person who used to be able to sit and get lost in a 6hr coding session, get a coffee, and then do it again.
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Oh, I totally agree with that 
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As I kinda agreeing with that statement, I’m also remembering that before I’ve ingurgitated lots of “how to make X sounds” stuff I was restricted myself to a way more constricted workflow. It helped me to add other perspectives to the way I looked at sound design.
But yeah, I’m talking about my first year of discovering computer assisted music, now (almost 10 years later) I dont see the point of looking at this kind of stuff.
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That’s exactly what I was doing. But I’ve noticed myself doing it a lot less so far this year. I can’t say not at all, but definitely a tolerable amount. I’ve found myself getting bored of doing that too (I know!) and then going up to the music room to make some positive changes up there. I hope this is the star of me spending my music time trying to create music, instead of gathering knowledge and equipment which I then put to no use.
This is SO important. My concentration is completely shot currently. Not just from GAS, there are other things going on too (haven’t we all). I’d really like to get back to the person who could concentrate on a single task for even an hour, without getting pulled in 10 different directions. It’s almost involuntary sometimes, like I’m watching myself get distracted, but can’t help it!
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Notation please.
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I can relate to the concentration thing. It’s been really bad for years. If I’m watching a movie by myself, I’ll pause it maybe 7-8 times an hour, to do other stuff, and rarely get to the end in one sitting. I’m seeing improvement lately, though. I get moments of being lost, in piano playing for instance, where I’ll look up and realise, that half an hour went by. Baby steps in the right direction.
Great subject, and one that is on my mind a lot lately.
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I just think of imitating other peoples’ production techniques as part of the process of learning and developing yourself as an artist, producer, or whatever you want to call yourself.
It’s so much harder if you’re not able to see how others accomplished the same things you’re trying to learn, like how to mix, what is panning, what is compression and how to use it, etc.
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Piano is my first instrument. For me, learning to read music and learning music theory were/are very much the same thing. I am not so good at processing large amounts of discrete information, so pattern comprehension is important when I am sight-reading music. For example, understanding that a certain chord is being played keeps me from having to scrutinize every note in the chord. I tell my students that music reading is about relationships between notes and about making good guesses.
Music theory, on this forum, is sometimes dismissed as a great tool for making worn-out-sounding music. Other times it is treated as bitter, but necessary medicine. My suggestion is to approach it through sight-reading. You may start out excruciatingly slow, but you will improve.
An old colleague and I occasionally got together to sight-read 4-hand piano transcriptions. I remember playing through Beethoven’s 6th Symphony. The experience redefined, for me, what it means to “know” a piece of music.
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Having got quite high on the ELO rating in Chess(around 2150) and being a county player my performance dropped after i turned 30, losing 100 ELO in Fides rating system. A factor in chess that concentration declines due to mental fatigue over extended periods. So now i find it very hard to sit through a film. I used to paint for hours with no problem. Now its 1hr at most as i lose concentration as i get tired. So concentration is going to be harder the older you get anyway.
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Yes, I would agree that it’s helpful but depending on what you want to do it might also have lots of negative effects, like comparing yourself to others too much, sounding like others and not finding your own style, or even trying really.
Nowadays it’s so easy to just watch some videos on YT to find all the great teachers and information there and thats awesome. My point is that there is a risk of going too much by those standards and not developing your own, and that’s where my current attitude stems from. I have been influenced too much by these great artists we all know and I need to change my approach a lot to be happy with what I’m doing.
These rant-ish statements are not to belittle anyone in any way but maybe myself a little bit, bcs I have found myself making lots of v mediocre stuff and I’m just absolutely sick of it. I don’t know what’s the point in me rambling on about these matters now that I think of it.
I guess just like many others here have begun feeling the NGNY’s effects in other aspects of their lives, I too am experiencing this and it’s heavily focused on the music and art itself in my case.
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Acquiring that information is just… acquiring information.
What you do with that information, how you feel about it, how you feel about yourself compared to others… those are separate issues.
Like when I wanted to learn how to use the First and Last step parameters in my MC-707, watching someone else show me how he does it… had no effect on me other than my acquisition of this information. If I have negative feelings because he knows how to use them better than me, should I not have gotten this information? I would say no. If those feelings were bad enough, I would instead call up a trusted friend and meet up for coffee and try to feel better by talking it out - and if that didn’t work, schedule an appointment with a health professional - and I mean it with due respect and seriousness.
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Interesting. My experience has been the opposite. But then again, I took up meditation some years ago, and that probably works in my favour.
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I would disagree. Those are separate issues in theory but not always (ever?) in practice. That of course might be more of an opinion than a fact. It’s a fact for me. 
I mean for example many mistakes or intentional f**k-ups are more compelling than many successfully executed choices, and some of those mistakes rarely happen or get deleted and fixed if you know how it’s done, regardless of the attitude one would like to have about it.
Ever mixed a track neurotically until it’s completely dead and means nothing anymore, anyone?
It seems to me that with certain information in your head you’re simply not capable or willing to do certain things.
In a nutshell I believe that acquiring information changes us in many ways, and in many ways we’re not aware of, and most of all that I’ve certainly overdone it.
I have had the misfortune of sitting with a bandmate who was neurotic about track mixes.
I took up violin as an adult. This is one of the worst instruments to learn if you are easily dismayed by seeing some little kid cruise through Back Partita in B Minor, Presto movement or another kid jam on a bluegrass hoedown at comparable speed like it was nothing… while you as an adult learner are struggling to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with shitty bow tone
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Would agree with this a lot, in terms of, there’s a lot of ways to left brain your way to a sound if you want it these days. When a lot of really good music was written with a base level of knowledge but beyond that, just exploration.
You can sound like burial did, you can sound like aphex or autechre did, but are you really pursuing your voice or just learning how to copy a sound at a very high level… I think that’s a very tough line to look out for
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Violin is a beautiful instrument that can be used experimentally too in many ways!!
My ex bandmate made me realise that when he piezo’d his violin and ran it through modular. Even without electronics it can be a very personal thing.
Glad to hear that you went there knowing it’s not gonna be easy in the beginning!!
I remember this so distinctly years ago when I really learned how to use and tweak all the parameters of KARMA on the Korg Kronos to create more complex arpeggiations than I have ever been able to do with any other hardware or software instrument. I wanted the Kronos mostly for this feature, which I have yet to find anywhere else (other than on a few other Korg and Yamahas). It is such a bummer that it has died now that it’s creator has retired. I hope my Kronos lasts for the rest of my life, for this reason alone (and many others).
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That’s high! I just started learning chess, and I can’t imagine being that good ever. Kudos!
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