o t h e r t i m e

there are a number of assumptions that i’m going to lay out here. the first is that most of the people who read this work full time jobs that are not related in any way to their creative output. that is to say, there is a “day job” involved. most of my friends who i know read this work all day and do their writing or composing or art at night or on the weekends. for me, there are three very strict divisions in my day: work, family and creative output. my creative work is divided right now between composing/recording/practicing (studio time) and instrument building (shop time). that’s a lot of stuff to break down, but it isn’t that difficult to do.

the first step toward doing solid creative work is to make it a part of the day. establishing a routine isn’t easy sometimes because it feels like the thing the the id wants to do isn’t going jive with the time or resources available. my basic strategy is to suck it up. i look for the immovable objects that surround me and use them as anchors to hold me on course or points for me to push off. a great example of that is my son.

my boy isn’t two years old yet. he is a creature of habit and a force of nature. we communicate very effectively but that doesn’t mean that he is compliant in the least. there’s another thing he’s not: quiet. when he was a baby i would take him into the studio with me in the evening and record. this gave my wife some time to herself and allowed me to bond with him. he was critical of my instrument choices sometimes (he still hates the banjo) but for the most part he was quiet and slept, maybe singing along from time to time. a year and a half later, he’s a totally different beast. i can’t have a live mic anywhere near him and he likes to help me play the guitar. so recording with him around is completely out. honestly, playing an instrument with him around is a challenge that i relish, but not one that is conducive to putting material on tape.

all of that aside, he still loves spending time with me in my studio. having him around doesn’t require 100% of my attention (most of the time) and he primarily wants to be close by and play with neat stuff. this is perfectly cool if i want to do some carving on a guitar neck or glue up some binding. he watches, hands me tools, and provides a running commentary that keeps me from taking myself too seriously or over thinking a project. on the weekends we spend hours in the garage together with him playing with anything within reach (which is a very short list of blunt objects that come into regular contact with the concrete floor and my knees) and me doing anything but working with power tools. i’m not cool with running the band saw around a toddler as i’m in love with the idea of keeping all ten of my digits.

with this in mind, there are rules for what kind of creative work can be done with my boy around. the first rule is that the creative activity needs to be one that can be interrupted at any time. that clears the board significantly. sanding can stop while gluing the top to the sides cannot. practicing can stop but recording can’t (or shouldn’t). this seems to contradict what i said about the boy being an example of an anchor, what with all of the stopping and starting, but it doesn’t. i know the rules in advance and being mentally prepared to drop what i’m doing allows me to maintain the necessary focus and still sneak in some work that i might not do if i didn’t see and seize the opportunity.

with the rules in place, i know that working on building an instrument can be done before bedtime but recording one must be done after. most evenings after dinner and a few books, we retire to my studio where i carve or glue or cut up guitar parts and my son plays with all of the fun stuff my studio has to offer a boy his age. things like sheets of cardboard. or a box of clothespins used to glue up linings. or random clamps. or anything with sliders or knobs. or his personal favorite: “peeks.” that would be “picks” to the rest of us. he loves to attack instruments with a guitar pick and so he does. he has fun, i get to chat with him, and plenty of guitar building or composing gets done at a reasonable pace.

note the word “reasonable.” not all definitions of that word are equal. my instrument building pace is glacial. i’m better with that on some days than others, but it’s getting done. being cool with having a longer time line than i would like is pretty important. for sanity’s sake i subdivide the building process into tasks where i need some level of education. like making and gluing braces for the top of the guitar. this is a process full of voodoo so getting the top done became a sub-project of sorts. when i got it done and attached to the sides there was a sense of accomplishment. the guitar isn’t making any noise, but a lot of learning took place and a process was completed. perspective is a powerful tool.

after the boy is in bed comes studio time. this is where the door is closed and my beautiful wife gives me the gift of one uninterrupted hour each night monday through thursday. that’s four hours a week. half of the old school average work day. it doesn’t sound like much, but it is. compartmentalizing means making that tiny part of my day as effective as i can. my passing thoughts are spent imagining what will be done with that time. my commute is often spent planning those 60 minutes and by the time they arrive, i am mentally prepared.

bear with me on this next part. it’s silly, but after thinking about it for some time i have decided that it is pretty important. the transition from family time to studio time is helped along by my shower. i was always a morning shower guy (before i started getting up for work at 5:00 AM) but moving it to the evening puts a good break in the day. much the way the commute home from work splits work time and family time, some hot water provides a mark between everything that i was doing and what i’m going to do in the studio. psychologically this is a really good way to get things rolling. clear divisions of time are quite significant.

when the door closes, i am somewhere else and that’s how it has to be. if your time is limited to an hour a day, it has to be the most effective hour it can be. there is no email. there is no internet. no applications that are not absolutely required for the task at hand. the space is prepared in advance and kept ready for work. no distractions. pure focus.

what makes for a successful session is pretty simple. being prepared mentally is the hard part. all of that other stuff from the day has to go away. the stress of the day to day is on the shelf and there are no priorities aside from doing that solid work. it’s like preparing for a performance. when you are on stage, that’s all there is. it should be the same way in the studio. i’ll talk more about my take on the similarities between the studio and the stage later. they’re more alike than not and that deserves some recognition.

the tools and the room must be set up in advance and preferably kept that way. i have a very simple home studio and keeping it small but feature rich helps me be more effective. there aren’t a thousand widgets to fire up. i plug in my sound block and pre-amp, launch a single application and begin my session. this is in no way limiting. it frees the studio time from the drudgery of keeping pace with a massive pile of gear and accentuates the effort put into composing or recording. a big part of efficiency is simplicity and i practice that for all it’s worth. in fact, i set up the studio after we put the boy to bed and before i take my evening shower. that way the studio is ready when i am.

the hour that i spend in the studio is strictly for creating, not editing or critiquing. that is done on the next morning when i put whatever scraps i can paste together onto the ipod for my morning commute. i find that i’m a very poor judge of material when i’m in the studio. headphones or monitors create illusions of defects that aren’t there in the morning or accent strengths that aren’t as significant after a night’s sleep. so again i have moved my time for critical activity to another chunk of my day. this gives the creative and critical processes some distance and improves the use of the time for each function.

for the kind of balance that is needed to embrace a creative lifestyle alongside the demands of living today, compartmentalizing is key. find a routine. stick to it. and divide time with predetermined markers. following this has squeezed more hours out of the day than i thought i had.

very few creative acts “just happen.” works of art are the culmination of everything that an artist has done. even in what would appear to be complete chaos, an artist’s entire process of becoming is present in a piece of work. in a very real sense, each piece is a snapshot of artistic development. that means that every creative effort is the current endpoint for an artist and the stepping stone to the next. with that in mind, i believe in getting it done.

somewhere on the intarwebz i came across the manifesto of the cult of done. these are the thoughts put down by a couple of guys who understand that each piece of work is part of a greater process. i liked the idea so much that i printed it up and hung it on my studio wall. it fits perfectly with my weekly sketch routine.

the reason that i do a sketch a week is to enforce personal discipline and development. many of the tunes i produce will end where they are and that’s fine because they lead to what is next. the act of recording and mixing a new song each week forces me to look at how i create, the tools that i use, and the kind of attention each piece demands. it also feeds what is to come. so while a given sketch may not be what i would consider a polished final product it is no less valuable for the role it plays in getting me to that next step.

my thesis is this: no one improves without many iterations. fish didn’t just jump out of the ocean and start picking apples. it took a while. creative work is the same way. brilliant pieces like “petrushka” didn’t spring fully formed from stravinsky’s head. it took him years of experimentation and hard work to develop the techniques necessary to produce such a thing of beauty. though a composer may only have a handful of pieces that are recognized as a part of the oeuvre, there are probably piles and piles of manuscripts that never saw the light of day. experiments. exercises. call them what you will, but for every truly great piece of music there are probably dozens of things that were, at best, scribbles on paper.

maybe that’s one of the better things about the time we’re living through: it’s pretty inexpensive to be prolific. well, for some disciplines anyway. a few gig of space here and there that can be recycled when it’s all over is pretty nifty. the immediate feedback of being able to commit a performance to the computer and hear it instantly is nice too. add a blog or some file space on the internet and there’s no good reason not to produce as much as you can (or want).

this is not to say that everything should be rushed. far from it. composing a major work can take years. it shouldn’t be pushed at an overly aggressive pace. at the same time, maybe it shouldn’t be the only thing that is in production. i like to keep several things in the air so that when i’m stuck on one i can move to another. it keeps the routine of creativity in tact without forcing bad decisions on a piece. of course if we stick with the “cult of done” model and recognize that everything is a draft, it’s a different ballgame.

and i’m not so sure about that.

in my personal creative process i never know what’s going to take off. i seldom sit down and say “i am going to write something that goes dah-dee blah boop-boop…” instead, i start noodling around. i sketch. play things over and over. create variations. invert ideas. switch up instruments. process things until they are unrecognizable. at no point in this series of experiments do i know when “it” is going to hit. or even if it will hit at all. while that’s certainly part of the fun, it’s not always very satisfying. it’s that feeling that someone at a slot machine gets…it hit once, it has to hit again! and indeed, if i pull the lever enough times, something will turn up. i keep sketching until it does.

so about sketches. they’re great. the more one does, the better the chances are for technical improvement and the more opportunities there are for powerful inspiration to worm its way into the work. once that tiny germ shows up, things can explode. in a very real way, this idea of producing as much as you can and really getting it done creates a deeper pool in which great ideas can grow.

take the project and get it done. “done is the engine of more.”