If you’re not going to do something about it, stop thinking about it.
If you’re not going to put action behind the things you spend a lot of time thinking about, it’s worth thinking of something else. Something that you’re going to move from thoughts into actions.
Your time and your thoughts are precious and powerful so it’s important to spend them in ways that make a difference to yourself and to others.
I’m not sure which came first…important news or the voice that news anchors use to indicate to us that the news they’re reporting is important.
It’s not a voice that anyone actually has in real life but we can all do the impression. So can they. And they do.
Impressions are great because it gives us shorthand to know how we should receive the message.
Just don’t misuse the impressions.
The strongest bond we share as artists is that we’ve all been working in a room, alone, and have absolutely nothing…thinking this must mark the end of creativity.
And then we come up with something.
And then we have nothing again.
And then we keep going.
That’s the bond. The keeping going.
What do you want?
What are you going to do next?
Answering the first one is fun because the boundaries are so wide. We can add all of our whimsical thoughts, our extravagant simple desires, and the way we want our reality to feel.
The second question is harder and perhaps more important because the boundaries are tight. ’Next’ means two minutes from now or two seconds from now…definitely not two months from now. It’s harder to get away with adding wild imagination when the constraints for coming through are so near, and the truth of the results are going to be realized so quickly.
Songwriting…the lyrics, chords and melody and some of the main musical hooks
Pre-Production…locking in the tempo, key, more musical elements, dynamics, implementing groove and structure (length of the intro, bars between sections, outro)
Production…sounds and details and adding drama and inspired performances and magical plugins
Production is really fun when the song is written and preproduction is mapped out.
Production is really clunky when the song is still being written and the flow is…not yet flowing.
All of these three elements can be done along side all of the others but it’s a bigger mental leap having to constantly switch back and forth.