I remember someone telling me that Prince wrote a song a day and kept all his unreleased material in a secure vault. Aside from being worried that others would steal his material, I imagine the main reason he went through such great lengths to keep these songs safe is that some of them were downright awful. Maybe not, but a song a day? I am acquainted with a few creative geniuses and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need some downtime in order to maintain consistency.
Some people are like Prince and pump out art as soon as it’s conceived. Others take their time on everything. Some are happy to show off everything they make while others are total perfectionists. I personally like to just go with what feels right, which is different every time.
Being like Prince helps to keep your creative channels open, but it also puts a strain on your imagination and can make art feel like work if it isn’t flowing and you force it. I’d like to be like Prince whenever I feel stuck, force myself to write SOMETHING. But really, if I feel like I’m maki progress on something, I don’t feel the need to do that.
Some of my songs take forever. There is one in particular song that took six years to write. Actually most songs take me over a year to write. I write a part of the song, or just the melody and then I feel I’m not happy with any changes or additions to the song and so I wait a few days or weeks and try again.
One reason it takes me so long is that I have a lot of things going on at any given time. I don’t only see myself as a musician, music is just one form of art that I work with and even art is just one way of expressing myself and being who I am. I usually have these 20-40 minute periods of intense inspiration where I am fully focused and excited. I do what I can and as I start to feel the intensity of that inspiration wear off, I put what I’m working on away and change what I’m doing. I can jump from writing a song to writing a story to planning some event or initiative to engaging at steemit to going out and enjoying surroundings.
Sometimes I wish I could focus on one thing for hours on end like some artists. Perhaps I’ll be able to do that some day but for now I am happy with my mode of work.
I would love to hear about your creative process on the comments, so feel free to share.
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Confessions of the Damaged - a collection of short stories
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by @skyleap
Very thoughtful and timely for me! I am writing one track a day (hopefully) and posting it to Dsound as an exercise to get back into song writing. It is like doing a Prince but keeping the vault door open!
It’s a great way to get the juices flowing! And why not keep the door open? Be proud!
I just can’t imaone doing it for months and years when you already have a ton of great and terrible songs like Prince does.
I'm from Prince's hometown, so I can safely say that nobody is ever like Prince. They've been releasing some of those vault songs and they're a huge mix - I wonder if it's not so much that he thought they were awful as that he was never able to find time to give them a good listen later.
The small bursts of work and then change media that you talk about is very familiar to me. Over a couple of decades I built up about fifteen modes of work I can switch between, and most of the time one of them worked, so I was able to work on something.
That worked semi-functionally for a long time, but then last summer everything started working at once. Which I hadn't really thought about as a disaster scenario, but it's very much a mixed blessing. It's great to be able to work on whatever I want to, and I've been ridiculously productive ever since, but I also feel utterly swamped all the time.
Woah, do your neighbors know Prince and stuff? I would love to hear Prince stories from high school teachers haha, what an interesting human being.
Yeah, I somehow doubt Prince would feel bad about anything he created, he released some awful songs among the great ones and didn’t seem to feel bad about it.
So right now you work on everything at once? That sounds fantastic! I’ll have to pay closer attention to your blog and see what you put out!
I know some people who knew Prince, but none of them very well. Most of the stories I get are more "and then it was Prince" rather than anything characteristic.
I put together songs in a similar way... Get that initial inspiration, get stuck in a song for awhile, and then go with the ebb and flow of your creative juices after that. Maybe come back to it and edit over the course of some months (or years). There's no shame in giving songs/art pieces/whatever you're doing time to breathe - in fact I find that giving tracks space is exactly what they need more often than not. Ear fatigue is real, and it will stop you from keeping a fresh outlook on your piece. I think taking time away from my songs and coming back later helps me listen to my songs more like the average listener would, which helps me find things I want to change that I wouldn't normally find after I listen to them nonstop for 5 hours and they become stale.
Ear fatigue! I never heard that word but I understand it so deeply! I just wish the gestation period wasn’t so long sometimes but I guess if I keep picking up the guitar every day it will be. I used to have a problem where I wouldn’t feel like playing for weeks at a time when I had other stuff going on which was always, but I think I’m over that.
Do you put your own tracks up? I saw you have some covers. I’ll pay go take another look.
Ear fatigue and general fatigue, the scourge of every musician :) I have some originals I'll start spitting out here on Steemit soon! Most are instrumental blues, rock, jazz, and hip hop. Thanks for your reply and support, happy playing, m8!
If the internet saw what I wrote everyday, I'm sure I'd be given a free pass to delete myself.
Sometimes, when the inspiration comes...I could write for two hours straight (which is a helluva time, given I can't stand/ sit still for longer than two seconds); most times, I get an idea and I scribble in down, only to return hours, days or even months, to make any thing out of it.
Other times, I just open up a document and write- the results vary (disastrously awful, or pleasantly surprising).
Different modes for different moods, I’d rather you copy and paste yourself! I’ll be back to your page to check out your second sndbox post! Excited!
Copy and paste?