Sitting There Like a Boob (aka The Zone)
Today is day seven of writing a jam a day, and I’m in the zone. Here's the jam.
I thought it would all be this or that (over covered in this blog), but I’ve kind of centered on this OP-1-based workflow. And now it’s bleeding into the Ableton workflow, affecting that too. So I’m for sure in the zone—or what I know is the zone.
I can attribute this mostly to one thing.
I get up around 5:00–5:30. Feed the dog. Make coffee. And then I just sit there. I sit there until I’m done with the first cup for sure, and sometimes it bleeds into the second. And I’m just sitting there like a boob doing nothing.
Catholics would call it First Fruits—your best time. I’m religious, so I do my religious stuff. I’ll meditate a little. And then when I’m ready, I start thinking about what kind of music I want to make.
So I’ll come up with an idea. The lightbulb moment. There’s a good video on this—link here. I’ll think about it some more and then it’s like, OK, I kind of theorize what it would be. Would it fit in the structure I’m working with? (Because I don’t want to mess around with that. If I mess around with that, it takes too much time.)
I’m allowing the universe in and to take over- receiving. Trusting that this process works. Like—I know if I do these things, I’m going to have a track. I don’t even care if it’s good or bad, because I know I did the work it takes for success to show up. Almost like it's out of my hands (because it is).
Now, you still need lightning to strike a little bit. You still need to be inspired. You still need a lot of things to happen. But you have to be receiving and get yourself out of the way.
I haven’t found a better way to get ready to make music than just sitting there quietly in the morning in the dark, staring at my dog.
Watch the video. It's the best I've ever seen it explained. (Shut it-I know it's long)