The Most Prolific Unpopular Musician in the World
I got… I was telling somebody this weekend that I may be getting the award for the largest amount of music produced versus unpopularity. Like, no one really listens. Sometimes they listen on SoundCloud, but I think that’s a scam.
But you just kind of keep making it.
I’ve been especially mindful of this as I try to build up a sync catalog. I just finished 20 songs, which I’ve beaten down to 7 or 8.
And honestly, I like that ratio. It’s a little higher than usual. They are artistically pleasing, if not artistic, meant to be synth pop background songs.
I’ve also been doing weekly dub techno on YouTube, which is not really dub techno, so it’s probably going to be very hard to hit because I don’t even know what to call it yet. Going out of town this week, so I have to make one tonight to populate next week.
Anyhoo
What I really got thinking about today was this:You can be whoever you want musically on any given day. And it’s basically penalty-free.
I used to tell people when I had a small restaurant that depending on who I was talking to, I could make a case that I was either a brilliant restauranteur or a total failure. And I think we can all do that musically too.
Some days I’ll listen to something and think: I don’t know how to make anything. I don’t know how to make a sound. I don’t know what I’m doing.
Then I listen back to this little commercial for-alll-the-wrong-reasons sync catalog and think: no, that sounds like somebody who knows their lane.
Because I cut away 13 okay tracks and ended up with 7 or 8 really succinct little melodically interesting tracks that are pleasing and non-offensive.
So it’s just like anything else. What are you telling yourself? Should you even be telling yourself anything?
At the end of the day, celebrate the wins. Think about the good music.
And it’s a volume game. If I keep making videos, someone’s going to notice. If I keep releasing music, I get a little smarter every time. A little better, a little more this, a little more that. Then you just kind of keep getting better and making better music.
Because I tried and spent 20 days building a little sync record, I understand what I do a little more now. I certainly understand the difference between the Akai MPC world and the Ableton Live world a lot more clearly. And I feel pretty proficient in both.
Now, I could go watch a tutorial on ambient dub techno sound design and immediately feel like an idiot again for starting with too many presets or all these other weird rules that people start setting for themselves.
But that doesn’t really make any sense.
So I’m going to try to be conscious of that and remind myself more of the good things I’m doing right now.
The failures are growth. Doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Although I am definitely an idiot about a lot of things.
But I bet if I listened to what I was doing a year ago, I’d be pretty encouraged. Not because it was bad. Just because there’s growth.
Happy Sunday.