Why Am I Leading With the Wrong Thing?
In a continuation of yesterday’s post, something occurred to me last night. Now, I don’t know if it’s true or whatever, but I could be putting my worst foot forward on Youtube.
And by that, I mean I’m regularly composing songs with an A/B form and generally holding back the C.
So, I can compose a song. And on YouTube, I’m doing jams which are a bit meandering, maybe a little loosey-goosey and all that kind of stuff in different styles.
Would I do better to do the thing I’m good at and make sure I’m cranking out one of my things a week?
Now, composing-wise, I could take one of these forms and extend them and drop in lyrical samples and do all kinds of cool stuff and learn and practice and do everything all at once. Making a synth pop song instead of some sort of house jam (which is what I’m posting). I don’t want to make any declarations today, but as I sit here now, it sure does make a lot of sense.
Why am I putting my worst foot forward? Why wouldn’t I put my best?
Is that why the content or the videos are not interesting for people to watch? They probably aren’t. It’s like, would I watch them? Really, if I’m being honest with myself, my partially subconscious thought with these is, hey, maybe someone will put them on in the background. Is that any way to get ahead?
Or do I just concentrate on what I do well, which is synth pop, kind of happy, but there’s some darkness there. And it’s the thing people respond most to. It’s the records I’m happiest with. It’s the music I’m happiest with.
And it just comes right out. Effortless in the sense that the work has been done. The listening’s been done, the practice has been done, the playing’s been done. So melodically, I can get into the flow really easily.
So why would I not lead with that?
I don’t have the answer today, but my assumption is that this is the direction I should go, and I’m going to think about this for a couple days and keep writing.
So if on Tuesday what I’m writing that day can become more of a song-song, then the more I do that, the better I get with the MPC or the KO sampler world or Ableton. And the goal is probably that you wouldn’t know which one I’m using.
But this week it’s Akai and the teenage engineering KO, which is super cool. Sampling into the MPC without syncing them up time-wise, but getting the BPM the same. Maybe the swing’s not the same, maybe I screwed something up in one or the other. So the microcosms of being off are what’s giving it its groove.
Something to think about on a Monday.