alt Hacker NewsI don't believe this is how great music usually comes about, not even Techno. It's missing the other essential piece. Being influenced by and completely immersed in a niche of other brilliant people. (The most extreme example of this would be the 90's Detroit-Berlin connection.)
Paired with an obsessive work ethic in the studio.
If it's only obsession in the studio, things come out dry, uninspired. If there's no surge of energy running through your bones when making the music, why would anyone else feel anything? Mixing and the music sounding "professional" is completely secondary. Even detrimental a lot of the time, to be honest.
Applies to many other things than music as well. I don't any great technology comes out and about without that loop, either.
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I don't think this is about becoming a great musician. Maybe that comes later. As the title suggests, this is just about becoming a musician in the first place.
As a piano player who's been noodling around for a few years, trying to learn to write original stuff and not making much progress, something like this is probably what I need.
Justin Vernon disappeared to a cabin in Wisconsin for months, where he wrote and recorded one of the greatest and most popular folk rock albums of all time.
> If there's no surge of energy running through your bones when making the music, why would anyone else feel anything?
There have been thousands if not hundreds of thousands of albums released under contract that the artists were not really into, yet listeners discovered them and were incredibly engaged with.
I'm thinking right now of the endless list of utterly mid jazz fusion albums (eg. on Columbia Records) that came out in the 78-88 period. Retrospectively the artists have said they hated the music, hated making it and didn't like the results, but there were plenty of people who loved it. I am sure there are other blobs like this. Now, the artists might be lying, or might have forgotten how they felt about it at the time, but that's what they say ...
So yeah, you don't need a "surge energy running through your bones". Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't.
Could great works substitute for having a scene? After all, writers have been inspired by Dostoevsky without being part of the same scene as him, and often without being part of a scene at all.
"Being influenced by and completely immersed in a niche of other brilliant people."
The author does mention that part of the process is collaboration with other musicians. It seems by setting their "chores" they are increasing their immersion.