On Wed, 30 Aug, 2006 at 03:54PM +0100, Folderol spake thus: > I'm wondering how other people on here get their ideas and develop them. > > To kick off with my own experiences, sometimes an idea comes at exactly > the right time so clearly that I can work on it immediately and get it > substantially complete in one day. More usually it develops slowly and > may take weeks or even months before I am happy with it. Yes, that's pretty much exactly what happens to me. With music and with other projects, like software or writing. As an example, ATT was in my head when I woke up one morning. By the afternoon, I had almost a fully formed track in my head and I sat down and made it real. Persona Grata, on the other hand, was made in the real world. I tried different things, and generally worked for it. > Do any of you run several projects at the same time? Dropping them for > a while if you go stale on them. Do you look back on them and fiddle > with them sometimes when they are already 'complete'? Yes, yes and no. I try not to go back to things that I considered finished unless there's a very good reason. If I have a new idea, I keep it for something fresh. > Sometimes it's a chord pattern that sets me off, other times it's a > melody line. There seems to be no clear priority. I almost always start by bashing keys and then thinking "oh, those ones are nice". > Does anyone else find > that an idea gets so bogged down you end up scrapping it completely? Never. I just leave them until another time. When nothing new wants to come out, I go back through my junk and listen for the little bits I like in the middle of things I hate. > Although my website is quite a recent innovation for me I've been > recording my work in one form or another for about 15-20 years now, and > seem to find that I only *really* like about 10% of what I've produced. > What about the rest of you? Yeah, about that. I have tonnes of stuff I keep but wouldn't show anyone. > I'm sometimes surprised by the opinions of friends, both positively and > negatively. Some really go a bundle on pieces I produced early on that > almost makes me cringe. Sometimes I get a negative comment on something > I think is really good. I've found it impossible to actually predict > the response of friends and family. Same here. If this happens, though, just remember: they are wrong! You are right! They just don't "get it". :) > The unkindest cut came from my brother a long time ago, when he > described my work as "OK I suppose, but it's not as if it's real > music." I personally think that's better than people giving me a blanket thumbs-up. How can you get anything useful from someone that pretends to like even the crappiest and most tuneless ditties? James
