This is part of a series of blog posts beginning with sport and continuing with failing

this is not a post about crafting.

so we begin by talking about knitting

the craft

am I going to ask th4¹ to prioritise energy over quality and drop a few stitches in order to make a wonky shawl? No, I am not. In making very intricate and beautiful pieces I guess there may be some tiny errors somewhere, but for most people they wouldn’t want it to be intentionally bad? I mean, that makes total sense. It would ruin the satisfaction of something if it looked terrible.

bad

I set the world record for the worlds worst live coding performance at AlgoRhythms this year. I could go further and play:

• abrasive white noise
• rotating mangled samples of the postman pat theme tune
• sounds of people high pitched anguished screaming non stop

so if the record is there for the taking, why don’t I swoop in and claim it?

craft

there is something about what I do that is a craft. I like to craft tracks. I do my best to preserve energy over time and not overdo it. I retain mistakes and record everything in a single take, no edits.
but still, I like to create something that feels good, satisfying.

so have I sold out? Have I abandoned energy YES quality NO??

NO

I don’t think in terms of the quality of my output. I feel in terms of the emotional impact of the music.
I spend time crafting things, I often move more slowly than realtime, by which I mean that if you listened to the process it would be quite boring as a from-scratch performance.
but I like working that way.
I also do an increasing number of from-scratch performances and am looking to do more and make it easier to quickly capture the energy I want in doing so.

I’ve been wondering about another axis

this is something we explored in rubbish
I propose another axis:

scrappy <——————–> refined

one way to think of this is in terms of food. we want our food to be cooked but we don’t want it to lose all flavour in the process.

so

YES

we love scrappy and should always share scrappy fiddles.
However, for reasons given above we are in constant danger of drifting toward the refined end of things.
I have a hypothesis that this axis is the true nature of energy vs quality
(from a creation, not a crit perspective)
the risks of ‘quality’ are that you kill the energy along the way.

conclusions

• its ok to want to craft something you are proud of
• as long as you know the risks of losing energy
• dancing somewhere on this spectrum is probably where its at

music

which brings me to: where am I going with music?
I’m in a great place - been making lots of music, plus lots more things to explore, I’m feeling good about what I’m doing.

however, as has happened in the past, in terms of reception its beginning to fizzle out…
sales are dropping off almost completely, I used to sell 5 or six copies of things, now its barely even one.
listens are trending to zero over time, or at least stagnating :/
sometimes I feel like my music is a child only a parent could love. but I’m also very glad that I do love it and I listen to it all the time
perhaps this will reverse and interest will pick up again, who knows?
I’m not very good at ‘marketing’ myself, nor pandering to what is the flavour of the moment.
the attention economy dominates, people are too busy with work and life stress, etc

as my music gets worse, the more I love it so I’m not going to change direction.

stop

I told my myself that this time I would do one important thing: not stop.

so I’m going to keep going as long as I can until, like weezer, people are actively paying me to not release music (could be a great money spinner)

I’m going to

• continue to explore genre
• work on more foley and grit
• do more collaborations
• work with voice more
• try different techniques
• speed up from-scratch
• continue to develop compositionally

yes, this is all about my ego and self-aggrandisement. and you can’t stop me