<story><title>Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician</title><url>https://the.scapegoat.dev/turning-music-into-a-chore-is-what-made-me-an-artist/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fortran77</author><text>&amp;gt; I just enjoy the relaxation involved.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t understand this at all.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been playing piano for 50+ years. Still practice every day. Play in amateur recitals. It&amp;#x27;s fun, but hardly relaxing. It&amp;#x27;s a lot of work, concentration, and study. And as I get older it gets more challenging because of physical limitations (movement, eyesight, hearing) that I have to work around. My fingers don&amp;#x27;t work like they used to, and sometimes I have to decide to leave out a note, or move something to a different hand, etc. Painstaking note-by-note and phrase-by-phrase analysis.&lt;p&gt;Memorization is also tough.</text></item><item><author>DoesntMatter22</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been making music for 20 years, just noodling mostly. I&amp;#x27;ve made some tracks that friends of mine love, but I don&amp;#x27;t want to do it professionally. I just enjoy the relaxation involved.&lt;p&gt;In about 2003 I tried something very similar, except I time boxed a song. I had to spend an hour and a half and each song could only take 15 minutes. That ended up being incredibly fruitful.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t have time to think, you just go stream of consciousness through whatever comes to mind. Drums are weird? Too bad, there is no time, go with it. Throw in a 8 bar synth or piano loop. It&amp;#x27;s not good? Well, there isn&amp;#x27;t much time so on to the next thing.&lt;p&gt;This ended doing a few things for me. For one, there was no second guessing anything. You just made what you made. For two there was no pressure to do a good job. You can&amp;#x27;t do a good job you are just rushing through. That lets things just flow. Thirdly it allowed me to try a ton of things that I wouldn&amp;#x27;t normally try. There was no wrong answer. All three are kinda related.&lt;p&gt;I made some of my favorite songs that way and they are songs I still love. I later applied this to writing a technical book. I forced myself to write for 5 minutes a day, everyday. Sometimes it&amp;#x27;d be 2 hours and other times it&amp;#x27;d be 5 minutes but I got the book done and it became pretty popular. (also had a monetary penalty if I couldn&amp;#x27;t write on any particular day).&lt;p&gt;I really love this way of working. Just time box and go.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nition</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been playing piano for ~25 years. I pretty quickly gravitated away from learning existing pieces towards composition and improv. I&amp;#x27;m slow at reading sheet music and can&amp;#x27;t sight read, but for playing new songs I can generally just look at the chords and get something at least close enough to sing over right away. Just messing around making stuff up is a lot more relaxing than learning by rote I think. Of course I&amp;#x27;m never going to play Piano Concerto No. 21 so it depends what you want out of life. :)&lt;p&gt;The best example of &amp;quot;relaxed piano playing&amp;quot; I can think of is actually the old Build Mode music from The Sims[0]. I&amp;#x27;m 90% sure that all those piano tracks are just someone messing around improvising over a few simple chords, because it sounds so much like what comes out when I&amp;#x27;m doing the same kind of thing.&lt;p&gt;Now, it&amp;#x27;s always a little stressful to &lt;i&gt;record&lt;/i&gt; that kind of playing because if you play something bad sounding then you&amp;#x27;ll have to start over (or at least, splice multiple takes together), but if you&amp;#x27;re just playing the piano for fun, I think it mostly is relaxing.&lt;p&gt;Have you ever tried just playing some chords in the left hand and kind of letting the right hand do what it feels like?&lt;p&gt;[0] Here&amp;#x27;s Build 3 for example: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=8gGHQicQUw4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=8gGHQicQUw4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;----&lt;p&gt;Edit: Looks like that YouTube video actually links to an article which confirms my old suspicion that it&amp;#x27;s improv piano:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;When Russo and Martin couldn&amp;#x27;t quite capture that wistfulness themselves, they called Burr. A successful jazz pianist in his own right as well as a highly sought-after session musician, he was comfortable working off of Martin&amp;#x27;s ideas (and, unlike Russo, he was a pianist by trade rather than a saxophonist). Burr says he loved the cut-and-paste style of recording that Martin employed. It was a case, he says, of &amp;quot;just looking at Jerry and asking, &amp;#x27;Does this sound like what you want?&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; So, while Russo went away and worked on his pieces only to see them chopped up by Martin, Burr was happy improvising.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician</title><url>https://the.scapegoat.dev/turning-music-into-a-chore-is-what-made-me-an-artist/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fortran77</author><text>&amp;gt; I just enjoy the relaxation involved.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t understand this at all.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been playing piano for 50+ years. Still practice every day. Play in amateur recitals. It&amp;#x27;s fun, but hardly relaxing. It&amp;#x27;s a lot of work, concentration, and study. And as I get older it gets more challenging because of physical limitations (movement, eyesight, hearing) that I have to work around. My fingers don&amp;#x27;t work like they used to, and sometimes I have to decide to leave out a note, or move something to a different hand, etc. Painstaking note-by-note and phrase-by-phrase analysis.&lt;p&gt;Memorization is also tough.</text></item><item><author>DoesntMatter22</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been making music for 20 years, just noodling mostly. I&amp;#x27;ve made some tracks that friends of mine love, but I don&amp;#x27;t want to do it professionally. I just enjoy the relaxation involved.&lt;p&gt;In about 2003 I tried something very similar, except I time boxed a song. I had to spend an hour and a half and each song could only take 15 minutes. That ended up being incredibly fruitful.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t have time to think, you just go stream of consciousness through whatever comes to mind. Drums are weird? Too bad, there is no time, go with it. Throw in a 8 bar synth or piano loop. It&amp;#x27;s not good? Well, there isn&amp;#x27;t much time so on to the next thing.&lt;p&gt;This ended doing a few things for me. For one, there was no second guessing anything. You just made what you made. For two there was no pressure to do a good job. You can&amp;#x27;t do a good job you are just rushing through. That lets things just flow. Thirdly it allowed me to try a ton of things that I wouldn&amp;#x27;t normally try. There was no wrong answer. All three are kinda related.&lt;p&gt;I made some of my favorite songs that way and they are songs I still love. I later applied this to writing a technical book. I forced myself to write for 5 minutes a day, everyday. Sometimes it&amp;#x27;d be 2 hours and other times it&amp;#x27;d be 5 minutes but I got the book done and it became pretty popular. (also had a monetary penalty if I couldn&amp;#x27;t write on any particular day).&lt;p&gt;I really love this way of working. Just time box and go.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dsclough</author><text>Practicing piano and fooling around in a DAW are completely different realms of music related activities. The pianists all know have given me the impression the activity is many more parts stress if the goal is practicing to be able to play a challenging piece, while working in a DAW can be more like splattering paint on a canvas when done like the parent comment describes</text></comment>