“The hardest way to make something is to wait until the time is right to do it”

“I compared the last year of my Youtube watch history as it relates to gear content as versus the amount of music I had made every month, and it turns out mainlining the flood of content is pretty bad for my ability to create anything”

“Just because you enjoy collecting gear and instruments and plugins or whatever doesn’t mean you need to make music with them — I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that whatsoever…I just like having them around and I play them every once in a while and it brings me a lot of joy…but, I’ve found myself getting sucked down this rabbit hole of Gear Acquisition Syndrome many times…and that’s the problem, when it actively inhibits my ability to create something”

He talks about the psychology of it — ex. with gamblers, the dopamine comes from the anticipation of the win, not the win itself. You get excited waiting to buy a new piece of gear, you buy it, and find out it doesn’t make music on its own. “We waste so much time waiting around to create something.”

So here’s my situation! I want to finish my Planet Project, “The Last of the 300 Worlds”. The last time I sat in front of a computer and made music was the summer of 2021, when I worked with my music tutor and handed in a bunch of music every 2 weeks. The goal then was to make a rough draft of the entire video soundtrack — have some music for all the sections of the video. I did succeed at that! and at one point the time crunch forced me into a solution I would not have come up with otherwise!

During the intervening time, many things have gotten in the way of making music. Because of Covid, I’m no longer a church musician, something that had been part of my life since 2001. Along with contact with other musicians, and practicing and performing music, it also added structure to my life. A schedule; deadlines. Pushing through social phobia.

Another disruptive process was finding a new home and moving from a place we had lived for 25 years. Soon after we moved, there were more changes. My dad passed away, and my mom about 6 months after that. My husband was in the hospital for a week. I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder.

Now after having been in the new house for more than a year, I feel much more content here. We planted the special trees we brought with us and bought several more — 25 in all! We set up the chickens and other pet birds. Just in the last month we installed 6 bookcases (two of which I built from scratch) and unpacked 35 bankers’ boxes full of books, 3 ring binders, and my beloved spiral bound graph paper notebooks. They are still out of order, so I can’t put a hand on the notebooks I was writing in during the summer of 2021. But they’re in my office!

And, I’ve touched base with my music tutor, who is in what he hopes will be the final semester of his music degree. We had a wonderful conversation, and plan to work together some time in the near future.

Why am I waiting?

The main thing holding me back from creating right now is my work space. My daughter is in the process of building me a new rig — one that will be able to run my DAWs, softsynths, and video editing software without chugging. I’m waiting for that with eager anticipation, as if it will solve all my problems. I also dislike working in my office now because it’s so cluttered and cramped. I haven’t yet found the power supplies for my synths and midi controllers, haven’t attached my audio interface. And my computer itself is so stuffed with files that there’s only a few hundred gig left on disk C. I’m afraid to try to run anything!

This house is set up differently than where we lived before. We have gained a beautiful living room and family room and two more bathrooms! But we have lost our outdoor detached garage and pole barn. A lot of things are stored in the garage and basement and they are packed so tightly that it’s hard to go through them, to sort and discard. A HUGE thing I could do is start the process of having a barn built. I’m scared to make the phone call. I had been postponing the decision (“Isn’t it selfish?”) until we had a minor flood in the basement and I realized that a lot of things we have in the basement should be stored somewhere else. Having more room is something that would benefit the whole family, not just me.

— More space, so my office can become a music studio instead of the place I put everything I haven’t made a decision about

— Find the power supplies and cables to attach the equipment I have

— Clear some space on my current computer

— Spend some time as a musician every day. Watching videos and responding to them counts! Listening to Dr. Greenberg’s audio courses. Listening to the concerto posted on Balloon Juice blog by a contemporary composer. Reading Jake Lizzio’s book on chords. Flash cards. Listening to Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier while looking at the score.

— Go back to the music I created in 2021. It’s currently in FL Studio. Start the process of moving it over to Ableton Live, so I can share files with my tutor. Are there parts I want to re-write? What parts fit the storyline and mood of the video, what parts don’t fit well?

That’s 5 items — that feels kind of overwhelming.

1. Barn
2. Attach midi controller and audio interface
3. Current computer — organize
4. Study music
5. re-acquaint myself with Planet Project

That’s good for now! Here’s the video by Venus Theory that I found so inspiring.