Big Picture Before Tiny Technicalities

This week has been a bit of a drag when it comes to music production. A couple weeks back, I realized that if I didn’t pick up the pace and start planning out deadlines for the pieces I wanted in Cloudland Connections, it would be the only major music project I’d release in 2017, and even then, that’s being optimistic. So far, though, sticking to it has not been going well—not because of procrastination, but because of something I’m going to be touching on in this post.

Productive Failure is a Real (and Helpful) Thing

I had a frustrating day yesterday when it comes to musical work. I’ve been trying to stick to a schedule of churning out a new track every 10 days, because I want to be able to release my current project, an album of ambient music titled Eyes Open in Dream, by April 10th. However, the current hardest part of the process (which is funny, because I used to be the other way around) is coming up with a basis on which to further build on and eventually shape into a fully-fledged piece. Right now, my I’m working on a track I’ve named Lazy Grey Skies.

The Burden of Technological Omnipresence

One hundred-seventy million square miles. That’s a lot of Earth, but we’re fortunate because we live in a time unlike any other. With the invention of the Internet, we’re now more connected worldwide than we ever have been before. In a lot of ways, it’s truly an amazing recourse to have, the reasons of which I’m sure you’re well aware of, so I won’t bother going into them.

More and more, however, I’m beginning to see that people are growing weary of this level of connectivity. I come across books about how “unplugging” to a certain extent can actually improve your happiness, and many a Facebook friend of mine have expressed time and time again that they need a break from it all, because it’s too much to handle, and rightly so. Imagine this scenario: you see a group of your friends in a public place, and as you go to join them, you’re suddenly bombarded by dozens of people, some of whom you know, but who’re mostly complete strangers. They’re in this clustered mob blocking you from your friends, and all of them are exchanging nasty remarks and tearing each other apart verbally concerning social, economic, and political issues, and as you try and push your way through in order to meet up with your friends on the side, the more exhausting it becomes, and the more you begin to wonder if it’s even worth all this effort.