Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativity

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Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativity

Postby DerpyGrooves » 28 Jul 2013 16:48



I would quite like to see these sorts of principles used in music making? Organization will set you free.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby itroitnyah » 28 Jul 2013 18:31

This was great, but creativity doesn't require organization. This really seems more like a message to keep our studios clean, lol.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby DerpyGrooves » 28 Jul 2013 18:56

itroitnyah wrote:This was great, but creativity doesn't require organization. This really seems more like a message to keep our studios clean, lol.


The points are presented better written:

"Creativity is the enemy of innovation"

1. Sacred Space - Tool kit at the ready! So when inspiration strikes there is no delay, excuse or hindrance between you, your thought and it’s realization.
2. Always be knolling (to arrange like objects in a parallel or 90 degree angle as a method of organization)
3. Keep a List - your list is your past and your future. Carry at all times, prioritize; today, this week, and eventually, you will someday die with items still on your list. But for now, while you live, your list helps prioritize what can be done in your limited time.
4. Work To Code - Do Not Innovate! Slowly develop new ideas built in a pre-existing language. Creativity is the enemy, and the road to caprice. Invent because you must, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
5. Sent Does Not Mean Received - Just because you sent it does not mean it was received. Always get a receipt and when practical confirm of receipt of items with intended recipient. Without a receipt your actions can not be proved, without a receipt you don’t exist. The more concrete the method of communication, the more authority it holds. The reverse is also true - which is useful when weaseling. What you say sometimes is not what is heard. What you hear sometimes is not what is being said. If you have doubts, confirm that the other understands your intentions by insisting politely that the instructions are repeated back to you and redacted. When receiving instructions, refer to bullet 6. “I understand". If this seems patronizing weigh it against the consequences of an error. It’s not the action that counts but the result of that action.
6. Feedback. A good computer will give you a click, vibrate or display that it has received your command. “I understand" means: I have heard and understand all of your statement. It’s a confirmation that the instructions are clear, conversely, “don’t understand" means clarification is requested. No response means: something is wrong with the system: “silence = death", acknowledgment is empathy, the slightest nod, grunt or polite interruption indicates that you have received and understood the information.
7. Finding Lost Things. Rule #1 - Believe you will find it. #2 - Knoll your space, clean everything. 90% of all lost things are found during cleaning. #3 Relax trust your ears and mind, don’t limit your perceptual experience. Use this as an opportunity to develop your intuition. What have you left to lose right?
8. Reset. At the end of the day: Knoll your workspace, sweep and empty trash. Preset your workstation with something pleasurable to complete. Begin your day with a sense of accomplishment. Resist ending the day unresolved, solve tough problems first.
9. Procrastinate. If at first you don’t succeed give up immediately, move on to some other task until that becomes unbearable, then move on again, circling back around for the first problem. By now, your subconscious will have worked on it, sort of like sleep, only cheaper.
10. Tenacity Prayer. “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not, nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not, unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent" - Ray Kroc
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby itroitnyah » 28 Jul 2013 19:15

DerpyGrooves wrote:List
My interpretation of it:

Do not be creative

1. Take care of your studio space.

2. Make sure your studio space is clean and tidy

3. Make schedules

4. Do not be creative, just follow guidelines on how you must be doing what you are doing.

5. Double check to make sure that the other people you work with in the studio understand what they are supposed to be doing.

6. Tell the other people in your studio that you know what you are supposed to be doing

7. If you lose something, find it

8. Clean your studio more often

9. Procrastinate

10. Be persistent and motivated.

To sum it all up, keep your studio clean and organized. And if you work with other people in your studio make sure they know what they are doing and that you know what you are doing.

This is really great for people who work more in workshops or factories more than producers who work in studios, although there are a few good points that are made.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby ph00tbag » 30 Jul 2013 14:12

I'm still not sure about number 4. This seems to be great advice for novices, or people that simply want their work to be solid. But from an artistic standpoint, solid simply isn't compelling. It's safe, comfortable. And comfort is the enemy of quality on the long road of making art.

It's all well and good to know the rules, but if you never break them for the hell of it, you'll never learn when breaking them is better than following them when you want quality work.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby Nine Volt » 30 Jul 2013 14:23

Number 4 seems counterproductive.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 30 Jul 2013 23:43

4..ok sure I'lll just make the same Digigrain 2 + double notch bass till something different happens.

Seriously, who could expect progress from not trying new things? Look at Tombstone, for a pretty long time he used the same drum kit, same basses, same lead solo as an outro, same song structure and the quality of his stuff was suffering because of it. Only after changing the formula did his music start getting better.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 30 Jul 2013 23:52

But I can definitely agree with keeping clean and keeping people informed on how things work. That makes sense.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby DerpyGrooves » 31 Jul 2013 01:39

ph00tbag wrote:I'm still not sure about number 4. This seems to be great advice for novices, or people that simply want their work to be solid. But from an artistic standpoint, solid simply isn't compelling. It's safe, comfortable. And comfort is the enemy of quality on the long road of making art.

It's all well and good to know the rules, but if you never break them for the hell of it, you'll never learn when breaking them is better than following them when you want quality work.


I think you guys are really missing the point. Let me quote Brian Eno, one of the greatest electronic musicians of all time.

Years ago I realized that the recording studio was becoming a musical instrument. I even lectured about it, proclaiming that “by turning sound into malleable material, studios invite you to construct new worlds of sounds as painters construct worlds of form and color.”

I was thrilled at how people were using studios to make music that otherwise simply could not exist. Studios opened up possibilities.

But now I’m struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. This transfer is not paying off.

Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse. Musicians enjoy drawing on that finesse (and audiences respond to its exercise), so when muscular activity is rendered useless, the creative process is frustrated. No wonder artists who can afford the best of anything keep buying “retro” electronics and instruments, and revert to retro media.

The trouble begins with a design philosophy that equates “more options” with “greater freedom.” Designers struggle endlessly with a problem that is almost nonexistent for users: “How do we pack the maximum number of options into the minimum space and price?” In my experience, the instruments and tools that endure (because they are loved by their users) have limited options.


Now let's look at number 4 again.

4. Work To Code - Do Not Innovate! Slowly develop new ideas built in a pre-existing language. Creativity is the enemy, and the road to caprice. Invent because you must, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Emphasis is mine again. In this context, a major scale is a pre-existing language. Common time is a pre-existing language. A given chord progression, or rhythmic idiom is a pre-existing language. The way we tune guitars is infinitely variable, but the vast majority of blues musicians use the same pre-existing tuning language. There is no need to innovate. The Amen Break, for example, is an entirely iconic sample, used in thousands of songs, in a million different contexts, and from that comes beauty. True art comes from the skilled use of intuitively limited tools. Obviously, there is room to experiment, but if you're making an acid house track, you may want to consider including a tb-303 from a functional standpoint.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby itroitnyah » 31 Jul 2013 08:02

So essentially just do what everybody else is doing the way they're doing it, but maybe change something a bit to make it somewhat unique...

I think we could really just leave #4 at
True art comes from the skilled use of intuitively limited tools.
and call it a day.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby DerpyGrooves » 31 Jul 2013 09:53

itroitnyah wrote:So essentially just do what everybody else is doing the way they're doing it, but maybe change something a bit to make it somewhat unique...

I think we could really just leave #4 at
True art comes from the skilled use of intuitively limited tools.
and call it a day.


I really don't understand most musicians obsession with being "unique" or "special". If I was writing a haiku, I would work within the morae idiom of 5/7/5. Not because I'm "stuck", not because I "lack creativity", but because the formula, by virtue of it's structure, encourages the formation and cadence of Japanese poetry. Picasso said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal". Skilled songcraft comes not from innovation and invention, it comes from the skillful amalgamation and assemblage of previously-existing parts. If you don't understand the heritage of your music, it's all floating in a sea of opinion. Rock came from blues. Reggae came from rock. Dub came from reggae. Dubstep came from dub. If you understand this heritage, you can better honor your music, the idea that somehow "uniqueness" is a quality inherent in good music is ludicrous.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby itroitnyah » 31 Jul 2013 09:57

Yeah, we tend to overhype the "you need to be unique" thing, but now you're just repeating yourself.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby DerpyGrooves » 31 Jul 2013 10:05

itroitnyah wrote:Yeah, we tend to overhype the "you need to be unique" thing, but now you're just repeating yourself.


It's not a matter of overhyping, but the idea that the desire to be unique is something that is actively injurious to good music. The sole desire of a musician should be to create well-crafted music. That's it. Creativity has nothing to do with it.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby Nine Volt » 31 Jul 2013 12:21

I still don't agree with #4. Yeah, we overhype "you need to be unique" but that doesn't mean uniqueness or creativity is a bad thing, nor is attempting to be unique or creative. People tend to like good, unique or creative music more than just good music. At least I do.
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Re: Ten Bullets- a great instruction on industrial creativit

Postby ph00tbag » 31 Jul 2013 22:46

DerpyGrooves wrote:The sole desire of a musician should be to create well-crafted music.

Except that's totally off-base, and is exactly what Brian Eno is railing against. The modern DAW allows you to do everything you want by a precise, codified workflow that allows you to pump out astoundingly well-crafted music daily. But that doesn't make the music quality music. It doesn't make it good. The distinction between quality and craftsmanship is important. It's the difference between Nirvana and Nickleback. Quality is intuitive, and the journey to find it must necessarily be frought with failure. Craftsmanship is codified, and the journey has already been well-trodden by your predecessors, so all you need to do is follow the trail.

This is where the creation of art fundamentally differs from the creation of craft. Craft must always work. Art that doesn't work is still celebrated as a discovery of what doesn't work. #4 is necessary in craft, and in industry in particular. It is stifling to art, hands down.

Obviously, music that is both well-crafted and quality is ideal. However, if I could only choose one between quality and craftsmanship, I would demand music that is quality.
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