If I had to pick one thing that made me jealous of other flavors of artists it would be the ability to listen to music while working. A composer can’t really do that. Consequently, I lose a lot of listening time to writing. Weird, eh? But it’s true. I have to go pretty far out of my way to hear new music and I have to make time for it. Part of this is due to the fact that my day job doesn’t allow for it and my commute is better suited to podcasts than to new music. As a result, I really only have the time during my lunch hour when I’m sitting in a coffee hut somewhere with huge headphones on and either trying to edit or journal. Journaling time is new music time.
Come to think of it, maybe I am jealous mainly of writers. They can write anywhere. I hear about people taking up residence at a coffee shop or library to do their work and it makes me green with envy. Being able to work anywhere just sounds cool. Which means that it probably isn’t. Those people are probably just as chained to their chairs as I am to my studio. The on-the-go lifestyle probably doesn’t involve much moving around. More like moving from where you sleep to where you work which is what everyone else does every day anyway.
But there was a long time ago when I would go once a week to the coffee shop with a buddy of mine and compose at my laptop for the evening. It was nice to get out and be surrounded by other people who were deep into being alone together. Despite the horrible music they played on a loop (changed at the whim of the coffee dude) and the malfunctioning temperature regulation (regardless of the time of year) it was a wonderful place to get things done and to experiment. Being out of the studio was a good thing. It changed the rules by taking away some of my options.
I’m a big believer in limits. Someday I’ll write a great treatise about how wonderful it is that art and music today are more or less defined by the intent of their creator and how fantastic all of the opportunities for setting up our own constructive boundaries are. But not today. Today I will simply say that the arbitrary obstacles imposed by changing where work is done can really improve certain processes and not at the expense of others.
My limited time at the coffee shoppe eliminates my ability to record my guitar. I lose access to most of my noise making toys. It’s really just me, the laptop, and some headphones. It makes tasks like critical listening much easier because all I can do is work with that is there, not what I would like to record over top of it. I can really listen to what I have produced outside of the creative process.
After a week away from my most recent batch of songs it’s amazing to sit down with complete focus and listen to them as though they weren’t mine because once I’m done with them and they are released to the unsuspecting internet, they’ll just be things that show up on shuffle on my iPod. The tracks can play while I journal and notes can be made on things that stick out. If there is a buzz or hiss or screech that jars me, I can make it go away later. Levels become obvious. Spatialization is more pronounced. And the almighty flow of the song, that force that drives it forward and reveals any and all energy contained in the piece, is on display.
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