Ah ok, I agree, and just to be clear I wasn’t making an argument about anything being ‘good/bad’ or ‘correct/incorrect’ rather just trying to give people a window into something they might enjoy. Because it is counterintuitive to think that’s an aspect of music making that would or could be enjoyable. It applied to you in your specific situation of not having your instruments or gear at that time; not sure if circumstances changed since.
(To be more clear I was making an argument when I joked about being a guide to the promised land of The One True Creative Process but that’s why it was a joke, lol)
Also, mentioned Eno but I neglected to mention this great example: he actually composed the Windows startup theme sound.
The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I’d been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, “Here’s a specific problem – solve it.”
The thing from the agency said, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,” this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said “and it must be 3 1⁄4 seconds long.”[† 1]
I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It’s like making a tiny little jewel.
In fact, I made eighty-four pieces. I got completely into this world of tiny, tiny little pieces of music. I was so sensitive to microseconds at the end of this that it really broke a logjam in my own work. Then when I’d finished that and I went back to working with pieces that were like three minutes long, it seemed like oceans of time.[60
Well this is why people collaborate, combining different skillsets and passions. Because I actually look at things the opposite, telling myself, "You dont need to play that guitar longer than 20 seconds, that’s more than enough audio to manipulate, c’mon man with all that malarkey " And its why although I joke and talk a lot of shit on here I was serious about an Unstuck music project. We seem to have all the pieces.
