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"Bulking up" with creativity aka reaping/sowing! (Patreon)

Published:
2020-06-01 17:48:06
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Alright let's get some productivity talk going on around  these parts!

I wanted to bring up the topic of musical reaping and sowing and see your thoughts on it.
What I mean by this is almost the complete opposite of the advice of only working on one song at a time.

So what do I mean exactly?
Well, working on a song from an idea (the super interesting stage we all can do) till it's a finished song IS work…it cannot be denied. And sometimes it's ok that that work is a bit heavy, and it's fine that we don't always have energy for it. It's also very good to know when not to work on a song (because you may get bored of a song even when it's really good).

What I've often done with albums/beattapes is I let myself work on those loops and just enjoy creating them…dive deep in that creative flow without the pressure of having to make them into full songs… not yet.
It's pretty much OK to put it aside and work on something cool, new, and fresh the next day. And nothing says of course that you cannot spend longer with a song, of course note.
But I KNOW I will have to make them ALL into songs at some point.

Also, good and necessary advice relating to this technique: delete ruthlessly! If you create new stuff often, a lot of will naturally be not-so-great, and it's FINE to delete stuff that isn't grrrreat, as we will ALWAYS be able to create more.


So, my point is that sometimes it can be beneficial to enjoy a supercreative period where you just work on song ideas (sow) for a while, as it can result in a very fruitful bulk of work as your mind will always be in a pretty relaxed state and there's no worries…just the joy of diving into new ideas, which we all love.
But if you are like me and work towards a goal/EP/album/release often, you know you will have to finish them (reap).
But when you get to work on the  songs, it should be fun once again as you'll have a good body of work that (hopefully) is pretty good, and once you've distanced yourself from it for a while, it should feel fairly fresh for you to take control of those songs again.
Honestly, this is how I always work on my hiphop albums. Every single FatGyver album beattape is made this way, more or less: I also keep a notepad of all the good beats I want to have for a project/album, and at some point I get my album mode on and get finishing the beats into longer songs.

I know this might not work for those who always have trouble finishing songs and whose biggest problem is that having way too many unfinished songs gets heavy on them…but if you possess the skill of finishing songs, try out the reaping/sowing technique (e.g., on summer holiday, come up with new song loops often!)

Lemme know  what you think!

Comments

esaruoho

How do you cultivate and maintain the album-mode though? have you found some ways of steering away from making "minimal tiny endless changes that almost make no change to the track and kinda muddy it up instead of clarifying it" and actually banging out finished tracks? do you do something like (and i write this very lightly) "lowering standards" of what a finished track "needs to be", to evade that endless quest for perfection (which can be a dead-end in itself).. or..? i do love to sometimes load something old and then just arranging it quickly just so i can listen to it in the future, like finishing up a few tracks at the end of the year ("time for a change", actually, kinda close to that harvesting the crops you were just writing about), but.. since you mentioned a notepad, are you always fitting tracks together like a jigsaw puzzle, or..?

Fanu/FatGyver
>>37931089

To me, albums often are songs made in a certain timeframe (not always, but often). That'll give one a decent snapshot of where its maker was during that time. I just, uh, stay inspired (actually that'd be a decent topic for a post) and get to work (because hey, as they say, inspiration is for amateurs – yet another topic for maybe a vlog post). And yes, certain "lowering of standards" is great…it's good to understand that there's a lot we'd do to our music (esp. mixing-wise) that the listener won't hear or appreciate. Also, having created "quite a bit of" music over the years has helped, I think…you'll give it (the song) your best shot and realize you'll always be able to create more. As for perfection: I've always thought that just making more songs will teach one way more than honing one song to perfection…because 10 songs will teach you more than one, I'd say. As for fitting tracks together: they have to somehow fit a certain vibe…it does happen that I make stuff and end up thinking they can't all go on the same album (esp. as I work on slightly different genres all the time).