Why you should make music that sucks

Howdy! Today we're going to learn to embrace the suck and get ready to make our next pile of trash - it's actually way more important than you'd think.

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[VenusTheory]

happy new year y'all. 🤠
Now, go make something awful and get back to work!

[Timber-Wolf]

As Grandma used to say "Practice doesn't make you perfect. It just makes you suck less". A wise woman.

[guttergd]

Brilliant! Perfection is the enemy of originality. You don't learn anything by systematically avoiding failure, you'll just be stuck with doing things someone elses way. Failure lets you find your own way and prosper.

[howardyermish]

When I first started learning to compose, I had a teacher that challenged me to write a jazz tune (lead sheet) each day for a year. It felt like torture at the time. Some days I knew I was writing garbage, the rare days I would stumble onto something good. I did it for a year, and created about 200-ish tunes. So the next summer when I returned to work with that teacher again, we looked through what I had done. We picked out about 15 tunes, and he reminded me that if I then sat with my jazz combo and played these, I wrote two albums worth of jazz music.

But as I got more skilled in writing, I slowed the output down.

30 years later, I needed this reminder from you. So thank you.

[VirtualRiot]

5:43 youre hitting on an important point here. This feeling can be described with a word, its the lack of self-efficacy. The belief that you CAN achieve what you set your mind to. Even if it will take some time. Self efficacy means a deep understanding of "I will be able to covercome the hardships on the path that I am choosing and have it in me to succeed." Lets say you have that cranked to the max inside of you, if you then start and fail, you'll get right back up and start again, not from scratch but from experience. The true core belief that one can achieve a thing is, as glib as it sounds, a massive piece of the puzzle. Not to be confused with confidence, with, of course, is also important, but while confidence is "I can do this!" self efficacy is the realization that you truly believe you can be that solo violin virtuouso you're watching at the orchestra if you give it all you got, not to prove something to anyone but just because you actually want it and believe you can be that.

[SpeccyMan]

I make music for my own pleasure and no other reason so there is absolutely zero pressure on me to make it "good" music. If I am enjoying the making then that is all that really matters to me. My health is pretty sh!t, with little chance of it ever improving, so I need distractions to help keep me sane. My hobbies are those distractions.

[sandersonstunes]

One practice I have done for years now is to pick a song I’m inspired by and completely reverse engineer it. Every note, sfx, sound. It’s taught me so much about music production. Plus after going through the process I now have the custom sounds and arrangement ideas to bring into my own work.

[_karla._]

I used to create when I was in my early teens. Music and Videos. I had put them on youtube. Sadly people in my school found the channel. I was always the outsider but after that I was heavily bullied. The whole school knew about it. So I deleted my channel and started spending more and more time online. I tried finding different topics to hyperfocus on. Found an interest in computers and IT-stuff and went pretty deep, but it wasn't completely for me. And I isolated myself and developed a heavy internet addiction in the process. Now I'm an internet-addicted media-engineering student and want to be creative again. It's hard to overcome the trauma. I hate everything I create. It sounds good when I experiment, but as soon as I have recorded it, I hate it. Thank you for the nice words though. They resonate.

[OscarUnderdog]

Another video that should be required viewing for all creators <3

[BitThoughts]

The thing I struggle with the most is turning off that part of my brain that says "this sucks". I've kind of learned that I can't really ever switch it off, but if I can just be persistant and push through it, sometimes something comes out that doesn't suck, and I end up absolutely loving it!

[edwinbrown]

Years ago, when I was living in Portland, I met a musician who was making a good living at music. Bought a nice house and supported his family with a career in music. He'd written pieces for TV and movies, commercial jingles, lead a band that was fairly successful, and on and on. I asked him what the secret was in being successful in music and he replied: "You need to have the courage to write tons of sh#! music. That's the only way to ultimately produce good music."

[raysubject]

i learned there is actually no such thing as failure in music - even biggest “failure” always finds at least somebody who likes it .. that’s my life experience .. and if my music makes feel good at least 1 person it can’t be considered as failure


btw. great video, again !

[k]

Anne Lamott wrote about this in her book "Bird by Bird, " which was about writing. She stressed the importance of "shitty first drafts" as something you need to just go ahead and do so you can use what is working, get rid of what isn't working, and make the second draft better. And then, an even better 3rd draft. Obviously applies to creating music as well.

[zachariahpoltergeist]

Two sayings I've been telling myself lately - "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, " and "Every failure is a discovery."

[doctorscoot]

I had to stop making music to complete my PhD. After completion I’m fine with my music just being ‘all risk’ because there’s no way I am making a living from it any more — I spend all the time experimenting about with it. My relationship to it is that I want to do the process to make the music … it helps me mentally relate to the world and operate in it without going insane.

[stevesoucy]

Videos like this make me so thankful to have found this channel. I recently broke out of my shell creatively when I had an epiphany. I used to sit and listen to my older works, and wonder "Why were these so good? What happened to me since then?" Suddenly it dawned on me. When I first started out, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. Every track was one giant experiment of me blending sounds and trying to make a track out of it. As I learned more about what fits great together, I inadvertently pigeon-holed myself into a specific set of sounds and my growth all but ceased. It wasn't until a couple months ago that I started experimenting in genres I've never composed in before, and little by little, I've increased my skills and abilities as I combine more of what I learn into new creations. Spot on video, Cam! Happy New Year, bud! I hope 2023 is awesome for all of us.

[staticbrown]

As an artist with basically no audience, your videos have been really inspirational and encouraging in reminding myself to keep working on my craft regardless of the outcome. Thank you!

[everthealtruist]

I spent part of my early 20's making intentionally harsh and uncomfortable music. It comes in handy to be able to dip into that and flavor it into the music I make now that I actually want people to enjoy.

[ricktheexplorer]

Alright; I hereby declare this channel my church. The cynicism, irony and incredible humor make this medicine go down. I needed this, and Thank You.

[dainiusrepsas]

The biggest creative win is overcoming these obstacles. Let's create bad music didn't cut it for me. What really worked was a self analysis, in which I realized that I'm a visual person. And if I imagine a musical landscape visually and strive to come to that image as close as possible, the feeling of "music sucks" is not there anymore.