Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician (2022)

5 days ago

The author took a three-month sabbatical in summer 2020 to finish an album, transforming their music-making process.
Previously, songwriting felt sporadic and unrepeatable, but during the sabbatical, they produced many songs through daily focus and tutorials.
Music-making shifted from a hit-or-miss hobby to a systematic, boring routine involving collaboration with online techno producer communities.
Tasks like jamming, recording, cleaning up, sketching arrangements, and mixdowns became mechanical 'chores' performed daily.
The key was putting in hours, switching tasks when stale, filing results, and taking breaks, leading to finishing multiple songs per day unnoticed.
Quality judgments became detached from emotional attachment, allowing for discarding or editing ideas freely in a large volume of material.
The author discovered no correlation between session satisfaction and output quality, with favorite tracks often from frustrating sessions.
By the end, they finished 40 tracks, released an EP, and continued producing after returning to work, finding joy in the permanent music despite the chore-like process.
The routine was internalized through sheer quantity of work, making music systematic and bureaucratic, a realization only possible through intensive practice.

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