Doing it all yourself?
Re: Doing it all yourself?
If you're talking about it on a forum it's not complete isolation.
Re: Doing it all yourself?
And I always do my best stuff by myself I hate working with other people, for making music anyway, so I am back to doing everything myself including the promo videos.
Re: Doing it all yourself?
For almost everyone, even people who collaborate a lot with others, there is some amount of working in isolation. One exception I guess is people who write together as a pair / team. But even then, I think the usual thing is that one of them brings a starting point or half of the material (say, the lyric or the hook) and they develop it further together. I guess that the lion's share of songwriting and arrangement is done in isolation.
Brian Eno has written some interesting stuff about how he collaborates with Daniel Lanois. But the reason it's interesting I think is that it kind of proves how unusual really productive collaboration actually is; it takes a lot of thought to make it work smoothly, and it's the exception rather than the rule.
On the other hand it's great to let people hear what you're doing as soon as possible to get feedback. It really helps, and it opens up all kinds of new ideas and possibilities.
I think the greatest danger of working in isolation is becoming unproductive for one reason or another, like spending too much time on the wrong kind of thing, chasing unproductive ideas, getting distracted or procrastinating, etc. Deadlines and schedules are a great antidote for this. If you have ever been in a position where you must (no questions) deliver a bunch of tracks by such-and-such a date, then you'll know what I mean: the pressure makes you work much more productively. If no one creates deadlines for you, create them yourself. Book a gig where you have to play for two hours. Offer to provide tracks to someone for a project on such-and-such a date. Do something to create a reason for a deadline.
-Luddy
Brian Eno has written some interesting stuff about how he collaborates with Daniel Lanois. But the reason it's interesting I think is that it kind of proves how unusual really productive collaboration actually is; it takes a lot of thought to make it work smoothly, and it's the exception rather than the rule.
On the other hand it's great to let people hear what you're doing as soon as possible to get feedback. It really helps, and it opens up all kinds of new ideas and possibilities.
I think the greatest danger of working in isolation is becoming unproductive for one reason or another, like spending too much time on the wrong kind of thing, chasing unproductive ideas, getting distracted or procrastinating, etc. Deadlines and schedules are a great antidote for this. If you have ever been in a position where you must (no questions) deliver a bunch of tracks by such-and-such a date, then you'll know what I mean: the pressure makes you work much more productively. If no one creates deadlines for you, create them yourself. Book a gig where you have to play for two hours. Offer to provide tracks to someone for a project on such-and-such a date. Do something to create a reason for a deadline.
-Luddy