This month in Keyboard

In my third favorite geek magazine, Keyboard, there are two interviews that rocked my world: Goldfrapp and Imogen Heap. I love them both - Goldfrapp's soon to be released (but inexplicably in my CD player for over a month) album Supernature is superfantastic, and Imogen Heap's solo album is an amazing labor of love.

What's interesting to me is that both of these artists do music that is not that far removed from what I do when I have time - electro-ey dancey stuff with a nod to the 80's and 90's... but reading the interviews, they couldn't have a work style further from mine.

Imogen is an obsessive editor - she records everything as audio and chop chop chops it up and rearranges every note until it's perfect. It took her a full year to create the 11 songs on her album... in her home! She never sequences.

Goldfrapp are PLAYERS - they do take after take to get the performance right, then splice it together. You wouldn't guess it to hear their blippy bloopy stuff, but again, they never sequence!

Both referred to long hours of just noodling on the piano. Imogen said that growing up she would play the piano for 5 hours a day, and when her family traveled, they had to find places with a piano nearby or she'd go nuts.

For both of these groups, they are very engaged in the music making PROCESS - they like to play, to edit, to tweak.

This is compared to ME: I am very engaged in the music making RESULT - I rarely can spend more than 8 hours total on a composition... I need to move on. I don't like to improvise or "noodle" or "jam" - I prefer to direct my efforts toward creating a product. I think that realizing this critical DIFFERENCE in my style from others is sort of a relevation:

For years I've read things like these interviews and said "man, I'm going to TOTALLY work on my scales now - I've got to work up my CHOPS for JAMMING!". And 30 minutes later, I'm done with that idea and reading a book. This time, I read it and realized - the difference is that they love their process in a way I never really did or do. I'm WAY too impatient.

So my resolution is to be more comfortable with how I DO work - I get great results from my own process, and not to feel inferior when reading about total musos and their work styles. It's their bag.