Doing The Numbers

How Many More Times (...Will You Treat Me The Way You Always Do)?

I started posting songs on iCompositions about 4 years ago. It was Australia Day weekend and I was bored and I thought "why not?". There was a bit more to it, but I'll talk about it some other day.  I've since posted 200 songs and pulled down 100 of those for review and remixes.

The thing about music recording is that I spent a good deal of my adult life wanting to do it without having the means. Now that I have just about all the equipment I need to record rock music in my bedroom and lounge, I've been able to produce all the stuff I wanted to. It's all stuff that has been clogging my mind for years. It's really hard to get creative about things when you have so many unfulfilled ideas, because you start to think, "what's the point of adding another song/script/idea to the pile of unfinished song/script/ideas?" It's just rough.

Having the means of production is no small thing. It makes all the difference for the artist. A painter needs his paints and canvas and easel. It's all they need, but the difference between having and not having is a colossal one. Similarly with music, having the ability to make your own recordings is a great step forwards for the aspiring recording artist. As a result of having the means of production, I've been able to exorcise the huge frustration that used to block my thoughts.

In the process, I've learnt a few things that are probably worth relating to people. No. 1 on my list of lessons is that quantity matters. When I started uploading, I thought I had my own style and execution totally sussed, because I had thought about it for so many years. All I had to do was execute. What I've learned from having recorded the 200+ pieces of bits of music is that I couldn't have been further from the truth. The recording artist and musician that I am today is actually a very different artist and musician to the one I thought I was when I walked into this process.

What's different now? I actually have a different sense for how I ant to engineer and mix my material. I also have a different feel for how I arrange my material, and this leads to a greater sense of freedom to go forwards and do different things. There are more experiments I want to undertake, but I have a better guess as to which ones are likely to yield interesting results while others would be boring.

I've only been able to come to see all this because I have done so many recordings and lived through so many different musical moments of my own devising that it has transformed me.Having done so much, I have a much better understanding of my own music. The delusions are gone, replaced by a sanguine perspective on just how good/not-so-good I actually am. Your own work does not lie. It is pretty descriptive of the limits of your own talent. Nonetheless when you get there, the limits don't bother you so much because the self-knowledge is very empowering and enriches one's artistic life.

The reason I am relating this is not to beat my chest, but because it also relates to how I feel about things I have directed. I've listed the most important things I've directed in my 'Art Neurography' section, but I've also done a lot more. The thing about experience is that it all amounts to something inside your brain. I no longer have crazy impulses to do whacky stuff, I'm actually more interested in coherent ideas and concepts in films, mostly as a result of having worked through enough ideas, whims, fancies and problems.

The lesson to be drawn from this is that the only way a group of works can really be understood as a oeuvre is if there is a mass or volume of work from which salient features emerge - something we can call 'perspective'. And it's a rule of thumb that can be applied to so many creative areas. It doesn't matter how talented an artist is, until they've painted 100, 300, 500, they actually won't have a grip on who they are as an artist and where they are going with their craft and talent. Quantity, and the generation of quantity is vital.

Truth be known, this is actually what is making Australian Film worse. With only 10-20 films being produced a year, there's no way known that Australian Cinema can actually develop a kind of perspective on itself, as a creative endeavor. There just isn't the volume of work from which we can actually draw conclusions or understanding of the salient features of Australian Cinema, let alone getting any much-needed perspective.

And while there is hardly any quantity on the table to survey, we'll never really know or understand what exactly it is that Australian cinema is saying to the world, but all the while those film bureacrats are trying to assess if your script and mine are sufficiently 'Australian'.

It's worrisome, isn't it?