This week’s session of The Trailer Music Composer’s Podcast is short, sweet and important!

It’s a continuation of the themes Rich talked about in the last two podcasts: your creative ideas are valuable!

Transcript:

Hey guys, welcome to another session of the trailer music composers podcast.  In today’s session I want to remind you of something incredibly important.  Now I’m always talking about just writing and not editing, but I just want to remind you of something.  That deleting shouldn’t be an option, it just shouldn’t be an option.  And what I mean by that is when you’re writing a piece of music and you’re sat down and you’re like ok, I’m going to do some writing.  You write it and then you press delete because you didn’t like it.  Don’t do that, do not do that.  I mean this is going to be a really short episode because of this very, very short and succinct message.  Just do not delete your work.

I have had countless examples when for instance I have written a track for an album that then doesn’t get picked.  I mean I could feasibly clear up some hard drive space, delete that.  But then what happened is this, a couple of years later a brief comes up and that track fits perfectly, it fits absolutely perfectly with the brief, so I then take that track, put it to its new brief, it gets picked, it gets placed because I didn’t delete anything.  That’s really, really, really vital, that you do not delete any of your work.

Even if it’s like a chord sequence, even if you never, ever listen to it again, because what you’re doing when you delete your work is you are kind of self-sabotaging.  You’re saying you know what my time wasn’t worth it, my ideas aren’t worth it, I forget the name of the guy, but I read in a book about this thing where every day he wakes up, and he writes down 10 ideas.  Not musical, I think these are ideas for a product or a business.  He writes down 10 ideas, regardless of how ridiculous they are, because he wants to get in the zone of creating, and letting the flow come out, the inspiration, the good ideas.  Those things.  And when you delete stuff you are kind of turning the tap off, and I am such a firm believer in letting the flow come through, letting the flow of ideas.  I mean that could come in the form of that little voice, singing a chord sequence to you in harmony, it could be so many things that flow.  

But essentially what you’re doing is you’re letting yourself create in a completely safe and critique free environment.  Because what you’ll do is actually you’ll notice the more you stop deleting the less you’ll ever encounter that situation where you want to delete it.  And what that kind of equates to is this, if you stop deleting your work you will find that the quality of your work increases.  Because what happens is this, an idea comes in, into your head, whether it’s a chord sequence, baseline, signature sound, whatever, idea for recording.  That idea comes in, you do it, what if it doesn’t sound the way you wanted?  If you delete it you’re wasting all that time and effort and you’re saying to yourself that I don’t produce good ideas. That my ideas aren’t worthwhile.

So what will happen is it will go right, right ok, well maybe I’ll stop giving you ideas then.  And then you will encounter writer’s block.  I don’t get writer’s block because I just let the ideas come out regardless of how ridiculous they may seem.  I mean some might say you’re boasting again Rich, I’m not boasting, I’m saying I’ve practised writing a lot, I practised all the time and I’ve always tried to maintain this idea of just letting ideas come out.  Because that’s how I started.  I started by playing my guitar in my bedroom with a tape machine.  And I just recorded every single idea that I did.

And whether it’s good a lot of the time is a moot point because sometimes I would listen back to that tape and be like these ideas are f-ing blinding, they’re amazing.  At the time I didn’t necessarily think so because I was in a bad mood.  But, I let the idea out.  It’s almost like an energetic release, you know.  An energetic climax into the recording machine.  Oi, oi.  And that’s what you’re doing, you’re letting those ideas out.

And then so let’s continue with this flow that you let an idea out and you don’t delete it, you don’t press delete, you let that idea go.  And you go ok, it doesn’t sound the way I like it.  And you go one of two ways.  You go right, let’s start a new idea, boom, new project, or you go let’s just let more ideas come out in this vein and see what happens.  You know it’s kind of like you’re stumbling blindly through a maze, and you either carry on stumbling blindly through the maze of creativity or you take your blindfold off and walk back to the start of the maze.  That was a pointless exercise.

At the end of that maze, there’s a beautiful piece of music that your inspiration, your little voice has told you to write.  And it will come out if you let it.  And that’s why I preach write, don’t edit.  I think that rhymed, write, don’t edit, do not delete work.  And even chord sequences, obviously if you’re going back in the editing mind frame, that’s a different approach, so don’t pick me up on this as a mistake, this is a different approach entriley, when you’re writing, in the writing process don’t delete your work.  And even when you’re going back to edit a track and you think this isn’t great, do not delete that track.  It can be of use to somebody, it can be of use to you, it is a gift you have been given.  So just remember that, its so, so important. 

Thanks for listening guys, I really appreciate it, you are absolute legends.  If you could take some time just to give me a review that would be great.  Thank you.

Music.