Exploring Happy Accidents
I wanted to explore a topic I was pondering today….
Ever notice how some of your favorite parts of your songs are the parts you didn’t intentionally do in the first place?
Ever record something “on the fly” and then attempt to recreate it “more professionally”?
From my experience, it’s usually the unplanned part that I like more.
Have you ever been doodling around on a synth with whatever sound is on at the time expecting to change the sound later but notice that you simply can’t improve the sound because it sounds great as it is?
I have a theory on all this, and this of course is just my personal opinion and speculation, but I figured I would share it with you to see if you find it thought provoking.
I feel that the reason these “accidents” sound good to us is because it didn’t sound like anything we would normally do. In fact often times it almost seems like it was played by somebody else altogether.
The fact of the matter is that we usually over analyze anything that we intentionally do, for example, most of us don’t like the raw sound of our own voice until we throw on a bunch of production techniques and effects until it sounds ‘not’ like us.
Another aspect of the “happy accident” is that in some ways, I don’t think it’s an accident at all. I think when we let go and get into our zone, we create from a higher level. It seems ‘not’ like us because we rarely experience this aspect of ourselves in daily life. I find that when I’m in that creative mode, that interesting synchronicities and accidents happen just when I was needing something to. This also makes the creative flow much more smooth and pleasant. I certainly wouldn’t by any means call this newsletter words of wisdom, but rather something to ponder….
May your failures and accidents pave the road to your best work!
Happy music making,
Jason
With that said, if you are benefiting from these posts, you will absolutely love my 2 bestselling books:
The Mental Game of Music Production
The Process for Electronic Music Producers
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If you are looking for personal guidance with your music production or Ableton, you can set up a free chat with me to go over exactly what your best next steps are to create the best music of your life. If it seems like a good fit, we can move forward from there. https://musicsoftwaretraining.com/private-coaching
Happy music making!
Jason
Excellent blog, Jason!
Tracy
Greetings Jason!! Pure Gold in these words, Thank you! Peace and Blessings
Nice blog for sure.
I love doing improvisations and as your point out, those moments are hard /impossible to recreate. Thats why I often lets Ableton Live record more or less whatever im doing to a certain point.
Keep it up
/Dan
Excellent post, Jason. I was just thinking today that my favorite part of a recent track I wrote was the direct result of “flubbing” a keyboard part. I don’t know what that says for my musicianship, but the music is better for it 🙂
This happened to me the other day and I ended up creating an amazing lead synth line by accident!
Love this topic! I was working on warping one little vocal phrase and it just wasn’t lining up. Although frustrated, I decided to have fun with it and I purposely warped it totally wrong. I took the stretched out phrase, threw it in virtual dj to add effects on the fly. Then I put it back into ableton and it sounded bad ass. Definitely stumbled upon a gem.