STAY IN THE FLOW. 🏊🏻‍♀️

Sep 23, 2019

Like a lot of people right now in 2019, I am obsessed with Billie Eilish and her productions.

Her productions are done mainly by her brother Finneas. I've been listening obsessively to interviews with him. One of the things that surprised me the most was when he is asked what his vocal chain is for his sister. He just says it's just the logic stock compressor and that's it. And then they send their songs off to a mixer.

I'm sure there's other things that are done afterwards, but while he's working, he just throws up a Logic stock compressor and just goes with it. He didn't say this, but I kind of think that part of why he does that is about having an uninterrupted flow, an uninterrupted creative flow. When he's working, he doesn't bog himself down with a really intricate vocal chain that is going to distract them from what is really important - the big picture of the song.

That's really the point that I want to make is try not to get bogged down too early in the details if they're not really essential to the big picture that you're working on. There is a time and a place to get into the weeds, into the details and really cut off the fat off of what you're working on. But most of the time - early on - that's not the time to be doing that and it can really get us all - including myself - sidetracked and really slow us down in our creative process.

The other thing that I wanted to say is pay attention to what your interests are at that moment. Like there's a lot of times where we make to do lists of like - gotta finish song - gotta finish writing lyrics - do the bridge - gotta comp vocals - gotta tune the vocals.

And those are two completely different mindsets. And a lot of times it can be really difficult to just call up that mindset, you know, just because your to do list says that you should. Pay attention to what your mindset is. If you're in one of those moods - and I get in this head space often where I feel like doing very analytical type things like tuning vocals or comping tracks or whatever those are, those are kind of tedious, but sometimes I kind of, they feel like putting together a little puzzle. Other times I just can't stand doing that. And I just want to be creative. I just want to write emotional lyrics or whatever I'm just feeling. Whatever it is that you're feeling, do it and do it 110%. Don't try and be bouncing back and forth and distracting yourself, doing a little bit of lyrics and a little bit of this other stuff. Just go in and just put yourself in that space and finish what it is that you set out to finish.

Have a great week.

xxx - Josh

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