brettworks

Paul Klee, Polyphony (1932)

If you make things, you begin every day by being stuck and the way forward is to figure out how to get unstuck.

Being stuck has as many forms as there are artists experiencing it. One form is apathy, or not feeling drawn in one direction or another with urgency. Another form is displeasure with yesterday’s work and wanting to move on. Another is wanting to begin something new, but not knowing how. 

Accepting stuckness as an inevitable and valuable experience is what moves you towards unstuck. Being stuck offers information about your situation. It functions as a compass and barometer for getting your bearings and sussing out the day, the social weather, your physical and cognitive condition, how you understand your work, and the overall tenor of your world.

Every time I sit down I’m in a state of stuck but only recently have I recognized that this is normal. I might begin by listening to a track I’ve done to see how I respond. What I want to know is whether or not this is worth working on. I’m reminded of Buckminster Fuller’s exhortation in I Seem To Be A Verb (1970):

“I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.”

The thing about being stuck is that it never feels extraordinary, but more low frequency, a humdrum inertia. So I sit in this frequency for a while. I open a file at random and listen, adding a smidge of reverb and save it. It’s something, not nothing.

I’m okay with nothing happening today, or ever again. After all, making anything requires intensities of energy, serendipity, and attention that I’m never guaranteed to be able to summon. But if nothing is happening today and that’s okay, my mindset loosens, shifting to a more casual mode—like, whatever, it’s all good. Post-whatever, things can and do happen.

Suddenly a thought appears, alighting seemingly from nowhere. The whole time I was stuck I was also thinking. I remember that I wanted to remodel the piano pieces. I did one a while back and saved it in a folder. I open a new file and drag in another piano solo to see what I can do today. 

Since my expectations have been lowered, I’m freed to do whatever with this audio. One technique I find fruitful is to build 3-part loops made of short segments. I search for the first loop, moving its start point around the four-minute piece randomly, waiting for the spectacular, a sound so subtle and interesting it could be a solo. But there’s nothing so far. I keep trying, listening to the results and wondering, Is this as good as it will get? It kind of doesn’t work. At the same time though, I’m noticing promising-sounding loop candidates. The piano solo, slow as it is, may be too busy for any looping, but who knows? Is there a pause or a long ringing note somewhere that could open up possibilities? Looping is a fascinating way to get into a sound by putting it under a zoom lens and focusing on otherwise hidden details.

(An hour passes.) Once I have a workable initial loop, I add second and third loops, each one beginning on a different beat of the time cycle. I want to know if there’s any way the three parts can get along. Right now the answer is a resounding no, but since I’m okay with nothing happening today because I’m stuck, I playfully press the matter by trying out numerous three-part loops. When you’re making things, there’s always a course of action for turning your materials at hand into a sum greater than their parts. With music, it’s often a matter of calibrating and arranging elements into the right balance and combinations. (It helps that in a production context one’s materials can be running continuously so changes are heard in a real-time flow.) When parts are finessed, they can reveal inherent patterns you didn’t know they had.

It’s by making things that I keep myself quite busy while waiting to be unstuck. Some time after I decided to play around with the piano music, one combination of the three parts finally clicks. It may or may not be enough to build on, but something in this sounds like music.