doing the pointless

what a productive weekend.

when your in a school or college, you spend a lot of time working on, perhaps, seemingly pointless tasks that are over and done with in a week and never lead to anything worthwhile.

in my case as a music technology student, you might walk into a lesson and be presented with a set of technics, some drum and bass records and be told to record a mix. or one afternoon you will be handed a guitar and will record yourself playing with a drummer and bass player in a little jam session. the recordings will never be used and you will never play again in that small formation. a pointless task perhaps.

but its these short, pointless tasks that often teach you the most important things and more importantly, they inspire creativity.

i am hopefully soon undertaking a small project with a local hip hop artist to re-mix some of his acoustic work with some beats and (my signature) synths.

i have never worked with hip hop but am really excited to try my hand at something new and explore some new ideas. i am not expecting to sell the track, for it to recieve any air play or for it to lead to some kind of production contract - it is purely an excersise and an opportunity to try something i have never done before.

i hate modern hip hop. well i hate the stuff that gets played on radio 1 and that twats dance to in tauntons clubs, so it is really important to me to retain the roots and feel of daves (the artist) work and this means avoiding digital, programmed beats and using some funky, old skool samples.

if i were in a top commercial studio, producing a commercial - even underground to be honest - urban track then time and money would be against us. the arrangement would be created using the biggest, most powerful software drum machines available. for a more authentic sound then the very latest sample CDs would be available to me so i could simply pluck some pre-prepared loops and drop them into the track. instant radio friendly hits.

i do not work in a commercial studio and am not producing a commercial track. time and money is not against me which is why i dedicated an entire day on saturday to sourcing, playing and recording 60s and 70s soul, funk, disco and motown records.

hopefully there will be some useful drum breaks i can use to create an arrangement. maybe not. either way it was a brilliant way to spend the day. my creative juices are flowing and i am full of ideas for this upcoming project and others.

a lot of people who i meet are very career minded. they will only do something if they think it will take them a step closer to their dream career. i too am often guilty of this.

theres more to life then that. there are better ways to spend your time. better things to occupy your head.

next weekend, when you are trying to decide how to spend your saturday, forget the project you are currently working on, forget starting your next big project - set yourself a small challenge for the day, a simple pointless excersise and have some fun.