Help! I’m a serial goalpost mover?!
Does anyone else find that they get so wrapped up in perfectionism that they are never satisfied with what just yesterday they were aching to achieve?!
When does it stop? Being a musician has made me realize I am a perfection seeking, goalpost moving, emotional and temperamental wreak!!! (and no…it’s not coz I’m a woman! )
Yesterday I broke barriers that a year ago I never dreamed I could dream of !
Today, alas… I sit at my desk sobbing failure as I reflect on a waisted afternoon of crappy takes and bad quality Simon Cowel would feast on 
So am I alone?
How do you really know for sure if you need to try harder or you’re just not capable
how do I know when I’m getting the best out of my equipment?
Or myself for that matter!
Which came first? The chicken or the egg? :s
Ange x
Well, there is a very good argument from a neo-Darwinian perspective that the chicken egg had to come first.
Quote:
“Whether chicken eggs preceded chickens hinges on the nature of chicken eggs,” said panel member and philosopher of science David Papineau at King’s College London.
“I would argue it’s a chicken egg if it has a chicken in it. If a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatched, that would surely be an ostrich egg, not a kangaroo egg. By this reasoning, the first chicken did indeed come from a chicken egg, even though that egg didn’t come from chickens.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/may/26/uknews
There you go.
Don’t ever tell me that philosophy isn’t useful.
I’ll leave your more difficult question for the others.
My partner has a degree in philosophy so I would surely fall from the heights of the pedestal on which i sit so proudly if he was to catch me doing anything other than agreeing with you.
Rob, my partner agrees with you also)
ange x
ps-more pressingly tho…my initial question? (or cry for help if you please?!)
Hi Ange
I think it’s pretty much a condition we find ourselves in with the abundance and availability of technology for recording.
We now find ourselves with the roles of songwriter, musician, engineer, manager, producer… etc. Many of use don’t really have the experience or skills to be all of those roles. In the “old days” a recording session would have an engineer and a producer who could make value judgements on the performance and quality of recording. Now we make that call ourselves.
My suggestions… Work slowly - step back every now and then and let things rest for a few days. Come back with fresh ears. Find a trusted pair of ears. Someone who can say “you can do better”. Post on forums, share your work with others.
You are not alone!
We all have those dyas, weeks, months, and even years. It’s the nature of the beast. You’re trying to do it all. Some folks get help aka producers, session players, engineers, a studio.
Doing it all yourself has an odd combination of satisfaction and frustration. The satisfaction should outweigh the frustration. if and only if it does not do you have to really think it over on another level.
…sounds pretty much like the pain you have to go through Tommy to find a different avatar every hour or so… 
Well I thought the MCA records label with my name on it was a bit out of my character… lol
And my last one moved too much.
Be nice - I’m old for cryin’ out loud.
And this one optimizes life. When a child falls asleep in your arms.
I once heard a good piece of advice: don’t think everything you do is good. Most of it isn’t. Somehow, that makes me feel better when I hit a patch of suckitude (to borrow a term from another esteemed n-Tracker).
Say howdy to your partner from another fellow who got a philosophy degree.
Philosophy? come on, spanish is where it’s at!
If we didn’t have the violent ups and downs, we wouldn’t be artists (or the more snooty “artistes”), we’d be, i dunno, fibers of a shag carpet over next to the wall that never gets walked on. or something. i dunno, i’m not a philosophy degree-holder. if one has a super-high ego and think everything they produce is excellent, they’d be wrong but ready to be a professional performer (although with the mandatory early burnout). If one keeps a humble and self-effacing attitude, then one can keep striving for improvement however depressed and eternally doldrum-ridden. Thus an “artist”. or an “artiste”.
i have no idea what any of that meant or if it was even worth typing. if you can decipher that, you should be cracking top secret code for the military. It’s late and I should go to bed. good night from the beautiful pacific northwest, the indie center of the universe (or so it would seem from the body art, piercings and thrift-store clothing).
I keep an old metal trash can in the garage for kicking, it’s called venting the frustration of digital musical over ANALizing over producing why is my foot swollen what the heck am I doing “home recording”!
It can be overwhelming at times, take a chill pill and a break!
As far as the chicken or the egg, i dunno. But!
I know why the chicken crossed the road, to prove to the 'possum it could be done! 
Yaz 
Perhaps two shifts of perspective here may be useful.
First - recognize that no work of art is ever finished, it merely gets abandoned at some point. Once you have reached that point - move on. Don’t keep looking at it, listening to it, touching it. You have abandoned it; move on.
Second - be grateful that you will never achieve perfection in your art. As a songwriter, I realized many years ago that if I ever wrote a perfect song I would never write another song afterward - perfect or otherwise. Once perfection is achieved there is nowhere to go but down. Why hasn’t Harper Lee written any fiction since To Kill A Mockingbird? I would argue that it is because she wrote a perfect novel; how sad for us that she wrote it so early in her career.
For myself, I am only now - gradually - listening to things I recorded over twenty years ago. They still make me cringe but I can console myself with the argument that, after twenty years, surely I’ve improved.
What a great way of looking at it!
Ggrrr that frustration…it’s never right, the lyric doesn’t flow, tweak tweak, fiddle fiddle.
Thought it was just me…but I guess EVERYONE has those insecurities!
I gotta agree, love that point of view.
some days (like today) recording just consumes me! Seriously…it eats me alive!
Nice to know I’m not alone
Quote: (ange @ Apr. 29 2008, 12:58 PM)
Nice to know I'm not alone
Yep.
Makes me wonder where many of today's great artists would be without their producer. I sure have a much greater respect for the back-room boys now.
Hey JDET, how about Spanish philosophers? José Ortega y Gasset!
My next song will be titled, no matter what it’s about, “The Revolt of the Masses” - and it’ll be a great work of art! I will be inspired! I will force inspiration!
I dunno about that idea that one perfect work would stop someone from writing. I’d be hungry to repeat the experience.
Me too, however I think I’d get a little jaded if I didn’t write something as good after a while. So in that respect I can see where Bill is coming from.
Everything I’ve ever done is forced inspiration.
EVERYTHING??
Quote:
Everything I've ever done is forced inspiration.
well that explains the EX..............