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I don't believe this is how great music usually comes about, not even Techno. It's missing the other essential piece. Being influenced by and completely immersed in a niche of other brilliant people. (The most extreme example of this would be the 90's Detroit-Berlin connection.)

Paired with an obsessive work ethic in the studio.

If it's only obsession in the studio, things come out dry, uninspired. If there's no surge of energy running through your bones when making the music, why would anyone else feel anything? Mixing and the music sounding "professional" is completely secondary. Even detrimental a lot of the time, to be honest.

Applies to many other things than music as well. I don't any great technology comes out and about without that loop, either.

5 comments

"Being influenced by and completely immersed in a niche of other brilliant people."

The author does mention that part of the process is collaboration with other musicians. It seems by setting their "chores" they are increasing their immersion.

Justin Vernon disappeared to a cabin in Wisconsin for months, where he wrote and recorded one of the greatest and most popular folk rock albums of all time.

I actually thought about that while writing the original comment as well. For Emma, Forever Ago is one of my all time favorite albums, good example of raw emotion with no need for any bells or whistles.

The big thing there is, that he already was a professional musician and completely inside a creative scene before leaving for the cabin. (DeYarmond Edison was the band he was in before Bon Iver.)

But yes, things were going way sideways for him, liver issues with mono, so he went to process whatever was going on and had been going on in complete isolation. (Although for the next album, he actually set up a whole "creative commune", a new band around Bon Iver instead of it being just himself, and so on. And I think you can hear the colors he wanted back in the music from it directly.)

A lot of examples of artists going into bouts of isolation, but almost always coming into it from an intense experience. So, the two don't have to be day to day intertwined, although for Techno specifically it's usually the case.

Did he not listen to music made by others when he was isolated in the cabin?

Most likely he made the album normally and the story about the cabin was made up by jimmy and bob from the marketing department.

What marketing department? For Emma, Forever Ago was initially self-released and got noticed, then an indie record label signed Justin Vernon to distribute the album with an official pressing. The story and the album and its success all predate any marketing department's involvement.

Jimmy and bob were his buddies. They moonlighted as his marketing team.

The stories around how music is made is a very under-considered aspect of the listening experience. Oftentimes those stories are not strictly true, but contain a kernel of truth, and it's the most compelling version of the story that ends up sticking.

How often do you listen to a song and think of these stories in your head? When you listen to the Beatles are you seeing Paul McCartney singing? I think for many people the answer is yes. These things (the story and the music itself) become connected and the story provides the context within which many people enjoy the music.

I'll admit this is a bit disappointing. I'd like to think that any piece could stand up on its on merits without some lore being required to appreciate it. But I have relented to the idea that this is just a very human thing. We do it with everything as it's just the way most of us are wired.

> I'd like to think that any piece could stand up on its on merits without some lore being required to appreciate it.

It seems like the majority of music I listen to has no lore attached to it.

Could great works substitute for having a scene? After all, writers have been inspired by Dostoevsky without being part of the same scene as him, and often without being part of a scene at all.

Which great writers are you thinking of here? True outsider art is very rare afaik.

Close contact between exceptional individuals is one of the main values of having a scene.

I don't think this is about becoming a great musician. Maybe that comes later. As the title suggests, this is just about becoming a musician in the first place.

As a piano player who's been noodling around for a few years, trying to learn to write original stuff and not making much progress, something like this is probably what I need.

> If there's no surge of energy running through your bones when making the music, why would anyone else feel anything?

There have been thousands if not hundreds of thousands of albums released under contract that the artists were not really into, yet listeners discovered them and were incredibly engaged with.

I'm thinking right now of the endless list of utterly mid jazz fusion albums (eg. on Columbia Records) that came out in the 78-88 period. Retrospectively the artists have said they hated the music, hated making it and didn't like the results, but there were plenty of people who loved it. I am sure there are other blobs like this. Now, the artists might be lying, or might have forgotten how they felt about it at the time, but that's what they say ...

So yeah, you don't need a "surge energy running through your bones". Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't.