3 Principles
March 12th, 2012 by davesterli in News
In the previous post, I mentioned that I wanted to approach this next musical effort a bit differently. Let me share a bit about what I mean.
My previous composition and recording efforts have followed the traditional approach of a)write and record the music, b) share with world and use traditional promotional tools to gain exposure. I was pleased with the results – especially of the last CD (Along the Curve) – and the progress we were making towards our goals of commercial/critical recognition. Those goals were good, and they do still exist. But as I noted in the last post, that was 6 years ago. Life has brought me to a different place now, and my priorities have changed.
So, simply put, the principles the will guide this project are:
1) It must be music I want to write
2) It must be music others want to hear
3) The music is a tool created to provide real benefit to others
I’ll expand on #1 and #2 further here:
1) It must be music I want to write - This sounds obvious, although I’ve been guilty of violating it in the past. This is really a sanity-check for me to make sure I am indeed enjoying the creative process, and will actually enjoy the end product.
2) It must be music others want to hear - This is where “doing this a bit differently” starts to come into play. The “traditional” recording and release process requires a great deal of faith. The artist hopes that people will like what they have toiled over for months or years, and the fan hopes that the recording that they have been waiting for meets their expectations. I can certainly recall the excitement and anticipation of a new CD by a favorite artist, only to be sorely disappointed when I finally hear it. How I wish I could have listened to their demos and said “No! Don’t do it!”. All of us would have been better off if only they received feedback early on.
In the world of business, the best companies and innovators do this constantly, getting input from customers early in their development process, to make sure the customers actually want what they are spending millions of dollars developing. I believe the same is true in music or art. There doesn’t need to be a big “unveiling” at the end. It would be much better for the ultimate listeners (sidenote: I’m somehow uncomfortable with the word “fans”…seems a bit pretentious to me) to actually know that they will want what they are getting.
SO…what does this mean? I’m still nailing down the technical aspects, but basically, I’m planning to share short demos of a bunch of songs to get feedback and help narrow the field. Once that field is narrowed, I’d like to continue getting feedback where needed to help build out the songs. My belief is that this will lead to a better result for both me (as long as we don’t violate principle #1!) and you.
In the next post, I’ll expand on Principle 3, the most important principle.
All the best -
Dave
I am excited to hear you will be creating more music! Your CDs are still some of my favorites. I have even made a playlist on my Ipod of all your songs.