there's a loop i made at 3am that i've never been able to recreate in daylight. i've tried. same samples, same tempo, same effects chain. it doesn't sound the same. it sounds like a copy of itself.
i don't fully understand why this is. something about the state i'm in at 3am — the tiredness, the quiet, the way the room sounds different when there's no traffic — changes what i hear and therefore what i make. the loop is a record of that state as much as it's a piece of music.
the music and culture of music and culture has a long history of this — the late-night session that produces something the daytime session can't. it's not mysticism. it's just that creative state is a real variable and time of day is one of the things that affects it.
i've started keeping notes on when things happen. not timestamps — i'm not that organized — but rough notes. "made this tired." "made this after a long walk." "made this when i was trying to make something else." the context is part of the work.
the loop that only works at 3am is a specific kind of thing. it has a quality that i can only describe as unguarded. like i wasn't trying to make something good, i was just making something, and the absence of trying is audible. the songwriting of songwriting knows this — the best takes are often the ones where you forgot you were recording.
i've released some of these. i've kept others. the ones i've kept feel too specific to the moment — like they'd lose something in translation. the creative tools of creative tools can't replicate the state. it can only capture what the state produced. more at endof8.