i hit record by accident. i was setting up a session, testing levels, not thinking about making anything. the thing that came out of that session is the best thing i've made in six months. i don't know what to do with that.
it's not the first time. there's a pattern here that i keep noticing and keep not knowing what to do with. the sessions where i sit down with a plan — a key, a tempo, a structure i want to build — produce work that's technically fine and emotionally inert. the sessions where i'm just messing around, not trying to make anything, produce the stuff i actually want to listen to.
the obvious conclusion is: stop trying. but that's not quite right either. the accidental sessions happen because i've been trying for a long time. the muscle memory is there. the ear is trained. the accident is only possible because of all the intentional work that came before it.
what the accident sounds like
the track i made by accident is a loop. four bars, maybe 90 bpm, a bass line that i played without thinking about it and a pad that came in when i was reaching for something else. the calitoy music and culture conversation about this is interesting — there's something about the loop format specifically that invites accident. you're not building toward anything. you're just circling.
i've been listening to it for three days. it doesn't resolve. it doesn't go anywhere. it just keeps going, and every time it comes around again there's something slightly different in how i hear it. that's the thing about loops — they're not static. you change, and the loop sounds different.
the jeremy dean music world approach to this is different — song structure, verse-chorus, something that builds and releases. i respect that. i can't do it. my brain doesn't work that way. i make loops and i make things that are almost loops and i make things that are trying to be songs but keep collapsing back into loops.
the intention question
the fringe signals and weird tech people have a theory about this — something about how intention creates interference, how the act of trying to make something good introduces a kind of noise into the signal. i don't know if i believe that exactly, but i believe something like it.
what i know is: the best thing i've made in six months happened when i wasn't trying to make anything. and i'm going to keep trying to make things, because that's the only way the accidents happen.
more at end of 8.