Trim the Fat!

It’s easy to keep adding and adding to something isn’t it? The great designer Dieter Ram is who really coined the phrase “Less, but better” his ten principles of good design inspired Jonathan Ives who went on to design the imac, iphone, ipad and so on. I even heard a talk once with producer Scott Storch who talks about “sandbagging” a track by adding too many bells and whistles when the actual song is not strong enough. Try breaking everything down to the most basic element of what is needed. But how to do this with art? I can only speak to production and music, but certainly we have all seen the photo with far to many photoshop filters, where Ansel Adams simple style still can’t be duplicated. Trying to do too many sonic tricks with a week melody is simple trying to polish a turd, far better to scrap and start over.

The best advice I ever heard on the subject was from photographer Ken Rockwell. On his blog he talks about looking at your best 20 photos then picking out the best 4 of them and scrapping the rest. Rinse and repeat. You will feel yourself getting better and more able to discern the quality of your own work. So maybe its time to try that with your music. Pick your 10 best tracks, then scrap all but two of them. Create more and keep refining and honing your craft. Not everything you create will be a masterpiece. In fact I feel that about 70% of what I create is not so good, the trick is knowing what 70% needs to go and that is what separates the men from the boys.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein