The Poor Man’s Noise Cancellation Headphones
I thought of this idea last week and it’s worked perfectly. I have an 8 hour flight coming up and preparing for the worst: a loud baby or noisy airplane engine the entire time.
Noise-cancelling headphones are $150-$300, and I thought it was pointless to buy them for a one-time use and hoard more equipment that will collect dust afterwards (I rarely write music in a busy environment).
I had construction headphones ($20-$30) back from when I played in a band and my iPod headphones. So I wore my iPod headphones like normal, and simply put the construction headphones over top. Absolutely perfect.
1.) I save $150-$300
2.) I can still send/receive phone calls without taking off my headphones
3.) Sound quality is perfect
4.) I don’t hoard more stuff
5.) No battery is needed
6.) NC Headphones are known to break. These won’t.
7.) You’ll never notice these aren’t actual NC headphones. Plus stylistically, I prefer the ways these look.
8.) Since they’re construction headphones, they’re very lightweight and comfortable.
9.) As the bottom picture shows, the fold is incredibly small, much much smaller than actual NC headphones. The perfect travel companion.
This is a fun article that I know I could internalize. My favorite quote:
The next time you have an idea rolling around in your head, find the courage to quiet your inner critic just long enough to get a piece of paper and a pen, then just start sketching it. “But I don’t have a long time for this!” you might think. Or, “The idea is probably stupid,” or, “Maybe I’ll go online and click around for—”
No. Shut up. Stop sabotaging yourself.
If you make art, stop and read this article. This is in-line with exactly what I’ve been saying about chasing a muse. When I’m stuck for musical ideas it’s usually because I leave too many options on the table. To have no boundary is what causes writer’s block, paralysis through analysis, or stalemate reactions for demanding an answer to something.
For example, if someone says to me “write a piece of music” then I’ll likely never come up with something interesting. But if the challenge was “write a piece of music using only 4 notes, between 1 and 2 minutes in length, only using legato arpeggios” then not only would it be more fun to see if I can conquer the obstacle, but the result would be easier on my mind to write, and a better musical piece as a result.
The reason why this McDonald’s Theory works too is because to say “pick a restaurant, any restaurant” is leaving too many options to capture our imagination. So the second someone suggests McDonalds’s then you’ve created a box or variable for other people to work inside of.
The only way you’re going to think outside the box is to first make the box.
Leave It Somewhere To Go
For my Gravity Falls piece, ryumarumg brought up an excellent point:
Hm. I like the beginning, builds a bit of suspense. I expected the brass to kick in sooner, but after listening to the whole thing I realized that it would have made the song feel much shorter and less full. Nice use of the strings for the main melody, too!
Here’s my thoughts on that:
Frank Sinatra always told Nelson Riddle to hold back on the brass in his arrangements because his thinking was to “leave the song somewhere to go”. It’s part of why Nelson Riddle is one of my favorite big band arrangers. He knew what he could do, but he teased the listener, push-pulled, and had a full bag of tricks that never got old because he sprinkled them in rather than beat you over the head with it.
To understand my style more, all you have to do is look at Daniel Kahneman’s TED Talk. The way things end matter more than the beginning or the middle. Almost our entire memory and/or rating of something is determined by the emotion that it left us, rather than what we experienced in full. For example, Transformers 5 could be the most boring movie ever, but if the final 20 minutes are amazing then we’ll say the movie was “OK”. However, if the very first 20 minutes were amazing but the rest of the movie was the most boring movie ever then we’ll say “the movie was absolutely horrible.”.
I grew up loving Nelson Riddle and Frank Sinatra’s advice because I apply it to everything I do. Sure, a movie’s first scene should grab your attention, but if it’s all explosions all the time then it gets tiresome. The same with any “art”: a book, a painter’s catalog, a chef’s dish, or even making love. You have to slowly build up on the intensity while making the entirety as perfect as possible. But if the final and last impression isn’t memorable, then anything that came before it is lost.
It’s said that the secret to a memorable piece of art is to make a good beginning, a good middle, and a good ending. But one thing I’ll add to that is to make the ending a lasting impression, because that’s what an audience subconciously weighs their opinions on.
Although some people dislike my arranging style, it’s about tension and release - to the point that you’re anxious to see where the road leads how it will progress.
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As for what I hear, there are times when I take liberties with my pieces and add a few extra instruments here or there. If I hear something in my head that is for piccolo, 4 trombones, or bass clarinet then I’ll throw it in even though it breaks from my traditional setup. Rarely do I split horn sections indivisi though.
But it’s mainly the same ensemble on every song. The reason for this is because I hope to tour one day, or at least one can hope and fight. So I would need the ensemble (and therefore my arrangements) to be for the same exact group. It would get sloppy if I did string quartet one week and brass quintet the next.
I mainly hear different melodies or embellishments rather than the size of the orchestra, though. For example, Nine Inch Nails ‘Closer’ which comes out this week, is originally a 6 minute song, but I rearranged it to be 5 minutes. This is partly due to licensing issues (songs over 5 minutes cost more for me), but it’s also because I heard the song slightly different. For an orchestra piece, I didn’t like the long drum intro or the stretched out middle section. I’m pretty thrilled with how it came out. If you compare the original to my piece then you’ll hear how I think (I equate my process to a film editor, if anything).
My ensemble size is based off of Beethoven’s traditional orchestra (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoon, french horn, trumpet, trombone, timpani, crash, vibraphone, xylophone, piano, roto toms, violin 1, violin 2, viola, cello, bass)
Thanks! It was just tough though because when you’re in debt, struggling to pay rent, trying to grow a community while somehow trying to obtain disposable income to reinvest, etc. the whole world felt like it was falling apart.
So when something like that happens you start thinking “OK, my unemployment checks run out in 2 months and I’m still only making $300 a month. What happens in 2 months? Will I be on the street? It’ll take me 4 months to find a job and the minimum wage I’ll probably receive won’t even break me even. Forget that, how do I even buy a car to get to work if I have no job yet to buy a car, or credit to take out a loan? How can I even afford anything if I have people chasing me down for money owed to them?”
So the past few years have been tough and I wasn’t really able to take a day off of work because time was limited. I know I’m not alone in this idea of being overwhelmed, and I know people who have it worse than me. But fast-forward 2 years and I’m now living a minimal life, just happy to write music and needed a few weeks to breathe. I just wanted to have my first week of “vacation” with my friends, go frisbee golf, relax a little, and just clear my head after the rollercoaster ride.
So I moved out of NYC, paid off all my debt over the years and moving to Portland next month to write music for you. Just a bike, no car. Just a place to restart something fresh, “if it scares you, do it.”
I remember I had to break up with someone I was crazy about simply because I couldn’t afford to live in NYC anymore, talk about sucking. But it might not have been the right time.
Crappy years cause the best times of your life, because when you get out of it you look back and realize you can do anything. And that’s when you really begin to grow.
Last year when I was at PAX East, I stopped in to Ben Kuchera’s presentation (my favorite of the entire expo). I just came across my notes that I scribbled onto a piece of paper.
I remember that within 10 minutes I was so into what he was saying, that I stopped taking notes and just tried to internalize everything he said.
It’s not much, but here’s what I wrote:
1.) keep a roloex of people smarter than you
2.) it takes 5 years to suck at something until you’re good at it
3.) find the story that no one is doing
4.) long terms stick around
5.) if it scares you it never gets better and it’s always hard
(I was asked to repost this to make it rebloggable, so here it is again)
Sleepyhollowjacks asks: During your Heart-Shaped Box writing days, how did you divide your time between projects? A few days a week on the occasional short story, the rest on Judas? One of my short stories isn’t so *short* anymore. Has stretched out into something much bigger. But I’m aware I could spend two years working on this potential novel, and then not have it sell. Want to avoid the whole eggs-in-a-basket thing.
Two thoughts:
The first is to stop thinking about writing a novel that’s going to take you two years. That’s too overwhelming. Instead, just focus on what you’re going to do today, which is write another great scene: a scene that does something unexpected and fun and is going to make people want to read on. Something that explores the characters in a way that’s real but surprising. Don’t write about someone waking up, unless they’re waking up to find a dead body next to them. Don’t write about someone making breakfast unless there’s a head in the fridge… or his wife is going to call halfway through his eggs to tell him she’s leaving his drunk and lazy ass for an alligator wrestler and part-time evangelical preacher. That would be a great scene to write and that’s all the job comes down to. Your job is to write one great scene… and then write another great scene. When you have a whole stack of them, it’s a short story, or a novel.
My second thought is that the only way to learn how to write a novel is to write a novel. You’re afraid you’ll spend two years on a book you can’t sell and it will all be wasted time. Forget that. Whether you sell the book or not, it won’t be wasted time. You will be developing crucial skills for the next book. You will develop ideas you can recycle later. Success comes from the things you learn when you fail. If you can’t bear to fail, it’s hard to grow as an artist.
I was one of the people who asked.
This is true.
Exactly the same with writing music. For me, I try to make it so that if you randomly listen to any 30 second excerpt it should stand on it’s own as an awesome piece.
