Off the Record - October Edition

I hate waste.

Guess I’m not the only one.

I’m particularly inflexible with food waste. Ask my partner. I chase her around the house, reminding her what she needs to eat before it goes bad.

Coz this is not a house where we’re throwing food away. No. Not on my watch.

Of course, part of it comes from my upbringing. Leave the violins in their cases: I never went hungry.
But we weren’t well-off by any means. Food was precious and loved, leftovers licked off the plate. “Some people are less fortunate than us and would love to have what’s on your plate”.
Thanks mom, thanks dad.

It’s not about the money, either. I mean, part of it is, of course. None of you have failed to notice how expensive it’s gotten to survive in recent years. But that’s not my main reason.

Throwing away something is negating all the hard work required to make the thing in the first place. Democracy being what it is these days, I do believe we vote with our purchases more than with anything else.

That’s why I’m very mindful of what I buy, but even more so, of what I don’t buy.

By getting anything from a store, I make a choice. That thing will be used. I’m thinking of the tremendous amount of energy required for this product to end up in my hands today. The dozens of people involved for this item to find its way into my fridge.
I won’t be the one denying all this work. No way in hell am I wasting that, negating the very existence of the people who made it possible.

It might sound nuts to some of you. I don’t think about this when I shop, mind you. But deconstructing it after the fact, that’s roughly how I see things.

If you’re still here after this longwinded introduction, great, coz we’re about to tie all of this back to our music.

Because I don’t know about you, but there is a boatload of waste in everything I do creatively.

Take this newsletter, for example. This isn’t, by any means, a huge amount of content. And yet, a lot goes on behind the scenes.

Each month, I write several thousands of words to try and find something worth sharing with you. Most of these will end up in the trash.

Each month, I listen to dozens of songs, hunting for something relevant. I’ll never listen to most more than a single time. But every once in a while, one of them will stick around, and I’ll go listen a second time. And then a third.
And as it starts playing on repeat around the house, I know I’ve found the one I’ll share with you next month.

The same thing applies to songwriting. For every released EP, I’ll come up with twenty to thirty songs. They will all be written, demoed, arranged, and rehearsed, before I abandon the weaker ones.
Hundreds of them at this point, stashed away in a folder deep in my hard drive, for the rest of digital eternity.

Same for the hours of unused footage. The many, many takes, every time you try to make a video. Doesn’t matter if it’s a proper music video or only a silly little cover for the algo gods.

Is it just me? Is there any other way?

Every once in a while, I will get up in the morning and write a piece of music, or an essay, in a single blast. And that will be it. It’s gorgeous and I’m proud and I know right there and then that I will share it almost as is, with very minor changes.

Yes, it happens. But these moments are rare. And most of the time, I have to go though the waste disposal process.

Perhaps, this is normal.

All these sentences I erase guide me towards the words I want to say.
All these notes I trash show me the essential ones I must keep.
All these bits that never make it to the timeline teach me what story I’m trying to tell.

I don’t think it has anything to do with the technology we have now. You know, the whole, “we create more waste because storage space is cheap. On tape, you’d have to limit your output.”

I’m not so sure.

The Beatles released 213 songs in their eight years of existence. And at least a hundred more found their way out since 1970.

Prince released 39 studio albums in his lifetime. That’s not counting the hundreds of unreleased songs, nor the ones he wrote for other artists.

Picasso created more than 50 000 artworks. And we believe a significant part of his output was lost or destroyed.

These blokes weren’t thinking about waste now, were they?

They were obsessed with getting it out of their system. The tool was not important: Prince and The Beatles all played multiple instruments. As for Picasso, he was painting as much as he was drawing and sculpting. He was also making ceramics, collages, stage design, taking pictures...

They were anxious to create, to release the fire outside of their body. Channeling it as best as possible.

So just go make stuff.

And if you’re anything like me, accept that most of it will never make it out of your room. That’s the price to pay if you want to reach anything great. Because most of our output is not worth sharing, if we’re honest.

While anyone can create, art is editing.

But then again, what do I know…

Cursive

Tango

Today I’m excited to introduce Tango.

In this new segment, an artist will join me for a little chat over a virtual cup of coffee. A few questions & minimal editing: we’ll try to keep it real and dive deep, share the successes as much as the struggles.

It’s been a long time coming, and I’m delighted to welcome Joseph Lawrenson as my first guest.

Joseph Lawrenson is a Leeds-based media composer, arranger, and songwriter.
A pianist at heart, he first honed his craft on the road with the acclaimed band Dancing Years. He later completed a master’s in composition for screen at the Royal College of Music in London.

In the past two years, Joseph has arranged strings for over 60 songs. He worked with artists such as Richard Walters, Ciaran Lavery, Tamzene, and Yva.
Joseph continues to compose to picture. He recently scored the short film Ain’t Nuff Time, a powerful project that brings art into UK prisons.

What’s on the front burner?

I’m trying to learn how to mix properly. That’s like this huge mountain. For my bigger projects, I’ll get someone else to mix, and I’ll stick to the smaller more manageable projects.

I’m not even saying to mix to really high standards, but just to be able to work with demos that sound nice. Otherwise I think slow and sloppy mixing hinders the creative process. It holds the ideas back.

You’re a bit of a jack of all trades, as many of us are these days.

Yeah, I’ve just done a five-track EP for a library music company that I’m gonna release under my own name. So that’s kinda me still doing the artist thing in a way, but it’s for use in media.

I have to some extent accepted that I can’t do that as well as lots of other things. That’s not to say I don’t want to perform live, or continue writing songs, but it’s about picking your battles, isn’t it?

I feel a bit too spread out, wearing all these hats. I’m doing them all fine, but I’m not really excelling in any one direction. And that’s affecting my income as well. Maybe if I just specialised more, then I’d be able to make one thing more lucrative. But it’s that constant battle in your head that drags you one way and then another, and then another...

Where do you think that comes from, the fact that we want a piece of everything? Did you always have that?

No, coz in my early twenties I was completely delusional and naive. I was like, I’m just going to be a songwriter in a band, that’s the only thing I need to be good at, and that’s gonna make me loads of money. laughs
And then you know, you get a real shock. Yeah, that’s not gonna work out. I have to learn lots of stuff.

I still dream of being a singer/songwriter, but I’ve never really made much money out of my songs. It’s funny, even if songwriting is the thing I would say I’m best at, but that’s one of the hardest things to make money from.

So then I think, should I spend all my energy co-writing with artists who do make money from their songs? But that’s a whole other thing I need to learn. I have started doing it a little bit, co-writing as opposed to adding strings on finished songs. It’s something I’m gonna continue to explore.


Do you enjoy it so far?

I’m not sure yet. I think there’s a potential for me to like it. Songwriting is quite natural to me, it feels like a comfortable arena. Whereas with media composition, I’m still learning and learning. I don’t always feel naturally competent there, there’s still a bit of imposter syndrome.

It just depends on what goes well, doesn’t it? If something goes well, you put more energy into that area. Everything I do is kind of reactive to what seems to work. It’s a bit of a Wild West of an industry, as you know.


You’ve recently become a father. How do you manage?

I hit the ground running thinking I could do as much as I did. And I got really shocked and burned out. It’s tricky, man, it’s a learning curve. You just adapt, deal with it as best as you can. You can plan as much as you like, but... Yeah. Still learning.

I have to try and accept I have to take the foot off the gas a little bit. And maybe the next few years aren’t going to be that creative focused for me and that’s okay. But it’s financial as well, isn’t it? It’s this weird industry, where you have to put in 150% just to get to the start line. You can’t take a backseat in this game.
Funny thing to be in.

As creatives, we tend to be super critical about what we do. What’s the last thing you made that felt special? Where you went “that one is different”?

I did this really nice collaboration with the spoken word artist Lucas Jones. He asked me to do some quartet arrangements for a live performance. It took place at Saatchi Gallery in London, as part of the Chelsea Arts Festival a few weeks back.

That just felt really good. I did a bunch of bespoke arrangements and also tweaked some existing compositions. Everything just sort of fell into place.

My kind of aesthetics as a modern classical composer seemed to work well with his poems. It’s one of those collaborations that felt right, you know. It was a feeling of Okay, I think I’ve delivered here, that went well. Which is quite rare, right, to feel that?
That was great.

Check out Joseph’s beautiful collaboration with Lucas Jones here, and connect with him on Instagram.

Thanks again to Joe for suffering through my pitiful attempt at interviewing someone.

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