Well it finally happened. I’ve managed to stay a few weeks ahead for a year now, but I’ve finally run out of words. Bear with me while I come up with some more ideas….
Trying to trust
I was brainstorming with BDT’s coach (yes, we call her Coach), and she mentioned the importance of feeling like you can trust everyone in your group. And that totally reminded me of a bunch of stuff I’ve learned about trust over the past years! So this week’s post is about Trust.
Ross Smith, a Director of Test at Microsoft, took a bunch of theories about trust and now regularly puts them to the test. I had the good fortune of working in his organization for a short time, and it was pretty amazing to see the transformation he achieved in a short period of time. Ross is tricky. He uses crowd sourcing and game techniques to improve results. In other words, he turns things into games that encourage people inside and outside his organization to play and compete. The genius of it is that people end up spending extra time on projects that they aren’t even responsible for–because it’s so fun and personally rewarding for them.
Here’s an article about when Ross first created a game framework that encouraged trust behaviors inside his group. Click the link, and then first scroll down to Benefits and Metrics and read that dense paragraph. Here’s an example of some of the results:
“Our retention numbers were 20% to 50% higher than our historical numbers”
“We saw between a 10% to 60% improvement in productivity, as measured by a number of different metrics”
Okay, now go back and read that dense article to learn the specifics. Since we’re talking about software here, it was all done in a systematic way that he could measure. Out of the process, his group came up with a list of 150 trust building behaviors that they would track and turn into a game.
In another interview, Ross lists the sources of his inspiration on Trust. Scroll down to the very bottom of the interview for the list of sources.
So as musicians in a band with a couple members, we probably don’t have to be all systematic and scientific about it. My only reason for linking to those interviews is to build the case that organizational trustworthiness has been measured and it’s a huge pile of awesomeness. You can even take the next logical step: an increase in productivity should help make an increase in income. Of course income doesn’t matter so much if you’re stressed out and burned out–but again the numbers show that happiness increases just as much on average.
So it’s pretty clear that Trust is going to make a significant impact on the success of your band.
And by the way, back when I was working for Ross, he created the environment that produced a tool called the Conversation Analyzer. It analyzes your IM conversations (using a communications program called Lync) for trust building language, and gives you a score. You can track how you progress toward being someone who is trustworthy and encourages trust building.
Now, go back to that list of 150 trust building behaviors and actually take a look at it. It’s something we could spend the rest of our lives working on. So, in addition to everything else we’re working on, let’s just spend the next year focusing on maybe one or two off that list. And then move to the next, and so on. As the data shows, we’ll be happier and more productive.
August news, 2013
I’m looking forward to doing some new things in the upcoming months.
I’ve been putting together a set with a group of good friends and we’ll likely start playing some shows in November. Stay tuned for some announcements. I’m really happy with the direction this group is taking. I get to focus on playing some rock in a more subtle and mature way, and I’m really proud of the music we’re making.
Related to that group, I’ve been putting together Spotify playlists of music both new and old. Just different tunes that I’ve been listening to, as I think about how to approach this new project. When I gather enough songs, I’ll post the playlist on the next Monday. There may be some clues about what we will sound like. I hope you enjoy the playlists too. Spotify has a web player now, so I don’t think you have to install anything anymore if you don’t want to. The latest playlist is there already, but I won’t be posting the link on facebook until this Monday.
I’m also sitting in with a Klezmer group, the Debaucherantes, so stay tuned for a date or two with them. Looking forward to that!
Gamer Jam is set to continue, even though we announced that it was over. Sean is just too busy, but the rest of us want to keep it going. Let me know if you have any ideas!
As you know, Shiplosion is winding down. Our last show is in the woods at the end of the month. And Bucharest Drinking Team continues strong! It’s amazing to look back over how far we’ve come over the past couple years, and we have so many more great ideas!
Lots of fun stuff. I hope to see you around sometime real soon. Check out my calendar for dates. Thanks for reading this blog! As always, let me know what you think, or anything else that’s on your mind. –Kai
Music recommendations, August 10, 2013
Well, I wasn’t able to articulate any deep thoughts this week. So instead, it’s time for some new music recommendations!
Skies Below -This is a metal band from here in Seattle, that includes the drummer from the late Consulate. They are in the studio right now at Magnets Large & Small, so keep an eye out for their debut album. I think this is a new band to watch. Maybe check out their next show? I couldn’t find anything about them online yet, other than facebook. But their description, “heavy mellow”, is apt.
Thine — The duo just finished mixing their first album, but it’s not quite out yet. You can find some previews on soundcloud. This is another project involving the prodigious Stuart Dahlquist. If you’re aware of his other projects, Burning Witch, Asva, Sun O))), etc, then you might find this to be a little more accessible. I think fans of Kao Dot would be interested, as well as Asva fans. Thine has that signature Dahlquist organ sound–so hypnotically minimal and so stunningly colorful. Then add the lush voice of Joel RL Phelps. I don’t know how to categorize this, but perhaps you could include the Norwegian group, Ulver. The dynamics are all over the map, and often kicking into a groove at rare and distinct moments of resolution. But more often than not, the music is rubato and full of suspense.
Asva — this isn’t a new band, but I’m pretty excited that they are releasing a live album soon. Go and try to preorder it.
Free Salamander Exhibit — Members of Sleeptime Gorilla Museum have started afresh. I just caught them tonight in Seattle at the Mix. They are prog, but with heavy influences of funk, wicker, and burlap. It’s very heavy, very abstract and modern, and very entertaining to see live. I caught their 3rd show ever, so you still have a chance to hook up with their tour somewhere.
Update: How could I leave this out?? Kao Dot is coming out with a new album, Hubardo. You can pre-order it, so go do that. I pretty much agree with the NPR review, so I won’t be reinventing the wheel. Suffice to say, this is a group that plays with dynamics, concepts of time, textures, and colors. Expect pleasant surprises.
Trying to get along with others
There is a book that fundamentally changed my point of view.
Dale Carnegie wrote this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, back in 1936. The link goes to Wikipedia, which basically summarizes what every chapter is about. Looks like a series of blog posts doesn’t it? Just think, he wrote this in the previous century and had it figured out already.
If you are a musician, you must buy this book and read it. From the title you might think that it’s one of those cynical get rich quick schemes that teaches you how to turn people into your servants through mind control. But it’s quite the contrary. It’s about how to understand people so that you can treat them the way they want to be treated and so that you can give them what they want to be given. Quite a noble endeavor, actually. In return, they give you the same. It’s a win-win.
And I don’t recommend this book so that you can win a bunch of fans and maximize profits.
Instead, I recommend this book because it taught me how to successfully navigate rooms full of inflated egos, including my own, with selfish goals without any predetermined organizational structure. I happily include myself in this group, seeking my own overblown dreams of individual success, like any other musician, and this book helped put the social dynamics in perspective so that I would be at peace here and so most interactions would be chill and productive.
I say this as if I’ve succeeded in becoming some kind of monk. Far from the truth. But, I see the path to follow now, and I am seeing tangible results as I stumble along. It’s really amazing.
You must read this book if you are a musician. It has withstood the test of time. It’s a book you will reread once a year for the rest of your life. Do it.
Trying not to swim upstream
I’m talking about anxiety. I’m not an expert, so don’t take anything I say here as advice.
I’ve always been pretty bad at remembering names, and abstract numbers, dates, codes, measurements, etc. This is bad when I’m talking to other musicians, who are usually gear heads and love to talk about how many watts or the size of drum heads or brand names. It gets embarrassing. But on the other hand, I’m very good at logic, concepts, metaphors, techniques, and coordination. So, I’m going to keep playing drums, and I’m not going to try to be a publicist any time soon. If you’re an industry person, you need rote memorization skills–which frankly I lack. I could tell you how things work until I’m blue in the face, but don’t ask me about the names of those things. So, I know my limits, and I continue to work on improving my memory of equipment specs, as well as your name. But for the time being, I tend to avoid situations where I have to be an equipment junky, and that often puts me at a frustrating disadvantage. Oh well, I have other advantages, and I just keep reminding myself to focus on the right things and be happy with that. Trust me, I get really frustrated about forgetting your name, even after asking you 3 times. But things would be a lot worse if my livelihood depended on it.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I played trumpet for 8 or 9 years, but the time came when I realized that I felt more comfortable behind a drum set. I was able to learn at a quicker rate than the trumpet, and it felt good to be able to keep up with my fellow musicians. So, I finally made the switch.
Similarly, I’ve experienced some decent anxiety in my software career. There can be a lot of pressure, and a lot of competition. I think the worst anxiety I’ve experienced in the past was in tough meetings or when giving presentations. For me, the more I prepare the less anxiety I feel. But one of the things I did recently was switch to a position where I’d experience less anxiety. It’s been great. I’m going to try to continue down this new path.
I think I put up with it for a while because I thought it was to be expected. But I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t need to be expected. I don’t have put up with it simply because that’s the environment I’m in. In fact, I can just choose not to engage in those situations that are the most troubling. And I can engage in ways to reduce stress and anxiety. Being nervous is normal. But heck, why submit myself to those situations over and over if I don’t have to? Luckily, I rarely get nervous playing drums. Musical performance actually recharges me, and that feeling really puts the rest of my life in perspective.
But here’s something tough to think about. If you suffer from performance anxiety, then consider the physiological ramifications down the road. Perhaps it’s time to take a moment to think about what makes you nervous, how nervous you get, and if there are ways to reduce anxiety. Or even stop doing the things that cause it. Everyone feels a little nervous on stage, but maybe it’s not right to be really nervous night after night. Maybe there are alternative ways to engage in your art.
A robot walks into a bar…
Hey musicians,
How’s that day job? Well, it looks like the job market is going to continually get scarcer out there. Most musicians have a day job, and so this is not good news. It seems music isn’t the only thing going digital–so is everything else: Robots are taking all the jobs.
This is a thought provoking article about how most jobs are becoming obsolete, due to automation. They predict that income disparity will continue to spread, as blue collar jobs are replaced by machines and software, and white collar jobs will get whittled away. And the article describes how we will eventually move into a post-job economy, where there are almost no jobs where you are working for someone. But in the current economic system, the only way to patch up the problem is by continually expanding welfare–or change the economic system.
But, the only jobs that aren’t going away right now are tech jobs. So consider going into tech. You can be a system administrator, or you can be an A/V expert, or perhaps go into development or data warehousing or web development. Or you can go into marketing, or sales. Tech doesn’t mean you have to know how to code. And as a vendor, as opposed to a “permanent” employee, you still have a certain amount of freedom to pursue music. But beware: you still have to stay current in all the latest technologies. But you can do it. Go to IT Tech or something. I know you already geek out over instrument specs, and you may even geek out about the music business. And you will practice the same riff over and over, and you may even be able to read music. So you have it in you to geek out, learn new things, and understand abstract logical and mathematical theory–if you want to.
Then you can keep playing music, because it may not pay much but it does involve real breathing living feeling people.
And help me with a punchline to the joke in the title. :)
Trying to find a mentor
Just as important as having a muse, you gotta have a mentor. I cannot stress this enough. This is more than having a role model, where you emulate them from afar. This about finding someone who will take an active role in your life, pointing you in the right direction for self improvement.
We’re all wandering around. It’s not dark, so we think we can navigate. But really, we can’t guess very well. We need a scout who’s been there. We have to learn by making so many mistakes, you really owe it to yourself to find a mentor who can help you avoid pitfalls. We’re lazy and take the easy route, so you owe it to yourself to have a sensei who will show you the value of thinking long term. We overestimate the size of hurdles, and so you owe it to yourself to have a coach who will show you that it’s easier than you thought.
You have permission to ask for help. You have no excuse for not knowing what to do, because you can find a mentor. There was a time that I didn’t know this, and so I wasted a lot of time and made pointless mistakes.
A few tips:
- Usually the mentor doesn’t need to know that’s how you view them. They probably don’t need that kind of pressure anyway.
- You don’t need any formal agreement because you are actually helping them, too.
- You can help a mentor by giving information, because you are likely more on the front lines.
There are a ton of articles on getting mentors, but the Forbes one is fine.
I can brag because I was a self-taught drummer for a long time, but now it’s kind of embarrassing for me. I wasted a lot of time without a percussion expert as a mentor, and so now I’m trying to catch up. Don’t make the same mistake as I did. Identify who wants to help you, and then ask them for it. Sometimes they are just waiting to be asked for help. Or do you already have mentors, and have they helped you?
Trying to find a muse
I have a few strengths and a lot of flaws. I try to work on some of those flaws. It seems like even strengths can be flaws 20% of the time. “Attention to detail” is probably one of the best strengths someone can have, but then maybe you sometimes forget the forest for the trees. Maybe you’re a great leader, but then do you work well with others when you need to?
The interview question “what’s your biggest flaw?” becomes turned on its head, because flaws can become strengths. So, I like to reinterpret the question and answer with “Well, what I am working on now is X, because there was a time when that didn’t go so well for me. So now I am working on overcoming that by doing A, B, and C, and I’m tracking my progress.” I think any other answer would be a bunch of unhelpful BS. Why do they ask that question? To see how you deal with stress? Maybe, but I have interviewed a lot of candidates throughout my career, and I have better ways to tell how people deal with stress. The question should be more about self-awareness.
But, as usual I digress (one of my flaws, but also a strength when brainstorming). What I was thinking about this week was about muses. A muse is an external input that can help us overcome our flaws, and bring out the best part of ourselves in a way that allows us to do our best work. A muse makes us more creative, and we can communicate our message more clearly. Sometimes a muse might not be a person, but the most famous muses are people.
Take a look at this list of famous duos. It’s irritating that they included so many fictional characters in the list, but that’s the nature of the internet. So, ignoring the fictional characters, there’s still quite a long list. And they are missing Matt Stone and Trey Parker! It’s hard to keep up. One could also argue that Scott Walker was David Bowie’s muse. In fact, I’ll bet most successful individuals likely have a muse that we just don’t know about. Going back to Matt and Trey, I highly recommend watching the South Park documentary to understand how muses work. Matt is Trey’s muse. There’d be no Trey without Matt.
Are you okay without a muse? Sure, but it’s better to have a muse, right? A muse makes the creative process go more quickly with a more inspired outcome.
So, I’m trying to find a muse for music. Do you have a muse? Find your muse.
Update: After writing this, I talked to my writing muse, Susan. We chatted about this for a while, and we realized that a muse can be one sided. There are other relationship types–roll model, influence, mentor, and others??? What are we leaving out?
Update 2: In the comments, Walter pointed out that I’m probably not talking about a muse as much as I’m talking about an artistic partner. I have to agree with him. A muse is probably better described as an emotional conduit for artistic output. Thanks Walter, I stand corrected!
Trying to estimate the cost, part 3
This is a continuation from part 2.
So previously, I ruminated on how valuable costing is with planning. As you gain experience in calculating the costs of time, resources, and money, you can be more trustworthy and more productive. Your ability to calculate costs improves your ability to make quick decisions and act on them.
But there is one more benefit from costing, and that benefit is personal growth.
When you are well versed in how long it takes to do something, then you can start thinking how to do it faster. Or you can think about what it would take to do it better. You can start asking questions about why it went so quickly or so slowly, why it cost more than you thought, or why you needed more help than you expected. Thinking about these things can reveal some of the basic assumptions we tend to make or some of the details we forget to think about.
In Shiplosion, we learned that we can record 2 or maybe 3 songs in a session, end to end. But we only expect 2 songs. We are a special case because we record everything (but the vocals) live. Then we finish up the vox. It just takes another session to mix it all down. But we know that we have to be able to play the songs flawlessly, and so that becomes a checkpoint before we can go in and record. But we learned this process by trial and error. When we started, we went in and recorded one track at a time. It took several sessions to get everything recorded for a single song. So, we had that baseline. Then we asked ourselves, how can we improve on this? How can we keep the quality of music that we want, but reduce the amount of time in the studio? So, we were in a lucky situation by being a three-piece. This resulted in a pretty major gain in productivity, and we didn’t have to sacrifice quality. And it’s a great feeling to know exactly how long it takes to record a song, and how much it will cost–without having to think about it.
In my previous post, I brainstormed some questions to ask when thinking about what it will take a learn a song. There are a lot of factors! But armed with this information, I can start asking myself how to be more efficient with song learning. For example, one thing I do is get a recording of the song and then listen to it on repeat everywhere I go. It takes a certain amount of patience, but I subconsciously learn the song while I’m getting other things done. I also work on the specific techniques on a practice pad while watching hulu. But other improvements may not have obvious benefits, and so that’s why it’s good to always be measuring your time and resources. You need to know if there’s a real benefit to a new strategy. For example, I learned that I can learn material faster if I just play each song on repeat one at a time, instead of an entire playlist on repeat.
Paying attention to costing can teach you valuable lessons about time buffers. They’re really important! We get so optimistic about what we can do, that we start to feel invincible. But things can and will go wrong. At one Shiplosion recording session, I already knew how long it would take to drive to Guitar Center, buy some new heads, and then drive to the studio. And I totally nailed that, and even showed up 30 minutes in advance to change out the heads. But what I didn’t plan for was the Guitar Center chaos effect. Sure, they gave me the number of heads I wanted, but then by the time I was ready to take them out of the boxes… I discovered that I was given the wrong heads. So, I had to kill that 30 minutes to race back and get the right heads (which actually, they didn’t have, so I had to settle for a mixed set of heads). Obviously not enough buffer.
In Bucharest Drinking Team, when we recorded our first album, we did a lot of planning and baselining to estimate how much material we could record. Those kinds of estimates are important when you’re recording live, because you have to rehearse the material in advance. And you have to rehearse in a very special way, knowing that you will have an unusual setup (unlike any show), and may not have any visual queues. We came up with a range of songs to record, and were able to get through the bare minimum. But we didn’t record everything we wanted, and we had to leave some things out–because we didn’t account for the Herding Cats Syndrome. When you have 12 people in a room, totally having a blast and amped up with energy, it’s very difficult to stay on schedule. But fortunately we had planned time buffer for the “unknown unknowns”, and we had prioritized the work so that we could just skip the lower priority things.
I’ll end with another brainstorm. Do you know the answers? I’ll actually need to figure some of these out for myself. :)
- How long does it take to break down your equipment? And to set it up?
- How long does it take for the whole band to break down equipment, load it, unload it, and set it up? What if someone is missing?
- How long does it take to record a song? How much does it cost?
- How long does it take to write a song? To learn it? To have it ready to perform? To record it?
- How long does it take to do a line check? Full sound check?
- How long does it take to drive to the next city over?
- What does it cost to play a show? To play a show a city over?
- What’s the monthly cost of being in a band?
- What’s the monthly cost of playing your instrument?
- What could go wrong with any of this?
- How can you improve on all of this?