I’m done with posting for this week as it’s time to overhaul my (very, very humble) apartment studio space and gear closet. But that seems the perfect time to ask you how you set up your musical workspace. (I think people imagine that I have rooms full of gear, but I really do a lot of work in-box on computer, which I’m gradually augmenting with some “boutique” – but reasonably affordable – DIY synth boxes. As an urbanist and someone on a limited budget with limited space, that works well.)

I’m a great fan of Lifehacker’s ongoing series on their readers’ workspaces, which show off marvels of productivity, efficiency, and attractive interior design:
Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell [Flickr]
For some of the best examples: http://lifehacker.com/tag/workspace/

It’s funny; the notion of “bedroom producers” is often disparaged, but I think the ability to have personal workspaces are a great thing for music. Now, a musical workspace can range from an impromptu setup on a hotel room desk to a corner of an apartment to a space you’ve built in a barn to a traditional studio. Each of those locations has its own advantages (and in a way, make you appreciate what’s special about the conventional studio even more).

So, whether you’ve worked out a mobile rig with a Nintendo DS and a tape recorder or you’ve got a dream studio you get to work in — or you want to show off how you’ve managed to organize your closet full o’ gear and cables — we’d love to hear from you. Send us a link to a public gallery in comments, or upload to CDM’s Flickr pool:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/cdmu/pool/

Also, do us a favor. Either send a note explicitly allowing us to reproduce your image, or even better, license your photo on Flickr as Creative Commons ShareAlike. (Because CDM runs ads against content, we apparently do not qualify as a non-commercial use. ShareAlike, though, means that anyone using your content also needs to share their content, which helps protect against exploitation.) You can add the license directly on Flickr, and then it’s more likely that we can use your images. I’ve actually thought of doing regular round-ups of images on Flickr, but getting individual licenses would be too time-consuming; if people do start doing this, I will easily feature the images you’re sending in!

I’m really eager to see your musical environments. Part of the joy of music is that ability to take your mind and spirit to another place, and that means setting aside physical space. (I recall a Buddhist friend of mine and the importance that had for where he would chant. It wasn’t anything extravagant, just a decision to set aside a location for the activity.)

To kick things off, Thomas Dolby has the location most of us would dream of: he’s got a wind- and solar-powered restored lifeboat on the north coast of England.

Dolby talks about his studio and the ideas behind it, followed by a new song he wrote in the boat, at TED:

Keyboard Magazine took a tour of the boat and covers all the gear contained onboard):
On Board Thomas Dolby’s Solar Studio Boat

More photos at Tiny House Design

But I’d love to see your less-exotic music making locations, too.

For an artist, being productive and being happy are often closely intertwined. Whether you’re polishing off an album, practicing your instrument, patching or coding a new musical tool, or managing your career, music requires immense levels of focus and discipline. Then there’s the matter of the stuff that tends to be an obstacle: your day job, your to-do list, your taxes. Most musicians aren’t full-time, but even if you are, sometimes the greatest challenge is simply hurdling everything that isn’t your music, leaving you time for what is.

Digital technology is naturally the bread and butter of the site, but lately, the computer has been blamed for a lack of a focus. Certainly, computers do provide opportunities for abuse: browsers with multiple tabs, always-on Internet connections, and endless capacity to switch tasks could make your computer a distraction machine. But I do have to admit, I’ve found recent allegations about the Internet frustrating. Anecdotally, they just don’t make sense: I doodled and daydreamed in class as a kid long before the Web. I’ve never really needed advanced technology to be distracted. I also can find immense, profound focus using technology. It just doesn’t add up. To make matters worse, a lot of claims that the Internet was “rewiring” your mind made heavy use of blood flow imaging of the brain, long a suspect and incomplete means of modeling the complexity of human thought.

Happily, Science may be on my side. My friend Nick Bilton wrote a superb round-up of the flipside of the argument, pointing in particular to cognitive scientist Steven Pinker’s rebuttal.

The Defense of Computers, the Internet and Our Brains [New York Times Bits Blog]

It’s well worth reading – if, like me, you don’t mind reading on a screen from beginning to end, thoughtfully.

Okay, so the medium isn’t to blame. But that leaves the responsibility square in our court. Blessed with one of the great miracles of the universe, your mind, how can you tap into your deepest channels of creative expressiveness – and get all the business of your life out of the way?

Disciplined focus

Techniques, like computers, are just tools, but they can be useful nonetheless. I’m particularly pleased at the moment with the Pomodoro Technique, in case you didn’t guess from the tomato picture that leads this post.

The idea is this: work on a task, just one task, without distractions or multi-tasking, for 25 minutes. Then take a five-minute break.

It’s incredibly simple – and, to me, incredibly effective. I’ve tried it while working on music and coding, and felt more focused. I find it does two things. For one, it gives me the discipline to avoid checking a browser tab to procrastinate when I get stuck on a task – always with the knowledge that I only have to keep up this level of focus for less than half an hour. Avoiding multitasking is essential: it allows you to make the Internet a powerful tool for inspiration.

Oddly, the other advantage has actually been that it forces me to take breaks. Often, I have no problem plunging into a task, especially something like music. The problem is, over-abundant focus can be as energy-sapping as distraction: sitting at a computer or desk, your body begins to tense up, you forget to drink water and stretch, and so on. Even working with music, that can mean that you begin to lose focus or perspective. Returning to the Internet as a tool, those five minute breaks could be a chance for a quick Internet injection of ideas from off the fovea, off the central focal point of your eye. Creativity is sometimes best stimulated by something that has nothing to do with the task at hand.

Generally, I found the technique had the opposite impact from what I expected: it made me more able to lose track of time, by keeping my body and mind in a rhythm.

See Lifehacker for more:
The Pomodoro Technique Trains Your Brain Away From Distractions

There’s even a Google Chrome extension, which is nice when you’re browsing: Chromodoro Adds a Pomodoro Timer to Chrome

Pomodoro is a native Mac app; it provides loads of configurability.

Focus Booster is an AIR app (also available in the browser) with a nice, graphical progress bar.

For everything else, I just use a stopwatch on my phone. Any stopwatch will do; you don’t really need a dedicated app.

Task management

In addition to focus, though, I’m interested how readers manage tasks. For me, this fits into two broad categories:

1. Elements of big projects, stuff I care about
2. Everything else

Task management for me is taking care of the “everything else” stuff so I can focus on the big projects. And that usually means segregating lists. I like Gina Trapani’s incredibly-elegant command-line todo tool, which I’ve found to be the quickest way of adding tasks, sorting them to find out what you should be doing next with a small slice of time, and getting them done and forgotten about – minimal management required. (I use the Python fork; see a recent happy birthday post. If I ever have time, I’ll whip up a quick Android version to keep my ‘Droid coding skills sharp.)

That’s just one tool, though; Remember the Milk is excellent on the Web, desktop, iPhone, and Android. So is paper.

What about tracking progress on big projects, though? An in-progress music album feels different than a long list of random tasks (send in a tax form, invoice so and so, pick up laundry detergent). But it can be helpful to divide big projects into smaller steps – and it can be essential to remember small details of something like a piece of music as you work. How do you manage those tasks?

For collaborative projects, a lot of people I know are great fans of simple, subscription-based Web project management Basecamp. Years after this was a highly-hyped tool, it remains helpful; it’s what I’m using now to collaborate on an electronics project and to work on an elaborate redesign of CDM.

Basecamp doesn’t make much sense if you’re polishing off your album, though, necessarily. So what tools do you use?

Mindfulness

I’ll close with one simple thought, which is that what binds all these things together for me is a simple sense of mindfulness. It’s a concept from Buddhism, reinforced in Psychology, but I find even without disciplined meditation or something elaborate, basic awareness can have a profound impact on your work and focus. Just taking a moment to take note of my breathing, stop thinking about other things for a moment, or be aware of how my body feels can radically alter my day. As I’ve talked to artists – as I did while meeting with various folks in Germany and Portugal traveling over the past weeks – I’ve heard similar things.

As it happens, the image I found above comes from a Norway-based composer and sound designer named Harry Koopman, who himself focuses on this very issue – and has short films and soundtracks to accompany them. Those films could be ideal sources of audiovisual meditation if you need something online to focus your head before an extended work session.
http://www.mindfulness.nl/

None of this is directly related to music, but for the kinds of music being produced on this site, I think it’s very relevant. Readers on CDM are often assembling their own tools and assembling their own music from scratch, working with the incredible abstraction music production on computers demands, working with scores, and getting close to the most personal, intimate sense of self-expression in musical creation. Without discipline and focus, it’s possible to wind up frustrated and downright depressed fast – and the opposite is true, too. for me is a great time to think about this stuff; it’s the break in the academic calendar (and I still am often teaching), it’s a big seasonal shift here in North America, and amidst travel and occasional trips to the beach, my head is clear. With dissertation research, software to code, documentation, writing, blogging, and music, I know I have plenty to keep me busy. Maybe having the winter mindset in the midst of summer (see photo above) is part of what makes this all work.

So I’m curious what you think. Hopefully we can follow up with more tips for keeping you creative. And digital. And musical. Creatively digitally musical.

So, let us know:
1. How do you stay focused when working on a computer?
2. Does the Pomodoro work for you?
3. How do you manage tasks – little ones, or big ones associated with musical projects?
4. How do you keep your mind happy?

I look forward to your responses.

Speaking as a sometimes-music-journalist, I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that we were all part of a vast conspiracy. Our job can become wrapping big-name artists into a polished, glamorous narrative. There are small nods to humanizing them, of course, but the message can quickly become: this person is special and different from you, this is the person you should want to be or want to consume, and as a result you’ll buy our magazine. I’ve never believed that myself, and I do believe a lot of great music writing is something very different, but there’s always that danger looming somewhere in the background.

Of course, now it’s 2009. We’re nowadays broadcasting minute details of our lives in real time, blurring the line between celebrity and nobody. We have all become a kind of text-only cinema verité. It can be downright scary to expose yourself that way, even as a non-celebrity. But then, in the occasional high-quality corner of a service like Twitter, something extraordinary happens: the little, insignificant moments of your life can actually prove to be what you want them to be. “Live each day like it’s your last” becomes “live each day like you’ll be pleased to read about it, even 140 characters at a time.”

Combine a really gifted creative imagination with a special kind of personal insight, and Twitter tells the side of a story a music journalist can’t: the day-to-day life of making music. Imogen Heap has been unusually generous with her Tweets. Following her Twitter feed, I think you’ll find new appreciation for her as a person and an artist, and also some of the ways all of us can work through day-to-day creative challenges and juggling to actually make music. It demonstrates that a world in which artists live-broadcast what they’re doing (but in the right quantities, and with the right attitudes) could be more utopia than dystopia.

Oh yeah, and thank God there’s a musician who drinks coffee sometimes and not just tea, and who gets a little wired.

Just looking at the month of January, we get bits of familiar insights into the day-to-day creative struggle. (Tip: go for a jog.)

Busy warbling away on A Cappella song… Darted out for a jog today in the sunshine. It’s a good day here at the hideaway….back to it

happy with verse/chorus lyrics/vocals but this one line’s been bugging me! Wouldn’t sit right. Here, by the kettle, it’s come to me x

I’m really starting to panic now at how almost impossible this a cappella one will be to do live. One thing at a time Heap! Bed I must go.

Imogen proves to be every bit as much of a gear lover as some of us, proof this ground isn’t the exclusive domain of dudes generally / Trent Reznor dude:

@mark_marshall Main bits: P-Tools, logic for VST/Midi etc, avalon 737, TLM 103, Waves, PlugsoundPro, Nord R3, Ivory, Liquid channel, M+K’s

Lots of NI stuff, TC electronic Voiceworks, Ircam solo instruments, Korg Electribe MX, occasionally dust off Ensoniq TS12

@REVERE I do indeed! So many great toys to play with! I have the Buddhamachine II. Really love it. X I’d love to make one if my own. X

And it’s not all techie gear — don’t forget the musical saw.

There are bits of music to hear:

12seconds – here’s some vocals i’ve been working oooooooonnnn!!! xxx http://tiny12.tv/HQ0JD

… and the moments of frustration that usually get left out of glossy-mag interviews:

@rguidry … my targets keep flying out the window. I’m closer every day. As long as I keep doing it.. I’ll get there. That’s all I know! x

jeeeeez… went jogging…meanwhile my inbox exploded with things to deal with and I’ve got nothing albummy done today. Juggling act. x

And in it, you watch music being formed. There actually is a certain narrative to Twitter, spread out into little pieces – something that gives some hope to our fragmented modern lives.

Had a really great day! Got 3 1st mixes done today. Will go back to them in Jan for a day but for now… Done x 6.30am! Time 4 bed x

Worked on rhythm for Swoon/ found some nice harmonies for 2nd ch. Nipped into town with my sis to see Lost and found Orchestra. I like saws.

Just having a bow of the old saw before bed whilst waiting for disk to back-up. Sounds quite nice but a little more practice I think! x

I am so sick of the sound of my voice!! Arghhh! Noises only tomorrow. Gonna start something new. A bit fed up with all these ones… x

Can’t sleep…just thought of lyrical spark for the new song. Throwing down strands of connections with laptop in bed. A start at least…x

ok.. that took a while but I now have a killer first verse and chorus lyrics. Waaaay better! Now for 2nd verse… first another coffee bzzz

Eeyore…I think Ive found my second verse so am going to hit the Heap hay, get another early bird session tmw and sing it into pooter x

I’m not going to try to reach any deeper conclusions about the usefulness of microblogging or Twitter, because I don’t have to. The point is that, with a Web-connected community of musicians, we get to share creative process with each other, and with the musicians we love. They arrive in real-time at times that may be random to us, and there’s no differentiation between our mate, our mum, an obscure artist or a famous one.

Sure, we’re all in information overload, surrounded by distractions. And sure, 99% of the volume of Twitter is crap. But then, there’s that occasional 1% that could remind you you’re not alone. So for that, thanks, Imogen!

http://twitter.com/imogenheap

For another great Twitter feed from a regular tourmate of Imogen’s, see:
Zoe Keating @ Twitter (zoecello)

Tired of waiting for Spore, the upcoming Will Wright game that will feature organic, generative music by musical legend Brian Eno instead of … looping … the same 8 bars of audio … over and over again? Want to explore your own oblique strategies in music making and create evolving generative compositions? noatikl could be for you.

Co-creator Pete Cole, who evidently found us by googling Eno, wrote us last week with the details:

intermorphic (http://www.intermorphic.com) yesterday launched the noatikl generative music engine.

You can think of noatikl as a "spiritual successor" to the (no-longer available) Koan generative music engine, which of course was used extensively by none other than Brian Eno; who you mentioned a while back in the context of Spore. Brian created his seminal "Generative Music 1" with the Koan system back in 1996.

As you’ll see from the site, noatikl has been created from scratch, is Windows and Mac compatible, and is available in a variety of plug-in variants. There are also quite a few demo and tutorial videos available on both myspace and vimeo.

noatikl Overview

umcorps Videos on Vimeo (tutorials + musical examples)

Pete Cole Videos on Vimeo (still more tutorials + musical examples)

The price tag is set at US$179 (standalone) to $249 (suite) US$99 (standalone non-commercial) to $199 (suite commercial) under a new pricing scheme, with academic pricing available. I have to say, even if you’re not interested in buying a new tool, anyone with a passing interest in the possibilities of generative music will want to spend a little time with the videos — some fascinating ideas in there.

Windows and Mac tutorials (in HD, no less) after the jump. Thanks for the couple of tips I got on this; back from Australia and catching up now!

Previously:

Brian Eno, with Wright on Spore and Generative Systems, Sound, and Paintings

Brian Eno to Create Generative Soundtrack for Spore; Algorithmic Productivity Busting Follows

(I think CDM should issue a "Seeds, Not Forests" t-shirt.)

noatikl generative music – creating your first piece on Mac from Pete Cole on Vimeo.

noatikl generative music – creating your first piece on Windows from Pete Cole on Vimeo.