Constraints & Creativity
Something we often seem to forget is the benefit of having constraints. Consider time. You probably feel, all too frequently, like you’re running short on it. It seems like we never have enough to get everything done, both on a day-to-day basis and the scale of a lifetime. But with a little contemplation, you may realize that without time (or the limit of it) you wouldn’t get anything done. If you had forever to do something, you could put off doing it forever. It seems that the constraint of time pushes you not only to get things done, but also to choose what things you really prioritize doing. The same can be said for many other constraints we face.
One personal example of constraints stimulating progress was my own original experience with music production in junior high. I started my musical journey playing trombone in the 6th grade band. My interest was piqued and soon I was religiously practicing guitar chords on my dad’s Yamaha acoustic. My interest in making music then spiraled into a full-fledged romance and I began searching for a way to compose full songs on my own. With a little research I discovered that you could make music in your own home using just a computer. However, all I had for a computer was my parents’ chromebook, good for little more than browsing the web and unable to run any sizable software. But to my joy I discovered a website which had not only a virtual studio that ran entirely online with no software, but also a community in which people posted, reposted, and commented on each others’ tracks. There were groups dedicated to giving feedback, and all of this was with the purpose of becoming better producers. It was called Soundation.
So I delved into the world of music production and soon became intimately drawn to the wide world of electronic music. I fell in love with the intricate soundscapes and unique timbres that could be created by means of electronics. My love for electronic music has always remained since, in large part due to its ability to synthesize unique emotions. As my skills in making songs progressed, I gained more recognition on the website and got more positive feedback, and soon my skills were rocketing upwards as if I were a light beam shooting up a chimney of mirrors. However, a problem arose; as my songs got better and more intricate, the computing power of the chromebook did not. My songs were now fairly regularly utilizing 20 – 30 “channels”, each attached to a different virtual instrument and set of notes or chords. The chromebook did not like this at all, and it would only allow me to listen to two or three channels at a time before freezing up, leaving me unable to hear anything. Creating and refining tracks now became a process of working on a couple channels then privately exporting the track, listening and deleting, making a couple more adjustments, and then repeating.
Although this sounds like a nightmare of inefficiencies, I have since realized that back then it worked to my advantage. The effect of the tedious process was that I was forced to find my style quickly. At the same time, having to pour so much focus into the process of making music was so engaging that I was constantly in and out of flow-states where it felt like I was delivering creative juice to my tracks straight from the source. Way more attention had to be poured into the details which paid off in uniqueness, and fellow producers increasingly noted the creativity expressed in my songs. This I believe directly resulted from my computer situation; the constraint stimulated creativity.
Before my sophomore year in high school, I had somewhat mastered the Soundation studio and had amassed a solid web of friends and followers on the website. I had finally saved up enough money from birthdays and doing yard work for my grandma to buy a competent laptop and a fresh copy of FL Studio. I was ready to move onto the next new challenge. When I opened FL on my new computer I was excited to discover that I could play 30+ tracks with ease and the dazzling variety of new virtual synthesizers inspired me to dive into a sea of new timbres. Once I jumped over most of the hurdles that come with learning a new software, I started producing tracks that were much more refined than my Soundation days. However, I found that the tracks I was producing lacked a little of the creative glimmer of my old ones. I realized then that the frustrations of making music with the chromebook had naturally extracted much more creativity out of me. By and by I have learned to combine my new skills and technology with my style and uniqueness, and I use the relative freedom of FL studio to my full advantage. But I also recognize that without the limitations of my earlier days, I would never have gotten to the place I am today.
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