A friend of mine mentioned that he reliably gets a headache after three hours of working on studio music (but not with games or graphic design) citing the amount of sheer concentration required.
Studio music is kind of unique in that sense. It’s hard to do it "lazily", like sketching or 3D graphics. There’s too much judgment involved in every step. Every element has to be constantly evaluated on multiple levels– how it fits in the mix, how it fits with the rhythm, how it fits with the harmony, and how it fits with the overall song structure. And as you’re evaluating, you’re constantly trying to change your perspective between "objective" and "subjective".
Sometimes it helps to get immersed into the groove of what you’ve made to help you brainstorm new ideas, though at the risk of going too far and "losing perspective". You need that objective perspective to keeps your impulses in check– your impulse to make that radical new lead too crazy, that phat bass too overpowering, that monstrous effects chain too absurd and distracting.
Sure, you can say all of this exists in graphics as well (e.g. sketching, painting, 3D graphics, 2D animation), but from my own experience I’ve found that type of work to be more "automatic", lighter on its demand for "judgment" when you’re in the nitty gritty of it. It’s much easier to follow your impulse and work mechanically for extended periods without intensely concentrating on maintaining your judgment and shifting your perspective.
What exacerbates the fatigue problem is the fact that sound and music exist in time. An evaluation requires more than a quick zoom-out and a glance at the project. Instead you have to sit there, and you have to listen, and you have to listen multiple times with your ears, your brain, and your "heart" so to speak. You have to think about how you feel during each moment of music. You struggle to imagine what it must be like to hear the song for the first time. As you do this, you have to resist the urge to get too used to the way things are, or else you’ll develop a resistance to change. Professional mixing/mastering engineers have practices and rituals to fight fatigue, because once you’re fatigued your ability to judge properly is compromised.
For me anyway, there’s a constant identity crisis happening when I work on music. I tend to begin each project with a vague notion of who the track is "for" (what sensibilities it caters to), how it defines the album it’ll be placed into, and how it defines me as an artist. 4 times out of 5, I end up with a very different song than what I originally envisioned. Ultimately I’m fine with that, but it does add another layer of ambiguity that makes the act of "judgment" less clear-cut. On what basis do I judge? Is this weird new part of a song a bold new direction for me or a daft idea that should be scrapped before I burn myself out on it?
The only other type of work I’ve done that’s similar is video editing. From beginning to end, the process is full of evaluation and more evaluation, from the little details (What should I use in this 3 hours of raw footage? Will this edit "feel" better if I place it 50 milliseconds earlier?) to the grand scheme (Does this rhythm feel right? Does this part really make me feel a buildup of tension?). Like music, sometimes I get on a roll and can work all day, but more often than not it’s a battle of concentration.
Meanwhile… news about me
Holy shit live show Nov. Fri. 13th 2009 in Chicago. That’s in two weeks!!
but not for "Renzu", my personal music project… instead it’s a debut of a music duo I’m in called MMvsUSAF (unofficially "Mega Man vs the United States Air Force"). It’s electronic dance music with rap, hiphop, pop and rock. Lots of variety. A site will be launched very shortly, so I’ll update my "news" RSS when it’s ready to roll. If all goes well, I’ll also post some video of the show after the event.
Renzu stuff
You might’ve noticed that my last album was a weird split of Japanese folk and straight electronic. I thought for my next album I’d try to focus on a tighter, more accessible fusion of modern electronic music and Japanese folk, but instead it went in the other direction. My Japanese folk-type stuff sounds jappier than ever, ready for the soundtrack of Muramasa 2, and my electronic tracks are becoming more aggressively bizarre and IDM-esque. So instead I’m going to split my material into two EPs or LPs or whatever. Who knows what kind of netlabels will take this stuff.
This divergence from the center, I think, is partially driven by how my pop energy and pop sensibilities are drained into the MMvsUSAF project. As a result, my personal work is growing increasingly experimental. Like what I was saying earlier about how working on music leads to an "identity crisis", I had to grow accustomed to the idea that the kind of energy I’m pursuing is something deeper, stranger and more alienating than what I originally aimed for, which was something that makes the foreign accessible. Instead I’m writing material that pursues its own logic with relative disregard to pop sensibilities.
It’s kind of awesome in its own way though. My goal is to make music that’s vivid and engaging and that hasn’t changed. It’s only the imagery that’s changing.