How to become a prolific music maker

0:00 Welcome back to Music 101. This episode is about speed. The drugs now, I mean, about actually getting fast. So hopefully this will be a fast episode.The whole point is when you practice something, you're practicing for that goal, right? Wetalked about that in the last episode. What if the goal is speed and fluency and fluidityand becoming holistic as a musician?

0:24 That was the whole premise, literally, of this project, I'm Scoobert Doobert, and. It was to take all the things that I've learned and practiced acrossa bunch of different instruments and recording software and all that kind of stuff,and then crank up the dial, make it really fast and make it really fun.And so I want to talk about kind of how I approach making music now with this project specifically.

0:48 I don't have a specific starting point. Usually it starts with groove or some semblance to it.

0:57 Doesn't always. The starting point is I want to make music. That's it. And it doesn't matterwhat direction it comes from. It can come from opening up pro tools and making an electronic beat.It can come from playing a box of beans like a shaker and having a cool groove. It can come fromwriting something on the acoustic guitar and then translating it. Whatever, doesn't matter.

1:22 And the reason why it doesn't matter is every single song I'm trying to practice

1:29 just being a musician, not being a instrumentalist, not being a recording engineer, not beinga producer, just being a musician that uses all of these tools to tap into the same exact thing.

1:40 There is one big pot of music that we all reach into and pull out. And the instruments arethe instruments by which we reach into that pot. So that's that's including my pro tools and stuff.I honestly, I think that the computer is my best instrument because it's the most it's thethat's the nexus point. That's the thing that ties it all together.

2:01 That's the thing that allows me to be like, hey, I'm going to I have this vague idea of a guitar part. And so I'm going tothrow on a metronome and I'm going to loop this, you know, eight bar section for 12 minutes. And

2:16 the 12th one will be the section that where I come up with the part. And then I'll take thatplace and base to it, put a vocal over it, write some drums. And like, boom, there's a chorus.

2:28 The whole the whole point of what I'm trying to say is like, I have specifically tried to practicenot doing one thing at once, like not what's what I'm trying to say like, I'm practicing notjust being a guitarist or just being a recording engineer, but trying to be all of those thingsall at the same time so that you can think about the next 25 steps while you're doing step two.

2:53 If that makes sense, like, I know that sounds overwhelming, but this is just another thing youcan practice, like anybody can do this. So like, say that I'm recording a bass part to a groovethat I made. So I program in some drums or I find some cool thing in the universe, like, some

3:11 like a washing machine, so that I find a washing machine. I'm like, that's a cool groove. Recordthe washing machine, the washing machine, the washing machine, the on my phone, throw it ontoPro Tools and then start grooving on it with bass. Well, as I'm grooving on it with bass,I'm picturing, what could a vocal be over that?

3:27 What kind of rhythm and phrasing what I want that vocal to be? Then how would I accent that with this bass part in maybe some sense and someguitars? I'm thinking of all of that as I'm doing the bass. So I'm thinking of, like, I'm basicallywriting a song as I'm writing a part. That makes sense.

3:44 And then that it's going to morph, it's going to change, but like every building block, it's almost like as you're laying a brick,you are also designing the floor plan or being the architect. So you're like simultaneously beingconstruction worker and architect.

4:01 As you lay each brick, you're picturing the next brick, the next 25 bricks, as you're building this three story house. And that house is going to evolveover time. As you get up to the top, you can be like, oh, actually, like a different roof.

4:17 And then the beauty of music is that then at the very, very end, you mix it all and mixingwhich will get into in a future pod is the process of like making it all look good. So that'slike the paint. That's like maybe you want to like, I'm going to blow up this wall and put in adifferent reinforcing beam or something like that. That's the concept.

4:36 It's like at the end, you can be very revisionist about it. It's so easy in computers, which makes me so grateful to not live inthe era of tape or something to like be like, oh, yeah, this section, I'm going to cut it in half.It's in half now. I'm going to double this one up and add in like a weird time signature heredone. It's added.

4:59 So it's like, it's like delivering that level of fluency of being a holistic musician that looks at all his music, not as a guitarist, not as a bassist.

5:10 And then being flexible and kind enough to yourself that you allow yourself to be creative as yougo.

5:17 And all knowing that like, you're just the command Z away from, you know, not doing that idea.So it's like, it's like freeing your inner creative and then allowing your future skeptic and editor to clean up the mess that they make and thinking several steps ahead. And again, this is somethingyou have to practice. Like you have to do this all at once in order to get this vibe.

5:44 And let me just give you a little bit of insight into my personal journey with this. So back in 2018, when I startedthis project, I, my first songs, my first two songs were Scoobert Snack and My Friend, Scoobert. The reason why they were my, whatever it was, I really like scrubs. And it was like the episodetitles of every Scrubs episode was my whatever. I thought I'd do that for every song.

6:10 Of course, not. I'm not going to do that. But again, that was a brick that I laid in the band-ins later.But I digress. Anyway, so those first two songs, I made them both in a day. And the goal wasa woke up in the morning, had some coffee, started making music.

6:29 And by the time I head hit the pillow, the song was mixed, done, and into distribution going on to Spotify one day. And it was really hardin the beginning. Because I'd never done that before, you know? But then by the end of that record,where every song was done in a day, it was a lot easier.

6:46 And then by the time I did my next record, Swami's, I tried to do the whole record. I think it did an eight days total. But you know, it's,

6:57 if you listen to that one, it's got a lot of like multi-layered stuff. Like the tracks are a little lessdefined. Like honestly, like in its reality, it was like one Pro Tools session of like 40 minutes or45 minutes or whatever. So it's really one big song. And so it was just kind of like I laid outthis canvas. And I painted on it with grooves and songs.

7:19 And then had to you know, chop it up for Spotify and stuff. But like, the concept is like learn how to be flexible and rigid at the same time,learn how to be specific and holistic at the same time. It's like these illogical moments of

7:39 being two things at once. And I really do think anybody can do it. You just have to like,just a multi-step process where you have to learn each of the individual constituent parts.And then on top of it, practice doing them all at once.

7:53 And then practice doing it quickly.And the quickly part is the trick because at first like, you know, things will have a certain charm, I think when you do them quickly because they're honest and they're just you. And

8:06 but they're also scary because it's pretty naked. You don't really have any anybody else to likeclean up after your mess or to make you look good. Like if you're a boy band with the record producerand engineer, so they're gonna work really hard. They're gonna stay late. They're not gonnasleep that night. So you can come back the next day and be like, wow, I sounded really good.

8:23 And the producer and the engineer will be like, yeah, you didn't. And but you have to be allthose things for yourself. And if you have a limited window of time that's your arbitrarilygiving yourself, you're gonna have a lot of warts. It's not gonna be that pretty at the end.That's okay because that's you. That's what you actually look like.

8:40 It's like no unfiltered Instagram, you know. But by doing that over and over and over and over again,eventually like the stuff sends sounds like popular. And then people like right now people arebeing like, how are you making these songs that are so poppy and like so quickly? It's like, dude,I've been practicing making quick pop songs for like three and a half almost four years.

9:01 And before that had to practice all these instruments, it's just like a matter of likecreating a state of play. Like I was saying in the last episode where if you make it fun,you'll keep doing it. And then because you keep doing it, you're gonna get better at it.

9:13 And thenif you do these ordinary things over and over and over again for a long enough time, eventually it's gonna seem like magic. It's like, how did you pull that off? It's like, dude, I've been practicingthis, this specific thing of making interesting weird pop songs quickly for years and years.

9:31 And now it's like, I have a fluency with myself where I understand like if I do this,then that'll happen and then I could do that and then I could run it through that distortion chainand then I, you know, and then I could put it in that tape machine and then bounce that out and thenput a reverb on it and then chop the reverb and then throw that back in and then I could double it

9:48 and then maybe delete that original track. You know, you start thinking of all these cascadingthings that honestly like if I was working with somebody else, that's hard to explain. Unlesslike you have a really great familiarity with that other person, they're just like certain thingsthat are intuitive and working on your own music alone, you develop an intuition with yourself.

10:09 And that's really cool and it's really fun. And then it keeps you doing it. So I'm excited to seewhat it'll be like in a year or two because, you know, I'm starting to get some things right nowwhere, you know, people will hit me up and say, Hey, can you turn this around tomorrow?It's like, yeah, no problem.

10:25 Do that and then I'll also make like a song for myself or whatever, you know, like I'm starting to get so much more in terms of like demands. Okay, can you remix this,can you produce this on top of my own music, but I don't want to slow down on anything,so I'm having to speed up it even more.

10:42 And I'm excited to see like what, what could it look like in a year or two after practicing what I've been practicing for the last three or four years,

10:51 even faster? I think it's possible, but I'm a little scared of it, but that's what practice is.It's like to sum up this little mini two, two part episode. So what is practice to me?

11:06 It's about doing something you're scared of defining that goal and like just running to itand creating an environment where you don't hate doing it so that you keep doing it.And you're doing that ordinary thing for long enough period of time and you're objective enoughabout it, keep, keep heart, like actually self-assess because a lot of people keep practicing

11:30 the same bad sounding things over and over and over again and they never get better. I mean, of course,you know, it's like speaking Japanese is a great example. If I only speak Japanese to otherJapanese learners, I'm gonna speak really weird Japanese. Like, you know, there's nobody to beobjective about my abilities. I still am not great at Japanese, but like that's beside the point.

11:52 The point is like, I'm trying to establish a framework in which I can grow towards fluency andtrying to do the same thing with music and then trying to do the same thing with speed and becomingholistic. And that's pretty much the Scoobert mentality right there, is tease it out, make it fun,

12:09 stay engaged, and you know, with enough amount of time, it's the same thing with technology, right?

12:18 Over enough time technology begins to feel like, look like magic, becomes what's the term likeindescipherable from magic. I think the same thing happens with practice. Like, talk to anyguitarist, they'll tell you at some point, like, I looked down at my hands, I couldn't believewhat I was doing. It's like, I can't believe that my hands can do these things.

12:40 It ends up looking like magic, because there's just enough time, enough ordinary stuff that you put in and eventuallyit feels like you can do a magic trick. Expand it. Why stop there? Like, guitarist is interestingto me, but making music and becoming a musician, that's way more interesting to me.

12:58 Guitarist, but an instrument to access this very deep and scary well of music itself.And that's what I'm trying to run towards and not run from, is to like dive headfirst into thatwell, become part of it, become faster. And then hopefully, live my dreams.

13:22 Honestly, I'm already doing that. The dream is to make a bunch of music and to feel really good about it and to make it quickly

13:30 quickly, because then it becomes more honest to me. That's my opinion. Quick can be honest,quick is fun. And then I get to make more. I get to check out more stuff instead of dwelling onone thing. It's like release it, make another thing. I don't know. That's what I think. Anyway,Scoobert Doobert talking about speed, not the drug, the ability.

13:55 Anyway, if you're interested in hearing some more music or connecting with me, send me some memes, www.scoobertdoobert.pizza. I'll see youin the next episode of Music Appreciation 101.