Creativity, ebb, flow…
These are things that can help to achieve greatness. Sometimes it’s a magical bit of blind luck. Other times it’s a long arduous task that can take copious amounts of behind the scenes work. I ought to know. Some of the music I’ve written ends up taking very little time to write and ends up getting great praise. Other times, I can write something that takes much less time that the time it takes to actually bring it to the world.
Right now, I’m working on a song that took about 2 days in terms of actual work time to write. But has stretched into weeks in terms of recording and now mixing to get it done. Why? Because I believe in details. It’s that quality thing. Sometimes that quality ends up taking time and pushing your system (recording setup) to the limits. In fact, I’ve come to a dead standstill because I’ve actually pushed my machine too far and it can’t handle the creation. Sometimes I can wish that I didn’t have such a desire to pay such attention to detail and quality. However, the more I create, the more quality I want. It’s a terrible catch 22.
Same can be said for the video of mine I have for Falling In. It took 4 days of total filming time. Three of those four days took 2 months of planning. The editing of the all the material ended up taking another 2 months. I pushed the director/editor to his limits. But the end result ended up garnering a lot of attention and a top video of the year award. Can’t beat that. Especially with the cost it took to create. That’s the beauty of our modern technology. It can allow people with access to create amazing things of amazing quality without huge costs. It still comes down to getting the planning and execution. The creativity, ebb and flow.
Which leads me into the point of Ok Go. In case you haven’t heard of them, they had one of the most viewed music videos on YouTube ever. Why? Because the video is unique, and probably also because of some good viral marketing. However, I have to think it has to do with the video you’re liking watching, or just watched before you read this. I have to imagine that a spark of an idea came, but then lots of time went into planning the execution of the idea. The end result is a very interesting visual piece. Albeit I don’t think it really speaks about the lyrics of the song. Though some of the best videos in the world never had anything to do with the lyrics of the song.
As I understand it, the budget on this video was extremely cheap, much like the budget was for Falling In. What they got in return is something that made a lot of people stand up and take notice, several years after the album was released. I believe it came out in 2002. The video I believe was 2006. So it can pay to promote a good product for quite some time. Ask Maroon 5. I think it took 2 years of pushing Songs About Jane before it started to become the powerhouse seller it became. Of course it didn’t hurt that the songs kicked ass.
(** Disclaimer: If Ok Go isn’t happy with a little extra run on their music, I’ll have to shove the video link aside. The post will remain to show that I appreciate creativity. **)