Why Thinking and Doing Less Makes you a Better Musician

There’s something magical about the first time you play something.

It’s an expression of a moment in time. And that moment only happens once. 

The first time you play something, you have no expectations of what it should or could be. It just happens. It’s pure. 

The second time you play it, your ego starts to assign a meaning to it. It may (rightfully so) think what you played is great, causing you to try to recapture or improve upon that original moment.  

The third time you play something, it starts to solidify into what it will be. You start to expect something of it. 

By the tenth time you play something, it’s just a recitation of that original moment. 

And that’s the way it goes. Moments pass. But as music makers, we can honor and preserve the original moment by keeping it in tact in the final version of the song. 

Do less

Preserving the original idea for a song usually involves doing less. 

The more you add to an idea after the fact, the more you risk covering up the purity. You can make it better through revising, adding and editing but a more overlooked option is just leaving it as is. 

Music isn’t necessarily better with more effort. Ruminating on what deep lyric to sing usually results in something contrived.

The best music falls out of people without thought. 

Music is expression, not an equation. 

It’s usually in the best interest to finish songs quickly.

Some of the best songs that have come out Incubator were written in a day. 

I think 5 hours is a good amount of time to spend on a song before recording it. Though that should usually be spread out over days if not weeks. 

If you are going to edit your own work, it’s a good idea to forget what you did so you can come back to it with fresh ears and minimal expectations.

It’s tempting to work on a song incessantly because you’re in love with it. You want to be around it.

But it’s healthier to give it space so you can have perspective. It’s easy to get confused and lose sight of what the song originally was when you do nothing but try to improve it. 

Effort doesn’t matter as much as playing what you want to hear. 

The best musicians are able to play something they like. It sounds so simple but it requires a certain level of grounding. Not effort or intention. Just presence.

The best musicians can sit down with an instrument and just go with the flow without judging, eventually finding themselves playing something that resonates with them. Maybe it takes 30 seconds of playing to get there, maybe 30 minutes. 

The power of beginner’s mind

When someone picks up an instrument and doesn’t really know how to play it yet. They haven’t learned the rules. What you should and shouldn’t do. They just do what feels natural and the results are often special. 

That’s why most members of Accelerator don’t know much music theory at all. Music theory is a helpful tool but at the end of the day, it’s a way intellectualize music. It’s reducing an expression to letters and numbers. 

An environment for spontaneous expression

The first time you play something is a magical moment. It’s a pure expression that only happens once. 

These moments tend to happen in the in-between. When rehearsal’s over and there’s just two people left mindlessly making noise on their instrument and they stumble on something beautiful. 

Incubator strives to be an environment that allows for these moments to happen and where there’s a process that helps musicians create songs that keep these moments in tact.