Failure: How Artists and Entrepreneurs Can Benefit from Failure

Failure-michael-jordan

 

Gerald Slavet, executive producer of the series “From the Top” says:

“There is no such thing as failure in the creative world.”

With each “failure” is the opportunity to refocus, change directions and make adjustments so the final outcome is success. Those few words are extremely powerful IF you are willing to honestly take stock of your progress as you move along on your creative project.

In my title for this blog post I say “Artists and Entrepreneurs” because the process of developing an idea is very similar (or the same!) for entrepreneurs and artists. Both go through this process:

  • You get an idea, a kernel of inspiration for a new work, or are assigned a new property to develop
  • You visualize the possible areas to explore on that property, look at it from different angles or perspectives, a period of discovery to find how many different variations of the final product or create process you can come up with
  • Create a plan to begin creating the property
  • Execution phase: Now you actually have to work!
  • Assessment, Evaluation and Valuation: Is everything going to plan? Does it need adjustment? What are the roadblocks to the final developed property and how do you overcome those? Is this project on a trajectory of success?

Continue reading “Failure: How Artists and Entrepreneurs Can Benefit from Failure”

Recording and Releasing an Album in One Day

I just recorded and released an album in one day. In fact it took me five hours from start to finish. That time included the learning curve of setting things up for the first time, so in the future I may be able to cut that down to 3.5 hours.

What’s the point! A colleague of mine has got me really hooked on Tim Ferriss and the “4 hour work week”. One of the concepts is to do 90% of your best work, not 100%. Why? Because that last 10% of quality is what takes up 90% of the time and most people won’t notice the difference any way. (Now you say, “But I will notice the difference, and this is MY art.” True that. And different things for different times. I’m trying it though to see how it works.

Continue reading “Recording and Releasing an Album in One Day”

Finale vs. Sibelius

Romeo_Juliet_Overture_excerpt_Askland

(Overture from Romeo and Juliet the musical by Conrad Askland – Sibelius screen shot)

Here it is late 2015 and there is still the grand debate of whether to use Sibelius or Finale as your main music notation software. You can read hundreds of technical break downs that compare the two. Here, I will give you a real-world breakdown of my experience with both programs.

Continue reading “Finale vs. Sibelius”