8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Tag: creative explorations

Chapter List

  • MIDI Controller Updated · v2

    I bought a dedicated MIDI controller. I capitulated to the lure, the artists yearning, the insatiable feeling deep down in one’s gut that nudges us all towards the black hole of equipment investment. 

    It was the itch.

    Look, the keyboard was not an expensive purchase. But neither is it a toy. It is merely a very basic and simple twenty-five key plug-and-play input device that has piano ivories (instead of numbers and letters.) MIDI controllers make no sound of their own, rather sending electronic signals to another device like my laptop and act as if I was typing musical notes. It’s a musical instrument-shaped interface for a computer, and a kind of soft synthesizer.

    Creativity is sometimes about logically unjustifiable exploration and investment.

    I am far from an expert on keyboard technology.

    If you had asked me a year ago what I knew about musical keyboards I would have told you there were, um, pianos …and electronic pianos …and—I am reluctantly admitting here that I hadn’t been paying much attention after that point. 

    Also, I quite enjoy synth music.

    Growing up we didn’t have a real piano or a fancy digital one and we definitely did not have a synth. We had a bog standard department store brand electronic keyboard with a couple dozen built in digital instruments. In our house now, my wife has (because it is hers from before we were married) a pretty nice digital piano in her office, and then a little over a decade ago we acquired a small upright piano, too, which sits in our kitchen and serves little other purpose than to remind the family of a decade of The Kid doing her piano lessons. In other words, the concept of a bed of black and white keys that makes sounds? That was pretty clear in my head. But I’m no expert.

    What I was, rather, was curious.

    For myself, those pianos were never quite what I wanted… what I was craving, musically speaking. I would noodle and try to learn the basics, of course, but it the tools I had access to never scratched the itch that I was feeling in my musical soul.

    Curiosity untethered to practicalities can lead to expensive places. It is the aforementioned equipment black hole. I have seen countless videos online where the recording studio is a room overflowing with more tools and toys than I could hope to accumulate if I were to work at it for the rest of my life as a full time job. These people are not wrong in chasing new investments in their hobby, of course. It is curiosity that brought most of them there. It is that itch to find the next thing that is going to satisfy the creative urge.

    We all do it, too. Photographers buy lenses. Artists buy brushes. You should see my mother-in-law’s quilt fabric collection. 

    I recently came across the example of Trigger[1], Willie Nelson’s famous guitar. “There are instruments older than Trigger, but few guitars have logged as many playing hours in a lifetime, and Nelson plays hard.” That is to say, there are a lucky few who find their tool and cling to it without variation. I’m sure Mr. Nelson owns more curious equipment add-ons and eclectic musical do-dahs than most, but famously he is a one-instrument musician. But now the important question: Did he get there on the first try? Or did it take him experimentally buying and upgrading and testing and tossing?

    I first went down the synthesizer rabbit hole in early 2025. A proper synth is more than a piano keyboard that makes funny sounds. And it is arguably better than a MIDI controller plugged into the software on my laptop. Rather it is a dedicated instrument engineered to generate and manipulate sounds with electrical hardware, and for which a piano-style keyboard is merely a comfortable and familiar user interface. The one I bought one rainy day that spring was my first synth, and I’d be lying if I told you that I’ll settle for it as my last…well for any other reason than budget. I’d love to buy a selection of them and dabble and poke and play and experiment. I’d love to fall into that equipment black hole until I find my Trigger. 

    The new MIDI controller is another step around that circle. I own a small keyboard controller to interface with the synth software on my computers, and I am learning more about how it all works with each visit to this world of music and sound …and most importantly, a new personal exploration of audio creativity. I am searching for something that I won’t know until I find it. It is a search for the scratch for that itch.

  • First Thrust

    Apparently attributable to a conversation published in a book[1] so out-of-print I couldn’t even locate one at a local library, Picasso is to have said that “In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.”

    His point, I think, may have had something to do with character, imperfection and what another famous painter, Bob Ross, probably would have called a “happy accident.”

    Trying to polish, correct, or refine something that emerged as beautiful from that first thrust of the pen, the initial strokes upon a keyboard or an inspired glimmer of photographic insight is, one might claim, fighting against the artistic instinct.  The rawness of the first try carries a beauty that, I might be so bold as to say that Picasso seemed to suggest, is difficult to replicate through copying the effort or nudging it with a more conscious hand.

    I find it captivating, this idea that imperfection has a beauty that transcends a glossy finish. We seem to worship the idea of factory fresh and mint-in-box and too often find ourselves chasing art that fits some commercial vibe or mechanized standardization.  

    Instead, leaning into a first try—not a try devoid of talent or skill, nor a try devoid of an experienced hand—but an attempt that is a first thrust at a new project, art without a reference draft to glance towards, that is where the richness of creativity might be truly bound.

  • Desire Paths

    There is a principle in urban design called “desire paths” wherein smart planners pave the shortcuts.

    You’d recognize this if you ever saw it. The example that comes to mind for me is the Quad in my alma mater. A big grassy field between classroom buildings existed as a place where students hung out, studied, napped, snacked, and of course, travelled between lectures. The sidewalk infrastructure was in place, but it didn’t represent the paths that students actually walked. The shortcuts wore into the grass as bare-earth trails trampled by a million footsteps. So, when the space was renovated, those exact paths were paved with proper sidewalks, voted on by countless students just existing.

    Noticing where shortcuts emerge and making those paths formal and proper, then, is something of a smart move. It is an act of recognition that the subconscious of many (or even just one) can tell us something we didn’t overtly consider.

    Recognizing your own shortcuts to creative expression is a similar act of finding the desire paths leading you towards creative fulfillment. Understanding that no matter what you do, your subconscious may be looking for the shortcuts between idea and product, between notion and outcome. 

    Forcing formality on your creative process or trying to follow a path that you “designed” based on your conscious consideration, may neither be the best way to get there, or the shortest, cleanest route.

    Instead, noticing the habits, being aware of the hacks, and catching those tricks you’ve stumbled on to get words on the page, ink on paper, or notes into the universe are the shortcuts that you should mix up some mental concrete and pave them straight through to your destination.

  • Gold Pans

    I was out for a walk near the river recently when I came across a guy sitting on a stool panning for gold. He had a small wagon-load of equipment, but he hailed me closer and talked me through the effort while he showed me the flecks of gold he’d dredged from the sand. They were right there reflecting off the bottom of his plastic pan.

    It was an encounter that was compelling enough that for a day or two I actually considered going to the local outdoor store and buying my own gold panning pan. I haven’t yet, but as I’m often wont to do my brain turned his hobby in an apt metaphor for the creative process in general.

    Creativity is after all sifting through a lot of worthless crud to find flecks of something more valuable.

    We often see the final product, but neglect to notice the heaps of debris remaining from the process itself.

    My gold panning friend told it me took five shovelfuls of riverbed muck and a couple hours worth of effort to reveal that dim constellation of golden specks on the bottom of his pan. Were they not clinging to the pan by hydrostatic forces they would have fluttered away in a stiff breeze. The heap of rocky mud at his feet was orders of magnitude larger.

    How many words does a writer need to write before the best distillation and clearest ideas of value form on her page?

    How much paint does an artist need to brush onto paper before something beautiful emerges from the colours?

    How many notes are lost to practice and rehearsal and noodling towards refined skill before a musician performs or records a hit?

    We’re all panning for gold, in our way, and the yields seem microscopic when viewed from the perspective of effort. But too, they are just as likely to glitter in the eyes of a random passerby who we call over to look at what we’ve made.

  • Drift Works

    Is your creative space a refuge? 

    I’ve been thinking a lot about disappearing our minds away into imaginary spaces. 

    We all do this, I think. Maybe we don’t always think of it like this, but letting our minds wander through crafted scenarios, daydreaming, thinking over problems and relationships, pondering strange ideas and realities… it all adds up to a kind of mental drift work.

    It feels foundational to creativity, to me at least.

    I had a quirky childhood—we all do I suppose—and my imagination was a place I could sneak away to when I needed to get away from reality. Oops. A bit of personal insight there—maybe, but I think there are likely a lot of us who use imagination as a kind of escape from the here and now.

    I’m certainly no therapist, but it does lead me to ponder how much creative expression is intertwined with exploration of our own mental realms—and how much of it happens because we are cleaning out the cobwebs of our own consciousness while we’re biding time hiding out from real world problems.

    As an adult I escape into meditative spaces when I run or write or just sitting back in a comfortable chair, and some of the best ideas I have are not things I’m chasing down but rather explorations I’m making through this mental space I’ve built for myself over a lifetime.

    I thought maybe that was weird… but perhaps it’s just human.