Have you noticed that the advice on the internet rarely leans into imperfection.
Very few people are writing tutorials about how to just have fun.
If you have been reading this blog you will long since know that my creative adventures into 2026 have swirled around creating music. I have played an instrument for forty years, but stretched my musical explorations more and more for just the last decade, taking up the violin about ten years ago, joining a community orchestra, and lately getting into synth-based audio explorations on my own. I’m a novice, but one with a big range: a large puddle, but not one that goes very deep—if you take my meaning.
In attempting to deepen that knowledge I have been seeking instruction, often online, and what I find is that most everything leans into the idea that the end goal must be perfect: polished, honed and uniformly refined to gold standard.
For example, I have been looping: recording layered loops of sound (and noise) and voice and rhythm into all manner of interesting audio recordings. Some of them I’ve been publishing as a kind of podcast on this very site. They are rough. They are gritty. They have sharp edges. They are imperfect.
Yet according to every piece of advice online my work has no value unless I strive for perfect.
Use a DAW.
Quantize your tracks.
Set up your recording booth just so.
Imperfection is the enemy… apparently.
But I don’t want that: I have merely been jamming. Exploring. Feeling my way through the tools and making things that echo with a kind of imperfect delight in their moment of creation.
So here’s a piece of advice online: strive for imperfect, too. After all, it’s human.