kill your darlings

been doing felix cartal for 17 years now. which is wild. someone asked me how long i’d been doing it, and i was equally as shocked to hear it as he was once i worked out the math. some days i feel like i’ve learned a lot, and sometimes i feel like i’ve learned nothing at all. shit’s funny like that. 

one thing i’ve learned with production is that i think lacking the speed to work out ideas is partly what makes it so hard when you’re first starting out. if a rough idea takes you 2 hours to work out in the studio, at best you can crank out 4 options in a day. get that down to 15mins, and now we’re cruising, you can get through all your “ideas” quickly and then decide what’s strongest. 

you also become less emotionally invested in ideas if they take you less time to sketch out. strengthening your skills allows you to be less precious with your ideas, which then leads to the ultimate goal of art imo: only the best ideas surviving. when i first started producing, a lot of the time i’d feel obliged to use a mediocre idea because it took me so long to do. i felt like if i didn’t use it, it was a waste of time. if you can get it out quickly and realize it sucks, then boom, onto the next one. ALL MEDIOCRE IDEAS THAT EMOTE UNCERTAINTY MUST BE KILLED IMMEDIATELY. the hardest part then is finding that voice that tells you what’s great and what’s mediocre. it rarely shouts, but often whispers.

am i making any sense these days? lmk

-felix