Psychological Affects - The Sand Mandala

An interesting psychological affect is revealed for me through this way of making music.

As I'm improvising, my focus becomes much more intense. Sampling has always been a process of construction for me in the past, where I could take as long as needed and keep tweaking every little nuance. But now, once the recording button is on, I just have to put myself into it, and if I make a mistake, too bad. I have been tempted already to do post production fixes, but for this phase at least, I've decided to be purist about it while my skills develop.

In the Streamland instrument, recordings are limited to only the stereo master track, there is no multi-track recording, so most errors can't be fixed even if I wanted to. I've found this to be very liberating - it gets me deeper into the moment of creation, and it doesn't add to the psychological weight of unfinished material that so often occurs in my music production.

And so there's that paradox that through proper discipline comes true spontaneity.

When I started creating my own instruments two years ago, I often came back to the idea of the sand mandala - a process of creating a beautiful and intricate artwork, that is simply swept away at the end. I toyed with the idea of making instruments that had no save or record functions - you have to be in the moment with the music as you create it, and when the moment's gone, it's gone. But when it came to it - I couldn't let go...

So instead, this is where that idea has brought me.