Being You Own Harshest Critic

Hey, here’s some content I enjoyed this past month, in no particular order:

• How to do great work: Here’s a guide on how to do great work, written by Paul Graham—who’s apparently a famous tech entrepreneur. It’s a pretty long and hefty text, but it outlines some very clear guides on how to become great at what you do. It even starts by helping you find something you could possibly excel at. It’s pretty incredible how much ground he covers and probably requires more than one read through to take it all in (for me at least), so it can be helpful for anyone ambitious that wants to be outstanding in their field (like music).

• Geolocating songs: I love YouTube channels where a creator becomes obsessed with some ridiculous tiny mystery and they become hellbent on solving it1. Here’s a music related one that I saw recently: Jam2go goes on a hallucinatory but somehow coherent search for where singers in songs are singing from. Starting with ‘Hey There Delilah’ but ending up at the conclusion rainbows are actually cone-shaped are the type of niche videos that I need more of.

• Being your own harshest critic: The Guardian interviewed Vini Reilly, better known as The Durruti Column. Besides from getting an insight into the guitar legend’s life, it’s revealed he doesn’t really like in his own music and believes it’s nothing special. It is somewhat relieving to know that you can dislike your own work, even when it’s widely regarded to be great. If the The Durruti Column doubts his work, than it’s okay for me to have some self-doubt every now and then too :)

• The magic of mixing up your playlists: I stumbled upon this playlist creation tool for Spotify and I have been using it to my favorite music in new a context. Using the tool I made a program that creates a new playlist every Friday2, drawing the tracks from four other playlists that all have their own specific mood and genre. Something magical happens when music from my New Age playlist get thrown together with my favorite Japanese ambient, film scores and soul & funk music. The new context is refreshing and rekindles my appreciation for the individual tracks. Start mixing up your playlists people!!

• Paris Texas being cool: Paris Texas is genre-bending duo putting out some sweet stuff3 lately. For the release of their new album they did a live recording which includes a pretty funny interview hosted by Vince Staples.

• Elijah Waters drops a hauntingly beautiful track: Rotterdam-native Elijah Waters uploaded some live performances in desolate buildings in France. I’d recommend you watch them all, but this one I found particularly beautiful.

• Mini game as music marketing: Take note artists: instead of trying to go viral on TikTok, there are still other ways to put yourself out there. Take composer Euglossine, he made a little game to accompany the release of his new album.

• More good marketing: I never really listen to James Blake, but in this video where he describes part of the process behind his latest album is cool. It’s one of those ‘presented by [brand name]’ experience marketing videos, but it’s done in a tasteful and subtle way that is actually enjoyable.

• Making a Vietnamese đàn bầu: You might have seen this guy creating his own instruments on your Instagram reels, but he also makes longer videos. In his latest he creates his own version of a traditional Vietnamese instrument and goes on to play a pretty sick jam with it.

That’s it for this month! Do check out the footnotes below, you’ll find extra content related to the topics shared above.