Monday, August 31, 2009

100 Songs


I've been playing the violin since I was seven. I don't practice regularly any more but I still play once in a while at church and with friends who have bands or are singer/songwriters. Last fall I started learning the guitar, and a few months ago, I finished writing and recording my first song. I'm waiting on my friend John Chambers to mix it so we can master it, but once it's ready I'll definitely post it on my Myspace page and let you know.

I've been super busy with my line lately, but I do have a longer term goal of writing and recording an album's worth of music. On the demo of my song, I sang, played guitar, and violin, but in the recording I did with John, I let him play the guitar since I'm still not very good.

Anyway, the other day my friend Mike who is a jazz trumpet player told me that Stevie Wonder writes 100 songs for each album he records. That surprised me but it makes sense -- if you write that many songs, you up your chances of coming up with something that's really good!

Similarly, in his book, "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hours rule, citing the Beatles, Bill Gates, and classical music virtuosos as examples. His premise is that in order to become an expert at something, you need to log 10,000 hours.

I want to try the 100 songs thing if I ever do write an album, but I also think I should apply the 10,000 hours principle to my work in fashion.

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