The author does mention that part of the process is collaboration with other musicians. It seems by setting their "chores" they are increasing their immersion.

As a piano player who's been noodling around for a few years, trying to learn to write original stuff and not making much progress, something like this is probably what I need.

There have been thousands if not hundreds of thousands of albums released under contract that the artists were not really into, yet listeners discovered them and were incredibly engaged with.

I'm thinking right now of the endless list of utterly mid jazz fusion albums (eg. on Columbia Records) that came out in the 78-88 period. Retrospectively the artists have said they hated the music, hated making it and didn't like the results, but there were plenty of people who loved it. I am sure there are other blobs like this. Now, the artists might be lying, or might have forgotten how they felt about it at the time, but that's what they say ...

So yeah, you don't need a "surge energy running through your bones". Sometimes that helps, sometimes it doesn't.

> Routines might be a better name, but I like how action-oriented and well defined "chore" sounds.

The article's use of "boring" is somewhat misleading too, I think. It's trendy to say that being bored is good, but really that's always about enjoying patience, not about experiencing drudgery and having a miserable time.

Come think it, I feel that I have on the other side of this many times: I read a post or watch a video that opens up something in my brain and I get a sort of crush on the author. I read everything they write or watch all their videos. For some authors, I retain interest. But for others, where it seems like they produce regularly in order to maintain the frequency, I lose interest.

For me, I'm much better at getting bike rides and runs in if I'm training for something, so I "have to" do my saturday long run. Others would do this "fun" (hobby) stuff without prompting but have a very hard time doing their chores.

This is all pretty vibe-y but I think that might be what the post’s author found the ability to do and is trying to teach? TFA links to this other post in a similar vein: https://commoncog.com/get-numb-get-good/

do you tell it "make the bass louder", or does it actually listen to the audio and goes "hmm, too much highs on the pad, let me turn them down a bit"

An example is how Paul McCartney’s original title for “Yesterday” was “Scrambled Eggs,” since those words fit naturally over the start of the melody.

From that point I can keep building/writing the song more, but at least now it has some identity.

It depends what your goal is - if your goal is to have an enjoyable hobby, then yes, it's probably missing the point.

If your goal is to have the best outputs, then that might involve a different creative process.

If your goal is to make (good amounts of) money, then the popularity of your music is actually important. Writing music that will be popular is a skill in itself, which is probably a different skill to just writing the music that you find the most joy and satisfaction in writing. Writing music that brings you joy and hoping others find the same joy in it might work, but I suspect the musicians making the most money are often working hard to write what the market wants/accepts rather than just what brings them the most joy. There will be exceptions to every rule however.

It’s perfectly fine if _your_ point in playing music is rooted in some flavor of anti-capitalism and your intrinsic joy of your creative process. _His_ point was to write an album during a sabbatical. He succeeded and then some!