I usually start programming with a very clear goal. Then the happy accidents start and the improvisational juices kick in. Ultimately, I still have a clue how everything works, but I didn’t know, ex ante, how it was going to happen.
How often
mostly.
i do music in my spare time that is limited.
not having a clue what i’m doing —> nothing done, time is wasted.
A lot. But a fun experiment to do to realize how much you actually do know is turn down the volume completely and make a track just as you would normally. Fiddle around and hear what you made. Would be a nice “current sounds from my gear” subthread
…lucky dips and happy accidents always remain an important part of each sonic recepie ur about to cook…
but the longer ur into sonic cooking, the fewer u can stumble upon and enjoy such moments…
the bliss of perfect balance between cluelessness and exactly know what ur doing is priceless…
that’s one of the great arguments when dealing with elektron devices…u can use them for years with full fledged muscle memory and audio know how, but still, from time to time, things just happen, u can’t really explain… 
I’m an engineer so I’ve made the whole “I have no idea what I’m doing but I’m gonna try” thing my career
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That would be fun. I used to do that with Reason on my laptop while flying.
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there’s also that:
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I just got my Model:Cycles a few days ago and I spent basically all of last night playing with CTRL ALL. No idea what sweep, contour, color & shape are doing to all of my sounds underneath the hood, and I don’t really care to know… I just know that it was a blast!
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It’s so refreshing to hear this from Sean, also the other video in the thread from Thom Yorke…
Not only refreshing but also grounding, validating, I love the music of Autechre and anything by Thom, hearing them say “fuck all” to the pursuit of virtuosity and just to play with toys relaxes me. That I can do, I can’t do the crazy patches that AE uses, I can’t play any instruments like Thom, but I can play with some musical toys that I understand enough to make some bleeps that I like, and realising that others might like as well.
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true, and the bit about “I look like Moby? fuck you man! fuckin’ Moby… grrr…” is hilarious 
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Hadn’t seen that video before, absolutely brilliant stuff. Thank you for sharing.
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Love this sentiment and it’s so, so true. Looking back, the best things I made with hardware when I was in the figuring out stage. This was absolutely true with the Digitakt. After I learned it inside and out, I basically stopped using it. Kind of makes me sad to think about.
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Often, but it mostly works out.
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If i know what im doing im doing the wrong thing.
I don’t have the brain capacity to learn every nook and cranny of every snyth… but at the same time I think part of it is the fear of the unknown and trying to understand/figure it all out. So a lot of what I do it just playing around with patches, tweaking and seeing what I think sounds good.
I feel the same. I think its way more important to develop good taste than skill or knowledge. Just play and if you like what you‘ve got there is nothing more to achieve. If others like it, thats out of your hands.
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Its interesting that you mention flow in this context. My mother gave me a book by Csíkszentmihályi as a birthday present in the 1990s, where he explained his flow theory and his research that led to it. I found it an invaluable model for approaching creativity and productivity, because it laid out clear constraints for achieving flow, which help me to this day, because once I bring consciousness to the fact that I’m stuck, or not on a state of flow, I know where to look to improve things. Those constraints are:
- a clear goal
- feedback that can be used as a measure of progress towards that goal
- a level of skill that matches the goal, it must be attainable, but also challenging
I know that many people mean many things when they talk about “flow” or about “being in the zone”, but often that mostly means that one is oblivious to the passage of time, and at the end, more often than not, time has passed, people are exhausted, but nothing meaningful was created or learned.
That’s why I prefer Csíkszentmihályi’s clearly defined idea of flow, because it can help to get into that state more often, and with actual results. And it also helps me understand why I can’t achieve flow in certain circumstances, e.g. because maybe my level of skill is not enough for the challenge at hand.
For achieving flow when making music, I find that combining equipment I understand “completely” with only a few things I’m unfamiliar with to spice things up works best for me. With devices I don’t understand well, I constantly try to make sense of things, and I’m struggling not to lose what is trying to emerge, whereas with a familiar device I it takes less effort, I can simply take something that emerges unexpectedly, play with it and expand on it. I know I can take a bit of that struggling, it makes things interesting by creating some creative tension, but I also need a solid foundation I can rely on.
I’d say I know 60-70% what I’m doing. These days, I almost exclusively use devices with patch memory and preferably autosave, and I do take some notes, so I typically well prepared to continue where I left off, which is sometimes a few days or even a week later if life decides to get in the way.
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Since birth.
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Nailed it
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this year i feel like i’ve stumbled around in the dark long enough to the point where i actually do know what im doing more often than not, in my life and with music. basically feels all like luck and just sticking with stuff, and im sure theres more stumbling to be done soon, but im enjoying this period of self confidence developed from acquired and practiced skills.
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