Editing also means that you have to force your ego to step aside for the good of the ART. I can think of two songwriter friends off the bat who are both very talented, but whose songs bore me quickly because they're all way too long and bubbling over with self-indulgence. Editing acknowledges that an audience may eventually listen to your creation, and sometimes the best thing you can do for it is to chop, chop, chop away. I am convinced that the best songwriters are the best editors. As your friendly, neighborhood CASA Web Content Director, I have now gotten to where I can pare things down to the essentials pretty quickly, but it took a while to get there. Working for a major ad agency helped. You learn to get rid of any preciousness when it comes to your writing. If they want it out, you take it out. When songwriters temper their poetry with some surgery, good things happen!

p.s. I edited this.

Brevity is ... wit,

W

I needed to read this right now.  Very important, and rarely discussed.  Yay Tim!

I agree with you both that this is an excellent technique that lends itself to more thoughtful, profound, poetic and technically amazing songs (read: lyrics). I do think that it needs to be said that art is extremely subjective. "90% crap", to me, is a pretty big exaggeration IMHO.

I think the definition of "what's good" or "what's great" really depends on a lot of factors. For instance, what is the intention or end goal of the writer? Who is their target audience? What style of music is it? Without knowing that my gut reaction is, "crap in who's opinion?" One person's crap is another person’s favorite song they believe to be great. What makes them wrong? What is this greater good you two keep referring to? Who's greater good are we talking about here?

You may have found the songwriters to be monotonous, but what did the rest of the people listening think? They may have been totally into the music. Who knows?

Let me also say that I get where you two are coming from. I am EXTREMELY critical of everything, especially music. But, I have also come to learn that while something may be, to me, technically amazing, it doesn't necessarily mean that it moves people. It doesn't mean that it's "great" either.

After all, what is the purpose of songwriting or art in general? To me, it's to touch people's lives and bring them something special that they don't get in their regular lives. I want to show them something that reminds them that there is more to life than just working and paying your bills.

I am assuming that you are mostly talking about the lyrics here, so please forgive me if I'm wrong. I think a lot of the "in the know" crowd share the view that if it isn't the most profound, poetic, thoughtfully expressed and completely original piece of writing that it is some how lacking in value. I couldn't disagree more. 

It is my belief that songs that contain more common, every day and God forbid cliché language are just as valid forms of expression. They just appeal to different people in different ways. Take for example, "Tub thumping". This is hardly high brow, cutting edge material. And yet, "I get knocked down! But I get up again! And you're never gonna keep me down!" is a party anthem that appeals to many, many, MANY people. The masses if you will. It's a song that I'm pretty sure hundreds of thousands of people, dare I say millions of people around the world have no doubt jammed a long to and shouted along with at a club some where having the time of their lives. If the end goal is to touch people's lives (and as many as possible) and bring them some kind of joy, then this song has accomplished that in spades. But it's complete crap, right? It's not Lennon and McCartney or Bob Dylan so it's trite, cookie-cutter, bubble gum crap.

It's a good thing when people can connect with the music like that. It's a great thing, right? It's what makes music so special. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that most of your average, every day people don't require that their music astounds them with its brilliance. Most people don't dissect music and lyrics like us music snobs do. They most likely don't know jack squat about songwriting techniques. They probably can't break a song down and analyze its minute details. They have no idea of all of the sweat and labor that goes into composing this "original creation". They just know they like certain music because it moves them or even just because it has a cool bass line and a kick-ass beat.

Again, I think that if the goal is to appeal to a smaller audience that is "in the know" and is very picky about the music they listen to, then "90% is crap" is probably true. But if the goal is to touch people and add a little bit of joy and happiness to their lives, then "90% is crap" just doesn't hold water. It's great and valid to want to do the very best you can do. But, I think trying to show everyone how original and creative you are and impressing yourself, your friends and those "in the know" with your genius and wit is less about the about the music or the ART and more about YOU.

Just my 2 cents.

You make an awful lot of assumptions ;-)

I did not, nor will I now, mention what kinds of music I like or dislike.  The 90% crap statement refers not to a specific kind of music, or art, or my personal likes or dislikes.  It refers to everything, every field, every genre, every niche, and that regardless of my/your/anyone else's feelings about the _whole_ of that field/genre/niche, within that field/genre/niche 90% of everything produced will be crap.

As per your example, "Tub Thumping."  No judgement about the artistic merit of the song.  We assume, because it is a well-known relic of pop culture, because it was a 'hit,' that it is a _good_ example of whatever it is it represents.  90% crap means that we can assume that for every "Tub Thumping" there are 9 songs that tried to do the same thing, and failed.

 For every Lennon, McCartney or Dylan there are 9 other songwriters who can't compare to them.  Not to say that the 9 others won't ever produce anything good, there are plenty of one-hit-wonders to disprove that.  Plenty of other artists who produce good stuff, but not as much... and other artists another step down from there... so that on average, 90%...

It's difficult to grasp when talking about music because culturally we're only aware of the best of the best, the hitmakers, the platinum albums.  We don't know about the countless bands that try to make and aren't good enough so we never hear about them.  We are only aware of our region, and the national and international stars that are allowed access to our region.  To grasp the numbers, assume that every community has just as many hobby artists, hack musicians, wannabes and has-beens as your community does.  

Here are 3 other examples that might clarify the point a bit: 1) artists.  Compared to the number of brilliant artists, how many horrible artists are there that try to sell their junk at the community arts fair?  Not to make too harsh a judgement, and not to say there is not value in painting for fun, but what's the ratio of truly amazing, skilled, trained artists to hobby artists?  2) pulp novels and fan fiction .  Great writers, the ones we'll put in the vaults and be reading in 300 years.  How many, compared to the volume of books published every year?  Compare that to the number of hobby writers.  Again, not saying you shouldn't write unless you're brilliant, but in terms of discerning the quality from the non (and if the idea of making artistic judgements bothers you, then make it a purely commercial judgement: what sells, and what does not)   3) movies.  They used to (in the good ol' days) make way, way more good movies than they do now.  Right?  I happened to read a Hollywood yearbook that listed all the major studio pictures from 1929 to 1995.  Every year, hundreds if not thousands of major movies made.  Of those, how many do we remember?  How many do we still watch?  How many even get mentioned in the normal movie history books?  About 10%.  I'm a movie history buff, and I've watched a lot of these 'forgotten' films, and trust me, there is a _reason_ we don't remember most of them.  90% of them are... 

Last example, appropriately enough, music.  They used to write waaaay better songs, and more of them, in the old days, right?  Wrong.  Same as movies: it seems like there were more hits because time has filtered out the best stuff for us.  90% of music has always been crap.  I collect vinyl of groups I've never heard of, of rare demos, of short-run small-level musicians.  There's a reason I'd never heard of most of these groups, the reason being, they are terrible.

In the a cappella world, how many amateur, semi-pro, community a cappella groups are there for every truly excellent ensemble?  Would you guess 9 to 1?  It's a not a judgement about the validity of doing music as a hobby, or about semi-pro a cappella groups (who might very well have some amazing musical moments!).  Some of my most moving musical moments have come performing in groups that quite frankly sucked.  It's not a statement about that kind of value.  It's a statement about the world at large, and yes, generalizations will be made.

And no, I don't think 90% is an exaggeration.

So it's not a judgement on what you like, or I like, or they like, or what is art, or what makes music valuable, or can a cappella qualify as an art form.  It's a statement that 90% of EVERYTHING... even 90% of whatever snobby music it is that you infer I love more than inferior music... is crap. 

I've sat through dozens of concerts wishing the songwriters had created more than one song (in different hats) and edited--not just the lyrics, but the music, too. And I stopped reading my friends' and acquaintances' writing because my crap tolerance for literature is low, and I judged the friendships to be more valuable than the friends' writing.

I agree with what I thought were the main points of the article: in order to produce great work, an artist in any discipline should create a lot and be willing to both edit and gracefully accept honest critique, even when it's brutal. My grandfather, who was a professional photographer, used to say that "you take a hundred pictures and keep ten. Or one. And throw the rest away." His claim was if you consistently got five good shots out of a roll (in the old days, when we used real film in cameras), you were a truly GREAT photographer.

I, as a writer and writing teacher, used to recommend my struggling 8th graders write a thousand words, then cut 500, add 1000, and then turn in a final copy with 750 words of whatever they wanted to say. Why? The process of editing half the manuscript out, tripling it, and then cutting half again helped them understand and hone their craft. It helped them see that the words on the page are not sacred and that the students themselves possessed the power to improve their own work.

Authors have editors; musicians have producers. Editors and producers are people who have a low tolerance for crap and a massive amount of  knowledge of how to fix it--how to make your product good (by whatever standard).  I, personally, believe that authors and musicians would benefit by becoming, at least in part, editors and producers as well.

And I think that THAT was what Mister Tim was talking about, regardless of how much crap this world can actually produce.

So my last post was deleted which is censorship. Nice.

He wasn't talking only about his own work in the blog. He talked about other people's work being crap and then generalized that 90% of everything created is crap. Now you're implying that he meant his crap when he said that.

If he had said "I don't know about you, but most of what I create for the most part is crap. I end up scrapping most of what I create. To even get to a final creation I edit and re-edit and chop and chop....."

THAT would be a better way of presenting his points and not sounding like he is delivering the final word on what is crap. I dunno. I just felt like it sounded arrogant. Maybe it was just me. But I know one thing. He DID talk about people's work being cookie cutter and people not having a creative bone in their body in the same breathe as the 90% is crap argument.

I have a brain too, Rebecca and I have my own tastes. We all do. I just think that 90/10 is a little too dismissive a ratio. I believe that there is A LOT of middle ground where most of us live with our creations. The masters live in the top 10% for sure, then there's a huge middle and then a smaller bottom end of lower quality yet still valid creations. Even in saying that though we'll never agree on who belongs where, not that it's for any of us to make that determination.

Editing and editing is an excellent  way to mold and shape your work into the best it can be. I've said several times that I agree with that. I once had 3 songs completely written with the music but no lyrics. I literally refused to add lyrics until they perfectly expressed what I felt in the music. Those songs spent 3 years without lyrics until I finally came up with some that were just right.

Most of the songs I write don't get finished because they're crap to me. I'm extremely critical of my own work. I'm critical of everything, basically. 

I guess it's how the blog was presented that I took issue with. Saying most people don't have a creative bone in their body has nothing to do with anything you said in your last post or what seems to be "the real point" of the blog in the first place.

Okay, I'm done talking about this.

I do think that it's weak that posts were deleted. But that's just my opinion.

"I just think that 90/10 is a little too dismissive a ratio. I believe that there is A LOT of middle ground where most of us live with our creations. The masters live in the top 10% for sure, then there's a huge middle and then a smaller bottom end of lower quality yet still valid creations."

I probably should have bowed out of this discussion before I began, but I admit that I think there's real value for some readers in rebutting this point.  Here's how and why:

If one creates with the expectation that 10% of the work will be on par with the best of the best, then one's internal censor has too strong a hand in the creation process. 

If one creates with the belief that all creations will be poor until one has achieved "master status," then again, the conditions for creation are not optimal.

However, if one consciously divides creative output into the "stuff one likes best" and "the rest," then one is taking my advice for creative improvement (and ultimately, I think, mastery).

This is my advice and my opinion.  Any statement to the contrary does not represent my views.

If 90% of the people listening to it think it's crap…it's crap.