Help Trying again, 1 more time.

[motyxia]

As title says, I decided to try again 1 more time. Thanks to music & something random my online friend said. This time I want to try harder than I have before. I want to not give up after the 1st crappy call with mental health clinic & suicide hotline like last time I tried a few months ago.

I have no idea what I'm doing though. So my first step I want to try posting this here. I can't go into much detail about personal problems, I'm trying to figure out those on my own alongside brainstorming with my online friend (I'm really thankful for him). So I won't talk about those, especially since this part is most important:

Music is everything to me. It probably sounds silly to people here, but if I was able to make music (just for myself/private), I'd stay alive no matter if my other issues got better or not because it means everything to me. There's other things that make me happy, but only music 100% always makes me happy, never lets me down. Its hard to communicate/vent in normal ways, using others' music is the best way I can express myself & connect with others. Every day for years I think about how the best way for me to vent & cope would be to make my own music. But I'm really dumb, so I don't know how. I have some instruments, they just collect dust. I have a DAW (Studio One Artist, nothing grand), that just takes up storage on my computer. Mental health professionals always said I was a really bad perfectionist, I realized that plays a part in this. Perfectionism makes me work really hard on things, only to destroy it because I decide it wasn't perfect & If it's anything less than perfect, it must be destroyed & forgotten about. It also makes me not even try things because I think "no matter what it won't be perfect, so I'm not going to try." Knowing what this problem is helps, but just knowing what it is doesn't make it go away. I also now think that even someone as dumb as me can learn to make music as long as he has people/sources that "Explain like I'm 5".

The first thing I'm going to force myself to do is talk to my uncle whenever he next visits. He's a musician. He's invited me to make music with him so many times, & I didn't even though I really wanted to because of perfectionism. I don't want him to see how imperfect I am. But I'm going to force myself to talk to him anyway, going to get my online friend to bully me into it for extra measure (shoutout to him, love him, he'll probably enjoy cyberbullying me). But I have other questions, anyone that knows anything about music or struggling with perfectionism your opinions would be really helpful on these:

• Does anyone have advice for dealing with this perfectionism crap?
• Musicians, any good resources you'd suggest that dumb people can understand/ELI5? What areas do you think are best to start with? Any advice is welcome here
• Any tips on how to not get discouraged so easily with recovery?

I'll always wish I wasn't born. But if I'm already here, I want to be happy. Otherwise everything was a complete waste. I want to try my best to be happy. I know that this site is likely to get in the way of trying to get better. I plan on sticking around for a week or 2 more to see if it's making things worse or not (I'll be hanging around in music threads). If it's bothering me, I'll leave.

 

[whywere]

1st off, you are NOT ever dumb or imperfect ever. You have the drive and wisdom to make music. It takes spirit to do different venues in life and you have all the right stuff within you. Asking your uncle to collaborate with you is awesome and what a great combo the two of you will be.

You are NOT imperfect for the sole reason that you want to make music and you have the drive to do it. I bet it will make you really happy to work with your uncle when you see the finished music score.

I 100% believe in you because you want to produce music and you will! I have through the years enjoyed doing various things and sometimes it took a few tries but it was a great time and great results.

If you have to dust yourself off a time or two, never sweat it or worry about it because being perfect is not what brings about great works of art or music or etc. It is the will and drive that makes all the difference and you have a abundance of it.

My wish is for you to be very happy, make lots of beautiful music with your uncle and also by yourself and when you do you will also make others happy and then you are a double winner in life.

Congratulations to you for being so awesome and for being you!!!!

Walter

 

[timf]

Music is such an interesting sphere. A lot of young people are not familiar with older music like the Moody blues or even some of the big band and earlier music. There is such a lot of hidden treasure in the past.

The 1950s to the 1980s saw a lot of good music because of there was a lot of experimentation. There was also a lot of bad music. With the influence of drugs there was a demonstration of the need for both creativity and discipline. With only discipline music became mechanical and formulaic. With only creativity music became discordant and even painful to listen to.

Your perfectionism may give you a leg up on the discipline side of things. However, it can cut off creativity if it goes too far. It might help to consider what is good enough. There are people that are gifted in music, art, or other endeavor such that whatever they do seems effortless. For the rest of us some degree of successive approximation is needed.

For example, you you think of a word, someone can tell you what it is by asking 17 questions. They can open the dictionary and ask you if the word is before or after the letter M. They then take the half of the dictionary that your word resides in and split that in half. The person can usually tell you you word in less than 17 questions.

To apply successive approximation to music one would have to determine what would equal 100% success and then see if they could get to the 50% level. Next would be the 75% level and then the 87.5% level and so on.

Most people would be happy to achieve the 95% level. In reality there is no 100% level because there is always something to criticize.

I enjoy singing. However, after hearing my voice on a tape recorder, I have to admit I am never going to get to even the 50% level. However, I will sing if there is no one around that I would bother.

In the field of music there is performance and composition. Most of the money goes to the composer or the person the composer sold the rights to.

At bluegrass festivals about half the people bring their instruments and in the parking lot find all sorts of people to play with just for fun. I don't know if the style of music you prefer has something similar, but if not, you might try putting a notice up on a bulletin board at a music shop looking for other musicians you can play with just for fun. This can allow you to segregate the music in which you are striving for perfection from the music you do just for fun.

 

[motyxia]

Thank you for the replies Walter & timf, I really appreciate it.

I realized I should try taking my meds again. I'm supposed to be taking them but I stopped months ago. The only 1 I'm not going to take is abilify because it makes me sick. I don't know if they're going to work but I'll try them again.

I have very small experience with music. I knew a tiny bit of guitar, I completely forgot it though, my uncle & grandfather played guitar too. I have my grandfather's guitar now & some of his books which will help along with talking to my uncle. Recently I wanted to learn guitar again in honour of my grandfather, I guess that's more motivation. I also kind of played the piano, I wasn't good but it made me happy, although my piano is at my mother's house so I haven't played it in a long time & forgot the very small amount I knew. I have a couple other instruments that I only touched maybe 3 times before giving up forever (yea I give up easily). The only time I ever completed a piece of music was in school when I was 10, my teacher put it on a CD & I remember as soon as she gave it to me I smashed it up & threw it in the classroom bin, so I've had this problem for a long time. It's nonsense, I know that everyone is going to suck terribly and the only way to get better is to not give up, but I still have this mindset anyway that if I can't do what I want 1st try (or 3rd try on a good day), I might as well give up & rot. I'm stubbornly anti-stubborn.

I listen to a lot of different music, but I've identified some traits of my most favourite music that I'd want to put into my music, I'm in love with noise & distortion. I really love monotone vocals, especially when they sound like they were recorded on a potato, I guess that works out for someone who can't sing & can't buy expensive microphones. I have ideas in my head, when I listen to music I think about ways I would've made it different or add on to it with my humming, I hear random everyday noises & think about how that could be used in a track (especially machines). But that doesn't help if I don't know music theory, it's frustrating that I have so many ideas but I have no idea how to make them exist outside of my head. It's daunting that I have to learn both music theory & technology to even get started. I'm not technology-smart despite being a zoomer. There's so much to learn & so much of it I only find taught in a way that my brain can't understand.

The other week I read some little thing about making rejection your goal. I'm bad at explaining, example if you want to make friends but you're too scared of them making fun of you to try, you make your goal to get rejected. Speak to others and get rejected _ times in _ timespan. I'm going to try using that to talk to others who might be able to give advice, like my uncle & posting this here. I was worried I'd get made fun of if I made this thread so I just told myself that my goal is to get people to make fun of me in the replies. It worked, I was able to post the thread. I wonder if making failure/crappy music a goal would help me not give up as easily with music. I'll give it a try but I don't know if it'll work. But I guess failure is the goal, so let's hope it doesn't work? & if anyone has any more ideas, would still love to know

 

[irememberinnocence]

Hi, I'm a musician. I would encourage you that if you have the dream to make music then LEARNING how to could be the goal worth sticking around for. If you don't yet know how to make music, then you can throw yourself into learning. Talk to your uncle, look on YouTube, attend lessons, just immerse yourself.

Yes your perfectionism will likely get in the way at first but I think that it's another hurdle for you to work towards overcoming, and it's easier to face those obstacles if you have a dream.

If you have a singing voice at all that is a great place to start, as you can practice tunes at home or join a choir, then you can sing and record it to put on YouTube or Soundcloud etc.

I prefer to perform live (instrument) and so have put little effort into recordings. My recordings are so amateur but I still somehow have followers.

Music is one of the things that had gotten me through the past couple of years.

 

[HadesBoatman]

I've had to deal with perfectionism too.

For me the thing that helped the most was setting an end date. Deadlines used to make me anxious, but since there's no real punishment to leave something I do for myself unfinished I started liking them. So start doing your project, define when it should be completed, work on it until that date, move on to the next project.