My writing only started improving after getting out of English class and replacing cultured reading with mediocre fanfiction.
Same thing in music—I’d do stuff in my own terrible demos, then hear other people’s terrible demos and go ”… ah, that’s why good music doesn’t do that.” It’s like there’s a whole heap of bad ideas that people try out, and mediocre works are where you’ll find the mistakes of others to learn from.
(It used to be a lot harder to find terrible demos before the Internet. The slush pile at the local community radio station helped, for example. Even the bottom 10% of a review pile—my previous sample of the bottom of the barrel—was at least in the barrel.)
Same thing in music—I’d do stuff in my own terrible demos, then hear other people’s terrible demos and go ”… ah, that’s why good music doesn’t do that.” It’s like there’s a whole heap of bad ideas that people try out, and mediocre works are where you’ll find the mistakes of others to learn from.
(It used to be a lot harder to find terrible demos before the Internet. The slush pile at the local community radio station helped, for example. Even the bottom 10% of a review pile—my previous sample of the bottom of the barrel—was at least in the barrel.)