This lockdown has been a dreary one.
Our social lives should contain a healthy balance of vibes. Binging the digital fast food of social media for three weeks straight has been an occasionally delicious, yet entirely unfulfilling diet.
What has been keeping me both sane and satiated is the brand new Two Daze Discord Community.
A quick TL:DR on Two Daze & the Discord App
With Two Daze we are helping musicians make more music, whether that’s through creating routine, or just by providing a reason to start something new.
The last three years we have put on an annual challenge for NZ artists to make a song from scratch in 48hours, which were then collected and released as the Two Daze Compilation during Aotearoa Music Month.
This has not only resulted in some great music from people such as Levyne, Leaping Tiger, Sulfate, Wiri Donna & many more, but the kickstarting of entire records including albums by Dictaphone Blues & Jol Mulholland.
The focus of Two Daze is not the quality of the music, but the creation of music itself.
Discord is a community hosting platform which allows people to connect, share and grow. Its used widely in the gaming and streaming industry already and I think it will continue growing into something quite ubiquitous.
It’s basically like customisable chatroom that you can make private, or share with the world. Imagine Facebook Groups but without all the crumbling fabric of polite society.
Every year that Two Daze rolled around I was reminded of the power of a deadline. With a simple email and a deadline, completely invented by myself, I would receive incredible music from some of my favourite musicians. It felt like a magic trick.
And yet so many musicians, including myself, find it quite hard to actually finish something, let alone put it out. Its harder than ever with the entire burden of marketing and PR essentially being shifted onto the artists shoulders as well, let alone potentially still working part-tine or even full-time. Deadlines can help.
Just the psychological power of due date for homework can compel any of us to do something we almost never do, and haven’t done since, which is stay up all night having no fun what so ever.
Thats where the Two Daze Community comes in. We offer excuses to adopt deadlines into your life. I already count myself as a beneficiary of this community.
I had a bit of a meltdown last week.
I really battled to finish a remix I had promised a friend. I was pushing shit uphill most of the time. Whether it was self-criticism or a genuine lack of talent I can’t be sure. It got done, I felt deflated. It was like almost throwing up and having to swallow it back down. All the taste with none of the relief.
I felt like a big fat failure.
Now was this heavily influenced by a global pandemic, nationwide stay at home order and significant increase in beer consumption? Absolutely. But it was also because I was rusty.
I hadn’t seriously worked on any music with consistency. I mean that as in ever. Like I’ve never done it. I made it through my old bands, to London & back without ever developing any kind of practice.
Which meant whenever there was a deadline set by either my self-loathing, or an outside force, I would relearn the basics making the song, ending exactly where started with my homework in hand.
And honestly, sometimes that worked. I’ve written some songs I think are pretty good and all of them were last minute rush jobs. But I was coasting off that luck, I couldn’t reproduce it whenever I wanted.
But this time I had the Two Daze Discord. Musicians, close friends and new friends alike were already hanging out giving hot takes on the Lorde album and reminiscing about kiwi music venues (RIP Goodbye Blue Monday)
I had set up a tiny two-hour challenge as a practice tool. WE challenge YOU to make sixteen bars of original music in TWO HOURS. It’s quite easy actually. But the brilliance of it isn’t the difficulty. It’s the ease tricking you into consistency.
You can find two hours each week. During a lockdown, I can find two hours every day.
I calmed down, the remix wasn’t so bad the next morning. I quite like it now (it’ll come out in a month or so). I opened up my computer and made something great in two hours flat.
I hadn’t gotten any better, I was just rust-free. That little win put me back into the challenge each day since.
Now I’ve got the bulk of a chilled, electronic album done. I’ve started writing my first guitar songs in almost three years. I’ve gotten lucky for sure, but I’ve also turned up and made the most of any luck coming my way. Im excited, and thats lovely.
“The purpose to create is to connect” - Me (pretty sure)
Two Daze is the place where there is no pressure to create, but there are plenty of excuses too. The connection is the real heart of the growing community to me.
The easiest ways to connect with musicians outside your circle is sadly through social media apps like Instagram, often digging through a veneer of brand awareness that you cannot escape as an online artist in 2021. You can make contacts, but do you really make friends?
Discord feels different. It feels like a private group chat that you’ve somehow been allowed into, with all the cool kids. I feel like Im getting to know people. There’s no follower counts on Discord, which means everyone comes as equals without something to prove. It’s hard to play nice when you’re busy posturing.
And it’s only just started. This Friday is the first seven-day remix challenge, where a guest artist donates their song and the community gets seven days to remix or cover it. We have one of my personal favourite musicians in the pop / guitar world Jack Berry letting us play with his song ‘the middle’ and Im pretty stoked on that.
Any and all musicians are welcome to the Two Daze Community.
I think what makes Two Daze helpful for me could be applied to any field or interest. Sitting down and limiting yourself every day forces you to lower your own expectations, which lowers that mental burden some of us place on ourselves and almost tricks us into producing pretty good stuff all the time, with the occasional masterpiece on accident. Thats a pretty good strategy to me.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. Feel free to join, or share the Discord.
Don’t be hard on yourself, its a Global Pandemic & Climate Crisis for jeepers sake, you’re doing your best.