You’ve probably heard of a composer called Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach is widely considered one of the greatest composers in western music, if not one of the greatest creatives ever. He was the only musician to be represented three times on the Voyager golden record surmising all of humankind’s music. In music class, we were taught that the end of the Baroque music period is dated to 1750 because that was the year he died! His Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is how the organ came to represent evil and villainy in film. The ABC’s Classic 100 Composer ranking, voted by people around Australia, placed Bach in 2nd, just behind Ludwig van Beethoven. Bach wrote over 1000 works, and more are still being discovered today, and there are some which could have been written by him (but we’re not sure). My question is, how did Bach do it? I think the reason is that Bach wrote 1000 pieces, and some portion of them are really incredible, and over time he developed his skills, meaning he got better and better. I doubt even Bach’s biggest fans, however, enjoy every single one of his works.

In Atomic Habits, James Clear tells a famous story about photography professor Jerry Uelsmann, a photography professor at the University of Florida. In his class, photography students were divided into two camps. One camp would be graded purely on how many photos they submitted, regardless of their quality. One hundred photos got you an A, 90 a B, and so on. The other camp only had to submit one photo, but this one singular photo made up 100% of their grade. At the end of the class, Uelsmann discovered that the students who took more photos made better photos with time. They were pushed to experiment, try new things, and learned a lot about the craft from the act of doing. The students who only submitted one photo spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to take a photo, and ended up submitting one that was mediocre, because they never spent time doing.

After moving to Leipzig to become the director of church music, Bach wrote a cantata (choral piece) every. single. week. This was in addition to his other duties as director and numerous other commitments. Granted, this was in 1723, when Bach was already quite an experienced musician; nevertheless, it demonstrates his dedication to the craft and I think shows how he was able to write so much music. Following on from Uelsmann’s discovery, it’s not the quality so much of the works that matter, but that quality flows on from quantity of works. By writing so much music, just on a probability game, some of them were going to be good. But by learning from his craft, he ensured that he would become better and better, until he’s now revered as one of the greatest of all time. As an aside, obviously times were different for old Johann than they are now: he had a dedicated group of servants to look after his needs, so he didn’t cook or clean himself, but I don’t know too much about his life or circumstances, and even still — over 1000 pieces in 65 years!

This week, I’m starting a new challenge, which I’m calling the 52 in 52. It’s a pretty simple challenge, on the face of it: write 52 pieces of music in 52 weeks. After all, Bach could do it! I haven’t written many rules beyond this. In my head, I have the differences between arranging and composing, but it doesn’t matter too much: the idea is to write, and have the rest come. I have things I want to write, but since finishing Honours I’ve found it hard to make the time to sit down and write. No more excuses — because of this challenge, I will need to write.
I also like this challenge because of how 52 gets broken up: 52 is 4 lots of 13, and 13 is a decent amount of tracks for an album. So I’m hoping to get 3 albums out of this (and another set of 13 pieces which may be more loose, because it’s important to keep room for freedom).

I’ll be posting my results weekly on YouTube and Instagram, I hope, but I’m not going to hold myself to that in case it gets too hard. Still, I will be sharing updates as the challenge goes along, and I really want to encourage you to share any feedback with me — the reason I share these works in progress is to get feedback and improve my work, not to get praise when it’s actually no good. Some pieces may be good, others may be terrible. That’s the idea — complete creative freedom, as long as I get something. And hopefully, some of it is good!

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