Comparing processes.
The process of creating has so many variables, depending on the time in which you’re creating, your space, the people around you, and certainly what thing you’re working to create. As someone who works in the architecture field and loves thinking about and working through the design process, I really enjoy hearing how different artists and practitioners — like chefs, musicians, scientists, priests, mathematicians, engineers, graphic designers, actors, directors, artists — talk about how their own work evolves and gets made. The more you dive into different creative worlds, the more you begin to understand how thin the line is between one profession or creative endeavor and another. From what I’ve gathered, that line itself is mostly made up of special skills developed over years and years of gaining knowledge and experience in your particular subject or medium.
So, I wanted to put two of these creative processes — design of a building and design of a music album — side by side in an attempt to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the two, however small or large they might be. Obviously every artist and architect has their own process and their own aesthetic (which inevitably informs the process and the product itself), so what’s laid out below isn’t intended as an exact guide or reflection of how these respective bodies of work always come to be.
THE CREATION PROCESS OF ARCHITECTURE | MUSIC
SCHEMATIC DESIGN | SONGWRITING
DISCOVER
The first stage of each of these processes is to discover through iterating. In architecture, this phase is called Schematic Design, which involves taking the client’s program (or helping to develop that, if they don’t already have one) and coming up with a design which responds to that document as well as the client’s stated project goals. In music, and the process of making an album, the first stage often involves creating many different songs in more rudimentary forms, some of which never see the light of day, while others hit on the essence of an emotion or particular story an artist is trying to express and will land as a song on the eventual album.
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT | TRACKING & ARRANGING
DEVELOP
This next phase in the process is about taking those initial ideas and developing them into a full building design or album. In architecture, this phase is called Design Development, and its sole purpose is to define the full scope of the design. At the end of the phase, the design can then be estimated to help the team determine more definitively if what’s being shown to the client will fit within their previously defined budget or not. In music, additional production, instrumentation, and vocal layers are tracked and recorded, giving more richness and definition to each previously written song. These songs are then arranged and sequenced to create a full body of work — an album — which paints the full picture of what the artist is trying to express.
CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTS | MIXING & MASTERING
TRANSLATE
By the completion of the previous phase in either one of these creative processes, almost all of the major design decisions should have been made and the majority of the artistic development has occurred. In architecture, it is up to the design team to take all that’s been decided on with the building design and translate that into a build-able set of construction documents from which a contractor would be able to construct a building. In music, each song is mixed — blending all of the individual tracks in a recording to create a version of each song that sounds as good as possible — and then mastered — balancing sonic elements of a stereo mix and optimizing playback across all systems and media formats.
BIDDING & CONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATION | ALBUM RELEASE
RELEASE
These phases in each of these respective processes are the first points at which what’s been created will be released by the creative teams and experienced by the public. In architecture, the focus of these two phases (Bidding and Construction Administration) is on getting constructed what has been designed on paper. As the actual construction is not the architect’s expertise, these phases are mostly controlled and completed by the contractor, while the architect (1) provides clarification on any elements of the design that are still unclear to the contractor and (2) approves all of the building’s materials before they’re installed. In music, as the ultimate goal is to get as many people to experience your art as possible, album rollout and release are very important parts of the process, providing an opportunity for the artist to alert people that their new album is coming and possibly even give the public a mental framework for how to approach listening to their work when that day finally comes. This often times involves releasing single songs or music videos, and/or doing press interviews and social media posts making specific announcements or providing context around the album.
POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION | TOURING
EVALUATE & ANALYZE
As an architect or a musician, the final process of creating a specific body of work is an opportunity for you to celebrate what you’ve done, but also to evaluate and analyze how people are interacting with your work. Doing this allows you to take that information and learn from it to help improve the work that you do for the next project. In architecture, a Post-Occupancy Evaluation is the process of analyzing how functional and comfortable a building is after users have been occupying it for some time. But beyond assessing comfort, this also allows you to see what design ideas and details helped to meet the goals of the client and which fell short. In music, touring provides you an opportunity to show the public another artistic layer to your work, but also allows you to see what songs people respond well to at shows and what ones don’t resonate as much. You can then take that information and use it when you’re in the studio again writing your next project, possibly even going so far as to tailor your writing to what you want your live show to feel like.
AND THEN YOU REPEAT.
Originally published at https://www.steeppitch.com on May 23, 2020.
