The First Note of the Season

Hey gang,

The studio was dead quiet on Thursday morning. First time I'd sat behind the kit in weeks, coffee still too hot to drink, the building empty in that way it only is right before a semester swallows it whole.

I didn't play anything ambitious. I just tuned a drum. Then tuned it again. Chased one sound around the room for the better part of an hour.

And it struck me that this is the most important hour of my whole fall — not because of what I made, but because of how I started.

In a couple of weeks the studio fills up. Students, rehearsals, the ensemble, a hundred small fires. The season gets loud fast. But the tone of the whole thing gets set right now, in the quiet, by a person deciding what they actually want this year to sound like before anyone else is in the room.

Musicians know this in our bones. The first note of a phrase decides the phrase. Rush it or force it and you spend the next eight bars apologizing. Place it with intention and everything after it has somewhere to stand.

Seasons work the same way.

It's tempting to let the fall just start — to get swept in on the current of everyone else's urgency and look up in October wondering where the year went. I've done that plenty. The antidote isn't a better calendar. It's one deliberate first note: an hour, alone, deciding the shape before the noise arrives.

So before your fall gets loud, steal the quiet morning. Tune the one drum. Decide what you want this stretch to sound like while it's still yours to decide.

The loud part is coming for all of us. What you do in the quiet is the part you actually get to choose.

Keep creating,

Andy 🆎

Around Studio AB

🥁 Back in the studio — deep into a new solo piece for the fall, and it's finally starting to find its voice. More soon.

🎟 Design Your Creative Life — I'm running the webinar (post-illness) on Friday, August 21 at 2 PM ET. Ninety minutes on building a creative practice that survives a busy season. [Save your spot →]