Early drafts of great work are encouraging
2009-06-26
I get so encouraged looking at early drafts of great work, thinking, “I can do that!”
In this clip from “Le mystère Picasso”, you watch Picasso start with a simple scribble of a goat, then flesh it out. Not only adding textures, but changing his mind and removing things as well.
After making the brilliant movie Sin City, director Robert Rodriguez was cool enough to include the entire film as it was really shot on a green screen, sped up and included on the DVD.
One of my favorite essayists, Paul Graham, lets you watch as he types one of his essays. It's incredibly encouraging (and funny!) to see how many times he'll re-write a sentence, and discover what he's saying as he goes.
The Beatles' “Anthology” had some great outtakes and early versions of songs I thought of as untouchably perfect. Like seeing stars without makeup, you realize how much of the magic is in the finishing touches.
Archive.org's wonderful Wayback Machine lets us see:
- yahoo.com from 1996
- cdbaby.com from 1998
- google.com from 1998
- myspace.com from 2003
- facebook.com from 2005 “Thefacebook” :-)
I meet so many potential entrepreneurs who think they have to spend millions and months in development before launching. (And therefore, they often never launch.)
For the first nine months of CD Baby, every page was hand-coded HTML and the site did nothing but email the order details to me. I had to copy-and-paste all the info from each email into four places: a mailing label, a thank-you email, a vendor-alert email, and a Filemaker database. It was as lo-fi as can be, but it was enough to get started, and it was profitable.
So I'm writing this in hopes that we get more of these “Version 0.1” stories out there. Encouraging potential entrepreneurs, songwriters, artists, and inventors to compare themselves to the early drafts, not the final polished perfection.
If you've got a story from inside a company (“In the old days of __[big company]__ we used to __[something inspiringly primitive]__.”)...
If you can share a recording of an early demo of a song that went on to become a big hit record....
... or anything else like that, please email me at derek@sivers.org or leave a reply here, below. I'll share the responses in a future article.
Very inspiring. Thanks again, Derek!
i really needed this post. thank you
The first one that springs to mind is Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit - their first live performance had completely different lyrics, the choruses were drawn out and the fills were different. It's perhaps more version 0.5 than version 0.1, but it still needed a little bit more work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soiffolOj5k
Their boxset "With The Lights Out" and the book Journals have several examples of version 0.1 (including an early Teen Spirit cassette demo).
Thanks Derek. Great post. Another good example is on the DVD for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Their first attempts at telling the story were so godawful yet it turned into a cult classic.
Brilliant. I especially love the Paul Graham timelapse; iteration after iteration of improvement.
I must admit though, when writing music, I still fear deleting too much of what I've written, even though past projects have improved through judicious use of the delete key.
Derek,
Great timing.
I am in the middle of my very own Version 1.0 of my new company, Dream Town Media. After spending last week in Nashville meeting songwriters/publishers, and another week a couple months back at the ASCAP Expo, I realized that all my learning in digital corporate America could really aid my fellow musicians, songwriters, and marketers. I started a blog to document my transition and growth from corporate slave to entrepreneur.
So, here I go... Officially jumping!
My wife and I are also building our first business together...
I really like he idea of building momentum for a new idea by running it by objective people. I believe Derek also initiated a different discussion a little while back about the merits of keeping new ideas under wraps until they're completely ready for public opinions. I guess that pretty much depends on how thick people's skin is, and how personally they take criticism.
Early drafts of great work are always encouraging to me because I feel myself growing stronger with every moment of, "I could do that too!"
One of my favorite early finds in an artist's career.
Bruce Springsteen, from 1973,before he was famous. My guess is that these were some of the venues John Hammond set him up in to see how he'd perform in front of an audience.
"He's playing in front of about 20 people in a small NY City Club. His first two albums were 5 and 15 months away."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dy7RTicVr0
I can't say that MySpace has improved much
Cool, very nostalgic.
I find that the mentality of musicians is to release a final product have have it stand as is for the rest of time (ie a Beatles song). The way things works right now is that you have to slowly release material and shape it through public opinion.
I actually did something like this for my 2005 album "Beer & Coffee". The album before it came out in 2001, so a lot of my fans wondered just what the hell happened for four long years.
Well, fans who bought the round plastic version and popped it into their computer got to not only read the story but hear some of the early live recordings and demos that went into making the album. I even included scans of Starbucks napkins I'd sketched ideas onto.
People seemed to really like the hidden extras, especially when they found out they were getting 6 more songs than they thought they'd paid for!
Pax,
Matthew
re: Beatles Anthology
conversely, you also realize how much magic is in the unadorned raw nugget of inspiratioN!!
It's interesting to see how the masters work. It can give us insight into what makes them great. (They're often doing something that we aren't, and it's instructive to find out what that something is.)
At the same time, I think it's important that we don't compare ourselves to them too closely. I can seek inspiration from the Beatles, but I in the end I'm working to become the best possible version of myself.
P.S. Derek, your topics are always so interesting. Participating in your blog reminds me of my favorite college seminars.
Check out some of the demos (they're on Amazon) from Michael Jackson. Definitively not what ended up on the album.
I think Myspace looked better in 2003 than it does now.
In the first years of building my restaurant group (early 70's) I started with a Pizza shop on the wrong side of the tracks, and less than $100 to buy inventory.
I'd wake every morning, ride the bus to the supplier to buy a stick or two of pep, a loaf of moz, etc and carted it back in paper sacks to do prep and open for lunch, etc.
yeah, 16 hr days...easy
After 10+ yrs I'd built it up to a massive multi-million catering biz.
In between I constantly traded up in locations and experimented with concepts and menus.
When most guys would have been in their office smoking a cigar I stayed on the floor and would pitch in with prep or set up banquets.
But my success during that period was actually due to the incredible employees I found, and my numerous mentors, as much as my desire to keep it simple.
My biggest thrill was reading a few years ago that a guy I'd started as a bus boy had sold his group for nearly 100 million!
So Derek, in your own way you're mentoring hundreds or thousands of us with your blog -- what experience have you had with mentors?
Hey Derek,
A great idea. How can you test it in the marketplace without much investment?
The reason I say that? I'm going to quote a conversation from Guy Kawasaki in Pamela Slim's book "Escape From Cubicle Nation."
He says, "I once worked on a program with fantastic, smart partners who had a great reputation, raving fans, and connections with a huge market. We all 'knew' that our product idea would be just what people needed. So instead of testing the idea with a small group, we designed the whole program and rolled it out. No one bought anything. Zip. Zilch. Nada."
I hope it helps.
*Jared
Above is the link for an early version of the song "Kids" by MGMT.
You can tell the crux of the song is there, but the newer version sounds totally different with the vocal effects added.
On a totally different level, open mic lipsync recordings are both A) hilarious and B) reassuring to indie singers with insecurities about their voice. See:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Henrique-Iglesias-voice-recorded-while-lip-syncing
Great post, Derek!
And I thought everything had to launch with perfection. My new blog isn't pretty yet, but in time... Same goes with my song writing. I don't yet have a great story to share with you, but I will. Thanks for the inspiration!
I remember being at your Woodstock place in 1998. Piles of CDs stacked by artist and you showing me pics of different babies you might use as your logo. And James Brown playing in the other room!
Memo Pad sketch to full "digital opera" motion graphics music video... http://www.flickr.com/photos/97686937@N00/3576944379/
Links at the bottom of the very 1.0 (or maybe even .01?) sketch lead to the youtube version of the serious 5.0 upgrade of the concept.
Also, "Empire of Dreams" a documentary of where Star Wars began and how it ended up is an amazing resource also.