But is it worth a dollar?

In the last couple days i wrote a little piece and recorded a couple versions. All in all that's about 3 hours of real work. The daw version is here:

https://paultompkins.bandcamp.com/track/unexpected-frog-dance-2018

A live recorded version:

https://youtu.be/8OAWdERVw0w

The burning question is, is this piece of music worth a dollar? The first version has some timing issues and the mix isn't spectacular. If spent a few more hours rerecording it would it be worth a dollar?

What if i took the audio from the live recording and removed some of environmental noise? What if i did 30 more takes? What if i bought a better guitar, booked studio time, had someone master the recording so it sounded better coming from your 1/4 inch cell phone speaker? Is it worth a dollar yet? What if i befriended another guitarist, convinced him/her to record their version with better solos? Is it worth a dollar?

What if you thought it was fantastic? What if you hate it? What if you woke up in 6 months humming it in your head and thought wow i actually love this little piece. Would that make it worth a dollar?

It sounds heavy handed when you put it like that but it's really just a yes/no question, and it scales up. What about an album? What about 30 albums? What about 20 years worth of music making? This is not actually about me, it's about music in general. Is making music for the enjoyment of making music worth money? Is music worth your money? Most of the world says "no, unless i already paid for the promise of entartainment, and it turns out that you did entertained me." 

It should be obvious that the thousands of bands and people making music can't be worth any money (to you). If they were you would be bankrupt, but where is that line? 

How to make an album, the p(nmi)t approach

Step 1 - don't write an album. Sitting down to create 7 or 8 or 14 tracks that play nice together is a recipe for not finishing at all.

Step 2 - write a couple pieces of music with no goal other than writing cool tracks.

Step 3 - once those 2 or 3 tracks are completely done, let them suggest a theme. It can be simple or complex or funny or whatever you want.

Step 4 - what leads into those tracks you've written? Where do they go next? Are there ideas that go in between them? Essentially, create a context for those pieces to fit in. If they just don't work together, try repeating this process; you can always use something later in another project.

Step 5 - finish the damned thing. Make cover art yourself, publish it online or force someone else to listen to it. Hell, send it to me, i'll listen to it at least once.

Step 6 - listen to it for what it is, something cool you just made.

Step 7 - the most important step is to move on. Do it again, do something completely different, do something. You just made an album. It's better than every album you hate, and crappier than some of the albums you love. It's a thing that now exists, and that's awesome.

That's it. No magic sauce or fairy dust, no money wasted, just do it.

Cheers

Referrences in My Archipelago EP

1- the Galapagos islands are by definition an archipelago. Water is one of the primary associations/images of my music work. The tracks also represent the disparate styles i work in, like islands in the sea of my musical thoughts, each separate yet clustered together.

2- modes of transportation play a significant role in Vonnegut's writing. This ep references modern travel by land, air, and sea.

3- the blue subway tunnel on the cover is the blue tunnel presented to leon, which he chooses not to enter.

4- ice can be just as deadly as anything else (cat's cradle). Hence, track 3 and the robert frost sample in track 4.

5- galapagos features extensive literary quotations. Historical recordings of famous speeches seem apropos.

6- Vonnegut suggests that human intelligence seems predisposed to inventive self-destruction. Nature, on the other hand, has ways of making us more docile, and infinite patience with which to do it. I find it hard to disagree.

I'm sure there is more one could talk about, but that's the extent to which i constructed this album.

Cheers.

One more thing i forgot. Vonnegut places an object (sometimes many) in every story, around which the characters exist. He has a name for it, i just don't feel like looking it up. The object itself is unimportant, except for the ways in which humans misuse it. Mine is the pentacle (mona plays the xylophone or marimba or something...). See, it just keeps going.

Anywho, cheers again.