
Steve Jobs Danced To My Song - shawndumas
https://medium.com/where-you-lead-i-will-follow-indeed/9e805c0f482d
======
davidgerard
The key bit? Those songs were number two-hundred-and-something and number
four-hundred-and-something.

There's a lot of value to doing one of something every day.

I'm busy working on terrible music. If I do a few hundred, I might suck less
too.

~~~
brandall10
I just listened to the song and it is quite remarkable he put that together so
quickly.

Rivers Cuomo from Weezer has claimed to have a very prolific songwriting
approach as well, apparently at least for periods of time doing a song per
day.

Apparently during the first couple years of The Beatles' songwriting career
John and Paul would knock out songs very fast, within hours - they actually
'scheduled' time to work together in a time-boxed fashion, so they could fit
in songwriting time around their otherwise hectic schedule. Now they didn't
produce that many throwaways, but in a period prior to this over several years
they learned ~500 songs by ear. They learned these songs well enough live and
used them as tools to figure out how to light up a crowd, and more or less had
a foundational vocabulary from which they moved forward with.

~~~
drifkin
Rivers also methodically analyzed many songs, including all of Nirvana's songs
to help him with his songwriting. He writes about his songwriting process in
the liner notes for "Alone II", an album of his home recordings. The liner
notes are amazing. He goes through each song on the album and explains the
back story, often mentioning what kind of methods he used to write that
particular song.

I dug up an old Rolling Stone article where he talks about his "Encyclopedia
of Pop". They also mention him writing several hundred songs in 1999:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080228012507/http://www.rollin...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080228012507/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5933454/rivers_cuomos_encyclopedia_of_pop)

The names he gives some of his methods are pretty excellent. Some examples:

* Intellectually acquired emotionally volatile concept: [http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Intellectual...](http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Intellectually_acquired_emotionally_volatile_concept)

* Incipit-Melody-Guitar-Develop-Tea : [http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Incipit-Melo...](http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Incipit-Melody-Guitar-Develop-Tea)

* Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange: [http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Arbitrary-Pr...](http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange)

~~~
brandall10
Wow. This is pure gold, thank you much!

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VishalRJoshi
If you break up the presentation into sections: \- Hook with related humor
(great song by Jonathan!!) \- Acknowledge the issue at hand briefly \- Show
the positive side first, back up with hard data, show the bigger picture \-
Trivialize the negative side, back up with hard data \- Ensure that people
know that you take even trivial problems too seriously and act for your users
\- Still uplevel the game and offer generous solutions to what you deemed were
trivial problems \- Sandwich the problem with good news at the end again and
promise a brighter future

There is a good wisdom in there about the way to handle big corporate crisis.
Clearly Steve had not left half of his family back in Hawaii for a trivial
issue !!

Thanks Shawn & Jonathan for reminding us of this great lesson in history!

------
wellboy
It's funny that artist have to go through the exact same experience as
entrepreneurs.

No one believes in you, everybody tells you to get a job. But no, you believe
in your ideas and just knowww that one of them will be a hit.

So you publish the next app and the next, some of them completely fail, but
some get a bit of traction. Then you improve and you improve and bam, after
several years of hustling you're the "overnight" success. ::)

Exchange apps with songs for musicians, paintings for painters, novels for
writers.

~~~
normloman
Yeah but they are telling you to get a job for a reason. Because chances are,
you'll never make it big as a writer, painter, or entrepreneur. And te ones
that do make it are so dedicated that nobody can change their mind anyway.

~~~
JeremyMorgan
Yes, but how many people with loads of potential give up too early? Something
to think about. I generally encourage people to shoot for the stars. You may
never make it big but at least you gave it a shot.

~~~
lmm
If that's good enough for you then great. But there are people who lose their
savings, lose their family, and still don't make it, and end up miserable.
While the guy who took a soft corporate job and spent his time outside work on
hobbies and family might be better off, even if he could've made it big.

The path of the artist or entrepreneur has its rewards, but it's not for
everyone.

------
Buetol
Video of the conference:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8tXyfjfnB0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8tXyfjfnB0)

Really nice presentation, as always!

~~~
scott_karana
Thanks! I wasn't sure why he missed including that in his post.

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pseudometa
The song:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIcaejkpD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIcaejkpD4)

~~~
Gravityloss
That's quite good I must say.

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rexreed
Jonathan Mann is great -- he was actually inspiration for a business I've been
working on. The idea is to keep working on things steadily and continuously.
As he says, 70% of what you do will be mediocre, 20% will be crap, but that
10% will be golden. Work the numbers and do something every day. I like that
philosophy.

I think Jonathan Mann's spirit is very positive. I do think his skills have
plateaued tho -- I'm hoping he can make a breakthrough soon. He once did some
work with a bunch of other artists in a collaboration and that stuff was
really awesome. Check out that work at
[http://jonathanmann.bandcamp.com/album/song-a-day-the-
album](http://jonathanmann.bandcamp.com/album/song-a-day-the-album)

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antr
Great story.

Watching the Jobs / Antenna Gate presentation again just reminded how well
Apple manages crisis. Other companies/startups could take note.

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speakme
Great example of resourcefulness and creating a path to success where no path
existed before!

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kirk21
He was so inspiring! Got a bust for christmas; my mom finally got the hint ;)
[http://www.scscale.com](http://www.scscale.com)

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easy_rider
Wow, when I clicked on the link and the overly pixelated 4 second animation
filled my screen, I actually laughed out loud and thought "Well done! Nice
parody on all the "Steve Jobs once gleamed at me " or "I spent 2 years in
college with the neighbor of Steve Jobs" articles.

Then it was for real. And I cried a little bit inside.

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alixaxel
Awesome story, and what a cool guy. =)

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tootie
It's funny because I saw a queue of people outside the AT&T this morning
waiting to bring back iPhones they'd gotten for christmas.

