a shift in mediums
In a lot of ways, I have neglected this site over the years. I had initially created it to be the home of some of my photography work, with occasional essays. Well, despite not posting as much the past few years, I actually haven’t been still. My photography output was scaled back a bit due to more intense work schedules and also becoming more deeply involved working creatively with music over the past few years. I kept the music and audio production work off this site on purpose…out of some needless purist sense I guess. Looking back I don’t know why, but I will share it now, along with some background (and how some creative practices even made their impact in some of my professional work in a non-creative realm).
philosophy of exploration via creativity
Periods of momentum and quiet regrowth have been common in my life, in the way I process life in general. During the Covid years I was primarily in Texas. I focused on dragonfly and insect-related photographer when I could, but didn’t get to physically explore as much as I had wanted. I had intended to go back to Thailand right around the time Covid hit but things were so uncertain, borders closed…I had to put off my plans. This protracted space in some ways pushed me toward music–and I began to more systematically develop a new side of creative work. I had always played guitar and written songs, and had produced an experimental electronic album in the late 2000s–but after the dissolution of the last band I was in, it became a more sporadic activity. When the Pandemic started, I got back into writing and producing music electronically–both as a learning exercise, and as a way to satisfy some sense of exploration while feeling physically more bound in place.
After a period of teaching myself new DAW (digital audio workstation), I frequently wrote sketches in all types of genres, heavily utilizing instruments from places of the world I have visited that have had a big impact on me. That basically means Chinese and east Asian instruments. After some time learning and understanding more audio production concepts, I began a more structured, ambitious project of writing a short instrumental album each month. Usually there was a rough theme, either in instrumentation or mood, sometimes in inspiration. The songs have come out more like pieces, progressions, or loose compositions rather than songs in the traditional sense of structure and coherent melody. In a distilled way, they are often just explorations with a subtly cinematic vibe. I did this exercise for a bit over three years, from December 2021 through March 2025. Longitudinally, I only have a few narrowly directed projects with similar uninterrupted longevity–a poetry project that went on as a daily exercise for over three years, and a long-term survey of local dragonfly habitats.
The monthly deadline was meant to inspire rapid iteration of ideas and try to limit the creep of perfectionism–I was essentially forcing sprints to see what I could accomplish and also wrap up as a finished product, rather than perpetually working on songs in search of an illusory (and never-arriving) perfection. Monthly process write-ups and all of the music is freely available on my Patreon, and many songs are available on the major streaming platforms online (just search for “Brian Gooding”). My first album done under this construct, brief emotional assessment, is still has some of the most interesting pieces of music I have written so far.
integration of practices
While doing the monthly albums for personal development, I was also working an in engineering. I would use the recurring deadlines for my personal projects to help develop project management skills and workflows, then translate them back into practices I could use in my career. I also started tracking data about the music I was creating and pulling it into Power BI to teach myself some basic data analysis and see if there were any interesting or meaningful patterns regarding creation, subjective analysis of songs, overall creative output, vibe/moods, etc.
At that time my job had a lot of creativity involved and I loved it it, but eventually I moved on to another engineering position that involved…no creativity (well, maybe some in the realm of trying to creatively influence people). But the job lacked a fulfilling and stable form of creativity for me–many components of the job should have been automated and/or redesigned with a mindful intent, but I lost that battle. I was able to leverage some data analysis skills I learned from my creative practices to drive a few successes there…but overall it was not a good long-term fit. Some people are fine to needlessly press buttons, manually do what computers do best, and to value comfort more than progress and efficiency. My attempt to streamline processes and develop scalable systems rather than gatekeeping roles was too disruptive in the environment of a feudal work culture. After being hired to help promote local integration and drive improvement, I left that position saddened and disappointed to have such a negative experience.
reflection on the elements of a creative project
But back to the positive, the entire process of coming up with music, developing themes, working on the technical side of mixing and audio engineering, creating album artwork, even doing monthly recaps, and eventually data analysis was a very positive experience for me. I learned a lot about audio engineering, my own innate organizational strengths and areas to advance in, how much I love analysis and synthesis of data…it has been a really great experience and also helped me anchor myself in meaningful projects. There is a good balance of creativity, technicality, organization, vision, that was really fulfilling for me, even in a non-commercial and relatively abstract project. The only reason I stopped was because I was going to back Asia indefinitely (more on that in the next post) and didn’t want to be pre-committed to such time-consuming projects (also I was packing light and didn’t have room for audio equipment).
Okay, I have to cut this post off here and split it into another one because it is too long. The next post will deal with my career break, photography, and the time I spent in Asia during the past year, which was one of the most positive experiences of my life…and has subsequently caused me to re-evaluate what I thought were going to be my next steps.