I’ve spent the last few weeks sporadically working on the design of a display stand to display the whistles I make in music shops, galleries or where-ever.  With it being a while since I’ve worked on any kind of new design, it’s been a bit of a re-introduction to the process and consequently it’s taking longer than it should.

It’s really just a tiny project within a project.  Nothing like some other mammoths I’ve been working on for years.  Even so it has reminded me about what I consider to be the most important, and probably the most overlooked, approach to creating things.  And that is….

GO GO GO!  get making things!  don’t worry about what it sounds, looks, plays or reads like.  What you are after is quantity, not quality.  Judging things is simply unproductive.  Solutions always emerge unchallenged, and your best work always happens when you are not thinking about it – something greater takes over.

I found this holds true in any of the creative field’s I’ve worked in:- music, writing, design and photography.

Sounds easy eh?

Almost a year after publishing my first book about experiences in Africa, I’ve taken a little time to reflect on the project.  The book, Bamako Boom Boom, was written to chronicle the sights, sounds and emotions of visiting somewhere like Africa for the first time.  I hadn’t done much reading or research before leaving for the trip – if I had I would have known too much to present it as an initial reaction – previous knowledge would in fact have tempered the formation of my own views.

Reliving the experience by writing it down reinforced my interest in Africa, so much so that when the final manuscript was sent to be printed, I went on a reading binge – taking in all I could find on the subject.  The most notable findings were Blayne Hardens ‘Dispatches from a fragile continent’, Richard Dowden’s ‘Africa’ and various works by the Polish journalist Ryzard Kapusincki.  These comprised some of the most thoroughly researched, well thought-out, and incisive writings about Africa I could find.  I was worried that conclusions I had come to and expressed in my book, wouldn’t in fact be based on enough of a breadth of experience to be classed as anything more than naive.

I didn’t realise it before I went but Africa fascinates me.    It sits out there on it’s own, and is the continent that the world would miss the most – in a complete reversal of the value traditionally given to it in political and economic spheres.  It’s disparate collection of people, places and cultures, which never ceases to dumbfound, horrify and amaze,  is as thrilling as you’ll find.  For me, this has manifested itself into a long term interest in the continent; it’s unlikely I’ll stop thinking about it, and words and pictures are the product of the thought.  It would at least be nice to think that the first attempt at recording some of these thoughts didn’t produce something rubbish.  For the time being at least, I’m not cringing.

It would be fair to say that the last few years have been a battle.  The recovery process for myself from an illness like M.E. has certainly not been fast.  The main challenge following on from this has been to be able to make more instruments to send to people, without loosing any of the quality I worked very hard to develop in the first place.   We’ve pretty much got to the end of that process and infact been able to improve the quality through the new methods we’ve developed.  Achieving this has however sucked all our resouces, and as a result we’ve been taken away from the creative side of things – developing new designs for music instruments.  I can now feel the tide turning and the burning creative zone, which keeps us up working manically late at night, is once again approaching.  I’ll be doing my best to post news on all but the most covert of operations, so watch this space!

After previous disappointment with spoiled instruments we’ve been doing some good work to get whistles made.  Here’s a few pictures from around the workshop.

Well, no one ever said that making musical instruments would be easy….

This week saw the demise of 40 low D whistles after several school boy errors by various people (including myself).  The business of making things well is not [in my experience of working in the creative industries, whether it be in craft, design or say music or writing] ever easy.  After ten years of making musical instruments it is still the tinnyest of errors, say as little as 1/100th of a millimeter, that can leave lots of instruments, which would otherwise have flown out into the hands of musicians around the world, in the rubbish bin.

This week I welcomed a fresh set of hands into the workshop – and a steady pair of hands they are too.  Nik Powell will be a very welcome addition to operations at Mk Music and I’m sure with the addition of his skills we will be able to get on top of things to bring the waiting times for instruments down.