Slowing down.

It's been over six years since I've had a weighted keyboard. Six years of virtual instruments, gear research, producing music through screens. And that's been fine—it works, the way most compromises work. But sitting down at a piano again reminded me of something I'd forgotten: how it feels when an instrument isn't just an instrument anymore, but a way back home.

The first thing I picked up was Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, Op. 15. I picked it partly because I loved how simple and beautiful it sounded in Ryusuke Hamaguchi's film, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, but mostly because of the title of the first piece: Von fremden Ländern und Menschen—"Of Foreign Lands and Peoples." Sitting here in Tokyo, far from where I started, those words felt less like a title and more like a question I'd been avoiding.

If you're a producer on the grind, or just an aspiring creative, this is your reminder to slow down. Play (or make) something just for yourself. Sometimes the most honest music is the kind that never makes it onto a hard drive.

—

November 2024, Tokyo

PS: A very low fidelity recording me: