Specialising

29/06/25

The importance of specialising when you are trying to do something as your dream is huge. In the real industries of any creative market, you have to be able to provide a consistent product. I know how that conflict feels between making the exact thing you naturally make, and helping to streamline it a little bit to make it easier to consume - but thats all good, being able to be creative in limitations ultimately helps you to make much better art. Today I’m learning for my Sadeeq reels I’m likely going to need to specialise into doing my flips, and figuring out a way to make my beats of the week more enjoyable on an instagram medium. All these things I feel settled about figuring out. 

I also learnt recently, well.. more like got reminded, that you need to be realistic with yourself. If you’ve got a project, and you want it to be good, you need to give it nutrients, you need to water it and you need to make sure it gets enough sunlight. If you plant a fern outside and give it like a handful of fertiliser, a cup full of water and then take it inside so you can see it in the morning right after you wake up - do you think the fern will be ready? In the same way, if you have a great vision for a song, write it in 50 minutes of grind mode after watching 8-mile, produce it in 5 minutes with splice samples and drums your mate Zeke made for you, then listen to the mp3 8 times over in 5x speed - do you think in the morning when you wake up you’ll have an art piece that speaks to you? The balance is hard, and that is just a metaphor - art can be made in absolutely any way - but always give your project plenty of time and effort, and allow your mindset to breathe without time constraints. 


Hopefully got some mental stuff coming up this week for beat of the week and flips, so keep watching! 
Keep on keeping on, 
Zayn

Everybody Knows

24/06/2025

Today I woke up early and put together a reel thats dropping at like 6pm of a Little Sims flip I put together - I could to get to a stage where I have my stuff backlogged by a week so I don’t have as much pressure and to keep uploads consistent. Pretty sure I’m gonna put stuff up 3 times a week. Then I’ve been working on fixing this website, and yes, I used AI for most of the programming - think smart, not hard (only when you’re doing a technical task, not when you’re making music Timbaland is an idiot). These kids came to my door like 5 minutes ago and sang thick of it by KSI, I have no idea why and it is really irking me right now. Like they just have nothing to do. 

I had a big rehearsal set up and I just put it back like a week because I forgot the concept of days and weeks, but I also somehow copped my grade 8 in saxophone even though I didn’t practice until like 3 days before which is crazy. I’m gassed. If you want to get into the right position I think what you need to do is keep going when you are burnt out, like the entire concept of burnout is purely mental - but also that David Goggins stuff isn’t realistic, the reason he’s like that is because he got so abused as a kid that him doing horrible self-talk was nicer than what the people around him said - so if you can have good self talk like ‘I could work on my art project today, how would that make me feel? What would that impact about my confidence?’ Then also grind through the pain and work in discomfort while applying your own mental comfort, you can become stronger and work harder. 

Creatives have this very interesting mental space, but its also good to be aware of it - it is our job to be delusional. Take someone like James Baldwin, he wrote some of the most amazing books that combined his experience and skilfully written political commentary with incredibly deeply felt emotional themes, he was able to so perfectly convey romantic emotions like longing, or even obsession because of his own non-mutual relationship with a man called Lucien. Because James Baldwin spent so much time within his own mind, he sort of made a fantasy world and hid in it by writing. This made some incredible art, but it destroyed James Baldwin for a time. In order to be in full control of your own creativity, you must also be deeply aware of yourself, and sometimes as much as it may dull your art slightly, its okay to step away. Like James Baldwin would literally go to other countries to write in silence. But don’t worry, there’s an option for our budgets too - just work in a different room, preferably with real human people.

Early mornings and aggressive work

22/06/25

Hey, this is Zayn, or Sadeeq. Today I learned that when you want to achieve something meaningful in life, you need to be crazy - and its nice but it’s sort of manic. I made that beat ‘Oudh’ today after finishing up some songwriting work, I can’t lie it took a few tries! This sort of polished jazz sound, or really any desired style/sound, takes a vision - then the ability to bang your head against a wall until you do it. Lol this is a moody blog post, woke up mad early. For all my non-Muslim friends, there is a morning prayer called Fajr - which you do before sunrise, so I woke up for that and prayed it and then got right to work on songwriting/producing after, I’ve been up since.

So when it comes to becoming more technically skilled, the best thing I’m learning to do, is to work aggressively and not stop - when it comes to the more artistic stuff, when you’re trying to channel an emotion, its much more important to focus on the spirit. To do things that weaken your filter, like seriously just make stuff and don’t care about what anyone thinks. There’s always a little bit of doubt, but seriously people will judge everything so if you ever want to do something meaningful with your life, don’t listen to anyone about your art unless their opinion justifies that arts existence. Like using a fact-checker, or making something based on actual experience or even just a friend who you feel shares a similar vision. 

I haven’t done my reel just yet as of the time of this blog-post but I’m gonna probably just record my logic menu, I don’t really have a good camera so I’m just gonna like share my logic stuff. Here’s some fun facts! Did you know that the first time Tupac got on a stage was actually when he was really young, he performed a really important role in ‘a raisin in the sun’. He also did ballet and briefly went to a drama school. He’s a perfect demonstration of an artist who understood how to be tough but how to also be open to his expression and artistic emotion - I think that’s why he’s so prophetic, he had a really good balance. If you want to do some art stuff well, take a page out of Tupac’s book, by far one of the greatest artists of all time. (Did you know Tupac’s favourite song was Vincent by Don Mclean? He used to listen to it when he was sad really loud in his room, thats how people knew he was feeling it). Do not deprive the world the gift of your art, everyone has the power to create anything - just talk to your creator.