As a wise musician once said, "Intros are easy, outros are hard." Maybe it's the nature of the times we live in, but a lot of music I hear these days often start out strong but often struggles to wrap things up in a coherent way. The track either ends too short...or goes on too long, directionless and without meaning. Perhaps, though, that is also a sign of the times.
I've dedicated my life to the study of musical improvisation - the idea being, that even if it's "made up" on the spot, the result would sounds like a fully formed piece, every time. And for the most part, it works - at least for my purposes, anyway. If you pay attention to the fundamentals and direction of where things are going, most people can't tell that the piece was not "composed" - even less so as people's knowledge of the "classics" have started to fade. Main thing is that people get the feeling of going from A to B. (Or back to A again, if that's your thing. 😂)
I've been putting a lot of work into TEIA's DAO lately and the feeling of "improv" is there, for sure. We need the early-adopters to start playing things and establish a "groove" - once that gets going, things will get easier. The beginnings are always the hardest, after all, even in music - even in bureaucracies.
To be honest, one thing I'm anxious about is the fact that a lot of the initiatives on TEIA require people to be largely self-governing and hold each other accountable for it to have any chance of success. What makes decentralized economies work is when individuals do deals with other individuals - not waiting around for crumbs to fall from the top. The latter is certainly a lot easier - but also a lot less rewarding (literally), and basically leaves you in limbo with nowhere to go. Perhaps, though, that is also a sign of the times.
The systems on TEIA works - everything on there is reliable, fair, peer-reviewed and meticulously transparent to almost a fault, honestly. It's one of the few places users are treated like adults with their own agency and ideas, rather than the infantilized circus show and now has become the internet itself. Are people really ready to take that leap, though? With autonomy also comes responsibility, and not everyone seems to be up to the task - I've been let down before, and maybe I will be let down again, I don't know. But regardless - my job is to make sure that the options are there, when the time comes.
"If" the time comes? No, it has to be "when" - the alternatives are too depressing to even think of, otherwise.
Lately I've been ending most of my jam sessions on a single major chord lately, even if most of the music itself was in minor, or very dissonant. I maybe complain about some things but in the end, I choose to be optimistic - mostly out of necessity, really.