"All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good [...] But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. [...] Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this..."
Ira Glass
I've been playing guitar for years. There's something satisfying about working through chord progressions, understanding why certain combinations create tension and release. But I've lived in Ira Glass's gap more often than I'd like to admit.
The ideas in my head would outpace my technical ability to express them. I'd sketch out a riff that felt promising, then open my DAW to expand on it. That's when I'd hit the wall. I could hear what the track needed: a drum sound that felt "saturated" and "dark" and "encompasses a room," but I had no idea how to actually create that texture.
So I'd start clicking through drum samples. Dozens of them. My ear would get fatigued after twenty minutes of auditioning kicks and snares, each one sounding more generic than the last. By the time I'd exhausted the sample library, I'd lost all connection to the original riff idea. The creative spark that brought me to the DAW was gone, replaced by browsing presets.
This is usually where I'd close the laptop. My intuition was pulling me toward something but I had no path to follow it. For me, the gap between inspiration and execution often killed the joy before I could even explore the idea.