Rick Rubin on Unlocking Creativity
The Tim Ferriss Show hosted by Tim Ferriss - Podcast Index
Rick Rubin, a nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer, shares his insights on creativity and collaboration drawn from his experience with legends like Adele and Jay-Z. He discusses the importance of embracing creative uncertainty and aligning authenticity with artistic output. The conversation dives into effective strategies for navigating interpersonal conflict in creative environments and how awareness of the world around us can spark inspiration. Rubin also addresses the role of distractions in creativity and the evolving influence of AI on artistic expression.
Snips
[42:11] "Being a Great Artist": Cultivating the State That Makes Art Inevitable
🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (40:44 - 42:11)
✨ Key takeaways
- The goal in making art is to achieve the state that makes art inevitable.
- The book 'A Way of Being' explores what makes an artist great.
- Being a great artist is not just about the act of creating but also about the way of being and experiencing the world.
- Great artists have an ability to see beauty in the mundane and notice things that others do not.
📚 Transcript
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Tim Ferriss
Right, so I'll go with Robert Henri, H-E The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. I would love for you to flesh this out a little bit. And maybe the way to do it would be to hear stories of your own. I mean, you may have just given one. But how you cultivate the precursors, the elemental pieces of this state that makes art inevitable.
Rick Rubin
And that could be through yourself, could be through people you've worked with, but what does that look like when it's done well? The whole book is the answer to that question. And the reason the subtitle of the book is a way of being is being a great artist. We think of it as the person who makes the thing. We think about it as the making. What makes an artist great happens not in the making. It happens in the way of being in the world, the way of experiencing the world, the way of noticing the thing that someone else doesn't notice, the way of seeing what's beautiful when Everyone else sees the mundane, and being able to represent that back in a way that other people get a glimpse of what we saw that they didn't notice. We get to walk around in awe all day and have our breath
[53:44] The Rise of AI in Music and Its Impact on Creativity
🎧 Play snip - 1min️ (52:24 - 53:44)
✨ Key takeaways
- Tools like mid-journey and stable diffusion are now being applied to music and going vertical in terms of mass adoption
- Offering people a subscription model was suggested as a way to offset file sharing 15 years ago and now it has become a reality with music subscriptions becoming popular
- Artificial intelligence may be helpful as a means but not as interesting as an end in creativity
- What's interesting about the things we make is not the making but the noticing, which is not done by computers
📚 Transcript
Click to expand
Tim Ferriss
I've been watching with some degree of awe these tools like Mid Journey and Stable Diffusion and so on, some of which are now being applied to music. And they're interpolating from, say, keyboard strokes to improv jazz with a touch of funk. And it's been astonishing to watch how much this has gone vertical in the last few months, at least in terms of mass adoption and experimentation. 15 years ago, at least as covered in the New York Times, 2007, you said that the way or one of the ways to counter, not counteract, but offset file sharing was to offer people a subscription Model, much like cable, right? So lo and behold, that has happened. And people have these subscriptions and they have music at their fingertips, in their living room, in their car, et cetera. What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence and it fits or doesn't fit into creativity?
Rick Rubin
I think of it as an end. It doesn't strike me as interesting. As a means, it could be helpful. For example, what's interesting about the things we make, again, isn't the making. The computer's doing the making. It's not doing the noticing. So I might ask, in the same way that we