?Imagine you are playing a race car video came like Gran Tourism or whatever. Obviously, it's just a video game so you can hold the gas down way longer than you would if you were really driving in real life. You can push the limit, take chances, and not care if you smash into a tree at 200 mph. The fact that there are no real life consequences is what makes video games exciting to so many people.

I kind of look at music the same way. You can certainly keep going through the motions and cranking out the same safe material, or you can go Mach 2 with you hair on fire. Why not go totally nuts and write a song that will blow everyone's mind? If you crash, it's not like you'll feel like you wrapped your intestines around a tree. In fact, at worse, you came up with a stupid song. Big deal. If you haven't wrote a stupid song, I bet you haven't wrote a song at all.

So going back to the title....The Importance of Making Music You'll Regret Later.... I think that not only is it a good idea to push the limit with your music sometimes, I think you should be pushing so hard that you end up making music that you regret making later. I mean you should submerge yourself so deep into whatever it is that you do and take such outlandish chances that you later look back and say “What the hell was I thinking?”.

When you accept the fact that it's okay to write a bad song, your mind will be free to do whatever it wants. While I know of no person who can fly or use telekinesis using just their mind, I don't know of a person who can't come up with some insanely exciting music / noise if they let their brains go free. I'm thinking of that character “Q” from Star Trek the next generation who had powers that most closely resembled god. He could play with people's minds, change the future, change the past, or even walk through metal. These are all things that a songwriter can do if he/she isn't held back by the constrains of the mind. These are things that a songwriter can do when they are holding the gas pedal down without fear of smashing into a wall or cramming shards of broken glass through the neck's of pedestrian children.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that you should quick making music that's radio friendly. If that's your gig, definitely stick with it. However, I am saying that you can push whatever music you make to something further than it is now. If you write 10 songs this week, at least one of those should be so intense that it's almost useless. Push yourself to make music that is “too much”. Push yourself to write a song this week that you will regret later.

As musicians and songwriters, pushing the envelope is the only way we are going to get passed this whole “stale” problem that a lot of us feel the music industry is stuck in. The industry has been playing it safe for a long time. While this probably reduces the financial risk of promoting a band, it also explains the lack of breakout albums.

So anyway, just like a video game, there is no real risk. You won't really die if you get shot in the face by a bazooka. When it comes to writing songs, the only risk you have is not pushing yourself hard enough to come up with something new. The only thing you have to lose is your time. If you are playing video games that often, this probably isn't that big of deal either.