[whstl]

True. I know a couple people who work with soundtracks professionally for TV, and the crazy thing is that "writing songs fast" is a totally different skill in itself, so it's not enough to be an amazing player with decades of experience, or even an amazing songwriter, it's a different superpower that impresses other musicians too.

Those super-fast soundtrack/jingle composers, session musicians and professional songwriters have this "little bag of tricks" in their heads that they use to move fast and iterate. They know intricacies of the styles they work with, like chord progressions, rhythms, song structures, arrangement conventions and cliche lines. Then, the chord progression often "suggests" a melody (meaning: some notes sound more natural over different chords), and melodies often also "suggests" some lyrics. And they also know the rules well enough to be able to break them.

Naturally, to make something "beautiful" takes more than "speed" and "familiarity with the genre". But it is really cool to see people able to do things fast. I wonder if we could apply this to coding... I guess it's not too different from people able to do game jams, or hackatons.

[jimmydddd]

I recall reading that Bernie Taupin and Elton John first met when they separately answered an ad for a company that wrote jingles and music for commercials. Apparently the two were partnered together at the company and would crank out a high volume of content every day. If true, this gives insight into their prolific output during the late sixties and early seventies.

[jjeaff]

That and the cocaine, of course.