Unrestrained Restraint: Why the Greatest Creators Choose Limitations
20,000 songs
In 2002, when Matt Farley was in his twenties, he and his friend Tom set themselves an odd challenge: make 24 hours of music.
Eight months later, they finished.
Then they raised the bar: a 30 minute album every day for a year.
Eleven months in, they were creating some of the best compositions of their careers. “The more we forced ourselves to write and record,” Matt writes, “the more likely we were to create something great. And it worked.”
Years later, he raised the bar again.
After noticing that his quirky songs earned $2 or $3 a year, he did the math. If 20 songs could earn $60, then 20,000 songs could earn $60,000. If he could produce 20,000 songs, he could quit his day job and create full-time. His goal was to quit his day job by the time he turned 40.
He didn’t wait for inspiration. He gave himself a deadline, a target, and a system.
He would make lists of topics—animals, office supplies, cities, and so on. “Then I’d say, ‘This week, I’m doing 80 songs about animals.’ I’d look up the 80 most popular animals, and I’d write and record a song about each one. A few months later, when that animal album was successful (by my very low standards), I’d do an album for the next 80 most popular animals.”
One week, 80 songs about animals. The next, 80 songs about something else.
Constraint after constraint, song after song.
“As I got closer and closer to 20,000 songs, I finally quit my day job after 17 years. I was now a full-time artist. It was glorious!”
Since 2021, he’s continued making two movies a year and 100 songs a month. As of this writing, he’s written and recorded more than 26,000 songs.
“He Had No Choice”
Beethoven called Bach the “progenitor of harmony.” Bach’s influence stretches from concert halls to the Beatles to Lady Gaga, and even into outer space—three of his compositions were included on the gold-plated record aboard Voyager 1.
David Epstein writes that Bach’s creativity came from the constraints he imposed on himself.
Take The Art of Fugue, a piece many believe is his greatest achievement. It begins with a simple twelve-note theme. One voice enters, then another, then another, until four independent melodies weave around one another. Each wanders off in its own direction before eventually finding its way back to the original theme.
Next, Bach gives the same theme a new rhythm, then flips it upside down. Soon he’s layering the original melody with its inverted version, all while following an astonishing number of musical rules. As musician Peter Mendelsund puts it, the “Level of complexity: scarily high. But gird your loins because this is where things get nuts.”
With each new fugue, Bach pushes the simple theme even further—playing it right side up and upside down, at double speed and half speed, sometimes all at once.
Then comes one of its most remarkable moments. It “occurs because Bach had to avoid violating the rule about overlapping melodies that make certain jumps at the same time,” Epstein writes.
“He’s forced into this. He had no choice,” Mendelsund explains. “And it leads to some harmonic territory that’s truly, truly groundbreaking.”
“A Cul-de-Sac of the Customary”
The best creators don’t wait for unlimited time or resources. They create within constraints—and invent them if they have to.
Given complete freedom, our brains tend to follow the path of least resistance. We fall back on familiar ideas, repeat what’s worked before, or grab the first solution that comes to mind. As one creativity researcher put it, “Without constraints, composition takes place in a cul-de-sac of the customary.”
The artist Saul Steinberg said, “What we respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”
It’s how you write 26,000 songs.
It’s how you create music no one has heard before.
The paradox is that constraints open up possibilities.
They’re less about limitations and more about freedom.
