Complete Those Songs!

When thinking about what I should include in my first "Tips and Tricks" post, one piece of advice that I kept seeing over and over again really stuck with me:

Complete those songs!!

I've seen firsthand how easy this trap can be to fall into as you can waste your time doing countless other things that while may feel productive, aren't giving you that full potential of growth and education.

When you complete a song you learn so much more than say working on a bunch of 8 bar loops. Those can sound amazing and looping them for 3 minutes gives you somewhat of a song, but this is the point where you really start to do different stuff and learn a lot more. Reading articles like these and watching YouTube tutorials are other areas where you'll feel like you're making progress and growing, and while you certainly are to an extent, nothing will be better than just actually diving in and doing it yourself. 

Don't get me wrong, there is definitely a place and time for helpful articles and video tutorials. You can learn countless things from them and really save a ton of time. Just make sure the majority of your time is spent making music and completing those songs. That is after all where the main fun and satisfaction will usually be! You end up teaching yourself how to arrange a song, how to mix and master using various plugins and effects and where to add different instruments/sounds/elements and so much more. 

This is one thing that I personally have to work on more. Right now I'm trying to stick with a goal that I'm finishing one standard song a week. I usually like to make a few different loops and when one inspires me just that little bit more, then I choose that one to go forward with. This ensures that at the very LEAST, I've got one song completed every 7 days. Weirdly though you don't necessarily want to concentrate on the goal of one song a week, but rather get into the habit of completing one song a week. This will become ingrained in your weekly life and before long will feel totally normal and expandable.

As mentioned before, this seems to be an extremely important piece of advice if you're serious about trying to get better at music production. It's the habit that you get yourself into that after a year you'll have 52 songs completed (following my once a week goal) and you'll be able to look back with pride and accomplishment as well as being able to see the improvement along the way.

What other pieces of advice do you think are extremely important in music production?

Cheers :)

BPM

Bonus: Trying to learn better habits for your music and life in general? I'd really recommend 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear. It's a superbly laid out book full of great points that can really help if you're struggling with certain areas in your mind and life. Some of the points I make here were learnt from this book and in the future perhaps I'll write a post that looks at how we can apply the teachings of 'Atomic Habits' to music and music production specifically.

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*Article photo courtesy of Niels Erdmann