How To Unf*ck Yourself as a music producer

A lot of times, our worst enemies in music production are ourselves. So, from time to time, we need to refresh our minds and start silencing these enemies to keep on making progress with music

4 THOUGHTS FROM ME

1. Silence your inner critic and stop overthinking your music.

When you overthink your music, you’ll face a serious risk of

• Releasing fewer songs than what you could or;
• Not releasing songs at all because you’re not 100% happy with the result.

These two can literally kill your momentum, and sometimes even your motivation, when it becomes an obsession. So:

1. Stop trying to reach for 100%. Getting a song to 100% done is a lie and a trap because it will make you pursue something that doesn’t exist. Instead, learn how to be happy without making everything sonically perfect because that can really slow you down. Before making any changes, ask yourself if anyone will perceive what you’re about to change.
   Or, if you don’t feel the song will improve at least by 10%, fight your instincts and don’t make the change. Get some feedback from friends, and if it’s good for them, learn how to make it good for you (for more on this, this video really helped me in the past);
2. Stop trying to impress anyone but yourself. Sometimes, producers get stuck not being able to release music after a major release on a top label since they don’t want to ‘lower their standards’ and go to smaller labels. Screw that. If you’re happy with the song, release it and have fun with the release, even if it doesn’t get signed by your past top label. Make it a goal to come back to it, but don’t make it a barrier if you don’t get it;
3. Focus on the experience of a song, not the details. What 95%+ of your listeners will care about your song is how it makes them feel, and won’t give a f*ck about the amount of attack you set on master or if the FX in your song is 0.5db louder or quieter. So, why waste your time overthinking these little details?
   Instead, go make another song and you’ll be doing your listeners a much bigger favor than obsessing over things only you hear/care about.

2. Stop focusing on what you don’t control.

One of the biggest issues in music production is the lack of control we, as artists, think we have over certain aspects of our careers.

The problem starts when we set expectations on things outside our control, which could later lead us to lose motivation if they don’t work out the way we expect, which can eventually cause us to quit making music. So, to avoid that:

1. Focus on what you can control. You can’t control how labels respond to your music, or how streaming services react to your release, but you can control the effort you put into your next song. if this song didn’t ‘make it’, try something new with the next one to see what works. You only control the amount of effort you put into your music, so make sure that your next song is better than your previous one, and keep it going;
2. Stop setting expectations on what you don’t control. You don’t control whether Spotify will pick your song for an editorial, but you can do your own promotion using Submithub or Groover, or even start your own playlist and put an effort into growing it so you don’t depend on Spotify. With labels, stop conditioning a song’s success to being signed or not.
   What you control is ‘making a better track’, ‘having fun with the track’, so the label should be seen as a bonus, not a consequence of your work;
3. Put your happiness in the center. Since I’ve stopped making music for labels and gone back to making music for the fun of it, it all became a lot more enjoyable, boosting productivity, motivation, and decreasing fear of failure. These are what will help you make music that might get labels interested, and even if you don’t get any interest, if you’re having fun with it, who cares, right?

3. Stop waiting for the right time and just do it.

Another really common ‘excuse’ from music producers not to produce is that we are waiting for motivation to produce, or we don’t have time to make music because things got busy, and believe me… Sometimes, I’m there with you.

But, here’s how I’m solving this right now:

1. Just sit down and do it.. When you work on music every day for a long time, it eventually stops being a struggle that relies on motivation and starts becoming a habit. So, if you’re struggling to even sit down to produce, make it a 30-day challenge for you. Produce every day for 30 days for at least 30 minutes and share this challenge with a friend.
   This will make it (a) fun by making it a challenge; (b) give you accountability by committing to it with a friend; (c) make it easier to sit down to produce by the end of your 30 days;
2. Schedule your production time in your calendar as if it was a doctor’s appointment. If you’re struggling to show up to produce because time is crushing you, stop treating it as a ‘when I have time’ to ‘I’ll make time for it’ the same way you do for your ‘fun time’. Pick a calendar and start blocking hours to produce (and to make your 30-day challenge);
3. Make music production fun again. A reason why you’re putting more time into Netflix or games than music is that music is not as fun anymore as it used to be, right? So, make it a goal to reverse that. (a) Find a community to talk about music; (b) listen to new music that might inspire you; (c) Start a collab with someone; (d) Try one of these exercises;
   Music is fun when we’re learning, making progress and stop setting expectations, and these ideas or this post or this post can help you recover having fun with it, which will make committing to produce a lot easier.

4. Crush writer’s block.

Another big problem for musicians is going through writer’s block, and solving it involves not only changing your mind and learning how to deal with it, but also crushing it by doing exercises, which can help you later change your mind.

1. Change your perception about writer’s block. The more you think you’re in a block, the more you can trigger your brain to actually be in a block, so changing your mind is always the first step. Accept the fact that you’re recovering from a block, and embrace making crap for a while. At this point, the act of showing up to do the following exercises is more important than the result you’ll have from them;
2. Mine your old ideas. I have a handful of melodies and chord progressions that I randomly write and forget about them, but when I’m feeling blocked, I go mining for anything that might trigger me. This is a quick way to spark some creativity, so start by making a folder of all unused ideas, and search through to check if anything inspires you;
3. Just do something, even if it sounds bad. Go to your DAW, write a chord and a bass progression, and start shaping this idea. Once you have an 8-bar loop that sounds nice (even if the idea is bad), stop, and do it again. Do this to break the block and to get your creative juices flowing, and, more often than not, you’ll come up with something you like (but it’s ok if you don’t);
4. Write like your favorite artist. Now, instead of randomly creating something, write the next 8-bar loop idea like your favorite artist or your favorite song. This can trigger you and put you in flow by making music inspired by what you love, breaking your block and getting you to write again;
5. Ask a friend to collab. If your ideas are not working, collaborating will allow you to work on someone’s ideas, taking the burden out of creating, and getting you back to working, which can eventually trigger your creativity.

3 QUICK TIPS FOR YOU

What else can you do unfuck your music career?

1. Optimize your environment.
Sometimes, we have an environment, digital or physical, that is so chaotic that we need to clean it to unblock ourselves and to get things done. Start by clearing out distractions. If you have thousands of plugins and sample packs, and the amount of options is getting you stuck, for example, uninstall/delete what you don’t use all the time. With fewer choices, you’ll have fewer distractions, which will make you focus and get things done;

2. Make your career and your producer life anything you want.
You don’t need to follow what everyone does in their career. So, if labels are not for you, self-release your song. Happiness is what drives us to produce, so if something is not making you happy, crush it! For more, read this post from Derek Sivers;

3. F*ck your comfort zone.
Don’t take your comfort zone as a place to stay. As soon as you get comfortable with something and you feel you’re starting to repeat it, push yourself forward and start learning new techniques. This can also apply to writing… the moment you feel your writing is feeling repetitive, go back to learning new writing styles, which you can check in one of these exercises.