Consistency is a vital part of all aspects of your musical journey, from marketing efforts to skill development. Here are four reasons why you should focus on being consistent and what you’ll benefit from it:
4 THOUGHTS FROM ME
1. Focus on consistently producing and finishing tracks and they will get done faster and better. If you focus on just finishing one perfect song every now and then or trying to look for one perfect idea to then start a new track, you’ll lose a lot of your precious time trying to fix or find the perfect song, which doesn’t exist, and will take you away from releasing new songs, which is what matters. When you focus on developing and finishing many tunes, you’ll likely learn a new skill or develop your current ones with every new song, which will make the next song always better than the previous one. In addition, not worrying that this one song has to be PERFECT will allow you the freedom to experiment since you’ll have other tracks coming if this song doesn’t work. This creative freedom is what can actually set you apart and make music that people will really want to listen to, which is key especially nowadays in music. Therefore, focus on creating and finishing more music rather than one perfect song.
2. You need a consistent release schedule to remain relevant to platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Imagine a show released episodes in a random and not predictable time span, and you don’t really know when the next episode is coming out. As a media outlet, would you promote that? No, right? That’s why streaming platforms value artists who are constantly uploading and bringing content to their audience in a predictable manner. When you release a new song every 4-6 weeks, not only your fans will like that you have new music, but these platforms will also see that you’re constantly bringing new content to their platforms and can possibly reward you for that, provided that you’re making good music. To achieve that, creating a buffer of songs, as mentioned here, is REALLY important to be able to schedule your songs in a consistent and predictable manner.
3. Consistently write new music to avoid going into writer’s block. When you focus on developing many ideas, let’s say two per week, you will understand that (1) not all ideas will be good, but by making 8 ideas per month, your likelihood of finding a new idea will be bigger, and (2) you’ll get into the habit of always practicing your ‘composition skills’, which will lead you to better and better ideas every week. Let’s do some quick Math, if you develop 3 ideas per week, that’s 156 ideas per year, and assuming 10% are good, you have 15 songs by the end of the year (which fits the schedule above), rather than if you are trying to develop 15 really good songs, out of just 15 ideas, that’s incredibly hard to do, if not impossible. Writer’s block is all about feeling pressured to compose something better than what you’ve done before, and by making more ideas, you lower the pressure on yourself to ‘deliver every time’, which will make you feel freer to compose, and, then, ideas will come more naturally to you, which will make dusting off the bad ones not as painful as well.
4. Stay consistent to improve your workflow and output more songs. The more you do one workflow, the better you’ll get at it, as mentioned in point #1. In addition, having a similar process each time, will decrease the time spent setting up each project. As shown in this step-by-step mixing walkthrough, in which you’ll see that I have a clear mixing workflow, having this clear workflow speeds up the mixing process since you’ll know exactly what is the next step, clearing your mind and avoiding overthinking, which will also make you better every time because of repeating the same process (familiarity) with a new song (new techniques). Therefore, if you don’t have a workflow yet for mixing, composing, mastering, etc., develop one, and the more you do it, the faster and better you’ll get at it.
1 QUESTION FOR YOU
How could you be more consistent with each of these
1. Releases? Create a buffer of 3-5 songs to be released in the future, which gives you more time to avoid having to always rush to produce a track to release on time;
2. Composition? Develop 2-3 ideas per week, every week, and you’ll have a load of ideas to choose from. One 8 bar loop, piano, kick and bass, and possibly some drums, and that’s it.
3. Networking? Get into the habit of meeting 2-3 new people every week, and certainly, the more people you meet, the higher your chances of meeting collab partners, developing relationships with label A&Rs or getting other business opportunities.
