The Truth And The Lie: You Need More Time, Part II | ProducerHead Bars

Are You Working Blind?

You have a process. You have a way of doing things. And, if you can’t immediately describe it, you’re unconsciously following an invisible process. My point is not that it’s right or wrong, but that it is a choice to work blind. Process is personal and if anyone aside from you designs it, it’s not going to fit.

I’m not here to prescribe process. I am here to share three principles to help you ask yourself better questions, so that your process is consciously bespoke according to your answers.

1. Make Something and Finish Something Daily

When I first started producing, I was lucky enough to ask someone who has made it: “What do I do?” Their response was simple: make a new idea every day.

The ever expanding responsibilities of the modern musician make it easy to forget that you started making music because you heard music that inspired you to try. The catalog of other artists inspired you to explore your own musical capacity. Your catalog is the best of your ideas, and you find your best ideas by making a new one each day. The first step to building your catalog is documenting your ideas.

The only potential downside to making a new idea every day is that you may never finish anything, which is why I suggest developing a daily habit of finishing. It’s not a reasonable expectation to complete a song each day, but you can perform an act to nudge it forward.

When implementing this practice, define progress and success expansively. Making music is not easy. Genuine effort counts, even more important if this is something you plan to do indefinitely.

2. Define Progress in Time-Bound and Input-Based Terms

You know how much time you have to dedicate to music. If you only have five minutes in a day to make music (for more on this, see frequency), don’t make yourself feel bad because you don’t write a whole new song that day. Apply genuine effort to those five minutes to make a new idea. Maybe all you found was a drum loop that you like. Drop it into a track, save the session, and move on. What you started today, you pick up tomorrow. What you have at the end of any particular session is irrelevant. It is about harnessing momentum and linking sessions together over an extended period of time (for more on this, see the marathon method). The individual session is meaningful because of its representation as commitment. You were here today, you will be back tomorrow.

3. Decide what you’re going to do beforehand.

Know what you’re going to do before you sit down. This is especially important when you are working with smaller blocks of time. If you only have 10 minutes available, decide ahead of time that you’re going to spend it programming drums or writing a chord progression. For inspiration, here’s one of my favorite examples of what can be done in 10min.

Counter Argument:

“The blocks of time and the wins seem too small to be worth the attention.”

I hear that. And this is less about objective progress as much as it is about your mindset and relationship with what work looks like. The difference between unconsciously viewing five available minutes as time to kill versus useful to your creativity represents optimism of what constitutes opportunity. It is acceptance that ideal circumstances don’t exist and we therefore seize available moments, not to optimize or squeeze out every last drop, but to express our creativity.

Final Thought To Keep In Mind

We are not as good at estimating task duration as we think. The only way to improve is experience and observation. As you try this out, it’s important not to jump to judgments about something taking longer than it “should.” The goal is not to optimize work, it is to work.

ProducerHead is a publication for independent music producers. Subscribe free and get access to Sonic Stimulus Vol. 1 — a free sample pack, The Invisible Instruments — a series of creative frameworks for producers, and The Pocket — behind the scenes production sessions from guests on the show.