This is the artists' guide I never had - a collection of approaches to get you through the artistic struggle and beyond.
I will use the example of making music but these techniques can be applied to any art, skill or passion. If you are not a musician simply relate my music examples to your own chosen passion - the mechanisms will remain largely the same.
A sizeable and boiled-down list of these core ideas is offered at the end of the article.
Know what you love
Before you start with any endeavour you have to be certain that you love what you are after. For me it was discovering psychedelic trance on the dancefloor, experiencing the vastness and quality of the sound and the experience with other people dancing on the floor in the sunset.
In that moment everything clicked - I didn't know at the time how to make this music or how long it would take to get there, but I knew I needed to add my own aspect to the genre somehow and that I would eventually find a way to make it happen. I loved it, I found myself!
Back home when I started I felt really frustrated and started to doubt my goal - if this is what I love why is it so much pain pushing through the learning curve?
I endlessly beat myself up and felt guilty whenever I heard people say things like: "When you know what you love you could do it all day long even if noone paid you for it." That seemed reasonable to me but I made the mistake of endlessly questioning myself whether I really had picked the right "passion". Maybe I was lying to myself?
Shouldn't this be more fun if it is truly my passion?
My answer is: No, it shouldn't! ;)
Starting out in your passion is about as fun as your first day riding a bicycle (scratching your knees open and falling on the ground) or playing the guitar (when your body has not yet grown the necessary hard skin at the fingertips) - you want to do it and have it work but instead it hurts, nothing goes the way it should and after a while it seems utterly pointless and futile to continue.
This is completely normal and is no reason to doubt whether you really picked the thing you love. You have to trust yourself and not confuse the initial frustrations with having chosen the wrong thing.
When starting out - everyone is a beginner. The only question is: Will you push through or will you give up on day 2? Remember why you picked up this will to create music in the first place - the catalyst that made you want to do it yourself. If it brings nostalgia and a sense of gratification over you - you picked the right thing!
Even the most accomplished artists often describe their experience of recording an album as painful and challenging (yes, this even goes for 'world class records').
The phrase that you should always keep in mind is "blood, sweat and tears" - if you don't run into resistance doing what you think you want to do there might be something wrong actually. This stems from the circumstance that we compare the sheer perceived impossibility of getting decent results in the beginning with the high-class level of productions we have listened to since we were kids. Your ego will quickly want to compare the two and consequently concludes after the first hours of practice that the goal is utterly unattainable. This is not true - it's a product of our societal conditioning in an instant gratification society.
The reframe: Accept pain, challenge and failure as your best friends on your artistic journey!
Your first track that you poured endless hours into SUCKS? GREAT! Pretty much anyone's first track sucks despite all the efforts involved in making it. The difference is: Some have made that pain so much their own that they simply gave up - the successful ones on the other hand have found a way to let that pain be their friend and continue their journey with a new track, letting the first track be as shitty as it may be.
You should always place your will to continue much higher than the quality of your actual results, especially when starting out!
Aim for the works you admire
When starting out you need to aim for some direction. This could be as easy as choosing a genre you want to go for - and it could even be a wide range within that genre. You want to make guitar music (no matter whether it's metal, rock'n'roll, punk or reggae)? You want to make electronic dance music (whether it's trap, psytrance, techno or house)?
There is no need to fully know where you will end up, but pick the general direction you want to go for and choose artists' tracks you love as something to aim for.
The goal in this is not to copy them in the end, but to have some place to start until you have gotten more proficient with your tools. In the beginning it can actually be valuable to try to simply copy other artists out there, just to get something done that is your own production. The more you continue the sooner you will find your own style.
When starting out it is vital that you:
don't compare your first results with the tracks that have become highly acclaimed and successful. You may have wanted to sound like that famous DJ you love with your first track but if you now listen back to your track to his in comparison - don't get discouraged if they are worlds apart! His track was only a crutch to get you going - comparing the end result of both tracks is unfair to you because you need more experience to turn out better results.
celebrate your first success in completing a track - no matter how terrible it might sound compared to the pros! The second track will be much better than your first - we are humans, we learn and grow all the time in doing things. We can't help it. Pat yourself on the back for achieving your first milestone of a completed track!
Remember that the tracks we get to hear by successful or skilled musicians are their GEMS! I cannot overstate this enough. We tend to think that anything this guy or that band turns out is high quality, polished and awesome. What we tend to forget is that these same artists have also once:
started out as beginners, not knowing anything about the craft, having no experience or skill.
have produced many shitty tracks and demos you as a fan have never gottan around to hear because they have never been released.
In other words: We only ever see or hear their best 5% of actual things produced. We never see their failed projects, that song that was promising but had a terrible chorus, that old demo where everyone cringed, the tracks that were nothing but crap.
It is vital that you don't commit the fallacy of thinking that all he pumps out is gold! Often, the majority of tracks by musicians never ever make it onto an album or out into the world because the tracks are just too bad! So try to keep in mind that we only hear their crème de la crème and that there is no need to think that every track you make has to be awesome.
Quite the contrary.
You cannot produce gold without producing lots of average or "bad" tracks. The goal is not focussing on producing gold but instead to pump out as many tracks as you can as soon as you can let them go when they are "decent enough".
You will never strike gold if you don't dig a lot.
Quantity in producing is a prerequisite for eventually reaching quality, so make more tracks that are decent instead of trying to make one track that is worldclass! You need more mileage before you can produce gems on your own.
The importance of mileage
"What is mileage" you ask? To me as a musician it probably is the most important concept ever in any artistic endeavour. Simply put it means you have to find a way to spend many hours doing the thing!
In the beginning this is more important than ever: You need to gather experience, knowledge, techniques and your own preferred workflow. It just doesn't appear out of nowhere, it needs to be cultivated - something that we cannot force as human beings in any other way than simply doing the thing!
What does this mean in practice?
- Don't hold on to your unfinished tracks and projects for too long. Sure, you could always improve on this aspect or that aspect of your track - finetuning the details forever because it may never seem good enough. But that is not your task. Your task is to become more proficient at what you do, and the only way this can be done is by letting go of your imperfect creations in order to move on to new creations that mirror your ever-expanding level of skill.
I have made the mistake of harboring unfinished tracks on my harddrive for years, getting more and more frustrated that I seemed "stuck" and that the tracks would not get finished, to a point where I felt really terrible about them (literally being scared of jumping back in to finish them). It seemed impossible, and this will eventually take all the passion and fun out of what you are doing, because it is an obsessed and ego-ridden way of looking at your craft.
The best example I can give is that of a bird singing in a tree. It sings whether someone walks by and loves it, or whether someone walks by and hates it. The bird doesn't care. It doesn't judge, it doesn't analyze its own singing. It just sings.
You have to become that bird. You have to trust that your imperfect creations are a requirement for you to eventually get better and grow. You cannot get better by trying to score a homerun on your first day on the field. You have to cut yourself some slack and be grateful to have come thus far already. When you feel a track is becoming stale and too painful to even want to continue working on it: Release the track!
Set yourself a final timeframe in which you will polish what you can and then simply let go of the track, as imperfect as it may be! It is the only way to retain your passion and to keep moving on to higher levels of craftsmanship.
This is because:
- The process of creating music is much more than just choosing the "right" setting on your instrument or synthesizer. You could spend a lifetime perfecting how to make a sound that is awesome - and when you eventually get to that level it will feel good. The problem is you might now be a master of sound design but are still a bloody beginner in all the other areas that are essential to your craft - arrangement of your sounds, song structure, mixing, mastering, etc.
It is much better and solution-oriented to try to improve on the entirety of the process for each track bit by bit, gradually getting better at all skills needed until you eventually have a decent grasp on all aspects instead of a masterful grasp on just one of the aspects.
You want to release as much as you can let go of in order to force yourself to run through the whole complete process as many times as possible - from opening the blank canvas project to putting your finished project out there to start a new one. Each time you run through the entire process you learn things that you will need, and you can only do so by not overemphasizing one aspect of the process but to try to balance your focus onto all aspects of the process, even if they only grow minutely with each round. It's much better than obsessing with one aspect, and will get you better much quicker!
- Releasing 'imperfect tracks' will give you the great luxury of being able to track your own progress. Today if I open my soundcloud I can literally SEE AND HEAR my evolution as an artist in the electronic music scene, because I dared to release tracks that were not all that professional!
It's like taking old objective snapshots of your ability at different stages along your journey, and capturing what you knew back then and what you were capable of. Being a human being we can't help but become better at what we do - it's automatic and cannot be avoided. So when you listen back to your old tracks of two years ago their "shittiness" or "low quality" is suddenly transformed into pure love and motivation for yourself because
- you will instantly hear how much you have grown since then
- you will recognize suddenly how much work you have already done (instead of having a harddrive full of forgotten and unreleased tracks that you poured your heart into)
- you will be able to spot your major areas of improvement and your areas of stagnation where your new releases still sound similar to your old releases - which allows you to focus a bit more on these areas in your next track
In the German language we have this saying "No master has ever fallen from the sky" - meaning 'practice makes perfect', and mileage is the only way to become better at things. Walking the walk. Instead of worrying about your lack in skills be happy when you can let go of a project and take all you have learnt with you - nobody can take that away from you now, and you have gathered more and more mileage in doing so.
A great dogma that I utilize often goes like this: "It's better to reach your goal with 65% than to not reach it with 100%"
Get it?
If you aimed for 100% right away chances are you will sabotage your own growth and progress because you are not efficiently accumulating mileage. You will instead get frustrated and beat yourself up needlessly 'til your passion starts to dim and frustration takes over.
Embrace imperfection! It is OK to not sound like your heroes, to not write awesome songs yet or to not get totally proud of what you have just created. That point will come, you just have to keep going for more mileage! When you do finally reach that point (it will happen many times along the way) you will not only have that first song among your many songs that you are truly proud of, you will also have the satisfaction of knowing you persisted and pushed through the bad times. Which will just fuel your love for what you do and make you feel like you are progressing - because you are!!! Instead of "obsessing" over your lack of perceived progress.
The other nice side-effect of going for mileage instead of perfect results is that you will build a fanbase while you learn! Think about that for a moment. You will attract people who can give you feedback on your work, where you can still improve and what you already are good at. By the time you truly made your first great track you love you will already have people who can celebrate it with you! Not to mention that were you to hold back all your releases until you felt you actually made a great track - there will be noone to listen to it because nobody yet knows that you exist at all.
Start releasing tracks as soon as you can let them go and see your fan base grow along the way. By doing this you will have a much more stable community of fans and supporters, and also give some people the sweet luxury of being able to claim one day: "That artist? I've been with him ever since he started out!!! I love his music!!!"
Going for mileage will help you find your own ideal workflow! The importance of a good workflow cannot be overestimated. When we start out we think it's all about knowledge and acquiring skill, but more important than that is finding a way of working that works for YOU. An efficient way of doing things, an method to structuring your approach to the craft in a way that maximizes your efficiency.
A good workflow cannot be forced. You can only discover it by accumulating more mileage. When you first start out everything is most likely a mess and that's totally alright. The more you progress and let go of old projects the more you learn how to do things in a less time-consuming manner with great results. You can listen to other people describe their workflow and find inspiration in it to establish and find your own. But sooner than later you will get to apoint where extra knowledge and techniques don't help much to progress further - instead it is the task of streamlining your way of doing things that makes you pick up speed in gathering mileage.
A good workflow allows you to move through the stages of song creation with less effort and more fun. Flow states can occur when you work easy and from intuition rather than overthinking everything you do all the time. When you reach a flow state in your craft you will truly become obsessed with your passion as it will seem to just flow out of you without any shoving needed on your part. Again mileage is essential for finding your individual workflow that brings out flow states in you.
If you want to learn more about this crucial concept of mileage come read up on it in one of my other articles "Lifehacks for the Mind: Part 3 | Mileage over Results"
Don't forget that releasing tracks doesn't mean you can never pick them up again! If you save your project files on an external hard drive you could always come back at a later time when you are more proficient and simply do a remix of your old track! Much better than trying to go for the "perfect result" right away. So in releasing imperfect tracks you have not really lost anything - but you will have gained tremendously over the long run.
Your focuse for mileage should be "proud that I have done something today". It is not tied to the result - just spending TIME doing what you are after is good enough. Even if it's just ten minutes a day - pat yourself on the back for it! You have moved ever so much closer to becoming great at your craft.
On bad days when no ideas seem to be forthcoming try to be happy with at least having spent some time doing the thing, even if it seemed fruitless in the end. Every time you work on your craft you are moving in the right direction - that should be your focus. This way you will always be able to keep the passion alive and to not get frustrated with your lack of results.
If you want a useful dogma for the focus on mileage - put this as your desktop background:
Even if it's only 10 minutes - it counts.
Persistency is so much more valuable than irratic binges or working. Be a steady marathon runner, not a sprinter. Consistency will pay off greatly, so work on your thing every day even if it's just for a little bit.
Theory vs. practice
When learning your craft it is essential that you gather information from other people, such as educational videos, books or tips from other artists. This however can harbor certain dangers:
- You get stuck on learning all day long without actually producing enough yourself
- You get stuck in others' preferred workflows and ways of doing things vs. establishing the ones that work for you
A great pattern to follow is that you go and learn theory for a bit of time only, then go and practice in actuality. When you have gathered some practical experiences doing the thing - come back to the theory side of things to learn more.
As conditioned people we have overemphasized the importance of theory and knowledge over hardcore practical experience. Getting stuck on either side of the coin will make you take longer and become less efficient gathering the skills and mileage you need:
- when overly focussing on theory you have little chance to actually understand why certain lessons and techniques of it are important or how they can help you individually
- when overly focussing on practice you might take a long time to eventually stumble upon smarter ways of achieving what you want to achieve with the crude methods you have come to discover on your own.
A good time to switch over to the practical side of things is when you feel that the information presented:
- cannot be understood by you (yet)
- cannot be gauged for its usefulness (yet)
- does not lead to the immediate solution to your current problem at hand
A good time to switch from practical to theory is when:
- you have no inspiration to start or continue working on a project
- you have an idea what you want to do but don't know how to achieve it technically (yet)
- you feel you have too little understanding of your tools to work efficiently
As everything in life: Balance is key. If you feel into your inner being you will know when you are mindlessly watching info to procrastinate on your work, and on the other hand when you keep working at your craft while strongly suspecting that you might be missing important techniques or workflow hacks to achieve your immediate vision for your current track.
Try not to learn too much in advance, as your mind will not be able to retain irrelevant information. Anything you can apply and use immediately is relevant - all information beyond that can wait 'til you have caught up in practice.
Practical tips
So keeping these general ways of approaching your passion in mind, are there actual practical things that can help you progress in your craft? Yes! Let me share some of the most powerful ones with you that I have discovered along the way. These - again - apply to all artistic crafts, not merely to making music.
A fixed band is not a requirement, you can do project-based collaborations with other musicians to share your knowledge, approaches, techniques, hacks and styles of workflows in making a single track at a time.
It forces you to reevaluate established ways of doing things so that you may find better approaches
It forces you to make compromises in taste when you and your collaborative partner disagree on aspects of the track or the track creation process ("blood, sweat and tears" again) - that will ultimately benefit both of you if you can find a way to deal with and push through these areas of disagreement that may arise, and get the track done regardless. Another great piece of mileage accumulated (namely a first collaborative success and lots of new experiences).
Another great idea in working with other musicians is to purposefully choosing a style you normally don't go for! This has several huge benefits to you and your progress in learning to become better at your craft.
You will feel free to try out all kinds of things due to the "in the end this is not really my thing so I don't care much"-attitude. For a psytrance producer like myself it's simply glorious to build - say - a beat for a rapper that needs music for his lyrics. Suddenly I find myself completely unconstricted by my goal to build a great track. I throw most of regular ways of doing things out the window and feel reborn. I try things I would never try in my own music and I discover: "Wow! That actually works as well!"
Because of the level of detachment you have to that other style you normally don't go for you will:
- tend not to overthink too much
- be happy with less
- give a great gift to your collaborative partner who may have NO skills in building beats at all
- discover aspects of the style you can use for your 'own' music of choice
- get your mind off your regular tracks and style (take a heart vacation to come back to your own tracks with a refreshed spirit)
If you set a deadline and make sure that this side project does not take up too much of your time you will become more familiar with an easy-going workflow which will drastically change your ease in approaching your own cherished music.
It's all about becoming easy in what you do and letting the track go when you can.
Deadlines may seem to be a stressful idea - you set out to make a track but already have the timeframe set in which you have to get it done. But surprisingly, deadlines can be one of the greatest catalysts for your growth as an artist as
- you will be amazed how quickly and efficiently you actually can produce when you don't have the luxury of letting a track sit forever in the making
- it will force you to spend time more equally on all aspects of song creation. If the deadline is tonight and "all" you have done is creating sounds, you better get your ass to arranging and mastering NOW with what you have - because you are running out of time ;)
Deadlines can be immensely helpful in gathering more mileage. And the more often you do make that deadline (especially when others depend on you making that deadline) the more you will see that a good track doesn't need years of tweaking. Rather a good track requires a quick, easy and uninhibited way of working - to give it your best you can at the time without overthinking things.
Similarly to working with deadlines you can sign up and commit to participating in contests! There are contest for song writers out there, contests for mixing, remixing and mastering. In a way it is the surest way to make the deadline because your ego will hate missing that deadline when you told everyone you will make it ;)
Steemit is particularly amazing for this type of activity as
- there are countless community competitions on Steemit where you can make stuff happen within the given deadline in the field of your chosen craft.
- there will be additional rewards to you making the deadline or even winning the contest (in addition to you acquiring more mileage)
- you will meet many other artists on a similar path as yourself. This can greatly help you spot your own weaknesses, improve upon them, and get the spiritual support you need to continue through the tough times where inspiration seems to be elusive.
- you will be able to give your feedback to other artists as well, and will be surprised how much you can actually teach them with what you know already
- you will be able to further increase your fan base and tribe of supporters as some of the other artists you meet within contests will dig your style and gravitate towards your work from now on.
So to recap:
- Find what you love and don't confuse the initial pains of growing with "choosing the wrong passion".
- Aim for artists' work that you love, but give yourself ample room to grow on your own terms.
- Never compare your initial results with the ones of the pros. They have a headstart.
- "Blood, sweat and tears" is as much a part of the growing process as flow states and utter joy at what you do. Being an artists is not always peachy and carefree - growing is a challenge.
- Don't get frustrated or quit when things seem to be stuck. Persist! Better times are coming!
- Be like a bird - just sing your song regardless of the world's feedback.
- Don't run a burnout sprint - walk at a steady (daily) pace.
- Better to reach your goal with 65% than to not reach it with 100%
- Embrace imperfection and release your imperfect creations to make room to grow!
- Aim for mileage in your craft above all else. The more time spent doing what you do the better you will become.
- Find the balance between theory and practice.
- Collaborate with other artists.
- Do work for others as an excuse to take a break from your regular style in order to discover new ways of doing things.
- Make use of deadlines.
- Take part in community competitions and contests to push your boundaries, gather feedback on your craft from people other than yourself and build a tribe supporting other artists through your feedback.
- Pat yourself on the back for every bit of mileage accumulated.
- Always celebrate your own successes even if they seem minute.
- Continue <3
I wonder: What are your favorite hacks and insights that helped you on your journey? Any advice for your fellow artists out there you want to share? Are there any techniques or perspectives that have helped you tremendously in overcoming the fear of producing non-superb works and letting them go?
I would love to hear your thoughts and what works for you, so we can all consider even more perspectives to get over ourselves and to go on producing content that will eventually be as golden as the tracks our idols in music have produced for us.
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Thanks for stopping by <3