Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician
# Summary
The author of this article explains that by treating music making like a routine job that you do everyday, and putting in the time day after day without worrying about how good the output is, you can become really productive and consistent in making music, and produce high quality work.
# Highlights
- Put in sheer time to get better at your craft, watch videos, learn how things are done.
- Make music everyday, or on a repeatable set pattern. It’s not something that depends on whether you feel like it or not.
- Create a list of “chores” that is required to finish a piece of music. Do it everyday. Things to think about:
- Steps to take a song from nothing to finish
- Methods of music storage and retrieval for composition
- Techniques to arrange the music into sections, how will you deal with bpm issues?
- How will you control performance quality? Will you replay the tracks?
- How will you remember how to play it? Will you figure it out again?
- What is the plan for lyric writing (again something to practice everyday)? And how will you sing it? Pick a style that suits your voice- Like OSI.
- What about the production phase, Mixing and Mastering?
- Can you use AI-art (Stable diffusion) to generate album covers?
- What is your method of distribution?
- Never judge a piece of music when you just created it. File it away, you might love it later.
- Make music boring. Get numb before you get good.
This follows the same principle that I’ve heard Misha Mansoor from Periphery talk about. He made tons of songs under the name of Bulb. He mentions too that he kept at it, till he got better at composing music. For example, he released his 110-song album from his pre-Periphery days in various parts. https://blabbermouth.net/news/peripherys-misha-mansoor-to-release-10-albums-of-bulb-material/
# References
https://the.scapegoat.dev/turning-music-into-a-chore-is-what-made-me-an-artist