Few people ever sit down to intentionally write, record and release a hit song by choice. Some of it is determined by your talent, effort, vision, or muse. Much of it is determined by what your audience connects with, but a lot of it is determined by luck and plenty of other things out of your control.
If you knew ahead of time how successful each new song was going to be as you were writing it, would you stop working on it?
By no means should you ever be compelled to release something you’re not happy with. At the same time, don’t let some preconceived expectation of success stop you from finishing a song.
We can't decide which new song will be a hit but we can decide to finish the journey to see where it takes us.
When you can write without worrying about the outcome, you free yourself from any restraints or expectations and can simply create something new and unknown.
New and unknown is almost always more compelling than "more of the same"
We create art, not widgets off an assembly line. Our music shouldn’t be based on a standard blueprint that results in thousands of identical items.
Once upon a time, we released full albums. The strongest songs were released as singles to promote sales of the full collection of work. As things have evolved, there's been a significant shift towards the release of individual songs as the de facto model instead. This creates added pressure to make each song really stand on its own. As a result, we too easily scrap or shelve a lot of decent song ideas because we just don't think they're "good" enough to be a hit single.
We misplace every song’s value solely on its outcome, not its inspiration or creation.
Like baseball, we can find ourselves constantly swinging for the fences to achieve that one glorious home run. We can often strike out as a result and we miss an important lesson here: that a string of solid base hits often wins the game and is much more easily sustained.
Is your goal to be the one-hit wonder or to be an artist that has continued success over the long haul?
Like many audio engineers, I often use reference tracks when I mix and master. They help calibrate my ears to what "good" sounds like. Not all of these songs were hit records or were released by major artists. Some were deep cuts, others became rarely remembered bonus or filler tracks—but what they all have in common is that they all sound damn good, both sonically and musically. I'm familiar with them and I know them well, having heard them once and then wanted to hear them again. And again.
And isn't that the real goal—to make music that someone will hear and then want to hear again and again?
If I can help you finish your next project, please reach out. I'd love to hear what you've been working on. Tell me about your music!
Whenever you find anything of value here, please share it via social media and within your music-making circles.
Please subscribe
get thoughts on music-making & making music thoughtful
we respect your privacy
I’ve launched a new series of Getting Started videos to support anyone who wants to record their music but may not even know where to begin. Start with what you have before investing more time & money; you can scale your efforts as your musical goals change & budget allows.
I've written an interactive eBook to introduce the basic steps you'll need to complete if you really want to finish your new song, record it, and have it released to your audience.Best thing is, IT'S FREE! No gimmicks. It's simply my gift to you for being a music-maker.
I've posted a short video showing how you can quickly get your phone or tablet set up for recording your voice and instruments onto individual tracks that can then be easily shared and downloaded across multiple platforms. Get started making more music, more often!
Be strategic with your purchases to better integrate them into your existing music-making workflows.
Don’t sabotage your best efforts as you make your recording and release it to your audience.
Lessons learned from mastering your songs can also impact every other stage in the music-making process.
Don't miss the opportunity to make the song your own by injecting your personality and distinctive sound.
This video shows how to export individual multitrack files from iOS GarageBand and includes steps for converting MIDI tracks to audio.
While it can be difficult to take pride in everything you create, take pride in the fact that you are creating something.
Fix before you mix. Start the mixing phase with the audio you want to be mixed, not fixed.
Use the limitations of your mobile app to focus on capturing one solid performance at a time.
My new YouTube series on Getting Started continues with a short video that establishes the need to use headphones to monitor your audio while recording your music.
I’ve launched a new series of Getting Started videos to support anyone who wants to record their music but may not even know where to begin. Start with what you have before investing more time & money; you can scale your efforts as your musical goals change & budget allows.
With remote collabs, you can quickly have a full production ready for mixing & mastering without having to get dressed or leave your home.
Music is something that is needed more than ever. If we can’t support each other financially, we can support each other creatively to ensure that new music can—and will—still be heard.
Separate the song from the recording of the song to tell us a good story and make us feel something.
You shouldn’t have to wait until the tracking session or live gig to figure out if a song will come together the way you hope it will.
When someone hears your song for the first time, you have one chance to make that first impression. Will they listen until the end? Will they listen at all or press Skip?
More than anything else, your final mix is dependent on the efforts put into the songwriting, the performance, and the recording going into it.
It’s not just about proper credit but collecting potential revenue to fund your art. You know how hard you worked on your song. Take the steps to protect your rights..
Finding good answers to your music-making questions can be frustrating. I'd like to share my answers to common questions in hopes that it helps you and your music get to the place you want to be, sooner rather than later.
The recording stage of the process is critical because that's when we actually get to make music. Sometimes small changes make a big difference in getting the results you want.
Unplug to rediscover your song’s core vibe. It's not uncommon to spend a lot of time and effort building out a full production of a song only to scrap it all and go back to its roots. We can become unable to hear that the song was already there, and it was working quite well before we buried it underneath too many well-intended ideas.
Songwriters love their music for different reasons than the casual listener does, so how can we make music worth loving?
Here are 5 musical routines you can implement throughout this new year to help generate and finish more of your song ideas while staying better prepared to record and release them to your audience.
Develop a creative workflow and then find technology that will compliment your process, not complicate it. Remember that the level of quality in our music has to be preserved by the songwriters and the musicians, not the tools.
When used wisely, technology can be an incredibly effective tool for creating new music but it can also become the biggest hurdle in creating music that still feels musical. There must be a balance between efficiency and originality. We need to find tools to enhance our creativity, not to restrict, and certainly not to replace our creativity.
This video shows how to export individual multitrack files from iOS GarageBand and includes steps for converting MIDI tracks to audio.