Hey there!

Today, I want to share with you something I have been promising in one way or another for months: my four rules of music production.

As a disclaimer, these aren't actual rules, of course. There are no music production police to come after me or anybody else should these not be adhered to. In reality, these are simply four truths of being a music producer that I have found to be so unfailingly true that I have chosen to adopt them as rules in my creative musical practice.

How did I learn these facts? Trial, error, and observation. Since 2020, I have taught over 500 hundred music producers and have spoken with countless others at various panels and talks I've given at conferences. Between my own experiences and hearing the experiences of so many others, I have found that we all share a common experience: we struggle to finish our songs.

Having insight into the process of so many different music producers, it's clear that the inability to finish songs can and does manifest at plenty of different choke points throughout the music production pipeline. What is perhaps a nice moment of synchronicity, my four rules do follow the production pipeline in a sense, though they were not designed for that reason.

Law #1 - The fundamentals are everything.

You have heard me mention the importance of the fundamentals again and again and again. (I could keep linking but you get my point.) I talk about the fundamentals of music production so much because everybody believes that the mark of a great producer is the ability to do some really fancy cowboy shit - and it is not.

Every fancy production trick can be broken down into a sequence of fundamental actions. That's why the fundamentals matter. Without the fundamentals, you don't know the WHY behind what you're doing - and that is a problem.

Music production is a multidisciplinary and interconnected art form, meaning that choices you make at one step of the process affect the choices you make later on. An excellent mix can't save a poor arrangement, for example.

The path to becoming an advanced producer isn't a path, it's a racetrack. Learn the fundamentals, practice the fundamentals, never stop practicing the fundamentals. You will then start stringing those fundamentals together in ways that look like straight up magic to other producers.

This is literally how I've grown my YouTube channel from six hundred to 6000 subscribers in six months.

Law #2 - Use what you've got.

Music technology is constantly evolving at an absurdly rapid pace. There are new synthesizers, plugins, and tools dropping every day and the marketing copy all says the same thing.

Want to make music? You need this to do it.

When you hear that message from every possible outlet AND you are in fact struggling to finish your songs, that message starts to seem perfectly sound. You must be missing some piece of gear, right?

Nope. In reality, we're at the point where stock plugins are phenomenal. I do 99% of my work all with stock Ableton Live Suite. But this conversation goes beyond what's simply in your DAW. The reality is that whatever collection of tools you have currently at your disposal is more than likely enough to make great music and express yourself artistically.

I believe in upgrading and new gear is always fun but unless it is truly filling some gap in your toolset, it will never make the difference between making great music or not.

Of course, to use what you've got effectively requires Law #1.

Law #3 - Inspiration is action. Take action.

Once you know the fundamentals and you know your tools, what are you going to do with them? This is the point at which a lot of useless music mythology and imposter syndrome sets in. There's an ignorant, yet persistent believe that musical ideas are rare and otherworldly and that they are only bestowed upon the worthy. This is untrue.

The difference between you and any great artist you admire is that they simply didn't stop what they were doing. They just kept going. There are of course factors into how long a runway anybody has such as wealth and institutional support, but the fact remains unchanged: they never stopped.

Inspiration can be cultivated, it can be learned, and it can be wired like a faucet to turn on as needed. You can summon inspiration by knowing your stuff (Law #1), knowing your tools (Law #2), and building a consistent habit of finishing songs (Law #4). Along the way you will learn what interests you and pick up tricks and skills to keep the music flowing. This is how professional producers, songwriters, artists, and composers can have such consistent outputs.

Law #4 - 70% is always better than 100%.

The finish line is the momentum killer.

I have worked with so many students who are hellbent on seeing results in their music. They get organized. They get their workflows down. They crank out ideas and they diligently produce their track. They even start mixing it and put in a few great passes on it.

And then they stop.

There are excuses. There is frustration. There are existential and philosophical discussions. Ultimately, the momentum crawls to a stop and the song doesn't get finished.

Nearly 10 times out of 10, the immovable force that my students run into is the fact that the song isn't perfect. The way they imagined the song in their mind isn't the reality they produced. They couldn't reaching 100% of their vision.

100% is impossible to reach for anybody. You may be able to get to 90% if you spend a year working on the song and never once change your mind over the course of that year. But is that really worth it? No.

Your goal should be 70%. Your goal should be good enough. Why? Because you can reach 70% relatively quickly and your good enough is more than likely great for your listeners or clients.

But if you go to only 70% how do you ever improve? See that's the brilliant trick. Your 70% gets better and keeps getting better. If you commit to releasing your tracks at 70%, at some point you will look back and realize that your current 70% is about 150% of what you were capable of at the beginning.

This is a lesson that is still sinking in for me personally. The growth of my YouTube output compared to my output as an artist is stark. Yet, twice this month alone I've cranked out great tracks in a few days so that I could bolster a demo reel for a game.

Perfectionism can get all of us. Don't let it.

Rules are only rules if they are followed

I assembled these rules for myself organically over the course of the last few years but, every time one has become apparent to me, I have chosen to live by it. The results have changed my creative practice for the better.

If these rules resonate with you, follow them and stick to them. You will face friction and frustration and you will feel like your progress is slowing down. But it will pick up and when it does, you'll be farther along than if you had continued down the path you're currently walking.

Til next time,

ZW