Labor Day Music Making

Here in the US, today is Labor Day. A potential day off for many of us from our actual labor and a chance to relax at home with the family. If that is the case for you and you have some atypical free time coming your way this afternoon (or any day really) then why don’t you commit just one hour of your time today making music in your studio? The only way any of us are actually going to be productive in our home studios is if we push ourselves to churn out something. Deadlines lead to productivity and creativity, so let’s create a short deadline today!

Via Sean MacEntee Flickr

Give Yourself One Hour

Let’s make this simple. Just block off one hour today to shut yourself in your studio room, turn off the internet and the phone, fire open your DAW, and just start creating. One of the fastest ways to get up and running is to start with a songwriting template. This way you aren’t having to create tracks and assign things to correct inputs every time you want to make music. If you haven’t already, today might be a good day to do this.

Whether you start with a template or not, you most definitely could benefit from my series I did here on The Recording Revolution for the new year, called the One Song One Month Challenge. These are a series of short videos that walk you through the song creation process step by step to sort of motivate you to actually start and FINISH a song in a certain amount of time. You may not be able to do the entire thing the way you want in one hour today, but you can get a lot done in that hour and have a plan to finish this song within the month!

Keep Things Simple

So maybe you’re cool with the idea of blocking off an hour to get some music made in your studio today. Great! But just a heads up, you’ll need to keep things simple. Don’t spend forever finding the perfect synth patch or drum loop. Don’t test out multiple vocal mics to see which one works best for the given song. Focus less on your gear, and more on the music you hear in your head. Then just jump in and see what happens.

If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and download my free eBook The #1 Rule of Home Recording. I wrote this little ebook to help people be more productive and effective in their studios by learning to shift their mental approach. One of my readers a while back really took this to heart and made some serious progress. Here is what he said:

I enjoyed The #1 Rule of Home Recording very much. The eBook is a big part of what has motivated me to get back to working on my music. In the past week I have accomplished more for my music than in the past six months.

The big difference for me was what you said about working with the tools that you have. Previously I had been thinking that before I could start making recordings that would sound good I would need to finish converting my office into my studio. For this endeavor I still need to fix the sound of my room. While I know this is still important it is not as important as actually working on my music.

Working on music is more important than gear obsession. This is the difference. In the past week I have created a music website, uploaded all of my previous songs (most of which are just scratch tracks and sound like garbage lol) and I am currently working on a new song using what I have learned on your site. (The one song in one month videos are VERY helpful).

-Daniel

Just Make Music

This is exactly why I write this blog. I want you to be free from the trap of gear obsession and sound obsession. We tend to actually not get a whole lot done in our studios because we spend too much time thinking and talking about gear and making things perfect. The only way to learn is to jump in and try to make music. The more you mess up the faster you will get to making better music!

So keep things simple this labor day and just make music for an hour. See what happens. I bet you’ll be surprised (and encouraged) by what comes out of your mini recording session. Happy music making!