The Music Producer Mindset
This advice changed my music making, forever
One of the things that slows us down most as a producer is second guessing.
Now don’t get me wrong. It can take hours and hours to go from a blank project through to a fully mastered track. And it should! You should really care about that finished product.
But what about that initial idea?
I’ve worked with some incredible producers. We’re talking Grammy winners. And being around them taught me something that shocked me.
They don’t care.
Now hold up — that’s a bold statement. What I mean is, in the early stage of development, they don’t care about production quality. They just want to get their ideas onto the canvas as quickly as possible.
Let’s think about this a different way. If you were about to paint a picture of a house. Would you start by carefully drawing the reflection on one of the panes of one of the windows? No! You’d probably start with the outline. A sketch or a framework that you could build on.
It’s the same for music. The reason why so many tracks are never finished is because that initial idea just isn’t allowed out. You get bogged down in fine tuning the kick, or choosing your snare sound.
I’ll put it simply.
You have to stop caring.
The moment you get bogged down in the details, especially early on, is the moment you lose your way. You have to stop second guessing yourself and get all your ideas down, (even if you think they’re awful or disorganised) as soon as possible. THIS is what keeps your creativity flowing.
I’ve worked with a tonne of top producers over my career and the ones that have always stood out and made the grade are the guys that just get as many ideas down as quickly as possible.
Then they go back and refine things later.
If you’re caught up trying to find the perfect snare too early on, I guarantee the following will happen:
1. You will end up losing enthusiasm
2. You will end up walking away with an unfinished track
DON’T make the same mistake that so many producers make of going into crazy detail so early on! Get those ideas out! Get all of them in the DAW- all happening at the same time if needs be. You’ll have little chunks of ideas that you can move around later in the arrangement phase.
If you can stop caring and over analysing at this critical early stage, then I assure you, you will start seeing results with tracks that actually end up finished!
Another tip to bear in mind is creating as many ideas as possible in MIDI. Why? Because you can get all these ideas down onto your canvas in super-fast time. You can quantise with one press of the Q key and move on.
And then, once you’ve got your ideas down, that’s when you go back and fine-tune, but with complete control over all your ideas!
Even better, get a MIDI pack to start you off. Lay down a chord sequence, or quickly create your own progressions, using a MIDI Chord Pack. You can go back and tweak everything else later.
I hope this article inspires you in the same way I was inspired that day. We all need to speed up and stop caring! If the 808 isn’t slapping yet, don’t worry! Just get the pattern down and come back to it later.
I guarantee this mindset of caring less about details in the early stages will revolutionise your beat making.
Thanks for reading
Jay
