NEW & IMPROVED SECOND EDITION

THE PRODUCER’S GUIDE TO

WORKFLOW &
CREATIVITY
How to beat creative
block, finish more music,
and have fun doing it.

SAM MATLA
 The Producer’s Guide to Workflow & Creativity

Version 2.0

© Copyright 2016 EDMPROD LTD.

All Rights Reserved.

This publication, including any of its parts, may not be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without prior written con-
sent from the publisher. Inclusion of brief quotations in reviews and educational material
are permitted.

Disclaimer: The information presented in this book is based on the author’s experience,
knowledge, and opinions. The author and publisher will not be held liable for the misuse of
the information in this book.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Workflow 8
2. Creativity 20
3. Creative Block 41
4. Finishing Music 63
5. High Output 85
6. Collaboration 104
7. Deliberate Practice 117
8. Originality 131
 INTRO
“These days the sessions for a CD album could be recorded almost anywhere in the world,
from large urban studios to somebody’s bedroom studio. The engineer responsible for the final
mixes could be anybody, including the artist. This way of working does open up artistic possi-
bilities that may not have been available in the more regimented big record label system, but it
also means that there is no longer the kind of technical oversight that the old system offered.”

— Robert Auld

After listening to a trance and techno compilation at the age of 14, I decided I
wanted to make electronic music.

Within a few hours, I’d downloaded a copy of FL Studio (I can’t remember

which version) on the family computer and had made my first 8-bar loop.

It played out through the $10 computer speakers and sounded absolutely terri-
ble. But I’d made something. And it didn’t cost me thousands of dollars worth of
equipment.

Music production has become democratized. Anyone who owns a computer and
a pair of speakers or headphones can make a commercially viable song.

Aside from the fact that modern music production requires very little invest-
ment (there are plenty of free plugins and DAWs out there, not to mention the
fact that most popular DAWs have trials and student discounts), it also enables
full autonomy and control over the creative process.

For many, the complete autonomy is the most exciting part. It was for me - be-
ing the youngest in a 5-piece rock band and feeling like I had no input. When I
was making something on the computer, I had all the input.

But that autonomy doesn’t come without its downsides.

THE ISSUE
Now that everyone and their dog can make music, the world is a wonderful place
and we coast through it making amazing music and enjoying the creative pro-
cess...right?

Not quite.

It’s true that music production has become easier, but that doesn’t mean it’s
easy.

In fact, many of the creative challenges that early producers and composers
faced are still prevalent today, especially among bedroom producers.

Problems such as failing to come up with good ideas, or any ideas for that mat-
ter; trying to stay focused; not finishing music; creative block; workflow slowly
and ineffectively; not developing skills fast enough and not sounding original
enough.

What’s worse? That list doesn’t include the problems that have arrived as a re-
sult of increased accessibility...

For starters, there are many more people making music. This isn’t a problem in
itself—I think it’s a great thing that more people are making music. However, it
does mean there’s more pressure to create something that stands out among the
noise.

Another problem is the sheer complexity of music production. It encompasses a

range of skills including composition, sound design, mixing, and also the mar-
keting and business skills necessary to build your brand and make a career out
of what you love. This is overwhelming.

Perhaps the most pressing problem is that most of us do it alone. Being able to
make music by yourself with just a laptop and headphones is a blessing and not
a curse, but it certainly makes things difficult.
Sure, you don’t have to compromise on creativity due to another member (un-
less you’re part of a duo or group), but you also have little direction and input.

When you’re on your own, it’s easy to get lost, stuck, and distracted. You get in-
side your head and tell yourself stories about how hard music production is, and
that maybe you’re not cut out for it.

These problems haven’t occurred by chance. We’ve slowly become less aware
of key disciplines and habits that top creative people possess. Many of us lack
workflow, or a workflow, lack creative thinking, and lack focus.

This book is a manual. Not only will it help you overcome the aforementioned
problems, it will also provide you with a rock solid framework that, if imple-
mented, will transform the way you make music.

Here’s to becoming a better producer.

Cheers,

Sam
 HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT
OF THIS BOOK
Writing a book takes a long time. You also paid good money for it.

The last thing I want is for people to skip through the book, learn a thing or two,
and then never take action.

This book is a resource, and should be treated as such. It’s something you can
come back to time and time again when you get stuck, or simply want to up your
game.

What I don’t recommend is trying to implement everything straight away. This

book contains a lot of strategies and advice, and to try them all at once is impos-
sible. Try things out, experiment, but don’t feel like you have to speed through
everything.

Note: there’ll be an assignment at the end of some chapters in part one. I highly
recommend working through them.

The Creative Strategies book is more practical. You’ll learn how to optimize
your DAW for speedy workflow, and you’ll also learn the workflow strategies
that I and many other producers use at each stage of the production process:
idea generation/composition, arrangement, and mixing.

I recommend reading this book first before Creative Strategies. This will pro-
vide the foundation that will allow you to exploit the strategies and workflow
tactics I feature in the other book.

One last thing—I plan to update both books often and re-launch the whole pack-
age two to three times per year. If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear it. You
can email me at sam@edmprod.com.
 1
WORKFLOW
 WHAT IS WORKFLOW?
The word “workflow” gets thrown around a lot in production circles, but what
does it actually mean?

Wikipedia’s definition states that workflow is “the sequence of industrial, ad-

ministrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from
initiation to completion.”

As electronic music producers, we can think of workflow in a similar way. I like

to define it as...

The process we go through to find a viable musical idea and turn that idea
into a finished song.

Every producer who finishes music on a regular basis has a workflow. They go
through a process to move from viable idea to finished product.

But anyone can have a workflow. Getting drunk and slouching over your laptop
while recklessly stabbing your keyboard is a workflow if it leads to a finished
song. Whether it’s ideal or not is another question.

If you’re not finishing music, however, then you don’t have a workflow. You
might start with a viable idea, but you never make it to the end. You initiate but
don’t complete.

Whether you’re in the first camp—you are finishing tracks on a regular basis but
feel like your ideas aren’t great and you want to increase output—or you’re in the
second camp, not finishing any music at all, one thing’s for certain...

You need an effective workflow.

9
What an effective workflow looks like
An effective workflow is a flexible workflow.

At its core, an effective workflow includes processes and techniques for:

• Idea generation
• Idea development
• Sound design (optional - not a necessary process given presets)
• Arrangement and structure
• Mixing and tweaking

It also includes strategies for working quickly and overcoming common prob-
lems that arise during the production process.

Let me give you an example for each:

• Idea generation: composing from a visual source (a scenic photo for

example)
• Idea development: adding subtle layers to the existing idea to embel-
lish certain parts
• Sound design: performing sound design/synthesis in a separate session
(outside of a song project)
• Arrangement and structure: taking a bird’s-eye view of structure be-
fore looking at the details
• Mixing and tweaking: using the fader-first mix strategy

A strategy for working quickly and effectively: creating “ready-to-go”

default templates to reduce the time between conceptual idea (in your head) and
actualized idea (in your DAW).

A strategy for overcoming common problems: quick reference file - if

you’re struggling with buildups, reference a song with a great buildup.

10
You might ask: “Why would you come up with so many strategies and tech-
niques to simply make a song?”

This all seems overwhelming at first, but all producers have a set of strategies
and techniques that they employ consciously and subconsciously when working
on a track. They might not lay it out as I have above, but they do have certain
ways of dealing with problems or performing specific production processes.

One example comes from a track I have been working on recently. As I spent
more time on the track, it started to sound a bit dull and I felt it wasn’t interest-
ing enough. I was losing motivation to work on it and felt the urge to move on to
a new project.

Rather than give up and move on, I used a technique I call Phrase Focus, which
sounds more awesome than it actually is.

Starting from the intro, I looped eight bars then added, subtracted, and changed
everything I needed to make it sound great. Then I moved on to the next eight
bars.

I didn’t consciously decide to use this technique. It’s something I’ve been doing
for years, and somehow my brain knew it was the right tool for the job.

Someone who has an effective workflow has a comprehensive set of these types
of techniques and strategies. A toolbox, if you will. When they need to solve a
problem in their track, they either know immediately what to use, or they spend
time searching for the right tool or strategy.

The difference between workflow &

creative habits
I like to think of workflow as a process or set of processes, and creative habits
as… well… habits that support that process or set of processes.

11
For instance, your workflow might include these basic steps:

1. Use a MIDI keyboard to write a melody

2. Write other ideas around the melody using your DAW’s piano roll (chord
progressions, motifs, etc.)
3. Build a full chorus loop around the idea(s) (adding drums, bass, FX, etc.)
4. Arrange
5. Mix, tweak, and add automation.

The creative habits that help you adhere to this process (and do it well) might
include:

• Consistent music production for ninety minutes per day

• Using a pen and paper for ideas that come to mind during production
• Setting an objective for each production session

At this stage, don’t worry too much about the difference between workflow and
creative habits. It will make more sense as you read through the book.

Flexibility & Rigidity

“I’m a firm believer in the chaotic nature of the creative process needing to be chaotic. If we
put too much structure on it, we will kill it.”

— Ed Catmull

An effective workflow is more than just a structure. It’s something flexible -

something that adapts to problems and what one is trying to achieve with each
project.

If your workflow is rigid—you follow the same exact steps and processes every
time—you’re prone to getting stuck and being less creative.

How do I know? Well, I used to have a rigid workflow. I’d approach each project
the exact same way: loop eight bars, find a decent kick drum, build a drum loop,
write a bassline and melody...

12
This worked for a few projects until I realized that my ideas simply weren’t that
interesting and my basslines were too simple.

Because I focused on the drums first, I hurt my ability to be creative when it

came to songwriting and composition. Not only did the drums dictate how the
rest of the song would be written, but my drums ended up sounding similar
across each project.

One day I decided to take a different approach and write the melody first. It was
hard at the beginning (after all, I was changing a habit) but once I had some-
thing decent, the track practically made itself, and it sounded much better than
the music I made using a rigid workflow.

I’m not making a judgment on whether the melody first approach is better than
the drums first approach—there is no objectively better approach. The point is
that I allowed myself to be flexible—to change my workflow—and as a result, I
was able to be more creative.

This point here is not to think of workflow as a comprehensive set of rules and
conditional logic that one must pass through to create a good track. Think of it
as a flexible framework (consisting of strategies and techniques) that grows and
adapts to your skill set and style over time.

At the same time, realize that some things in your workflow should be semi-per-
manent. Workflow benefits from habit and repetition. If you change your work-
flow with each new project, you’ll never know what truly works. My advice is to
commit to a certain strategy or technique until you get stuck, then try another
one.

13
EVERY CREATIVE FIELD HAS A
WORKFLOW
In non-musical creative fields, workflow still exists.

Writer, speaker and lawyer Sam Glover has a workflow for writing.

Glover starts with a simple text file, making the point that rich-text editors like
MS Word are distracting due to their many features. He keeps his text files in a
folder called Writing in Dropbox, which also contains two other folders called
Abandoned Writing and Writing Archive.

One of his favorite tools for drafting is Byword (I use the same tool for writing
blog posts), and he edits his work in MS Word or Google Docs.

A more relevant example is the workflow I’ve been using to write this book:

1. 3-5 days brainstorming and outlining the project

2. Research based on outline
3. Shitty first draft in Scrivener
4. Second draft in Google Docs (better for editing)
5. Final copy + design

Whether it’s video editing, photography, writing or music—every creative field

has a workflow.

Don’t believe me? Google [insert creative field] + “workflow” and surprise your-
self.

14
 WORKFLOW HELPS US FLOW
In his popular book Flow: The Psychology of Happiness, Dr. Mihaly Csikszent-
mihalyi talks about a phenomenon he calls the state of flow...

“Flow is the way people describe their state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously
ordered, and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake. In reviewing some
of the activities that consistently produce flow—such as sports, games, art, and hobbies—it
becomes easier to understand what makes people happy.”

When you’re in the state of flow, time goes out the window, and all you’re think-
ing about is the task at hand. You’re doing something challenging, but not too
challenging, and as a result, your brain is fully engaged.

In one particular section of his book, Csikszentmihalyi talks about how to get
into the flow state, or at least improve your chances of getting into it. He states
that one of the requirements for flow states is having clear goals.

Why workflow leads to flow states

It’s said that playing video games is one of the most powerful flow-inducing ac-
tivities.

When you’re playing a video game, you have clear goals. There’s a macro-goal
(finish or win the game) and a smaller goal (finish the specific mission or level).

To reach the smaller goal, there’s typically a set of challenges or steps you have
to go through. You know what these steps are (most of the time), but actually
doing them is the hard part.

But you know, more or less, what to do to achieve the goal. It’s challenging, but
you know it’s possible.

15
We can replicate this system of goals while producing by using a workflow.
Without a workflow, there’s no set of steps to go through to achieve the small-
er goal (e.g., writing a melody), and if you don’t achieve the smaller goals, you
don’t achieve the overarching goal (finish a song).

Think about it... who’s more likely to get distracted and lower their chances of
getting in flow? The person who has a framework for writing a melody (jamming
on keyboard, recording MIDI, removing unnecessary notes, adding variation),
or the person who doesn’t have a framework at all?

Workflow makes music enjoyable

“Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant
to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person’s skills, it usually
begins to be intrinsically rewarding.”

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We enjoy making music most when we’re in the state of flow. Perhaps that’s the
reason why we get into it in the first place.

If an effective workflow increases the frequency of flow states, it follows that an

effective workflow makes music production more enjoyable.

Don’t take this the wrong way. The point of having an effective workflow is not
to make music production easy. All creative work is difficult. The point is to
make sure you’re putting your effort into the right things.

As we’ll see in the next chapter, flow and enjoyment are necessary for creative
thinking. If you find production to be a stressful, confusing and frustrating pro-
cess, then it’s unlikely you’ll be creative. If you’re not feeling creative, you’ll find
production stressful, confusing and frustrating. It’s a vicious cycle, but you can
get out of it with the right tools and mindsets.

In short: workflow ­-> flow states -> enjoyment -> creativity -> better result

16
 WORKFLOW HELPS US
IMPROVE
You’ve probably heard of the 10,000 hour rule, which states that a person needs,
on average, 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become world-class at some-
thing.

Not 10,000 hours to become good, or even great, but to become world-class.

The key thing that people overlook when discussing the 10,000 hour rule is that
it’s 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

“When we see people practice effectively, we usually describe it with words like willpower or
concentration or focus. But those words don’t quite fit because they don’t capture the ice-climb-
ing particularity of the event. The people inside the talent hotbeds are engaged in an activity
that seems, on the face of it, strange and surprising. They are seeking out the slippery hills.
They are purposely operating at the edges of their ability, so they will screw up. And somehow
screwing up is making them better.”

— Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code)

While concentration and focus don’t sufficiently describe deliberate practice,

they are definitely components. You cannot operate at the edges of your ability
without focus and concentration.

How does workflow play into this? Well, it helps you practice more deliberately
by aiding focus and concentration.

How workflow aids practice

When you’re focused—concentrating on a single task—you’re not wasting time.
All your attention and energy is being directed towards what you’re doing.

A workflow helps you concentrate because it sets clear objectives and parame-

17
ters. If your workflow suggests that you should be focusing on writing a melody,
and you know the steps you need to go through to write a melody, then you’re
much more likely to focus because you have a clear path.

Without a workflow, the task of writing a melody becomes much more challeng-
ing, and when something is unnecessarily challenging and confusing, we default
to doing something trivial like tweaking a drum hit.

As soon as you start working on the trivial, you stop practicing deliberately and
start running on the treadmill of faux practice. You don’t add to your 10,000
hours.

In addition to this, workflow aids deliberate practice because it forces us to focus

on our weak points as producers. As you build your workflow you’ll quickly iden-
tify what those weak points are.

For areas of music production you find hard, you’ll generally have a strong strat-
egy or framework and will consciously employ it when you work on those areas.
For instance, I find drum programming and arrangement extremely intuitive
and easy, but melody writing and coming up with initial ideas is more difficult.

Because of this, my workflow is built around my weak point—coming up with

ideas. It’s optimized for it. I don’t do anything else until I’ve come up with a
good idea, and I use certain techniques and tricks to make sure that I only focus
on idea generation until I’m satisfied.

That way, I’m not avoiding the difficult work that’s closely linked to deliberate
practice. Rather, I’m struggling in the areas that most need improvement, thus
forcing myself to operate closer and closer to the edge of my ability.

18
 TAKE ACTION
Because this book is useless if you read it without applying the strategies, I’ve
added a section like this at the end of several chapters. These sections will con-
tain an assignment for you to complete before moving on to the next chapter.

Your first assignment is to find your main weakness and build a framework that
makes it easier.

Let’s say my weakness is arrangement, I might create the following framework/

workflow:

1. Drag a professionally made track in a similar style [to the song I’m mak-
ing] into my DAW
2. Roughly copy the structure of the track - write down any ideas that come
to mind while doing so
3. Listen to how FX are used in the track and create placeholders for my
track

Your framework can be as simple or complex as you’d like. Just think about how
you can add steps to something you find difficult, how you can “hack” it.

Note: I don’t want to chuck you in the deep end. This assignment is difficult
(well, they all are) and will force you to think. Take your time.

19
 2
CREATIVITY
 WHAT IS CREATIVITY?
To understand what creativity is, we first need to understand what creativity is
not.

What creativity is not

Creativity is not innate
One common myth surrounding creativity is that it’s a gift given to a few lucky
people. Something innate that cannot be learned, practiced, or developed.

Even if this myth was true, it wouldn’t change the fact that Thomas Edison went
through 3,000 different ideas and iterations for lighting systems before coming
across one that was practical and profitable. It wouldn’t change the fact that Mo-
zart composed over six hundred pieces of music during his short life.

If creativity is innate, why did Edison and Mozart need to work so hard?

The origin for this myth comes from the left vs. right-brain myth, which states
that one part of the brain is analytical and the other creative and free-roaming.
The understanding was, and still is, that people are born more “right-brain” or
“left-brain” and are more creative or less creative as a result.

But this is simply false, as psychologist and author Christian Jarrett points out:

“Creativity isn’t the preserve of one side of the brain, and it isn’t a talent con-
fined to people with a special kind of brain. Real neuroscience says: if you’re
human and you’ve got a brain, you’re capable of being creative.”

Creativity is not a Eureka moment

In 2014, a film called The Imitation Game was released.

21
It follows legendary mathematician Alan Turing as he attempts to crack the
Enigma Code (The Enigma machine was a cipher machine used to protect mili-
tary and diplomatic communication).

Like many films before it, the film features a memorable Eureka moment where
Turing figures out how to crack the code.

The film is realistic because it’s based on a true story but also because it shows
the intense struggle and effort that precedes such a moment.

Turing didn’t think of creativity as a passive process the way some people do. He
didn’t go about his day waiting for the code to crack itself. He actively thought
about it—actively tried and failed repeatedly.

It’s easy to think of creativity as just a Eureka moment. You’re driving some-
where and that beautiful melodic idea starts playing in your head, or you’re
having dinner with a friend and the solution for a problem in the project you’re
working on falls down from the sky.

These moments do indeed happen. They happen due to the subconscious mind
working on the problem in the background. But this can only take place after the
initial, conscious work has been put in.

In other words, it’s not passive. You have to put in the work first and often con-
tinuously to experience such a moment.

For example, let’s say you’re facing a problem in your project: you can’t come up
with a melody over the top of the chord progression you’ve made.

You have two options:

1. Quit at the first sign of difficulty, take a break, and assume you’ll be able
to work it out later.
2. Take a break, come back at it soon after, and try again, and again until it
works.

22
The second option is more effective. Sometimes you’ll find the solution while
you’re working on it (consciously directing your attention and effort), and other
times the solution will come out of nowhere, randomly.

You can hack this and make it work in your favor. Ernest Hemingway used to
finish his writing for the day mid-way through a sentence or paragraph to let his
brain work on the problem overnight. In the morning, he’d pick up where he left
off with new ideas.

So, creativity can include Eureka moments, but they do not happen without
hard work.

What creativity is
We know what creativity is not, but what is it?

The first thing to understand is that creativity is a skill like any other.

It’s a way of operating or thinking as opposed to a talent, as John Cleese once

said (more on that in a moment).

If this is true, and I believe it is, then it’s something we need to develop. Creativ-
ity is a habit. You can’t magically improve your thinking overnight, it takes time.
It takes consistent hard work.

Take the trait of confidence for example. It’s extremely hard to build confidence
overnight. You can’t just flick a switch and be confident all of a sudden.

Why? Because confidence is a way of operating and thinking. It’s something you
consciously need to think about in hundreds of different situations—when you’re
meeting someone new, attempting a challenge or starting a new routine.

Confidence begets confidence; creativity begets creativity.

23
Funnily enough, confidence actually plays a part in creativity. If you don’t be-
lieve you’re creative, it’s unlikely you will be. This introduces one of the many
paradoxes in creativity: you have to pretend you’re creative in order to be cre-
ative at a given moment in order to develop the skill of creativity.

Michael Michalko explains:

“To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected con-
nections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing noth-
ing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look
at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace
failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disre-
gard them.”

If you still think creativity is sexy and elusive, then read this next sentence care-
fully…

Creativity is HARD work.

If creating music was easy, everyone would be doing it, and that’s not happen-
ing.

Even successful creative people moan (and I understand why) about how hard it
is to create. Steven Pressfield is one example. In his well-known book The War
of Art, he talks about something he calls The Resistance: a force that tries to
stop us from creating, that tells us to procrastinate, that we’re not good enough,
and that failing is bad.

“People who take on complicated creative projects become lost at some point in the process. It
is the nature of things—in order to create, you must internalize and almost become the project
for a while, and that near-fusing with the project is an essential part of its emergence. But it is
also confusing. Where once a movie’s writer/director had perspective, he or she loses it. Where
once he or she could see a forest, now there are only trees. The details converge to obscure the
whole, and that makes it difficult to move forward substantially in any one direction. The
experience can be overwhelming.”

— Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc

24
Please don’t get discouraged. Yes, creativity is a skill, and yes, it’s hard to devel-
op. But it’s worth it.

In fact, one could argue that it’s more rewarding because of the fact that it’s
hard. We wouldn’t treat it with as much respect if it was easy and freely given
out to everyone.

In summary:

• Everyone has the potential to be creative.

• Creativity does not only consist of Eureka moments. It is not a passive
process.
• Creativity is a skill that needs to be developed.
• Creativity is hard.

25
 HOW TO BE CREATIVE
During his famous talk on creativity, John Cleese compares what he calls the
“closed” mode of working with the “open” mode of working.

The closed mode is what Cleese describes as a rational, logical state of mind
where we feel there’s a lot to be done, we’re driven, somewhat anxious, impa-
tient, and process-centric.

The closed mode is our default. It’s what we’re in most of the time—always
thinking about the next thing “I have to pick the kids up from school and I have
to get some milk on my way back home.”

While the closed mode is necessary for day-to-day living, it’s terrible for creativ-
ity. During the later stages of a project it’s helpful (where you need to do a series
of small things to finalize your song), but during the ideation stage it’s far from
conducive.

The open mode, on the other hand, is more relaxed. It’s expansive, less purpose-
ful, and more contemplative. There’s little to no pressure, and we feel free to
make mistakes.

To be creative and come up with ideas, we need to be in the open mode.

Ideally we’d be able to switch, instantly, at will, between the two modes—to
move from a logical, pressured frame of mind to an open, expansive frame of
mind.

Unfortunately, for most of us, doing that is impossible. That doesn’t mean get-
ting into the open mode is a function of luck, though. What it does mean is that
getting into the open mode requires a few things to be set in place, which Cleese
talks about.

26
How to get into the open mode
You need five things to get into the open mode:

1. Space
2. Time
3. Time
4. Confidence
5. Humor

Let’s look at each of them.

Step 1: Create space

Because we’re living in a digital age, we need to create space in the physical and
digital dimension.

Creating space in the physical dimension

If you’re trying to make music in the open mode while located in an environ-
ment where you’re typically in the closed mode, then it’s difficult to be creative.

To get in the open mode, it’s important that you have a physical space where you
won’t be disturbed or feel under pressure.

Many well-known writers have built their own “writing cabins” on their property
(or, for the ultra-successful authors, properties) where they go to work without
distraction. Obviously that’s not feasible for everyone. It can be expensive, and,
if you’re renting, you can end up with a potentially peeved landlord.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary.

What is necessary is that your workspace, your studio, whatever you want to call
it—is a place where creativity can flourish. This doesn’t mean you need to have
fancy interior and an amazing studio chair (though it does help), but rather, that

27
you remove all potential distractions and do everything you can to make your
environment comfortable.

If you have gadgets sitting on your desk that aren’t related to music production,
it’s a good idea to move them out of sight. They’ll enter your field of view and
become toyed with as soon as you reach a challenging point in your project.

Personally, I like to keep my environment as simple as possible. In the past year,

I’ve done away with a second monitor, because I find it much easier to focus on
one thing at once with a single screen. My monitors are on stands, my laptop
and small MIDI keyboard sit on my desk with my interface, and aside from a
cup of coffee sitting next to me, that’s it.

TAKE ACTION

What can you do right now to improve your workspace? Are there potential-
ly distracting things you can remove from your desk? Do you have a secluded
spare room in your house that could be used as a temporary studio?

Creating space in the digital dimension

Taking care of your physical environment is a good start, but it’s not enough.
You can go as far as making your own production cabin out in the woods, alien-
ate all your friends and family members, and become a hermit—but you’ll still
be prone to distraction when using a computer to make music.

Desktop notifications, emails coming in, things popping up on your screen—all

of these affect your ability to focus and be creative.

One solution is to have a dedicated production computer—a machine not con-

nected to the internet that only contains production-related software. But this is
an expensive solution, and it’s not easy to justify the cost.

The second best thing is to take measures to ensure you won’t be distracted:

28
 1. Turn off your internet connection. Ideally your internet should be
turned off or disconnected at the wall (so it’s not easy to turn back on.)
This works great unless you live with other people (if you do live with
other people and do this, you’ll welcome more distraction and it won’t be
pleasant).
2. Close all unrelated programs. That includes any internet browser
you have open. Basically everything except your DAW.
3. Make sure your DAW is in full-screen mode so you’re not tempted
to open anything else.

To cover all bases, move your smartphone to a place (ideally another room)
where you won’t be tempted to pick it up and start using it. Also, unless there’s
a significant reason you need to receive calls, make sure it’s on airplane mode or
Do Not Disturb mode.

By doing these things you essentially make yourself have to work to give into
distractions.

TAKE ACTION

Before moving on, set a timer on your phone in another room for 30 minutes.
Do everything mentioned above, sit down, and work on music until the timer
runs out. Notice how you feel afterwards and compare it to how you feel when
you make music while distracted.

If you’ve always worked in a distracted state, this will be difficult, but push
through it.

Step 2: Set a time

You’ll notice that there are two instances of “time” in Cleese’s five requirements.
You’ll find out why in a moment, but for now—time limits.

It’s logical to think that setting a time limit on a production session inhibits cre-
ativity because it adds pressure, but this isn’t the case. In fact, if you don’t set
some sort of time limit, you’re less likely to focus and work quickly because

29
there’s no incentive to do so.

An example of this outside of music comes from my own life. When I started
working on EDMProd full time, I didn’t have a fixed schedule or set hours. I
didn’t see any issue with working the whole day.

Because there were no set boundaries or time limits, it was easy for me to pro-
crastinate in the afternoon and tell myself I’d work later that night.

It works the same way when you’re making music. If you don’t set a time limit
and you’ve got a full day or night ahead of you, it’s easy to break your focus, head
over to YouTube and watch a few videos while telling yourself you’ll make up for
it later.

Another less obvious benefit of setting time limits is that it gives others clear
boundaries. If you live by yourself, this isn’t as big of a deal. But when you live
with roommates or have a wife and/or kids, it’s helpful to be able to say to them
that you’re going to make music for 90 minutes and ask politely that they don’t
disturb you for that time period (unless it’s urgent).

Note: if you want to learn more about why time limits are effective, look into
Parkinson’s Law, which states that work expands so as to fill the time available
for its completion.

How long should your sessions be?

I used to think that the optimal time period depended on the person, but the
more I do research on and read about focus and attention, it seems that 90-min-
ute sessions are the most effective.

If you haven’t practiced doing focused work, a 90-minute session will be diffi-
cult, but it won’t be near impossible like three to four hours of unrelenting con-
centration. They’re short enough to be achievable, but long enough to make sol-
id progress on a song.

30
In his book The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker recalls asking the president
of a big bank why he had always scheduled 90-minute planning sessions with
him:

“Why always an hour and a half ?”

“That’s easy. I have found out that my attention span is about an hour and a half. If I work
on one topic longer than this, I begin to repeat myself. At the same time, I have learned that
nothing of importance can really be tackled in much less time. One does not get to the point
where one understands what one is talking about.”

Of course, with practice, you can move from the closed to open mode more
quickly and get more work done in less time. But 90 minutes still seems to be
optimal.

Why not shorter sessions?

There isn’t any harm in shorter sessions, and let’s be honest, we don’t always
have a spare hour and a half of free time.

You can still make progress on a track in a short 30-minute session, but they
aren’t ideal for being highly creative and working on complex problems in a
project, because doing so requires intense focus. You can still move the needle,
though, so don’t use the fact that you’ve only got 30 minutes free as an excuse
not to produce.

Another issue with shorter sessions, which Cleese touches upon, is that when we
decide to move into the open mode, there’s this residue that exists where your
mind is adjusting for 15-30 minutes or so after the transition. You’re still think-
ing about irrelevant things. It’s only after this residue fades away that the real
creative work begins.

So, if you were to schedule a 30-minute session to work on something that re-
quired focus, and it took you 15 minutes to truly get into the open mode, then
you’re only getting 15 minutes of focused work in as opposed to 75 minutes
during a 90-minute session.

31
Note: if you’re not used to focused production sessions, doing this will be hard-
er than you think. A 90-minute session is long. If you find it to be impossible,
start smaller and work you way up. Commit to 15 minute sessions, then 30 min-
utes, and work your way up to 90 minutes in 15-minute increments.

TAKE ACTION

Block out one 90-minute production session in your calendar as soon as your
schedule allows. Make sure you keep your commitment!

Pro-tip: I find it much easier to get into the open mode and focus if I feel re-
laxed beforehand. If you’re busy running around and rushing to get things
done, it’s difficult to switch into a creative state. Give yourself 30 minutes or so
to sit back, relax, maybe read a book, and then start your session.

Step 3: Time (patience & persistence)

The third requirement (and second instance of time) is better described as a
willingness to sit for long periods of time without seeing any sign of success.

That sounds daunting and unpleasant, so let me remind you that creativity is
not sexy. Even a highly-skilled producer can sit in their studio for hours on end,
experiment, try a bunch of things, only to come up with nothing worthwhile.

It’s during these sessions, where persistence and patience are needed, that you
grow the most as an artist.

Why? Because you’re operating at the edge of your ability. You’re trying new
things and failing, A LOT, but rapid failure is a good thing. It shows you what
you’re doing wrong, and what you need to do instead, and that’s how you learn.

If you don’t have a healthy attitude towards this kind of struggle (you don’t have
patience and persistence), then getting into the open mode will be incredibly
difficult.

32
Step 4: Have confidence
In the last section I touched upon the link between creativity and confidence: if
you don’t think you’re creative, you won’t be.

You have to first be confident in your ability to be creative and make music.
If you’re a new producer and haven’t properly developed your skills yet, you
should at least be confident in your ability to come up with ideas, or simply your
ability to learn.

You also have to be confident in the fact that mistakes are a good thing, as Cleese
explains:

“When in your space-time oasis, nothing will stop you becoming creative more effectively than
the fear of making a mistake.”

Experimentation precedes originality. To experiment freely, you need to be cu-

rious, not worried about what’s right and what’s wrong. You need to have confi-
dence in the fact that every mistake you make is an essential and beneficial part
of the creative process.

Be confident in your ability to be creative.

Step 5: Don’t be too serious

Cleese calls this requirement “humor,” but I think it makes more sense to view it
as “not taking things too seriously.”

If you’re too serious when you begin a production session, you’re not going to
get into the open mode. Remember, creativity is the art of play.

Now of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take your craft or your music se-
riously. You absolutely should. It just means during the ideation stage, you need
to view your production sessions less as an obligation and more as a period of
time where you’re allowed to try new things, experiment, and have fun. Play.

33
 CONSISTENCY & CREATIVITY
“...when you’re regularly working on things you enjoy, the walls come down and seemingly
insignificant moments spark inspiration.”

— Gregory Ciotti

There’s a lot of talk about consistency, and some claim that it’s a requirement for
anyone who wants to do great creative work and become good at their craft.

On the surface level, though, consistency and creativity seem to be at odds:

What if I don’t feel inspired? Surely if I force myself to make something every
day I’ll lose interest and start to dislike the process, right?

These kind of questions are common, but they’re not excuses or good argu-
ments. I haven’t heard of any producer who decided to start working consis-
tently and ended up hating what they were doing. As for the inspiration thing,
it’s beside the point—some days you don’t feel inspired, so do something that
doesn’t require inspiration.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this book, it’s to be consistent.
Pulling an all-nighter once every two weeks to work on music is not sustainable
and won’t help you as much as putting in one hour or so daily.

So why then is consistency so important?

Consistency makes creativity easier

One of the hardest parts of music production is… starting. For most of you,
you’ve probably noticed that once you start and work for a while, you tend to get
lost in the process and producing becomes easy and enjoyable.

Consistency makes creativity easier because it reduces the friction between

starting and not starting.

34
You can’t remove that friction. It’s always there. It’s The Resistance as Pressfield
describes. But you can reduce it significantly.

A relevant example: the first edition of this book, which was much different to
this edition, took a long, long time to write.

Now, books naturally take a long time to write, but the first edition took too long
because I failed to be consistent.

When I decided to start the project, I spent a few days on it over the first week,
but then stopped for 5 months. My excuse for stopping was that I didn’t have
the time due to a new part-time job I was working in addition to running EDM-
Prod (I did, of course, have the time, but the excuse had been made).

It went on and on. I kept telling myself that I’d finish it by the end of that month,
but then “that month” kept changing and being pushed back.

The issue? I was too focused on the goal rather than the process. I was not being
consistent.

With this second edition, I’m writing for 2-3 hours every day. It’s still hard—I
didn’t feel like writing today—but it’s a lot easier than being sporadic and work-
ing on the project out of urgency or pressure.

What’s my point? When you’re working day in and day out on music, something
interesting happens. You build confidence. You know that because you spent 2-3
hours making music yesterday, you can do the same today, tomorrow, and the
next day.

Consistency keeps ideas flowing

The flow of great musical ideas will stagnate if you don’t work on your craft con-
sistently. Your brain isn’t being forced to think about music—consciously and
subconsciously.

35
Consistent work puts you in a place where good ideas can find you. When you’re
working on music every day, even if it’s just for an hour or so, your brain ends
up mulling over ideas and things you’ve learned during that hour, even when
you’re relaxing or doing something else outside of music.

It’s the least appealing yet most helpful advice for creativity: create more and
you’ll be more creative.

Consistency begets consistency; creativity begets creativity.

Consistency helps you create more

One reason producers avoid consistency is that they feel it’s not enough.

I used to feel this way. I felt that if I only put in 60-90 minutes a day I wasn’t
spending enough time producing, and I felt guilty.

Because I felt guilty, I wouldn’t spend that 60-90 minutes a day producing. In-
stead, I’d wait until the weekend, where I told myself I’d spend two whole days
making music. Of course, that never happened, and I’d typically only end up
spending four to five hours on music during the weekend.

By telling myself that 60-90 minutes daily wasn’t enough, I actually worked less.

Consistency allows you to put more hours into your craft.

Two hours of concentrated production work, every day, averages out to about
one track per week if we assume that the average song takes 10-15 hours to
make.

If you kept this up, you’d have 52 tracks by the end of the year--roughly four
tracks per month.

Even if 10% of those were release-worthy, you’d still have five solid releases
throughout the year.

36
You can see how it adds up. You don’t need to spend 16 hours a day in the studio
to put out quality music.

Don’t mistake consistency for boring

routine
Consistency implies habit, it implies routine, but it’s not a routine in the sense
that you have to do it at the same time every day for a set number of hours.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think it’s a good idea to work on your craft consistently
around the same time every day, but it shouldn’t be set in stone, and there are
two reasons why…

The first is that you’ll inevitably slip up, or an inconvenience will stop you from
producing at your set time for your set hours.

For example, I try to produce every day for at least one hour. I normally do this
in the evening, but if I have something going on in the evening, I’ll find some
time in the morning or during the afternoon.

If you make it a law, you’ll inevitably break that law and feel disappointed in
yourself when you do. Instead of thinking of consistency as “this is something I
must do every day for X hours at this time,” think of it as “this is what I must do
every day. This time tends to work best, but sometimes I’ll have to do it at a dif-
ferent time.”

Besides, some days you’re just not going to be able to make music. Life gets in
the way, in good ways and bad. Don’t feel guilty, just make sure you pick up
where you left off.

The other reason why it’s bad to be too rigid with your routine is that creativity
benefits from change. That doesn’t mean you should change your routine every
day—as there has to be some degree of consistency for creativity to thrive—but
it does mean it can be beneficial to change things up for a day or two every now
and again.

37
You could change the time of day you produce, or your environment. Graham
Cochrane of The Recording Revolution did this by mixing an EP at Starbucks.
He kept consistent but changed the environment.

The importance of a pre-production

ritual
Consistency is great, but it’s also difficult. If you don’t take the right measures to
ensure positive consistency, you’ll fall off the wagon.

One thing I recommend you do, which will drastically improve your ability to be
creative, is to develop a sort of pre-production ritual.

A pre-production ritual is something that precedes your production session.

There’s nothing fluffy or new-agey about it, it’s just something simple you do
that tells your brain “it’s time for me to focus now.”

My ritual when producing is to turn off my phone, disable my internet connec-

tion, brew a coffee (or tea if I’m producing in the evening—gotta optimize that
sleep), and lock my door. When I do these things in that exact sequence, my pro-
duction sessions are far more focused and productive than they would be other-
wise. My ritual for writing is the same.

Renowned composer Igor Stravinsky had a ritual too. Every morning after en-
tering his workplace, he’d sit at his piano and play a Bach Fugue.

The more you do your ritual, the more powerful it becomes. If you’re having an
off-day and don’t feel like making music, and you do your ritual, your brain gets
the message and it’s easier to sit down and make music. Why? Because the last
fifty times you’ve performed that ritual, a good hour or two of creative work fol-
lowed.

Taking a habitual, consistent approach to music production - furthering your

skills and increasing your knowledge daily, makes creativity inevitable.

38
 TAKE ACTION
For this chapter’s assignment, I’m going to ask you to do two things:

1. Set a schedule for production

2. Come up with a pre-production ritual

Setting a production schedule

Creating a consistent production schedule isn’t hard, but sticking with it is. So
it’s important you keep a few things in mind:

• Make sure you block out time in a physical or digital calendar. You can’t
keep a mental calendar.
• Start small. Stick to 30 minutes or so (especially if you’re busy) and build
up momentum. If you over-commit at first, you’ll just burn out and it will
be harder to start back up.
• If you skip a day, don’t worry. Just make sure to pick it up again the next
day.

Ask yourself whether you want to produce 7 days a week, just during the week-
days, or just during the weekends. I recommend the first option, but figure out
what fits best for you.

Also, this will be controversial, but try and schedule your production sessions
for the early morning (before work or study). Your willpower is highest in the
morning and your brain is fresh.

39
Creating a pre-production ritual
I can’t create your ritual for you, but here are two tips:

• It shouldn’t be something you do regularly, day-to-day. If you drink coffee

a few times a day, then your pre-production ritual shouldn’t be to “drink
a coffee” because that’s not unique enough. Of course, coffee can be a part
of your pre-production ritual as long as you combine it with other things
(like turning your phone off).
• Don’t make it too hard or complex. Music production is hard, and you
don’t want to make it harder by having to pass through a complex ritual
first. Your ritual should be low-friction. A few easy steps.

Just remember that a ritual doesn’t work straight away. Don’t be discouraged! It
will start to have an effect after you’ve used it several times.

40
 3
CREATIVE BLOCK
The odds are if you’re a producer, you’ve likely encountered creative block or
will at some point. It sucks, it’s nearly unavoidable, and there’s nothing glamor-
ous about it.

To make things worse, the topic of creative block has been oversimplified in the
production community. If you ask a question about how to deal with it on a fo-
rum or Facebook group, you’ll get answers like:

Take a walk!

Make a different genre!

Smoke some weed dude!

Now, that’s not to say these answers don’t help (well, I don’t know about the last
one), but they aren’t really sufficient.

Because creative block has levels of severity (at least in my opinion). If you tell
someone who thinks they have creative block to smoke a joint or go for a walk,
it’s not really going to help; especially if that person is just being lazy.

Likewise, telling someone who has a more severe form of creative block (like
perfectionism) to just “push through it,” is only going to make things worse.

The unfortunate reality is that there’s no “one size fits all” solution to creative
block. I used to think there was a fix all solution, I wish there was, but sadly
there just isn’t.

Now, that doesn’t mean that solutions don’t exist (I’ll be going through a ton
of them in the next section). What it does mean is that you need to know what
stage of creative block you’re in before you can look for the best solution.

42
Stage 1: Sheer laziness
It’s easy to mistake laziness—or a lack of willingness to put in effort—for creative
block.

When you first start producing music, the process is easy. You don’t find it hard
to sit down, it’s fun, and you don’t really stress out about it. But as you learn
more and progress, it starts to become more difficult.

What was first a simple task, production now requires you to push through it
with difficulty, just like you’d have to push through difficulty if you wanted to
lose weight or eat healthier.

Laziness is an incredibly powerful manipulator. It will force your brain to justify

reasons why you shouldn’t make music. Often that justification is “well, I’ve got
creative block so I should just take a break.”1

The problem with this, and laziness as a whole, is that it’s perpetual. The less
time you spend making music, the more you delay it, and the harder it is to get
back on track and start again.

But Sam, music is my hobby! Why should I keep doing it if it’s hard?

Hobbies are supposed to be fun, but fun doesn’t mean easy all the time. In fact,
you could argue that difficulty, when overcome, leads to a sense of accomplish-
ment that provides more satisfaction than performing a task that requires no
effort at all.

I recommend thinking of music production as a craft rather than a hobby. A

craft is something you diligently work on. It’s something you take pride in and
something that keeps you sane despite having a stressful work life.

1 There’s nothing wrong with taking breaks, just make sure you really need one. Sometimes it’s better
to push through.

43
You should keep making music even when it’s hard.

Besides, what’s the alternative? What other hobby doesn’t require hard work to
get better at?

Stage 2: Challenge
You’re working on a project.

Everything’s going well and you’re feeling good… until you come across a prob-
lem.

You don’t always know what the problem is, but it’s there. Maybe it’s the chorus
or drop that doesn’t sound quite right. Maybe it’s the transition between your
intro and breakdown.

Whatever it is, it’s vexing. You don’t know how to fix it.

Fortunately, if you’re in this stage, you’re like 99% of other producers in the
world. You’re not alone, and as we’ll see in the next section, it can be overcome.

Stage 3: Suppression/tunnel vision

Falling into this trap is easy. It happens when you try to force a certain sound;
when you try to make your music fit a mold.

True creativity is letting a song make itself. It’s drawing a note in your piano roll
and immediately hearing the next one in your head and going with it instead of
ignoring it because it doesn’t fit the style or genre you had in mind.

Producers fall into this trap when they attempt to emulate another artist. Be-
cause they’re not letting ideas roam free by trying to force them into a frame-
work or style, they find it hard to A) enjoy the process and B) get the right
sound.

44
Stage 4: Outside distractions
The way I see it, there are two types of creative people.

For the first type, creative work is a form of escapism. They can easily “switch
off” while producing and ignore everything going on around them.

The second type needs to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy production or
simply to sit down at their desk and start.

I’m the second type. If I’ve had a stressful day, I know that it’s going to be diffi-
cult for me to sit down at my desk and start making music. Why? Because I can’t
just switch my brain off and stop thinking about things outside of music.

So, for many people, the outside world and everything in it can lead to creative
block. This is a severe stage of creative block and is hard to overcome, but I’ll
share some tips in the next section.

Stage 5: Deep mindset problem

This is a common stage. It’s not necessarily worse than stage 3 or 4, but it’s more
deeply rooted and thus can be more challenging to overcome.

The Deep Mindset Problem is a form of creative block that stems from an un-
healthy or fixed mindset.

This often exists in the form of perfectionism—the obsessive desire to make

something perfect (which is impossible).

Other times this problem could be due to a limiting belief. You’ve convinced
yourself that you don’t actually have the ability to come up with good ideas or
finish songs.

45
Finally, it can also be due to an obsessive focus on a superficial objective. If, at
the end of the day, you only care about money and fame and use music purely as
a means to achieve that, then you can find yourself stuck. You’re only concerned
with the end result, yet your main focus needs to be on enjoying the process
since it’s the most challenging part.

46
 STRATEGIES FOR DEALING
WITH CREATIVE BLOCK
The strategies below are not a replacement for consistent work. If you’re not
producing consistently and you’re not taking measures to stay focused, then
these strategies won’t work.

General strategies

Force it

This may seem unhelpful, but many producers need to hear it.

Creativity can be forced. To suggest otherwise is to discredit those who do cre-

ative work every day by necessity—i.e., magazine and newspaper writers.

If they don’t write, they lose their jobs.

So, how do you force it?

You just do. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Force yourself to lay down a drum beat.
Just do something. Make something that sucks.

The important thing is that you go from doing nothing to doing something.

Take a break
It’s easy to get burned out, even when you’re producing consistently.

Consistency doesn’t imply stress-free. Authors and artists attest to this when
they talk about how burned out they feel by the end of a big project like a book
or album.

47
If you think you need to take a break, then take one. You’re not going to lose all
your production skills during your break, nor is your career going to fail. Not
only do breaks reduce stress, they also give your brain some time to mull over
the ideas you’ve been working on.

Tip: I recommend a week-long break depending on how burned out you feel.
Sometimes, you’ll only need a few days and other times you’ll need longer. It’s
up to you to figure out the ideal length.

The important thing here is not to use the word “break,” as a fancy term for pro-
crastination.

Get feedback

If you’re stuck with a certain section in your project, ask for feedback on it.

A simple question like: I’m working on a new song and I’m stuck at the part
around (timestamp). I’ve thought about doing X or Y, but I’m not sure. What
comes to mind for you?

Make sure you don’t ask for feedback simply to gain validation or approval. As
good as it feels to do that, it doesn’t help you overcome creative block. Whenever
you ask for feedback, you should be prepared for discomfort. Feedback should
be critical, not make you feel good.

One thing at a time

One common cause of creative block is feeling overwhelmed. We look at how
much work is required to make a song and we default to the path of least resis-
tance--that is, not working on a song at all.

There’s a way to reduce that overwhelming feeling and lower friction. It’s the
age-old technique of doing one thing at a time.

48
If you struggle with the prospect of creating a full song, and your creative block
is more “big picture,” then you can break the process up into segments such as:

1. Write a melody
2. Add a chord progression
3. Add drums
4. Arrange

...and so forth.

If your creative block is more granular and lower-level, say, you’re struggling
to write a melody--then you can break that single task up and do one thing at a
time:

1. Create the rhythm for the melody

2. Create the first bar of the melody
3. Create the second bar of the melody
4. Extend/double it and add variation to make it four bars long

Anyone can come up with the rhythm for a melody. It’s not stupid to start there
if you’re struggling.

Note: Obviously you can combine these and have a “big picture” sequence as
well as a more granular one. Everyone is different, so use these tips and tools in
a way that works best for you.

The list technique

This strategy is great for when you find yourself stuck 50-70% of the way
through a project. You have the core ideas down, maybe you’ve even finished the
arrangement, but there’s something missing.

Sometimes, you know exactly what’s missing, and you can fix it straight away.
But most of the time, it’s a bunch of small things that compound and scream for
attention.

49
The best thing to do in this situation is to identify what those small things are,
and write them down as a list.

Grab a pen and paper, then listen to your track through twice (so you don’t miss
anything) while writing down everything that you think needs to be fixed. It
might be that the crash cymbal in the intro is slightly too loud, and you might
feel like the riser during the build-up should be removed. Don’t be afraid to be
ruthless here.

After you’ve written everything down, start working down the list addressing
each item.

Tip: It helps to imagine your idol producer is sitting in the room listening with
you. You’ll tend to listen much more critically.

Ruthless reduction

This strategy is painful as it often involves scrapping work that’s taken hours of
effort.

When you work on a track for a long time, you naturally end up adding a lot.
Sometimes, as you add things, the track loses direction. It becomes too busy,
and you lose focus of the core ideas which make the track special.

The ruthless reduction strategy is a great way to get your project back on track
and have the core ideas remain in the spotlight. Here’s how it works:

1. Save your project as a new version (in case you make a mistake and need
to revisit an earlier version).
2. Remove everything apart from the core ideas and instruments. Basically
everything that you know needs to be in the track.
3. Work on the track from that point

This strategy will end up doing one of two things: if your core ideas and sounds
are good, you’ll keep working on it. If they’re bad, you’ll realize after you’ve take-

50
n everything away that the track probably isn’t worth working on. It’s easy to
cover up mediocre ideas with fancy fills and other sounds, but it’s a bad way to
write music.

Time-blocking + objectives

This is by far my favorite strategy, and I know it works because I’ve recommend
it to many producers with great results.

It’s simple: you schedule out a time-block for production—say, 90 minutes—and

then you set an objective for it.

If you’re starting a new project, your objective might be to come up with an

8-bar loop containing a melody, bassline and drum pattern.

This does two things: the time-blocking forces you to perceive that time as im-
portant, and adds some healthy pressure, and the objective gives you something
to work towards so you’re not mucking around focusing on things that don’t
matter.

Stage-specific strategies

Stage 1: Sheer laziness

The 5-minute production session

One of the best ways to combat low motivation or laziness is to make things as
easy as possible. I mean ridiculously easy. Stupid easy.

It’s why those self-help guys will tell you that the best way to start exercising is
to make an extremely small commitment: instead of telling yourself you’ll go to
the gym five times a week when you’ve never gone before, you decide to go for a
five-minute walk twice a week.

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If you have a hard time producing, then you should lower the commitment. Re-
duce the friction. Commit to just five minutes of music production.

This seems stupid, but you’ll notice a few things when you do this:

1. There’s no pressure. You’ve committed to five minutes of music pro-

duction. You don’t feel forced to make something great because you know
it’s impossible to do so in such a short time period. You feel relaxed.
2. You’ll almost always go longer than five minutes. Chances are,
your timer will go off after five minutes, you’ll laugh, and keep going.
Anything you do past five minutes is a bonus, and you should feel proud
that you exceeded your commitment.
3. It forces you to focus. Sometimes you’ll sit there for five minutes and
do absolutely nothing, but most of the time you’ll immediately focus on
what’s important. You’ll want to achieve something in the five-minute
time frame you’ve set. Not something great, because you know it’s impos-
sible given the time period, but you certainly won’t procrastinate or waste
time on trivial stuff.

Finding motivation

Laziness often stems from a lack of motivation.

If you’re not feeling motivated to produce, there are a number of things you can
do to regain passion and motivation.

The first thing you should do is work out your why. Why do you make music?
Do you make music because you absolutely love it? Or do you make music be-
cause you want to become famous and make a lot of money?

Superficial goals like this aren’t necessarily bad—there shouldn’t be any shame
in wanting to make money—but they don’t cultivate lasting motivation because
they aren’t intrinsically rewarding.

If, for you, making music has become a means to an end, rather than a process
itself, then you need to recalibrate your goals and vision so that it places impor-

52
tance on the process as well.

For example, the following goal:

I want to build a career out of music because I love making music.

Includes an objective and also recognizes that the process is important (love
making music).

Your why can be as elaborate or as simple as you like. What’s important is that it
makes you feel something.

One example that comes to mind is from a reader who emailed me a while back.
His reason for making music is that it’s his escape. He lives with chronic pain, as
does his wife, and music production is the one thing that allows him to zone out
for a while.

You might not use music as an escape, but it is important to think about what it
really means to you and why you do it.

Another way to gain motivation is to listen to more music.

It amazes me how few producers prioritize listening to music. It’s something you
should do habitually and consciously.

A great writer studies and reads many books. A great businessman studies other
business models and concepts. It follows that a great music producer or musi-
cian studies and listens to a lot of music.

Aside from being a great learning tool, listening to music almost always ignites
motivation. If you’re listening to new music on a daily basis, it doesn’t take long
for you to hear that one track that urges you to get in the studio and start mak-
ing music.

Note: Motivation can’t be relied on. It’s good for the initial “push,” but you need
to remain disciplined and use it to build momentum. Motivation will get you out

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of ruts; it won’t keep you out of them.

Stakes

If the above two strategies don’t work, then you have to get serious.

As a music producer, unless you’re working as a professional, there’s nothing

stopping you from not making music. You don’t have any skin in the game.
There’s no loss.

This isn’t a bad thing, after all, you don’t want to feel like music production is an
obligation. But if you actually want to make music and find it difficult to A) get
started and B) finish something, then having skin in the game will force you to
do both. Because if you don’t, you lose something, and it hurts.

So, how do you create a scenario where you have skin in the game? Where losing
is a painful option that you want to avoid at all costs?

You set stakes.

I needed to finish the second edition of this book. I didn’t need motivation, but
I did want to work faster and harder. So I used a site called gof**kingdoit.com
(spelled out in full), wrote down my goal with a deadline, and put down $1000
as a stake.

I’m writing it now, and if I don’t achieve my goal of finishing the book by the
deadline, an email gets sent to my accountability partner and he clicks the link
that says I didn’t achieve my goal. I lose $1000.

You can employ this as a producer. Whether you want to finish a song, an EP, an
album—it doesn’t matter. The key is to set a stake high enough that forces you
to take action. If you set a $5 stake, it’s pretty easy to justify giving up, because
losing $5 doesn’t hurt as much as $50 or $500.

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Stage 2: Challenge

Ask for advice

If your creative block stems from a challenge--something you don’t know how to
do--then your first line of attack should be asking for advice.

If you’re lucky enough to have a mentor or set of mentors, then go to them. If

you have producer friends who know more than you, ask them. And if you don’t
have friends or mentors, join any of the several production groups on Facebook
and pose your question there (I recommend: EDMProd Artist Community, EDM
Producer Network and EDM Bedroom Producer).

Tip: Don’t be afraid to ask for advice from producers who don’t know you. Pro-
ducers who are talented but aren’t super busy are often delighted to help out as
long as you’re polite, specific, and don’t ask a ton of questions.

Identify an alternative

Sometimes, you’ll work on a project and have a great idea come to mind for a
certain section of the song.

Maybe you want a breakdown similar to that of a Koan Sound track, except
you’ve only been producing a few months and don’t have the technical ability to
replicate that style well.

Detach yourself from that idea and find an alternative that you can implement
using your current skills. This isn’t a cop-out, it’s called being smart. A vocalist
won’t go out of their range if the song requires them to, they’ll sing it in another
key.

Spend some time studying

Sometimes the only thing stopping you from finishing a project is a lack of
knowledge or skills.

55
It might be songwriting and composition skills; you have the ideas in your head
but you’re not sure how to realize them in your DAW. Sometimes it’s sound de-
sign skill; you have the sounds in your head but you can’t recreate them. And
sometimes it’s arrangement and structure knowhow; you have a solid loop writ-
ten but you don’t know how to turn it into a full song.

By spending some time studying (a few days or weeks), you can come back to an
existing project with more knowledge and fresh ideas.

Stage 3: Suppression/tunnel vision

Get into the open mode

We’ve already gone over how to get into the open mode, but it’s crucial that you
actually do so when faced with this stage of creative block.

When you’re in the open mode, you’re creative. You’re playing; not trying to
force anything. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and force a sound or style when
you’re distracted and not relaxed, so make getting into the open mode your pri-
ority.

Remove pressure

This is easier said than done, but it’s worth thinking about.

Let’s say you’re trying to imitate a certain producer. You want to sound like that
producer, but perhaps it runs deeper than that?

Maybe you want to sound like that producer because that producer gets a lot of
recognition. Your brain starts making up this story that if you don’t make music
the same way that producer does, you won’t get recognition.

This is irrational, of course, but we aren’t rational creatures as much as we’d like
to be. Our brain makes up stories all the time to make sense of things.

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When your brain makes up a story like this, it adds a ton of pressure. As soon as
you make something that doesn’t sound like that producer, you fail.

When this kind of pressure exists, it’s impossible to be creative. You’re produc-
ing within a straight-jacket.

So, remove the pressure in any way you can. Collaborate with a friend, play
around with a new plugin, do a remix, just allow yourself to try something differ-
ent.

Work fast

I’m a huge believer in working fast. It’s a great way to create, and a lot of top cre-
ative people in their respective fields will tell you it’s beneficial.

But it’s especially important when you’ve got tunnel vision or you’re trying to
sound a certain way. Because to imitate another artist or make music in a cer-
tain style, you really have to think about what you’re doing.

When you work slowly, you’ve got plenty of time to think. You can easily disen-
gage from the process and analyze what you’re doing. This is a bad thing.

When you work quickly, you work intuitively. You have less time to think, and
you follow ideas where they take you.

Stage 4: Outside distractions

Deal with them first if they’re important

Some outside distractions are too important to ignore.

If it’s a family matter or any sort of crisis, then you shouldn’t even be thinking
about music. But you already know that.

If it isn’t a crisis but the distraction is still kind of important, it’s a good idea to

57
deal with it before sitting down and making music.

Perhaps you’re distracted by an argument you had with someone that’s still lin-
gering in your head. Would you have a better production session if you resolved
that before sitting down to produce? Maybe it’s a work project you forgot to
wrap up. If it took 30 minutes to finish it, would it help you have a better ses-
sion?

There needs to be balance here, because it’s easy to use these outside distrac-
tions as a reason not to make music. The last thing you need is to spend all your
time fixing all the trivial things and never getting around to actually making mu-
sic. This next strategy exists to prevent that from happening.

Produce in the morning

Blasphemy! Producers don’t function in the morning! Are you crazy?

There’s a tendency for us producers to work at night. I believe this is due to

three things:

1. A lot of producers are young. Young people tend to stay up late.

2. There’s a strong link between music production and DJing/live perfor-
mance, and the latter almost always happens at night.
3. People have jobs and find it easier to produce after they come home.

The problem, however, is that your mind is typically full of things at the end of
the day.

Jenny made you a terrible coffee at the office, and her voice is so annoying. It
echoes eternally. Then you stubbed your toe as you walked out the door. Basical-
ly, you went through a day.

When you produce in the morning, none of that stuff has happened. You haven’t
seen Jenny yet (thank goodness), and yes, you could have stubbed your toe, but
the day has just started so you’re less likely.

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Also, your mind is more focused during the morning. You’re not as distracted,
and you have more willpower (which is something that fades throughout the
day).

At the very least, try it for a few mornings. You might surprise yourself.

Stage 5: Mindset problem

Find out what it is

Are you a perfectionist?

Do you have a limiting belief?

You need to work out what type of mindset problem you have.

But how do you find out whether or not you’re at this stage of creative block?
The best way to know is when you’ve spent months on end struggling to make
music. Maybe you’ve even tried a bunch of the aforementioned strategies to no
avail.

If you are in this stage, you have lasting creative block that takes a long time to
go away by itself (most people quit).

The best thing you can do is examine yourself and be honest with yourself. If
you’re a perfectionist, admit it. If you have a limiting belief, admit it and work
on it. It helps to ask other people what they think you have.

I’m making it sound like an illness. It really isn’t—it’s something almost all cre-
ative people deal with, which is why it’s essential to talk to other people who are
experiencing this severe form of creative block, or who’ve been through it.

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How to overcome perfectionism

The best way to overcome perfectionism is to set deadlines.

There are other helpful strategies, but none as powerful as short deadlines.

Deadlines force you to focus. They force you to abandon the desire to make
something perfect.

If you’re a perfectionist who hasn’t set deadlines before, you’re in for a tough
experience. But afterwards you’ll be on your way to finishing a lot of music.

How long should I set a deadline for?

I recommend a time period of five hours. That is, only spend five hours total on
your next project.

You can do that in a day, spread it out over a couple of days, whatever works
best. Just make sure you’re tracking your time spent on the project.

Five hours gives you enough time to make something that doesn’t sound terri-
ble, but it’s too short a time to muck around and tweak instruments to perfec-
tion.

Remember, if you’re in this position, your goal should be to finish, not to make
something great.

How to overcome a limiting belief

I’m not a therapist and this book isn’t about overcoming limiting beliefs, so I’m
not going to go into extreme detail on this topic.

However, I will share some advice that has helped me overcome limiting beliefs
related to music production. It might help you, but no guarantees.

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One of the most common limiting beliefs that leads to creative block is “I’m not
cut out for music.”

The only reason people hold this belief is due to the false narrative that assumes
some people are born with talent (born musical) while others aren’t.

The best way to overcome a belief like this is to first understand why you hold
the belief, and then make a case against it and test your assumption.

Let’s say I believed that people were born with talent and that hard work didn’t
make much difference. I’d first try to work out where that belief came from. Was
it from a book? A movie? Did my parents tell me it when I was a kid?

Then I’d test my belief by reading a reputable book on the topic (The Talent
Code is a great book on this particular topic, by the way), along with some scien-
tific studies if I felt I needed extra convincing. If the book or paper contradicted
my belief, that belief would be much easier to give up because I know that it’s
objectively wrong.

Once you’ve tested your assumption and found out it’s wrong, then it’s simply
a matter of reminding yourself of the truth every time you start falling into the
trap of believing it again.

In summary:

1. Work out where your limiting belief comes from

2. Test your assumption to find out whether it’s true or not
3. Remind yourself until the belief changes

Note: A lot of limiting beliefs are changed through a breakthrough of some

kind. For example, if you believe you’re not cut out to make music, and then you
muster up willpower and put out a track that gets a lot of positive feedback, then
your belief is likely to change on a visceral level. Don’t be afraid to simply ignore
and push through limiting beliefs until you’re forced to realize that they’re false.

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 TAKE ACTION
Your creative block probably won’t disappear unless you do something about it.

Your assignment for the end of chapter three is to pick one strategy and try it
out. Ideally pick a stage-specific strategy based on the severity of your creative
block. If you’re not sure what stage you’re at, pick a general strategy.

If you want to make things easy on yourself, choose the Five Minute Production
Session strategy!

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 4
FINISHING MUSIC
 WHY NOT FINISHING IS BAD
Ideas, if not fully developed, don’t mean much in the long run.

No one wants to listen to a loop. They want to listen to something that’s fin-
ished; they want a complete song.

It’s easy to think that because you’re coming up with a bunch of ideas, you’re
getting better as a producer. This, of course, isn’t always true. If you’re coming
up with a ton of ideas but never seeing them through, then you’re avoiding the
difficult but necessary process involved in completing a song. It’s through that
process—through moving the needle—that you really become a better producer.

The non-finishing habit

It’s easy to build this habit. Most of the time, we don’t know we’re falling into it
(I imagine that’s generally the case with bad habits!)

It starts off innocent. You’re working on a project, and you discover a new, excit-
ing idea.

So you put the current project aside to work on the new idea, telling yourself
that you’ll revisit the original project later.

As you’re working on the new idea, you encounter a challenge. Maybe the track
doesn’t flow right. Maybe the melody isn’t as good as you thought it was.

You decide to set that project aside “for now,” and work on a new project. After
all, you don’t want to be wasting precious time.

As excuses are made, the cycle repeats. You develop the habit of abandoning
projects. It becomes your default mode, and before long your hard drive begins
to grow full of unfinished ideas.

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Three reasons why not finishing
tracks is a bad thing
Before we look at how to finish tracks, it’s important to understand why finish-
ing them is so crucial.

1. It stems progress
Many producers fail to finish tracks because of a weakness or lack of skill in a
particular area.

For instance, you might struggle with mixing or using effects, so you jump ship
when it comes to the mixdown stage; or you might struggle with arrangement,
so you start a new project whenever it comes to arranging your ideas.

Often, the lack of completion that producers face comes from a (subconscious or
even conscience) fear of embracing difficulty. Not always, but often.

On the other hand, the producer who consistently finishes tracks develops their
skill-set evenly.

Why?

Because to finish a track, you need to go through all the stages: composition, ar-
rangement, mixing, and everything in-between. You have no choice but to work
on areas that challenge you.

2. It crushes credibility

You can post as many memes as you like on your Facebook artist page, but if you
don’t release music consistently, people won’t take you seriously.

Even if you’re a new producer with little social reach and you’re not really focus-
ing on building your brand, it’s still an issue. The people in your inner circle will

65
quietly perceive you as less driven or motivated and won’t feel as inclined to in-
vest time and effort in helping you.

Not being able to finish tracks also means you can’t deliver in situations where
it’s essential.

For instance, if I asked you to collaborate with me on a track, and you didn’t pull
through, what impression will that leave on me? Likewise, if a vocalist or instru-
mentalist asked you to produce a track for them (paid project) and you couldn’t
deliver, how would you feel?

3. It’s less fun

Sure, finishing music is challenging, but it’s also fun. There’s a feeling of intense
satisfaction one gets when exporting the final version of a track.

The less you have this feeling of satisfaction—the less you finish tracks—the
more mundane and frustrating music production becomes, and the more likely
you are to want to give up and watch Netflix

Furthermore, by not finishing tracks, you begin to tell yourself that you can’t fin-
ish tracks. You get stuck in a feedback loop. A feedback loop that features a toxic
combination of little output and feeling sorry for yourself.

66
 START STRONG
One of the main deciding factors of whether or not you finish a song is how
smoothly the first few hours go.

With some projects, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, the first few hours fly by
with ease. You’re completely immersed in the process, and you generally finish
60-80% of your track in the first session.

When this happens, the likelihood of finishing the project is much higher than
when the first few hours are stressful, tiring, and broken up.

There are two reasons for this.

The first is that you build a ton of momentum when the first few hours go
smoothly, and it’s much easier to work on a track that’s 80% finished than a
track that’s 30% finished.

The second reason is that you tend to associate negative feelings towards a proj-
ect where the first few hours spent on it weren’t enjoyable.

So, given that, how do you ensure that you have a great first session? How do
you start strong?

1. Slay the dragon

I arrived in Amsterdam two days before Amsterdam Dance Event.

I was staying with my friend Budi Voogt (co-founder and director of Heroic Re-
cordings), and as soon as I got off my flight we headed to his office. It was the
afternoon, so everyone was still working.

He showed me around, and I noticed a whiteboard with the word “Dragons” on

67
it that had a task for each team member written underneath.

Budi explained what they were. Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly what he
said (I’d been awake for 36 hours - I can’t sleep on planes), but it was something
along the lines of…

“A dragon is the most important task that needs to be done. Each of us has a
dragon for the week, and the goal is to slay the dragon.”

Productivity gurus have been using illustrations like this for a while now. Even
Mark Twain once said “eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing
worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

When you’re working on a song, it’s crucial that you slay the dragon first. If you
put it off, things are only going to get more difficult and you’ll feel less inclined
to finish the track, because there’s a dragon waiting to strike.

So what’s the most important thing?

There’s no one answer. It depends entirely on the style of music you’re making
and what you’re good at.

If you’re making a trance track, the most important thing might be writing a
melody. The longer you avoid writing a melody, the harder it will be to finish.
If you’re making a drum and bass track, the most important thing might be the
drums, so you work on them first.

Let’s be honest though, you probably know deep down what the most important
thing is. It’s that thing you keep wanting to avoid.

Note: The most important thing is not always the most difficult thing. If it
comes down to it, you should prioritize the most important thing over the diffi-
cult thing, but address the difficult thing soon after.

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2. Have a long first session
Slaying dragons takes time.

Starting strong takes time.

Typically, your first session is the longest. It’s where you make the most prog-
ress. It’s where energy and excitement are high and you can easily enter the state
of flow.

To start strong, you really need to give yourself a decent chunk of time. I recom-
mend at least 90 minutes. It may sound like a lot, but you need to capitalize on
the rare excitement and creative flow that comes with a new project.

“I have to add that my workflow is pretty fast in the first hours into my projects. That is be-
cause I have an idea I want to write down. So usually in the first hour or two the whole “skel-
eton:” of the track is down. A rule of thumb is that if you don’t like your track by the first
studio session, you can’t really expect to improve on it in the following sessions. Unless you
have some sort of skill that enables you to pick up projects and completely morph them to your
liking.” — Naden

Don’t quit if you’re excited

It’s easy to be working on a project, get excited, and then close up shop for the
day feeling satisfied.

Of course, ending a session at peak excitement is one of the worst things you can
do. It’s easy to tell yourself “This track is great! I can’t wait to come back to it
tomorrow.”

But when you do eventually come back to it, it’s rare that you feel the same level
of excitement you had earlier.

So, when you’re excited, capitalize on your excitement. Sometimes this means

69
staying up a little later, or having lunch two hours late. It will require some ef-
fort and concentration, but you’ll thank yourself for it later.

3. Set a first session goal (optional)

This is an optional strategy because it can be harmful.

Setting objectives for production sessions is a no brainer in the later stages of a

track, but in the beginning an objective can inhibit creativity because it forces
you to think more sequentially and logically. It can also add unnecessary pres-
sure.

However, if you set a broad but measurable goal for your first session, it can fo-
cus your mind wonderfully and help you make massive progress in the first few
hours.

Your goal might be to finish the full arrangement. A goal as broad as that won’t
inhibit creativity, whereas a goal like “write a 16-bar melody and counter-mel-
ody,” will, because it dictates where your track should go (all songs have an ar-
rangement, but not all songs have 16-bar melodies with counter-melodies).

Tip: It’s a good idea to set a next session goal so you can keep the momentum
rolling through following sessions. At the end of the first session, set a specific
objective that you want to focus on during the next session. This one can be less
broad.

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 Iteration not inspiration
“This is the difference between professionals and amateurs. Professionals set a schedule and
stick to it. Amateurs wait until they feel inspired or motivated.”

— James Clear

The common belief in the electronic music production community is that you
need to be inspired to create music, and that if you aren’t inspired, you simply
have creative block and should wait until the next wave of inspiration hits you.

If that were true, everything would rely on luck. Don’t feel inspired? Tough.

Fortunately, creativity doesn’t come down to inspiration alone. Common sense

tells us that inspiration and motivation are both unreliable. If we want to be suc-
cessful creatives, we have to look deeper.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying inspiration is bad. There’s nothing better
than feeling inspired to work on a track, or feeling extremely motivated and
driven to do something. But it’s rare, and it shouldn’t be relied on.

In short, if you rely on inspiration, you’ll give up quickly, feel a lack of satisfac-
tion, and fail to have high output.

So what can you do?

Iterative production
When you have inspiration, capitalize on it. But when you don’t feel inspired,
realize that that is the norm and don’t let yourself get disappointed.

If you’re used to making music when you feel inspired, how do you make it when
you’re not feeling inspired?

You use something I like to call Iterative Production.

71
Iterative production is a method that, once practiced and understood, will make
a huge difference to your workflow and ability to start and finish tracks.

It involves starting with something extremely simple, and turning it into some-
thing satisfactory through a series of small additions and adjustments (itera-
tions).

A brief example

Let’s start off with a simple 4-note bassline in the key of A natural minor:

Easy, right? The key here is to reduce friction right from the beginning. You
don’t need inspiration to create a 4-note bassline.

Next, let’s add a 5th to each note.

Again, nothing difficult.

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Next, let’s double the root note to add some body to the sound.

Now we can chop this progression up to create a rhythm.

Still easy? You bet.

At this point, we might add in a melody over the top (this is the most difficult
part—use your ears).

Our end result isn’t the most amazing melody in the world, but it’s something,
and we achieved it through a series of small, easy steps.

73
 DEADLINES AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
There are no tools more powerful in the creative person’s arsenal than account-
ability and deadlines.

These two are almost always linked, with the exception being that although
deadlines can be self-imposed, you can’t really be accountable to yourself.

Let’s first look at the power of accountability and how it relates to finishing
tracks.

The three layers of accountability

The first layer is P2P (person-to-person) accountability and it’s what most peo-
ple think of when they hear the word accountability.

The second layer is public accountability which is generally stronger than the
first layer.

The third layer is reliant accountability and is stronger than the first and second
layer.

Let’s unpack these in detail.

P2P accountability
Person-to-person accountability is one of the most common forms of account-
ability and also the easiest to set up.

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It can be as simple as asking a friend or someone you know to keep you account-
able on a certain goal or habit.

For instance, you might tell one of your producer friends that you’re going to
finish one track per week, and that you’d like them to message you at the end of
each weak to ask if you’ve finished your track for the week.

If you want to install some sort of accountability into your workflow, then doing
it this way is a great start.

How to do it well

If finishing music is your problem, then you should center your accountability
goal or habit around that.

Finishing one track per week is a good benchmark, but you may prefer to or-
ganize it on a track-by-track basis with a more specific deadline (you tell your
friend that you’ll finish your current project by a certain date).

It doesn’t really matter who you pick to stay accountable to, as long as they’re
willing to help out and flick you a message from time to time.

They also don’t have to be a producer. However, it does help if the person you’re
staying accountable to is a creative of some sort. That way they’re a bit more un-
derstanding and sympathetic—as they know how hard it is to finish things—and
may offer some encouragement along the way.

Of course, you should opt for another producer if possible. They can share tips,
you can rant to them, share your feelings, do a producer-counseling session to-
gether… you get the idea.

That’s all well and good, Sam. But how do I actually approach someone and
ask if they can hold me accountable?

If they’re a friend, you already know what to do.

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If they aren’t, use the template below. Modify the style, tone, and formality
based on your relationship with the person.

Hey [name],

How are you? Hope you’re well.

I’ve been reading through a book on workflow and creativity for electronic mu-
sic producers and there’s a chapter on finishing music, which is something I’m
currently struggling with.

One strategy that the author recommends to help finish tracks is to find some-
one to stay accountable to someone so there’s a little more pressure to finish
music.

I think this would be a helpful thing to do, and you came to mind first. It’s re-
ally simple: my goal is to finish one song per week, and at the end of that week
I’ll message you with a link to the completed song. You don’t have to listen to it,
of course, it’s just for me to show someone that I’ve finished it.

All I ask is that if I don’t message you at the end of the week, you contact me
and ask what’s up.

Would this be cool?

- [Name]

If they don’t know that you produce, simply use the above template but include
something like this at the beginning:

Hey [name],

Not sure you know this, but I’ve been spending the last few weeks/months/
years making electronic music.

Why am I telling you this? Well I’ve been reading...

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Public accountability

Public accountability is less personal but can be more powerful because you
have to look good in front of more than one person.

One example of public accountability that worked well was the August Loop
Challenge we ran last year.

Participants would spend exactly 20 minutes on an 8-bar loop every day, and
then upload their loop to a Soundcloud group. We had 50 people contribute.
Not all of them made a loop every day (some of them quit), but there was a core
group of people that saw the challenge through.

A few of those people got in touch with me personally to tell me that if it wasn’t
for the public nature of the Soundcloud group, they’d have given up in the first
week.

A more recent example of public accountability is the Deep Work Challenge that
Budi Voogt and I have started.

The challenge arose because we wanted to spend more time doing focused work.
We tried P2P accountability, but it didn’t work too well. At least, not for me.
Budi managed fine. He’s a machine.

So, we got talking and came up with the idea to publicly log how many hours of
deep work we did per day. We set up a Google Spreadsheet which you can find
here.

At the time of writing this, we have six people logging their deep work hours
in the spreadsheet. It works well because there’s an element of competition.
There’s also the fact that my name is at the top and anyone on the internet can
see how much work I’m doing.

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How to do it well

There’s a bit more involved in public accountability than there is in P2P ac-
countability, but the initial time investment pays for itself tenfold.

The best way to do it, in my opinion, is to set up a public webpage. A Facebook

post announcing that you’re going to finish one track per week isn’t as perma-
nent as a webpage declaring your objective. It’s also easier to update your web-
page weekly to reflect whether you’ve achieved it or not.

Alternatively, you could use a shared Google Sheet like Budi and I are doing for
the Deep Work Challenge.

By the way, it doesn’t really matter whether anyone’s viewing it or keeping tabs
on you. You can just pretend they are. The main reason it works so well is that
people can visit that webpage or spreadsheet and you don’t want it to show that
you haven’t finished anything.

The Facebook Group Method

I haven’t tried this. It’s something that popped into my head while writing the
last sentence (caffeine is awesome), but I’m sure it would work.

Create a Facebook group with several people that want to finish more music (ask
for their permission BEFORE you create the group - it’s rude to just add people).

Then, create some sort of schedule. For example: on Sunday evening every week,
you post an update where people can link to their finished track. If there are ten
people in the group, there should be ten comments on that update assuming ev-
eryone’s done the work.

Note: There’s no reason why you can’t use P2P and public accountability at the
same time, but it’s probably overkill to do so.

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Reliant accountability

Reliant accountability is the least common of the lot, which is unfortunate be-
cause I believe it’s the most transformative tool for lasting change in any area of
life.

It involves setting up an accountability program in a way where the other person

or persons rely on you, and you on them. If you don’t do the work, they get put
at a disadvantage.

A non-music example of reliant accountability from my life came to fruition a

few weeks ago.

A friend of mine who lives roughly 100 meters down the road is joining the air
force. He has to work his way through a six-week fitness program to pass the
requirements.

Obviously, it involves a lot of running, and I’d mistakenly mentioned to him a

few weeks earlier that I wanted to run more (I didn’t, but it felt like a cool thing
to say). So, he asked me if I was keen to start running with him.

We run together every day. If I don’t show up, I’ve let him down, and vice versa.
If it was just me following the schedule, I’d come up with a myriad of excuses for
why I shouldn’t go for a run that day.

So, how can you apply this kind of accountability to music production—more
specifically, finishing tracks?

The first and most obvious answer is collaboration, but that’s not the most feasi-
ble option (we also cover it in detail during chapter six).

You have to get creative. Here are two methods I recommend:

The show & tell method

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At the end of every week, you have a chat with your accountability partner
(someone who’s trying to do the same thing as you: finish a track every week).

During this chat, you share anything and everything you’ve learned from finish-
ing your project for the week. It might have been a new technique, a cool sample
pack you’ve come across, whatever.

If you get to the end of the week and haven’t finished a track, you can’t share
valuable information, right? I mean, you can, but you won’t help yourself (or
your partner) if you aren’t honest about your progress.

The project swap method

Warning: Only do this with someone you trust.

At the end of each week, swap project files. Do this for learning purposes, to see
how the other person has put things together and mixed their track.

This is more cumbersome and involved than the show and tell method, but it’s
also more foolproof because you can’t really lie. If you send over a project file
that is blatantly unfinished, the other person will be disappointed. He or she
can’t learn as much.

Deadlines
Deadlines help you focus. There’s a famous and slightly morbid quote from
Samuel Johnson that reads…

“When a man knows he is to be hanged...it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Of course, self-imposing a deadline for a song to be finished by a certain date

isn’t going to have as much an impact as being told you’re going to die in a few
weeks, but it still does something.

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The mistake many producers make when setting deadlines is they make them
too long. Your deadlines should be as short as possible, and then some.

There’s an old adage written by C. Northcote Parkinson that states: “work ex-
pands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

If you think you can finish a song in one week, set the deadline for four days. If
you think you can produce an album in a year, set the deadline for eight months.

The common objection to setting short deadlines is that they result in lower
quality work. This is true, to an extent. Obviously if you tried to make an album
in one week it wouldn’t turn out great, but eight months? That’s plenty of time.

In fact, shorter deadlines can actually result in better work. You realize time is of
the essence, and you focus more deeply and do better work.

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 THREE MORE STRATEGIES
FOR FINISHING MUSIC

1. Lower your standards

Having high standards for your work is important. All artists have high stan-
dards.

But high standards are not helpful when you can’t finish any music. In fact, they
can actually stop you from finishing music: you work on something, it doesn’t
reach your (unreachable) standard, and so you flip over to something new.

Don’t mistake high standards for perfectionism. Perfectionism kills progress.

The first thing you must do if you want to re-build the habit of finishing music is
to lower your standards.

It’s difficult to lower your standards. It’s such an odd thing to do, and what if
you lose your high standards?

You won’t. The key here is to lower your standards until you can finish music
consistently.

One thing that helps you lower your standards temporarily is to not think about
releasing your work or making it public in any way, shape, or form. As soon as
you think about how your track will be received by the public, or your peers,
there’s a pressure that’s added.

That pressure forces you to bring up your standards. It’s a good pressure under
normal circumstances, but when you can’t finish anything, it’s poison.

So, make the decision to not release anything for a few weeks. Commit to it. If
you do make something great, release it, but make sure there’s no pressure.

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2. Work fast and carelessly
High standards become an issue because we overanalyze what we’re doing. We
listen to something and think that it’s not good enough. We pick holes in it and
focus on the minor issues that most listeners might not even notice.

But when you work fast—so fast that you’re slightly careless—you don’t have
time for that. You don’t have time to pick holes in what you’re doing, or to focus
on the minor issues.

Working fast forces you to make decisions immediately. When writing a chord
progression, instead of asking yourself “how can I make this the best chord pro-
gression?” You ask, “is this good enough?”

If it is good enough, you move on to the next thing.

Now, working carelessly is a problem when you’ve built the habit of finishing
tracks. You want to put effort into your craft; give it time, and think about it. But
it’s key when you can’t finish anything.

Work carelessly because your focus is not to make something good, it’s to actu-
ally finish something. It doesn’t matter if it’s bad. Remember, most creative peo-
ple create more bad art than they do good art.

3. Lower the friction

If you possess an exceptionally bad case of non-finishing, it’s likely that you’re
having trouble at each stage of the production process.

Perhaps you struggle to come up with ideas and develop/arrange those ideas.

If this is the case, the best thing you can do is lower the friction and make it as
easy as possible to finish something.

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One way to do this is to model another track. Not remake it necessarily, but
model it.

You can copy its structure, general instrumentation, and use your own compo-
sition and ideas. It’s okay if you steal a fair amount from the existing track, (it’s
quite hard to make an exact copy of another track anyway).

When you do this, a strange thing happens. You forget that you’re modeling
another track because you come up with your own idea that’s so captivating you
lose yourself in it. The track makes itself, you just simply used the model track
as a launchpad.

Another way to lower friction is to use construction kits.

WHAT?! CONSTRUCTION KITS?! NEVER!

Yes. If you use a construction kit to make a song and don’t add anything origi-
nal, then you release it and call it your own, I have no respect for you. That’s not
creative at all.

However, if you use construction kits purely for the purpose of getting into the
habit of finishing, then they’re brilliant. Use as many loops, samples, and con-
struction kits as you like. Make it as easy as possible to finish tracks. Just don’t
release ‘em.

As you start to build the habit, do a few more things on your own and use less
construction kit elements. Before you know it, you’ll be finishing tracks that are
made up almost entirely of original elements.

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 5
HIGH OUTPUT
 QUANTITY BEATS QUALITY
“Lock yourself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers. That’s a different world
like Cree Summer’s. I deserve to do these numbers!”

— Kanye West, Spaceship

Quantity over quality is controversial advice but it makes a ton of sense.

Let me use football (soccer) for example. Who’s going to be better at scoring
goals: the kid who takes minutes to set up his shots, making sure everything is
perfect? Or the kid who takes hundreds of shots in rapid succession, adjusting
his technique ever so slightly with each shot?

The latter, of course.

We know that quantity-driven practice is important in sports, but when it comes

to music, we seem to ignore it.

But quantity always leads to quality. If you seek quantity over quality, you will
get both.

For one, focusing on quantity helps us develop our skills faster. If you spend two
months on one song, you’re really only writing one melody, programming one
drum sequence, and performing one mixdown.

If you make eight songs in the same time period, you’ll do all those things eight
times, and improve more quickly as a result.

Also, music production is largely about solving problems. Because of this, it’s
important that you expose yourself to as many problems as you can, as quickly
as you can, so you know how to fix them in the future.

If you work on one track for a few months, you’re only going to encounter a cer-
tain set of problems that may not repeat themselves in other tracks; if you work

86
on eight tracks in a few months, you have a higher likelihood of learning more
because you’re forced to solve more problems.

“The best way to refine your craft is to create a huge volume of work. Not to create the most
perfect piece you can, but to create many pieces of work.”

— Ira Glass

Perhaps the leading argument for quantity over quality is that you have the abil-
ity to receive more feedback. If you’re spending two months on one song, you
can really only ask for feedback once or twice near the end of the production
process. If you make eight songs in two months, you have seven opportunities to
use the feedback gained from the last track to benefit the next one.

Objections
Won’t my music sound worse if I focus on quantity over quality?

Not in the long run.

Sure, the first track or two that you finish when focusing on quantity may lack
the same level of polish that the track you spent two months on had, but that
lack of polish disappears quickly as you finish more tracks in rapid succession.

In fact, your music will sound better if you focus on quantity. That’s the whole
point.

Is there a point where I should focus on quality?

The point of focusing on quantity over quality is not that you should carelessly
pump out music that’s bad because you’re putting less effort into it.

The point is that you shouldn’t get hung up on minor details. If a track is taking
too long, don’t abandon it, rather, try and finish it in any way you can.

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 MOMENTUM
“Momentum isn’t meant to be just constant movement, but should be seen as maintaining
that level of flow you worked so hard to get to.”

— Jory MacKay

Woody Allen once said that the day he finishes editing a film is the day he starts
writing the script for the next one.

Why would he do that? Surely it’s good to take a break after a massive project
like that?

What Allen understood was that if he took a break, he’d have a slim chance of
retaining the momentum he’d built up.

The benefits of momentum

There is no question that momentum leads to higher output. When you’re in a
state of momentum, you get a lot done by working consistently day in and day
out.

You also feel a lot better when you have momentum. It’s hard to describe, but
it’s like you’re spiraling upwards, and it feels great.

Finally, momentum makes it easier to start and finish music. You don’t have as
much trouble sitting down at your desk to make a song than you would if you
haven’t produced in a while. It gets to a point where it feels like second nature.
It’s perpetual.

Developing consistency
Consistency is a trait of momentum, but it also contributes to momentum. With-
out it, you don’t build momentum, and with momentum comes consistency.

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It’s nice to think that momentum is built through quantum leaps like releasing
an album or EP, but this isn’t the case. In fact, finishing a big project like an al-
bum or EP requires consistency. You build momentum while working on such a
project.

Why consistency beats intensity

We romanticism the late nights in the studio, the 12-hour days, the all-nighters.
It makes us feel proud just thinking about it.

But that’s not how good music is made.1

Good music is made through continuous, consistent effort. Good music is made
through momentum.

Now, what seems like a better way to build momentum: one hour per day for
seven days? Or a ten hour session on a Sunday?

The ten hour session will probably leave you feeling a bit burned out (if you can
even focus for ten hours straight). On the other hand, producing for one hour
per day might only add up to seven hours, but you build momentum each ses-
sion, which makes it easier to roll through day after day.

Daily effort is what moves the needle. Daily effort is what builds momentum.

Small wins
It’s easy to look at all your unfinished tracks, all the bad ideas you’ve come up
with, and feel like you suck.

When you feel like you suck, it’s not easy to be creative.

1 At least, most of the time. There are exceptions. Madeon is notorious for locking himself in the
studio for 24 hours at a time, and Deadmau5 has said he gets his best ideas during a semi-delirious state
around 4-5AM after producing for ten hours.

89
For instance, instead of viewing a completed track as the only form of success,
re-frame it in a way where smaller things like coming up with a good melody or
drum sequence are also “wins.”

By doing this, you’re able to build momentum for the particular project you’re
working on. When you have a series of small wins behind you, it’s easier to keep
going.

Small wins keep you positive and remind you that you’re making progress.

The Get Better mindset

There are two mindsets that we as creative people hold: a mindset that holds us
back, or a mindset that propels us forward.

The one that holds us back is the Be Good mindset. When we have this mindset,
our underlying goal is to show people that we’re good.

Now, this sounds reasonable on the surface, but it’s quite the negative mindset.
You always feel like you’re trying to prove yourself, and you’re constantly com-
paring yourself to others. It’s hard to be creative with this mindset.

In addition, when you have the Be Good mindset, you can’t build momentum
well.

Why?

Because in this mindset you don’t handle setbacks well. You view setbacks and
challenges as things that are wrong with you, rather than viewing them as nec-
essary mistakes that help you learn. You think that because you’re finding some-
thing difficult, it must mean that you’re not cut out for it, and so it stops you
from producing (thus halting momentum).

The mindset that propels us forward is the Get Better mindset, which I first
came across in a presentation by social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson in

90
her popular 99U presentation.

The Get Better mindset is not about being good, it’s about being better. You fo-
cus on improving not proving.

You focus on developing rather than demonstrating.

As a result of all this, when producing, you:

• Handle setbacks better

• Have higher interest and enjoyment
• Experience deeper thinking and engagement
• Have higher creativity
• Build persistence

All of these aid momentum.

In short, the Get Better mindset is about reframing difficulty. It’s about getting
stuck with something, i.e., not being able to write a good melody, but then re-
framing it to be something positive—“the fact that I can’t write a good melody is
a great thing because it’s something I can now focus my energy on learning.”

3 extra tips for building momentum

1. Know that momentum takes time to build
The only way you can build momentum instantly is to have extraordinary suc-
cess. Perhaps it’s the completion of a big project, or a random occurrence that
benefits you greatly.

When I launched my first educational course, I let people have free access for
the first forty-eight hours. To my surprise, hundreds of people joined. I worked
non-stop for the next few weeks improving it. That surprise event had sparked
momentum.

91
But most of the time, these kind of things don’t happen, and they normally re-
quire momentum in the first place. Momentum is something that is built up over
time. It starts small and grows.

So, don’t stress out about it taking some time, and more importantly, make sure
that you…

2. Don’t skip a day

We’ve looked at why it’s important to be consistent if you want to be creative,
but it becomes even more important when you want to build momentum.

If you’ve ever tried to start a new diet or fitness regime, you know that skipping
one day can lead to another day, then another day, and then all of a sudden
you’ve stopped.

When you skip a day, it becomes much easier to skip another. You think “ah
well, I failed yesterday so it’s not that bad if I fail again today. I’ll just get back
on track tomorrow.” And on the cycle goes.

Try your best to do something related to music production every day. Even if
you can only fit five minutes in, do it. It’s worth it to keep the momentum alive.

3. Don’t rest after success

Just like Woody Allen doesn’t take a break after finishing a film, it’s not a good
idea to get too comfortable after finishing a big project like an EP or album.

Likewise, if a song of yours gains a lot of attention, it means there’s a window of

opportunity where the worst thing you can do is sit around and not make music.

When you see some success, use it as a launchpad to push yourself higher. Don’t
rest. Go from strength to strength. If anything, you probably feel incredibly driv-
en after a sign of success. You don’t want to let that feeling go to waste because it
doesn’t come around often.

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 HOW TO MAKE MORE TIME
FOR MUSIC (FOCUSED WORK)
Why is it important to spend more time producing?

After all, you have to enjoy life, don’t you? Isn’t it a bad idea to force yourself to
spend more time making music?

Those who ask such questions and rail against the suggestion to spend more
time in the studio will often say something like…

“I understand the importance of this if you’re trying to build a career out of

music, or if you’re a professional. But what if it’s just a hobby?”

Creating is good for us

We’re generally more happy when we’re creating than when we’re consuming.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s a simple test: next time you watch TV for more than two hours straight,
ask yourself afterwards how you feel.

Do you feel like you’ve achieved something? Do you feel like that two hours was
a good investment of your time?

As humans, it’s good for us to spend more time doing creative things. The “I
need to relax therefore I need to watch TV” argument doesn’t really work, unless
we really have to unwind before bed after a long day of work.

“One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are
capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is
change–not rest, except in sleep.” – Arnold Bennett

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You don’t need as much time as you
think you do
In his short piece on Harvard Business Review, Greg McKeown, the author of
popular business/self-help book Essentialism writes:

“We have a problem–and the odd thing is we not only know about it, we’re celebrating it. …
The asset we’re overvaluing now is the notion of doing it all, having it all, achieving it all;
what Jim Collins calls ‘the undisciplined pursuit of more.”

This exists in the music world: you have a handful of successful producers telling
the media how they spent 12 hours each day in the studio, and how they credit
that to their success (read more about The Narrative Fallacy).

Don’t get me wrong, you do need to work hard in order to get to where you want
to be, regardless of what that goal looks like (again, hobbyists and want-to-be
professionals will differ in this regard). But blindly working for 12 hours a day
because “it’s what everyone does…” is misguided.

One issue with the “long hours in the studio” meme being over-praised is that
those who don’t have the luxury to log such hours–everyone who has a job or is
a student–feels like they’re screwed.

And I don’t blame them. If 12-hour days are what artists are crediting to their
success, then it makes sense to feel like you’re never going to make it. Most pro-
ducers wouldn’t.

Fortunately, you don’t need to put in 12-hour days to be a great producer.

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The limits of high-intensity creative
work
If you’re constantly being interrupted, distracted by social media, and you’re not
structuring your time properly—in other words, not focusing—it’s easy to spend
a full day in the studio.

The reason it’s easy is because you’re not fully engaging your mental muscles.
You’re not giving yourself a workout, so you never get tired.

You also don’t get much done. Or maybe you do, but it’s taken you 12 hours.

Anders Ericsson, the guy who came up with the theory of deliberate practice,
wrote a paper in 1993 titled The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of
Expert Performance.1

In it, he notes that there’s a limit to an individual’s capacity to perform cogni-

tively demanding work (i.e., creative work).

Cal Newport paraphrases:

“Ericsson notes that for a novice, somewhere around an hour a day of intense
concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand to
as many as four hours–but rarely more.”

He goes on (shortened for brevity)…

“One of the studies cited catalogs the practice habits of elite violin players
training at Berlin’s Universität der Künste. The elite players averaged around
three and a half hours per day in a state of deliberate practice, usually sepa-
rated into two distinct periods.”

Are these elite violin players spending 12 hours a day deliberately practicing?

1 http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf

95
No.

Why?

Because it’s impossible for them to do so.

Remember, these are elite violin players performing a cognitively demanding

task with intense concentration.

This means that:

• You can excel at your craft even if you have a full-time job, as 12 hours per
day isn’t necessary.
• Deliberate practice and intense concentration is hard and is something
that needs to be trained.
• If you do spend 12 hours a day in the studio, ask yourself how many of
those hours are highly focused and without distraction.

What is focused work?

Cal Newport again describes it best:

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free

concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts
create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

Focused work is difficult, high-intensity work.

Not all production work requires this type of concentration. Preparing your
project file for mixdown, setting up routing, and performing menial but neces-
sary tasks do not require deep focus.

Because of that, you don’t necessarily need to work in a state of focus to finish
music. This is made evident by the many producers who have Facebook open on
another screen or their phones constantly buzzing throughout a session.

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But of course, just because something is possible, it doesn’t mean it’s ideal. Be-
ing distracted affects our ability to be creative, and we can get more done in 2
hours of highly-focused work than we can during 4–6 hours of broken, distract-
ed work.

“It is better to dedicate two to three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours
of diffused concentration on it. You want to be as immediately present to what you are doing
as possible.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

The alternative

The alternative to focused work—work that will ultimately propel you forward
and help you make the most gains—is distracted work. Something Newport calls
“shallow work.”

Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often per-

formed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the
world and are easy to replicate.

Music production doesn’t fit this definition because it tends to be a cognitively

demanding task that isn’t logistical.

Yet many of us producers treat it as shallow work. We allow ourselves to be dis-

tracted. We make up excuses as to why we need our internet connection enabled
or why our phones need to be turned on.

The true alternative is treating something that should be focused work (deep
work) as shallow work. This is a waste of time.

It also leads to dissatisfaction because your hours of diffused concentration re-

sult in less output than you think they should (cue self-loathing: “I’m just not
good enough… I’m not productive enough…”).

So why do so many of us follow this alternative? Why do we allow ourselves to

be distracted?

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It’s not sexy. Focused work is hard.

A lot of people who read this will not make any changes to how they work. Some
will laugh at what I’m suggesting. Others will agree with it, make an attempt to
stay focused, and then relapse to old unproductive habits.

As a music producer, I’d argue that focused work is exceptionally difficult.

Why?

Because the general demographic of electronic music producers, judging by the

analytics for EDMProd.com, show that 50% of them are males between the age
of 18–24 (with the next largest group (37%) falling between 25–34).

If you’re in this age group, you’ve grown up with the internet. The norm is to be
distracted. It’s part of life.

To go against this is to go against ingrained habits. If you’re used to checking

your phone every 15 minutes, setting aside a full hour (or more) to focus on
something is extremely difficult.

And that’s why the idea of focused work is not sexy. It might seem brilliant when
you’re reading about it like you are now, but when you actually sit down to start,
it’s hard.

So why do it? Because it’s satisfying. Not only will you finish more music, you’ll
also enjoy the process of making music much more than you would if distracted.
You’ll be more present.

What’s wrong with checking my phone occasionally during a production ses-

sion?

Let’s say you commit to a 90-minute focused production session. You set a goal
(to finish the structure for your track), set the timer, and get started.

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What’s wrong with checking your phone during the those 90 minutes? After
all, it only takes a few seconds to click the home button, light up the screen and
check to see if anything “important” has happened, right?

Well, that quick click results in much more than a few seconds of diffused con-
centration—and that’s in a best case scenario.

What if you got an unpleasant message from someone you don’t like? Do you
think the rest of your production session would go well?

In the best case scenario—as in, you only have one or two notifications that ar-
en’t urgent—you’re still going to incur the cost of task-switching, known as at-
tention residue.

This simply means that you’ll be thinking about that notification for several min-
utes after knowing about it, and this affects your concentration.

How to cultivate intense focus

So you know what it is, and you know why it’s important. But what are some
strategies for actually getting better at deep work and concentration?

After all, if you care about your craft, you should care about getting better at
it. There’s no better way to improve than by increasing the time you spend in a
state of deliberate practice.

Here are 3 strategies for cultivating intense concentration.

1. Reduce inputs & minimize distractions

Inputs and distractions lead to attention residue and break your focus, so get rid
of as many possible.

When producing:

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 • Turn your phone OFF and put it in a place where you won’t be tempted to
turn it back on.
• Turn your internet connection OFF. You don’t need it.
• Put a Do Not Disturb sign on your door if you live with other people.
• Handle any loose ends (phone calls, message replies) before starting a
session.
• Clear your workspace. Physical items can be distracting.

2. Start small

If you’re new to the idea of intense concentration/deep work, then you might be
tempted to launch into four hours of non-stop focused music production.

If you do this, you’ll probably fail. I say that from a sympathetic standpoint be-
cause I’ve tried this many times myself.

The ability to concentrate is a skill. It’s something that needs to be developed. So

don’t feel like you need to start off at the highest level. If anything, you’ll proba-
bly burn yourself out.

Start small. Try to spend one hour per day focused on music production. If you
find it exceptionally hard to do this, start even smaller (15 or 30 minutes).

3. Block out time

Adding structure to your production sessions is helpful, and one easy way to add
structure is to use a time limit.

I like to use a timer in tandem with blocking out time in my calendar. This does
a few things:

It’s harder to avoid. When something’s in your calendar, you’ve made a commit-
ment. If you set aside 90 minutes to produce, that’s sacred time.

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It provides a clear goal amidst ambiguity. It’s easy to spend some time produc-
ing and come out the other end feeling like you haven’t really done anything.
When you block out time, you’ve got a clear goal (sit down and try to make mu-
sic for 90 minutes).

You also focus better. If you’re just producing on a whim—say, for a few minutes
before having to go out—then you’re not going to focus well. When you set aside
time, it allows you to focus on nothing but music production without feeling
guilty for doing so (because you’ve made the commitment).

Give up the small stuff

If you’re struggling to find time to produce, one of the most effective things you
can do is reduce the amount of other stuff you’re doing.

This doesn’t mean you should quit your job and produce full time. That’s not re-
alistic unless you have a long-term vision and strategy (it’s certainly achievable,
and if that’s what you want to do, then I encourage you to do so).

What it does mean is that you should focus on nothing else but what’s essential.
Aside from work, family, friends, your health, and any other hobbies you may
have – what’s essential is making music.

Not trying to market yourself. Not trying to build your social media profile. Not
spending time downloading new plugins.

These things are helpful in isolation, but they are not things that will make you a
better producer. They won’t move the needle.

But Sam, what if my goal is to build a career. Shouldn’t I focus on marketing?

You should, but if you’re short on time, the best way to increase your chances of
future success is to hone your craft.

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If you’re great at making music, marketing becomes a peripheral task. The prod-
uct (music) matters most, so that’s what you should focus on. Otherwise you’ll
have a short-lived career that lacks the deep satisfaction one gets from investing
time and effort into their craft.

So, next time you find yourself asking whether it’s worth using that new so-
cial media platform, remember that the only way to make leaps and bounds is
through concentrated effort on your craft.

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 TAKE ACTION
This one’s simple: Do one thing right now to build momentum.

....

What are you waiting for?

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 6
COLLABORATION
 THE BENEFITS OF
COLLABORATION
“Collaboration is much like a birth. The song that springs forth resembles each one of us to a
degree, but it’s the kind of thing that would never be born from just one of us.”

— Grant-Lee Phillips

If we’re honest, it’s easier to work solo. When a lot of us think of collaborations,
the words “slow” and “frustrating” come to mind.

Let’s not kid ourselves, they can be slow. But they should be done. Collaboration
is not only fun, it’s practical too.

In this section, I’ll cover the benefits of collaboration before sharing tips on how
to streamline the collaborative process so you and your collaborative partner can
get the most out of it.

Increased creativity
If you’ve ever played in a band, you’ll know how powerful jamming can be...

...just playing around, following each other’s cues, and developing ideas in a nat-
ural way. Before you know it, you’ve made a song.

When you’re collaborating with another producer, you can bounce ideas off each
other in a similar way. You have two minds working instead of just one. Two
creative minds.

This is even more potent when you’re in the same room (local collaboration).

But wait, wouldn’t two people in the same room be distracting? How can you
leverage intense concentration and do “deep work” if there’s someone sitting

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right next to you?

Well, as long as you’re both focused on the same goal, it should be fine:

“For some types of problems, working with someone else at the proverbial
shared whiteboard can push you deeper than if you were working alone. The
presence of the other party waiting for your next insight—be it someone phys-
ically in the same room or collaborating with you virtually—can short-circuit
the natural instinct to avoid depth.” - Cal Newport

Balanced strengths & weaknesses

In a perfect world, your collaboration partner has strengths in place of your
weaknesses.

It doesn’t normally end up that way, but you are bound to have different
strengths, which results in more creative ideas and better sounding music.

If you’re great at writing melodies but terrible at mixing, and your partner is
great at mixing but terrible at writing melodies, you’re a match made in heaven.

When you work out what your strengths are, you can split up production pro-
cesses based on them. If your partner is good at composition, then let them han-
dle most of the work upfront. If you’re good at mixing, then provide input along
the way (you should still be involved in the creative process) but spend a few
hours at the end cleaning everything up.

You learn new techniques

If you ever come across the opportunity to collaborate with someone better than
you, take it.

Don’t make any excuses. Do everything you can to make that collaboration hap-
pen.

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Why? Because collaboration is a great learning tool. If you’re in person, you can
ask questions and study how they’re doing certain things. If you’re collaborating
virtually, you can still see how they’ve done certain things as you have access to
the project file.

Note: You can still learn from collaboration partners who are at your level. We
all have different tips and tricks that we’ve picked up individually that are worth
sharing.

You finish more music

We looked at accountability in the last chapter. Specifically, reliant accountabili-
ty.

Collaboration is one of the best forms of this. If you don’t do your part, your
partner suffers.

You have skin in the game. You want to finish the track not just because your
partner depends on you doing so, but also because you want to show them that
you’re someone who follows through.

Career benefits
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons collaborations take place is that they’re bene-
ficial from a marketing standpoint.

Not only do you and your collaboration partner become friends, but you also get
introduced to their audience and them to yours.

You also can’t underestimate serendipity. What if you collaborate with someone
who’s being watched by a label? What if that label checks out your music and
likes it?

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 FINDING A COLLABORATION
PARTNER
The best way to ensure that your collaborative project goes smoothly is to find a
decent collaboration partner.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when choosing a collaboration part-
ner.

The first is that you generally want to choose someone at or around the same
skill level as you. This sounds harsh, but if you’re collaborating with someone
who’s years behind you, then you’re going to get frustrated and likely won’t get
much out of the collaboration.1

It also helps to know the person you’re going to collaborate with. It’s not essen-
tial, and you don’t need to know them like your best friend, but it’s good to have
a few informal conversations first.

That means that it’s a good idea to build the relationship before asking to collab-
orate, which you should really be doing anyway.2

So, how do you find people to build a relationship with and eventually ask to col-
laborate on something?

Look local
I’m a big proponent of local collaboration for three reasons: it’s fun, better ideas
come out of it, and you’re not alone (sitting in a studio/bedroom all day by your-
self does get to you).

1 Of course, if you’re collaborating in order to help someone out, it’s a different story.
2 This isn’t a book on networking, so I recommend checking out How to Win Friends and Influence
People and Never Eat Alone.

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One way to find people in your local area is to go to producer/music meetups.
They aren’t in every town, but if one exists in yours, then check it out and talk to
a few people. You can use a site like Meetups.com to find them.

The second way is to ask on forums, particularly Facebook and Reddit (r/edm-
production). There are numerous Facebook groups out there, some that are lo-
cation-dependent too. If you live in London, you could search for “London Pro-
ducer Group” and see if anything comes up.

Also, go to events. Club nights, producer workshops, conferences, you get the
idea. Going to such events is a great way to network with people, and if alcohol
is involved, it’s much easier to convince people to collaborate with you (I’m kid-
ding, of course).

Finally, ask your friends if they know of anyone who makes music. This is more
helpful than you think. I grew up in a small town of 10,000 people and thought
I was the only one who made music until I was talking with a friend who men-
tioned their cousin was a producer.

Facebook groups
I touched on Facebook groups above, but I want to expand on them a little bit
because I think they’re one of the best ways to connect with other artists and
perform collaborations.

With many of these groups, you can straight up ask if anyone wants to collab.
Something like this will do:

Hey guys,

I’m looking for someone to collaborate with me on a [insert genre] track.

I’ve already got a basic idea (private soundcloud link to idea).

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I’ve been producing for X years and use [Insert DAW of choice].

If you’re keen, please flick me a message.

To improve your chances, make yourself known in the group before posting
something like this. Comment on posts, answer questions, provide feedback,
and become part of the community.

Once people know who you are, ask to collaborate.

Soundcloud
Soundcloud is a great way to find collaboration partners because you can imme-
diately judge someone’s skill level (and also how big their reach is if that matters
to you).

There’s no ideal strategy here. I’d recommend first looking through your follow-
ers. Listen to their music, and if there’s an artist you like, flick them a message
on Soundcloud and Facebook (or email if they have one advertised) and start
having a chat.

A final note
While I do think it’s a good idea to build the relationship first, if you want to col-
laborate straight away, you should.

In fact, if you haven’t done a collaboration before, this is exactly what I recom-
mend. Don’t be afraid to ask people straight up if they want to collaborate—
someone will say yes eventually.

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 COLLABORATIVE WORKFLOW
The question most producers ask when it comes to workflow and collaboration
is “how should the work be split?”

After all, if you’re the one doing most of the work, you feel like the project is
more yours than theirs. If they’re the one doing most of the work, you feel guilty.

Before I run through some workflows you can use, please note that it’s impossi-
ble to split the work 50/50, and to attempt to do so is missing the point of col-
laboration.

Creativity and ideas can’t be quantified. If someone does 60% of the hours on a
track, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve contributed 60% of the value, so don’t
worry about trying to find an exact balance.

Local collaboration workflow

I would suggest that you don’t lay out a structure, at least initially, for local col-
laborations.

The reason being that there’s an incredible amount of spontaneity and creative
buzz that exists when two or more producers are in the same room. You need an
element of freedom, of carelessness, to play around and jam.

The same could be said for online collaboration, but as I’ll get to in a moment,
that requires a little more structure.

So, at the start, don’t worry about how you’re going to manage or split up the
work. Just come up with ideas together. Play around with stuff. Share thoughts.
Laugh.

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If you find midway through the project that things are becoming tense or messy,
and you’re not getting much done, then a workflow may be necessary.

For local collaboration, I recommend splitting up the work by task (one person
creates a melody, the next creates a chord progression and so forth). However, a
better workflow can be the Couch & Operator workflow.

The Couch & Operator workflow

The couch & operator workflow sounds a bit stupid, but it’s an effective way to
collaborate especially when one person is an “ideas” person while the other is
more technically proficient or faster in the DAW.

It’s simple: one person is, more or less, hands-off: they’re listening attentively,
sharing ideas, making suggestions and tweaks. The other person is doing the
physical work: they’re implementing the ideas, making the tweaks, and so forth.’

This is how a lot of music production happens at an elite level. I guarantee some
of your favorite producers will hire people to actually do the legwork while they
provide the creative input.

Note: You obviously don’t need to sit on a couch to do this. I recommend sitting
in a chair right next to your collaboration partner (or for them to do so if you’re
the technical person).

Online collaboration workflow

Online collaboration typically involves two people working on a project at differ-
ent times rather than simultaneously. There’s less chance for serendipitous dis-
covery.

As such, it’s a good idea to have a workflow in place from the beginning.

Here are three workflows I recommend:

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Strengths workflow

With the strengths workflow, the work is split up between each collaborator
based on their strengths.

Let’s say you and I collaborated. I’m good at writing melodies and structuring a
track for maximum tension and energy, but I fall short in the areas you excel in:
mixing and sound design.

So we split up the work as follows:

1. I begin by coming up with a melodic idea, which I send over to you for
feedback. You make some suggestions, then I make some edits and add a
chord progression underneath.
2. The sounds I’m using are bland, so I hand the project over to you for a
few days to work on the sound design. You might also add a drum section
and bassline during this stage (the point is not to be rigidly structured but
rather split up the processes on a macro-level).
3. You hand the project back to me for structure and arrangement. Perhaps
we have a Skype call during this stage to discuss ideas and make a few
tweaks.
4. I hand the project back over to you for final mixing.

By doing this, we’ve both leveraged our strengths. It would be silly for me to fo-
cus on the mixing and sound design while you write the melody and work on the
arrangement. By not focusing on our strengths, it would do nothing but slow the
process down.

But Sam, shouldn’t I focus on improving my weaknesses?

Only to a certain point. Music production is too large a field to become good at
every facet. After all, some people devote their whole lives to studying the nature
of synthesis, which is merely one component of sound design, which is one com-
ponent of music production. Get your weaknesses up to a reasonable standard
where they don’t inhibit your music, but don’t try to become great at everything.

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One important thing to consider when following this workflow is that you and
your partner must be upfront about your skills. Typically your existing music
will showcase your skills—it might be well composed but badly mixed—but it’s
important that you let each other know what you think your strengths and weak-
nesses are so the work can be split up effectively.

It’s also important to not fall into the trap of closing yourself off from your part-
ner. It’s easy to assume that because your strength is writing melodies and your
partner’s strength is mixing, that you shouldn’t come to him for his thoughts on
the melody you’ve written for the song. Always ask what he or she thinks. Just
because someone can’t write a great melody, it doesn’t mean they don’t know
what a great melody sounds like.

Linear split workflow

If you and your collaboration partner are fairly well matched in terms of
strengths and weaknesses, and you’re up for a challenge, then I recommend
splitting the work in a linear fashion.

It’s simple: you work through the track, left to right, part-by-part.

Again, if you and I were to collaborate, I might work on the first 32 bars, then
you might take what I’ve done and write a 16 bar breakdown before handing it
back to me to work on the first chorus.

This workflow is challenging, but it’s also a great way to promote creativity.
Why? Because obviously the ideas that enter your head after listening to the 32
bar intro I’ve made will be different to the ideas I hear in my head. You might
take the track in a better or simply different direction than I was imagining, and
then when you send it back, I hear something different than where you were
thinking of taking it.

This sounds nice in theory, and it is when it works, but this disparity between
vision and ideas can lead to a lot of frustration. It’s important that you and your
collaboration partner are open to change, especially in the early stages of the
track.

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Later on during the project, it becomes necessary to communicate and start
working on it together instead of part-by-part. Different ideas and directions are
helpful during the beginning stages, but harmful closer to the end of the project
where the vision is clear.

Task-based workflow

The task-based workflow is effective because it leverages cloud technologies

(Splice, Dropbox) that allow us to work on the same project with ease (not hav-
ing to send large files back and forth).

You both work on the project in parallel, making tweaks and adjustments where
needed.

For example, your partner sketches out a basic arrangement. You like it, but you
feel that a few changes should be made, so you tell your partner you’re going
to make those changes. You save as a new version after making the necessary
changes, your partner likes most of them apart from a few, so he/she tweaks
accordingly.

If you wanted to take this approach one step further, you could create a task list.
It could be a shared Google Doc where you write down what you think needs
to be added or changed. You and your partner can go through and tick off the
items.

Some people dislike this overly structured way of working, but it can come in
handy when it’s crunch time.

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 TAKE ACTION
Another simple task: Find a collaboration partner.

You’ve read up on collaboration, its benefits, and how to do it well. Now it’s time
to actually collaborate with someone.

I’ve already given you some tips for finding collaboration partners, so put ‘em
into action!

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 7
DELIBERATE
PRACTICE
 ARE YOU REALLY
PRACTICING?
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is practice.”

— Vladimir Horowitz

In the electronic music production community, we don’t talk about practice

enough.

When see a violin player, we see practice. We see of a dedicated individual

spending hours every day making mistakes and correcting them; playing certain
sections of the piece slowly until perfect, and then speeding them up.

When we see a football/soccer player, we see practice. We see a dedicated in-

dividual spending hours every day on the field. Not repeating the shots they’re
good at, but instead failing repeatedly at the difficult shots, improving slightly
each time.

But when we see a music producer, the image of practice isn’t the same. We see
someone making a song—someone dedicated—but we often don’t see them the
same way as a violin player or football player.

There are reasons for this. One of them being that music production is a com-
plex creative field that can’t really be practiced the same way an instrument can
(Daniel Coyle, author of the The Talent Code states that it’s incredibly hard to
become an elite self-taught violin player, but there are many professional self-
taught writers, which shows there’s an obvious difference).

But I also think it’s something to do with the culture. Perhaps the idea of “prac-
tice” has been lost in the modern world of electronic music production.

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The illusion of practice
“To benefit from practice and reach your potential, you have to constantly challenge yourself.

This doesn’t mean repeatedly doing what you already know how to do.

This means understanding your weaknesses and inventing specific tasks in your practice to
address those deficiencies.”

— Corbett Barr

As a creative person, it’s easy to fall into the trap of “spinning the wheel.”

You fall into this trap after you’ve put a lot of effort in your creative journey:
you’ve built up a few skills, you’re good at writing melodies, designing sounds,
etc.

Basically, you’re at the stage where you can create a decent song with the skills
you already have.

So you keep spinning the wheel. You keep churning out songs. They’re decent.
Not spectacular, but they do the job. You’re comfortable, everybody’s comfort-
able, but you’re not getting better.

You think you’re practicing. You think that with every song, you’re improving,
and you’re probably right. But by how much are you improving?

Deliberate practice
As a beginner, you progress exponentially with every song you finish because
there’s so much to learn. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing, and you’re
learning constantly. But as you get better, you need to take a more directed ap-
proach to practice, otherwise you risk not being able to see through the illusion
of practice.

What you need is deliberate practice—something I touched on in chapter 5. The

119
common trait of all high-achievers, both in creative fields and in sports, is that
they know how to practice deliberately.

“Deliberate practice: working on technique, seeking out constant critical feedback, and focus-
ing ruthlessly on shoring up weaknesses.”

— Daniel Coyle

You practice deliberately when you’re at the edge of your ability.

It’s spending an hour a day designing complex sounds when you’re not good at
sound design. It’s writing 10 melodies in one sitting when you suck at writing
melodies. It’s finishing tracks quickly and rapidly when you’re not good at fin-
ishing tracks. It’s doing the hard things that can be enjoyable, but aren’t always
enjoyable.

Why is deliberate practice important?

Why is it so important? What’s wrong with being able to churn out good
tracks? Why should I challenge myself if I’m already proficient?

As I said, it’s easy to avoid doing things that are difficult and still end up with a
good track. There have been plenty of instances where I’ve avoided going down a
certain route with a track because I knew it was difficult and would require a lot
of time and effort. It’s not like I needed to go down that route, so I didn’t.

Of course, whenever you find yourself in such a situation, where a path has
opened up but you don’t take it because it’s difficult, you’re not being creative.
You’re limiting yourself, aren’t you?

Deliberate practice helps you develop the skills which open up those pathways
and make them easier to go down. When writing music, you’ll see more options
and possibilities because you’ll see the connection between things. For instance,
if you haven’t practiced sound design, you won’t see the link between sound de-
sign and composition, or sound design and mixing.

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If you practice deliberately over the long term, you’ll become a better artist.
You’ll put out music that is great.

On top of that, deliberate practice is simply satisfying. Perhaps it’s just because
it’s hard; you feel satisfied after deliberate practice the same way you feel satis-
fied after chopping wood for 6 hours. But it doesn’t matter why it’s satisfying, it
just is.

When you’re stuck in the cycle of churning out tracks without challenging your-
self, you begin to feel a bit bored. You get complacent, and eventually, your mu-
sic starts to suffer.

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 CREATING A PRACTICE PLAN
If you think that creating a practice plan is pedantic, you’re right.

It sounds like one of those things that your piano teacher gave you when you
were young. You looked at it, sighed, and didn’t actually follow it.

But creating routines and plans for your creative work is crucial if you want to
develop your skills as quickly as possible.

A practice plan does not need to be complicated. In fact, making it unnecessarily

complicated will ensure its failure.

Why develop a practice plan? This quote says it all (emphasis mine):

“Resist the temptation to be nice to yourself. You become your own worst
critic; you see your work as if through the eyes of others. You recognize your
weaknesses, precisely the elements you are not good at. Those are the aspects
you give precedence to in your practice. You find a kind of perverse pleasure
in moving past the pain this might bring. Second, you resist the lure of easing
up on your focus. You train yourself to concentrate in practice with double the
intensity, as if it were the real thing times two. In devising your own rou-
tines, you become as creative as possible. You invent exercises that work
upon your weaknesses. You give yourself arbitrary deadlines to meet certain
standards, constantly pushing yourself past perceived limits. In this way you
develop your own standards for excellence, generally higher than those of oth-
ers.” — Robert Greene

Step 1: Figure out how much time you

have
One key reason producers become stagnant and get stuck is that they don’t have
any sort of schedule for music production.

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When someone tells them that having a schedule or routine is important, they
tend to over-commit. They decide to be better than their friend who producers
music for one hour per day… “I’m going to make music after work for six hours
a day after work! How about that?!”

Of course, if you’ve never had a set schedule or routine for creative work/prac-
tice before, then committing to six hours a day is impossible.

Because of this, the first step in developing a rock solid practice plan is to figure
out not only how many hours you have to spare, but how many hours you think
you can commit to without failing. It’s better to under-commit and build up your
hours over time than over-commit and burn out or quit.

Between running EDMProd, eating food, exercising, and everything else, I prob-
ably have a good three hours per day spare. I could make music for those three
hours, but I know that it would be incredibly difficult on most days where I also
write for a few hours (or do any other sort of creative work).

So, I’d commit to half of that: ninety minutes, six days a week.

That totals nine hours per week, which may not seem like a lot, but when you’re
doing it consistently it has a huge impact.

Before moving on to step two, figure out how much time you can and should
commit to your practice plan (your practice plan does include making music, by
the way).

The second thing you must do is schedule this time out. Your scheduled time
doesn’t need to be set in stone—things always pop-up—but it should be defined.

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Step 2: Work out your ratio
It’s important to not spend all your time practicing (not working directly on a
song), and it’s also important not to spend all your time producing (working di-
rectly on a song but not actively learning).

Of course, making a song is practice, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. But di-
rected, deliberate practice should be part of your schedule.

The question is, how much should you do? Should you split it 50/50? Should
you spend more time making music and less time actively learning and practic-
ing?

There’s no right answer, and it’s something that will change over time. It also
depends on skill level. A lot of my friends who are great producers but want to
get to the next level spend a lot of their time actively learning and studying as
opposed to working on songs the whole time.

If you know what ratio suits you best—that’s great, use it. If you’re not sure, I
recommend starting with an 80/20 split: 80% of your time towards making mu-
sic, and 20% of your time towards actively learning and practicing.

The reason I recommend this split is that what you learn during the 20% is go-
ing to need to be practiced during the 80%, when you’re making music. For in-
stance, if I spend two hours one week learning about jazz chord progressions,
it’s a good idea for me to include them in a song I’m working on, and by doing
so, I’m practicing.

Remember, the real learning happens inside the DAW when we’re making
songs, but study helps us direct that learning. It helps reduce trial and error.

I’ll use an analogy to explain what I mean:

Let’s say I want to learn to chop onions. I could stand there for hours on end
with hundreds of onions, trying out different approaches and comparing them,

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working out how to chop faster and easier, how to cut finer, and so on.

Or I could go online to a reputable cooking website and learn one of the

chef-recommended techniques for chopping onions. And then I could leverage
trial and error to perfect a method that’s already been proven to work.

So, you can learn to craft a good chord progression through trial and error. If
you plot a wrong note, you’ll notice it, and you’ll move the note. Over time, you’ll
become more aware of which notes sound good, and which notes sound bad.
You won’t understand why they sound good and bad, of course, you’ll just know
that they do.

Or you could study up on chords and harmonic progression beforehand. You’d

know in advance which notes work together, and why they work together. By do-
ing this, you skip a number of steps that you’d have to work through otherwise,
placing you far ahead of the person working from trial and error right from the
start.

Before moving on, figure out your ratio. If you don’t know what to choose, just
start with the 80/20 split. You can always adjust it later.

Step 3: What’s your focus?

When I first developed a plan like this, I made the mistake of trying to practice
too many things.

I wanted to learn more music theory, I wanted to be better at sound design and
mixing. I wanted to be a whiz in Ableton and know all the keyboard shortcuts.

I figured by packing my plan with everything under the sun, I wouldn’t get bored
and I’d always be interested.

And it’s true—I didn’t get bored, but I also didn’t learn much at all. I was head-
ing in several directions at once and didn’t have time to process or implement
what I learned.

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So, instead of designing a curriculum for your practice plan from the ground up,
I recommend a much more simple approach (that you may find difficult initial-
ly)—choosing one thing at a time.

This means that your weekly practice would look something like this:

Rather than this:

The former is less interesting. It isn’t exciting. But it’s practical, and it will help
you far more than a diverse practice plan.

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Note: One hidden benefit to focusing on one thing is that it helps you develop
concentration. It’s easy to flick from one thing to the next when you’re learning,
but by doing so, you don’t develop the concentration that’s necessary for highly
creative work.

Choosing one thing is important, but that brings up a few questions, namely:
what should I focus on? For how long should I focus on it?

It’s a valid question—should you just pick something at random and run with it?
Should you do it for a week? A month? A year?

To figure out what to focus on learning, ask yourself one or both of the following
questions:

1. What do you want to be great at as a producer? What do you want to be

known for?
2. What’s holding your music back?

The answer may be the same to both questions.

For instance, I might want to be known for my melodies, and they also happen
to be the thing holding my music back. The mix sounds great, the sound design
is pristine, but the melodies are lacking. That should be what I focus on during
my practice sessions.

Taking my example. I want to get better at melodies. I’d devise a basic plan that
includes a little bit of theory/study and a lot of directed practice.

1. Finish two books on music theory, particularly around melody.

2. Remake as many melodies as possible during my two hours per week. Do
this for four weeks.
3. Write as many melodies as possible during my two hours per week. Do
this for four weeks.

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If I did this the other way around, it’d be less effective. By starting with theory
and study, I can recreate melodies in step two and actually understand what’s
going on. I can explain why a melody sounds the way it does, and make connec-
tions between things.

By remaking melodies in step two, I have a good idea of why certain melodies
sound the way they do, and a more intuitive understanding of how good melo-
dies are crafted. This allows me to be more directed during the final step.

All in all, this plan might take a few months, which seems awfully long. But re-
member, this is dedicating two hours per week. I could easily add another two
hours in on the weekend and halve the time.

How long should you focus on it for?

This is a hard question to answer because it’s not like you get to a certain point
where you feel you’ve mastered something. The same way an athlete doesn’t just
stop practicing something because they’re world-class at it. There’s no finality in
learning.

So, to some extent, you need to create arbitrary deadlines like I did above for my
plan. There’s nothing special about four weeks, I could have just as easily said
“keep going until one hundred melodies have been written.”

There’s nothing wrong with your deadlines being arbitrary. Deadlines are inher-
ently beneficial, and if you don’t set them, you run the risk of becoming compla-
cent and fed-up/bored.

So, set arbitrary deadlines. Figure out over time what works for you—maybe
you’re a fast learner and only need a few weeks. Maybe you don’t have much
time and you need to do it slower. Just set something and adjust it later.

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Practice plans for different skills
You’re welcome to go ahead and create your own practice plan if you know what
you need to learn. Otherwise, I’ve listed several below for different skills. You
should adjust the variables based on how much time you have.

These practice plans are all based on the Theory -> Imitate -> Create model that
you can see in the example I laid out earlier (melody practice).

Note: I’ve added more in-depth practice plans, as well as intermediate ones in
the bonuses section for the Complete Package (use discount code: BOOK19 to
take the price of the book off)

Structure & arrangement basics

1. Watch the free course I made for Freshly Squeezed Samples (search
“Structure and Arrangement in Electronic Music) on YouTube.
2. Using blank MIDI clips in your DAW, analyze/deconstruct the arrange-
ment for 50 songs OR for 4 weeks.
3. Using construction kits and pre-made loops, create 20 common but
slightly different structures (construction kits aren’t cheating in this sce-
nario as they’re purely being used for practice/learning).

Synthesis basics
1. Read Sound on Sound Synth Secrets
2. Reverse engineer presets for 4 weeks: take a screenshot of a preset, and
then recreate it from scratch by following said screenshot. Take note of
how the sound changes with each knob you twist.
3. Recreate presets for 4 weeks: listen to a preset, don’t look at how it’s
made, and then attempt to recreate it.
4. Create your own sounds for 4 weeks: don’t listen to presets, just create.

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Theory basics
1. Read Music Theory for Computer Musicians
2. Remake existing melodies for 4 weeks.
3. Write melodies over existing chord progressions for 2 weeks.
4. Write original melodies for 4 weeks.

Note: I haven’t added a basic practice plan for mixing because it’s difficult to do
so unless you have access to stems. The only way you can really practice mixing
is to mix. However, it’s worth reading a book or two on mixing. I recommend
Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio by Mike Senior.

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 8
ORIGINALITY
 NOTHING IS ORIGINAL
Originality comes from the root word origin, which means beginning—the start
of something.

When you produce a song, are you doing something completely new? Or are you
making a derivative of something else?

Are you forming the origin of something? Or simply iterating on other works?

It’s the latter, almost every time. You can’t escape influence, and you shouldn’t
want to escape it.

“…the height of originality is skill in concealing origins.” — Unknown

Nothing comes from nowhere

“What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds
on what came before. Nothing is completely original.”

— Austin Kleon, Steal Like An Artist

When you sit down to produce a new track, whether you’re aware of it or not,
you’re pulling from music you’ve listened to.

You might structure a build-up in the same way as your favorite song. You might
write a melody in a particular style that’s similar to another artist.

Doing this does not mean you’re a cheat. You are a cheat if you steal an exact
melody, or change hardly any of it and call it your own. But if you copy the style
of the melody, perhaps even the rhythm, it cannot be called cheating.

When someone writes a non-fiction book, they don’t set out to make something
completely original from their own head. They use sources, they read a ton of

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other books and papers, they pull quotes from articles. This section that I’m
writing right now is not my own original idea, it’s been heavily influenced by
other works.

Creativity is a fusing together of multiple influences to create something new.

Artists iterate
When you think about how electronic music has evolved over the last couple of
decades, it makes you think—why didn’t someone do X sooner?

X could be trap music, future bass, or the big room sound that was popular
during 2012-13.

After all, we had the technology 10-15 years ago to make such music, so why
didn’t someone innovate and make it?

The answer is probably more intricate than you and I think, but my sugges-
tion would be that artists iterate, because that’s how music works. It evolves. It
doesn’t normally take quantum leaps.

Take a genre like trance, for instance. In the early days, trance music was closer
to what we call techno today. It didn’t have long, extended breakdowns. Over
time, it changed. Long extended breakdowns became a staple, supersaws be-
came a staple, and the BPM was still relatively fast.

Nowadays, trance music still retains some of those characteristics, but has
evolved into much more. Just because a track doesn’t have a supersaw, it doesn’t
mean it’s not trance. It’s evolved because artists have iterated. But it didn’t hap-
pen overnight.

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Don’t be afraid to steal
“The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.”

— David Bowie

Based on the facts that nothing comes from nowhere, and the best artists hide
their sources, it makes sense to steal ideas from other people.

Just make sure not to steal from only one source, rather, steal from many. For
example, you might take a few notes from a melody from one source, a drum
sequence from another, and a basic structure from yet another song. Once you
merge these all together, you’ll have something new and distinguishably yours.

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 CRAFTING YOUR SIGNATURE
SOUND
It’s not essential to develop a signature sound right out of the gate (or at all).
There are plenty of artists out there who make great music that isn’t particularly
unique in any way. Besides, the majority of people who listen to music don’t care
whether the creator has a particular signature sound, they just want to listen to
music.

While not essential, you simply can’t deny the immense benefits that having a
signature sound produces. There are many benefits, but for the sake of simplici-
ty, I’ll go over two.

Branding
To quote Australian producer Northie:

“Finding your signature sound that translates across many genres is the best
thing you can do for your brand. Something people can identify you with as a
unique artist. When you think of names like Skrillex, Madeon, Deadmau5, Dil-
lon Francis, Diplo... you can identify their production no matter what genre
they dabble in because you’ve become familiar with THEIR sound.”

Developing your unique sound is, like Northie said, one of the best things you
can do for your brand. It’s why people like your page on Facebook to get regular
updates from you, or follow you on Soundcloud. When you have a unique sound
(and people like it), you’ll have fans craving new releases, wanting more and
more.

Remix opportunities (and general ca-

reer opportunities)

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There’s a reason why Madeon is one of the most in-demand remixers. Not only
is he incredibly skilled technically, he has a truly distinctive sound that sets him
apart.

Developing a unique sound leads to more remix opportunities. When labels

and artists are aware of you and your sound, you’ll be more likely to get a remix
contract for a song because the original producers feel their track would benefit
from your sound.

How to develop your signature sound

You know that a signature sound is beneficial, and you want to develop one. So
how should you go about it?

1. Listen to music you like and dislike

Aside from the actual practice of making music, listening to music is a great way
to build your repertoire of what you like and dislike.

Why should you want to build your repertoire? Because a unique sound comes
from a unique taste, and a unique taste comes from listening to a lot of music.

First and foremost, you should listen to music you like. Ask yourself why you
like particular songs. What stands out? Why do you keep listening through to
the end?

But you should also listen to music you dislike. You don’t necessarily need to do
this actively, but if you come across a track that everyone seems to love except
you, ask yourself why you don’t like it. What’s keeping you from liking it? Is it
the composition? The sound design?

Naturally, you’ll apply this taste to your own music. You’ll discard certain ideas
while welcoming others.

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2. Be patient

Because a signature sound is comprised of taste and your ability to effectively

translate that taste into polished music, it takes a long time to develop.

Also, a signature sound should not take precedence over technical skill. It should
not come before learning how to use EQ, compression, or basic music theory.
Even if you do manage to develop a signature sound before becoming a compe-
tent producer, your sound wouldn’t be anywhere near as powerful as it could be
since the music won’t likely sound polished enough.

3. Don’t pigeon-hole yourself

One of the dangers that comes with consciously thinking about your signature
sound is trapping yourself in one genre.

It’s easy to think, “Well, I must make trance, otherwise I’ll stray too far from my
desired sound.”

Flick back to that quote from Northie, and remember that a signature sound is
not something that’s confined to one genre, but rather something that can tra-
verse across all genres. Listen to Mat Zo’s album Damage Control and you’ll see
what I mean.

Also, don’t discard a good idea just because it doesn’t fit with your overall vision
or sound, especially if you’re a new producer. Good music is good music, and at
the end of the day, if it doesn’t fit your sound and you don’t think it’s appropri-
ate to release it, then you don’t need to do anything with it.

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Other people will notice first
I didn’t know I had a unique sound until someone told me. In fact, I’m still skep-
tical that I really do.

Other people will notice that you have a signature sound before you do. They
may not point it out, but they’ll notice.

It’s the same with working out, trying to gain or lose weight. Others notice first
because they’re not seeing you every day, whereas you’re looking at yourself in
the mirror comparing yourself day after day.

When you’re producing music frequently, it’s hard to hear progress and change.
It’s hard to know when you’ve developed that signature sound.

Fortunately, there are two tests you can do:

1. Ask your friends, “Is there a common theme in my music?”

2. Do a blind test on someone with a track that you created and another
track that you didn’t create. See if they can tell the difference. (Note, this
doesn’t work if said person has heard the other track!)

This only works with honest people, of course, so don’t ask your mother or
someone who will tell you what you want to hear.

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 WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
Wherever you are in your journey as a producer, I hope you have gained some-
thing from this book.

It’s the best time in history to be a creative, but it’s also one of the most difficult.
We’re surrounded by distraction, day in and day out.

Remember to focus on focusing, cultivating high output, pushing through cre-

ative ruts, and organizing your life in a way that benefits creativity rather than in
a way that works against it.

To become a prolific, productive and creative producer you need to nail at least
some of things I’ve talked about in this book. Check yourself constantly, and
remember to work on your weaknesses. If you find it hard to focus, then devel-
op your focusing skills. If you find it hard to come up with ideas, then dedicate a
few weeks to purely idea generation.

If you struggle with something, it’s not because you lack the talent, it’s simply
because you haven’t practiced enough. The playing field is even - you get out
what you put in.

Most importantly, don’t forget to enjoy making music. It sounds stupid, but it’s
the first thing that is disregarded when you start over analyzing what you’re do-
ing or when you start to become career-focused rather than art-focused. Reflect
on why you started making music in the first place. Don’t just go through the
motions whilst being indifferent to your craft.

Could you do me a favor?

Writing this book took a lot of work. I need to know that it’s actually helped peo-
ple (partly because I’ll feel guilty if it hasn’t, and also because I love to hear suc-
cess stories in general). If this book helps, or has helped you, please let me know
by emailing me at sam@edmprod.com. I’d love to hear from you!