A new year has just begun and we are all so excited for a new beginning. Most of us have made some serious decisions about the goals we want to achieve this year. Some of you have set health goals, family goals, personal goals, but what about your music? What about your home studio? Have you thought about it seriously? You want to make more music this year, don’t you? Have you set your goals? Have you set deadlines for the unfinished projects that you have left behind?
I know what you’re thinking! That with all these things happening in your life you can’t find any time for you. That’s life! You know something? Even if you had 18 hours at your disposal for your music , I bet that you would skip a couple of hours to do something different! And don’t try to deny it! I will tell you something and I want you to trust me on that. Do you know what is the secret for making more music this year? The answer is deadlines.Yes , exactly this empowering procedure for setting deadlines to every single goal that you set or a project that you want to finish is the key to success.It’s the key to accomplishing more things in your life.Let’s start setting goals.
Brian Tracy , a worldwide well known author , public speaker,time management expert, said that 1 minute of planning saves us from 10 minutes of execution. It’s so true! You will see the difference ,once you apply this habit to your life. Did you know that only the 3% of the population on earth writes down it’s goals? The rest 97% just works for that 3%! Everything is on planning. I want you to do something this weekend or even better today if that’s possible. I want you to take a blank piece of paper and write down everything you want to achieve this year in your life. I assume that making music is one of your big goals for this year,isn’t it? Ok,write down what you want to achieve this year in your home studio. You have to write down what you really want.For example, you want to release an album or an ep or a single.You have to be specific when you are going to do this. You are not writing some thoughts or ideas that just come to your head.You plan everything you want.
Let’s say that you want to release an ep by 30th of June .Now you have set a goal that is measurable and you have set a deadline.The next step is to plan every step you have to take for moving towards that goal. And here my friend comes a very handful tool that is invented for this purpose. The calendar. A very effective tool for those who use it regularly. Being musicians , we have this theory that creativity is something that we can’t program ,it needs to be spontaneous and we must wait for this moment where inspiration strikes. No , forget about these old fashioned believes! Creativity is a gift that you have to share to the world. You have to create!
Now let’s schedule the whole process from writing the songs until you upload and release your ep. It’s a big project ,and it needs to be divided to smaller tasks that you can manage. And the best way to do this, is going backwards from the release date. For example you want to release your EP on 30th of June. That means that mastering has to be finished the latest on 23rd of June. You have to be aware that uploading your songs for distribution on a platform of your choice doesn’t mean that will be released at the same time. It depends from the platform, an average time for releasing your songs is 5-15 days. The next step is schedule how long does mastering take to be completed and that way you set a start date for the mastering of your songs.
The next phase is mixing. If you start mastering ,for example, 16/5 ,then the mixing phase has to be done by 14th of June. You define the duration of the mixing and going backwards you set the start date. Let’s say that you need one month for mixing.14th of May is the start date of mixing. After that , we have recording month , week or whatever you choose to be.
Recording process has to be done by 12th of May and you have to get started on 12th of April.And the final step(going backwards) is songwriting process. Songwriting has to be done by 11th of April or earlier. And the start date should be around 11th of March. So if you set a goal that you will write 5 songs or 2 songs, or even one ,I suggest to put a monthly schedule for every task that you created. In that way a big project is scheduled and planned. Maybe you are a tech guy or girl and you don’t want to write or schedule to a calendar.That’s fine!use whatever you want! Use your mobile phone or your pc. As long as you schedule things you will be always on track.
Now the next thing you have to do is to plan the details for completing each task of your project. The first is songwriting. Ok, great! You have a month to write five ,three , or even one song.You know better. You have set a deadline for that procedure! You’ve got to have your songs ready by the due date. In the meantime you have to program some other things,like you have to schedule an appointment with your vocalist (in case you don’t sing) and rehearse the songs or record a demo of your songs and mail them to your vocalist if this is possible. Once you are done with songwriting, the next step is recording. For having better results you must be prepared according the instrumentation of your songs. If you want to record classic guitar in one of your songs, you have to mail a demo of that song to your guitarist friend , or even a score of it to listen and rehearse on some phrases or the rhythm pattern. In that way you minimize the recording time. Also you have to schedule the exact dates of recording with each musician you want to participate. Another thing you have to plan and be prepared is recording vocals. As you see, everything is scheduled in details. This is the best way to schedule a project. But I left the best tip for last! You must get started now! Today! Don’t waste any more time.