Make Bad Music! (via @AfroDjMac Podcast)

Hi there, everybody. I hope you’re feeling good and do your thing, being creative, following your dreams etc. etc.. On my side it’s “stuck-as-usual” and therefore I want to point out a good source of inspiration for that kind of condition: the podcast of AfroDJMac which calls itself “the Music Production Podcast“. From the title you may expect a lot of tutorials on how to use Ableton Live or plugin X, but from my POV it’s more about creativity and getting things done. Therefor it doesn’t need fancy videos to teach you something useful (Brian has them, too, but this is not the topic here). So, that said it maybe be an interesting podcast not only for musicians / producers but for all the other creative people as well. If you haven’t done so, please check it out.

Today I want to write about a special older episode of that podcast, which is called “Make Bad Music“. It’s about those songs, you start but do not finish because you think they are bad/not-good-enough/not-awesome-enough. He thinks that you should finish those songs anyway. Why? It’s a waste of time, right? You should work on the awesome part of your legacy, those songs you future wikepedia article will call “trend setting” or “mayor milestone of the genre” after your big breakthrough. Time is limited, right? His point is this: What you practice right now is “starting songs”, “working on songs” … and what is missing is “finishing songs”. So, when your big hit comes you will have problems finishing it, because you do it for the first time. Well, maybe not for the first time but you will have problems doing it, because it’s relatively new. Maybe you don’t have a process established, your have doubts how to do it.

The solution is in the title: Finish the “bad” songs to establish the process / the habit. This sounds good to me, for those reasons

• practice, practice, practice as stated above
• instead of getting nothing “done” (dread, dread, dread) you get it “DONE!” (yeah, awesome!). It may be “bad” in your ears, but it’s DONE! which gives you new energy to carry on
• Bad in your ears may be cool or even awesome in the ears of someone out there. There a lot of artists who had their breakthrough with something completely different then expected.
• more respect for “bad” songs you find on the internet. Downloaded a “bad” song from bandcamp or soundcloud? Well, it may be bad in your ears but it was published. That is more than you have, right! And he/she/they had the courage to show it to the world saying “here it is. My thing! It’s done!”

Maybe this will motivate you to re-check your old songs and finish some of them. I hope this will motivate you to check out Brian’s podcasts. His episodes are full of those gems of wisdom. I wish you a creative day and if you want to discuss this topic I would be happy if you comment below.

-mE

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