For musicians that aren’t yet signed or making music full time, that side job and a busy lifestyle can get in the way of recording your current album. It’s easy to be distracted when such a daunting task is looming over you like a heavy weight of responsibility on your chest. It doesn’t need to be like that, recording an album should be fun and satisfying. If you struggle to keep momentum going, here are 4 ways to make sure you record as often as you can.
Schedule Recording Time
I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep a schedule. As this is rudimentary to a lot of musicians, it may be that you find yourself in a whirlwind of “busy”.
The number one way to combat that is to commit your time. Making music is great, but making music to pay your bills requires a commitment to your craft, and if you don’t give yourself the time to actually practice your craft, you’re just spinning your wheels.
Schedule fun time, schedule music time, even schedule family time. If you could get a peek at my iCal schedule, you would see several different colors representing different aspects of my life, right down to going to the Y. I even schedule family time. Why? Because If I don’t commit to a time to set aside for family, I may just keep working. To keep myself balanced, I schedule everything.
Balance in your life doesn’t happen by accident, it takes effort, and walking away from a task or free time to move to your next scheduled effort in life takes practice. Schedule your recording time so that your party time or any other things you like to spend your time on don’t suffer.
Keep Your Fans Updated
It’s funny how some people can commit to something without any outside influence and some people need a reason, often a reason from someone they make a commitment to. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just how your wired.
The bad would be knowing you need some reason to be motivated an then you don’t set one up. If you’re the type of musician who knows you need a 3rd party to help keep you in line, I can give you about the best suggestion you can get for who to use… your fans.
Tell them your in production. They will love knowing that you working on new material for them. Keep a twitter lifeline updating for them, keep your Facebook updated. Let your email list know what’s happening day to day. Keep a blog about it. There are many ways to keep your fan base abreast of your day to day, and if you’re the kind of person that is wired in a way that keeping a commitment to someone else is more motivating that making a commitment yourself, use your fans to your advantage.
Have a Goal
Making a new album is a great time, but if you have no idea what your trying to achieve, then you may not have any idea how to achieve it. That’s a fairly simple statement, but if your “free time you” is not aware of your goals, neither is the you that makes sure the record button gets pushed.
I’m about to give you another one of my Father’s “isms”. You know those sayings your elders give you when your younger that actually make sense later.
My Dad used to tell me “Heath, if you fail to plan, you might as well plan to fail.”. Who knew that was real wisdom that would stick with me in my lifetime. Sounds like crazy talk, but, it’s the kind of crazy that gets stuff done. Have a goal as to what the album is to achieve and reach it. I touch on this a bit in my ebook “6 Steps to Creating Your Next Album”. It’s free, so click here to grab it if you haven’t already.
Work With a Producer
Working with someone that you can trust to take your music and make it marketable while completing the goal of finishing the album is a godsend to those musicians who could really use the extra help.
Not all producers work with those who only have record deals. Some producers are willing to contribute either as “work for hire” or for a percentage of the sales from the album.
For more information on what benefits a producer can give you, click here to get my free ebook.
