In his classic book Reality Check, Guy Kawasaki summarizes the advice of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on how to be a great engineer:
1. Don’t waver
2. See things in gray-scale
3. Work alone
4. Trust your instincts
When I read this the other week, my first thought was that this is also great advice for musicians as they navigate the creative process.
Don’t Waver
I know some very talented musicians who, despite writing and recording constantly, really struggle to complete any of the projects they start. They have a wealth of talent but little work to show for it.
The problem? They can’t commit to one artistic goal at a time.
Example: A singer-songwriter sets out to record an acoustic EP, just his voice and his guitar. After a few months of work, he decides that the record would actually be better with a full band. So he starts recording with a band, but after several more months he decides that he doesn’t like any of the material. So he chooses to scrap everything and start over from scratch, this time writing songs him and the piano instead…
I call this creative A.D.D., and artists need to be cautious about falling victim to it. Granted, the creative process isn’t linear. Some things you try musically won’t work, and it’s important to recognize when it’s time to take a fresh approach. But once you’ve settled on a creative direction and spent a bit of time pursuing it, see it through to the end. Push your doubts aside and finish that acoustic album before you start the full-band record. Chances are that it will turn out better than you thought it would.
See Things In Gray-Scale
While committing to an artistic direction is important, being open-minded about the shape your tracks will ultimately take is also critical. As I mentioned, the creative process is rarely linear. Letting your songs evolve as you work is necessary and often leads to good things.
When my brother and I work on a track, our strategy is always to take the path of least resistance without completely overhauling what we’re doing. For example, one song we produced last year began as a mid-tempo rock track. As we worked on it, we kept finding ourselves wanting to add more electronica elements to it. But in order to make those new elements feel right, we realized that we would have to cut the tempo in half. After initially resisting this change, we eventually decided to go for it. The end result was a downtempo electronica song that was quite different – and in my opinion, much better – than the track we thought we were going to make when we started.
Work Alone/Trust Your Instincts
Feedback is essential for all artists. But feedback needs to be sought at the right time from the right people.
I generally find it counterproductive to solicit any input on a song until it is near completion. In the early stages of track, when there are so many directions that it could go, outside advice just confuses things. They say that too many cooks in the kitchen ruins the meal. Similarly, too many opinions in the studio can be disastrous.
Once my brother and I have developed a song or idea more completely, we then get as much feedback as possible from peers, other producers, and our target audience. From there, we can go back and change things if we want to. Or we might decide to remix the track. But we always push our ideas as far as we can on our own first while trying to ignore outside influences as much as possible.