Benefits That Come From Focusing On What You Love In Music

The non-musical world often thinks that making and performing music is always fun, easy, and instantly gratifying. But serious musicians know that this is only one part of their story. Loading your equipment out of a venue you just played after a show that no one attended isn't fulfilling. Pitching your new album to a long list of email contacts and never hearing back isn't fun. And yet both these examples are things independent musicians have to do to find audiences for their music. You can think of it as "paying your dues," but the kicker is that some artists never manage to move past the stage of trying to get the world to notice their music, even if their songs are great. That's a hard truth about pursuing music.

One of the only sure things you'll have in music is your ability to enjoy what you do as a musician, whether it's getting on stage or writing music. But for as important as this connection is in music, we often neglect it by acting in certain ways that we think we need to to find success. Here are four huge benefits you'll find by focusing on what you love most in music:

The ability to create naturally

If you've been working on new music for months and nothing seems to be clicking, it could be because your passion just isn't where it should be. It sounds obvious, but writing in ways that match your unique preferences and interests builds a natural creative practice. But making music in ways that aren't true to ourselves does just the opposite. The classic example is imitating popular music to chase success. When you drop expectations and try to make music that's exciting and unique to you, you'll be able to work freely and naturally.

Authenticity

Creating and performing authentically in music comes from a place of being able to connect with joy and purpose. But when we're too focused on creating work we think the world wants us to make or writing out of another artist's creative playbook, we risk compromising and losing it. When you perform and create with the things you uniquely love about music at the center of your actions, you're working authentically and with purpose. The hard part is that it's easy to simply copy and paste another artist's work into your own process without realizing it, especially if you're just starting out in music. It's not always easy to keep focusing on what uniquely drives you in music, but doing so is the only way to preserve your authenticity.

Resilience

For musical artists dedicated to creating and performing music seriously, resilience is a crucial lifeline for creative survival. It allows you to bounce back from the countless disappointments the music industry can throw at you, from bad reviews to financial hardship to band breakups. I'd argue that the only way to bring resilience into your life as a musician is to ensure you're doing exactly what you love in music. If music creation is an important part of your identity, you'll be able to withstand disappointment better if you're actively writing. The same goes for those who live to perform, record, or produce. Hardship is inevitable in music, but living a creative life built around your passions isn't. It's a choice you'll have to make.

Creative inspiration

How musicians find and use inspiration completely depends on the individual. But it's safe to say that neglecting your musical passions will make it far harder to come by. Life has a way of crowding out what we love about making music even when it appears like we're working the way we want to on the surface. Situations like one creative voice getting lost in the shuffle of a band or an artist prioritizing promotion over music creation can lead to the loss of musical inspiration.

If your musical life isn't where it should be, it's time to make some changes. What we love can't be at the center of our musical lives unless we design it to be. For some musicians, it's as simple as remembering to focus on doing what inspires them the most from week to week. For others, the path is harder and often requires having tough conversations with bandmates or doing some soul searching. But regardless of your unique situation, you'll thrive in music much more if you focus on doing what you love than if you don't.

3 Tips For Prioritizing Music In Your Weekly Schedule

Music might be one of the most important things in your life, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to pursue it in earnest easily. From fighting through seasons where inspiration seems impossible with having to balance non-musical priorities during your week, working on music consistently can feel impossible to do sometimes. But the truth is that your ability to make music creation, performance, and promotion a regular part of your life could be the single factor that determines whether you reach your goals or not. If you want to earn a living through music or simply create work that deeply resonates with a wide audience, you won't get there without hard, consistent work. No matter what kind of music you make or what your goals are, you'll thrive and grow much more as a musician if you can prioritize music in your weekly schedule. Here are three tips for helping you do just that:

Create an action plan to tackle short-term goals

If you're a songwriter, free and unstructured time to work on music should absolutely be a part of your weekly schedule. But to make those times more productive, start first by creating a list of short-term goals to accomplish each week. If you're in the middle of recording an album, it could be finishing specific songs or working on a promotion plan. If you are unclear on how to spend your time, thinking about what you want out of music and how to get there is a great way to make progress. Serious musicians will get the most out of splitting their time between creating and rehearsing but also some of the less sexy things that need to be done like answering emails, pitching music, and planning. By prioritizing what's important and carving out enough time to address each item on your list, you'll ensure that you'll have time to create and handle everything that needs to happen in your music career each week.

Be realistic when carving out time for music

We'd all love to spend eight hours a day working on music, and some of us are lucky enough to do it. But for the rest of us––those with non-music careers, families, and other obligations––working on music each week is a balancing act. You might not be able to accommodate a 40-hour musical week, but you could potentially swing a 15-hour one, and you can get a lot done in that timeframe if you focus. Being realistic about the amount of time you can commit to music each week means approaching things in a sustainable way. As you develop your music, it could become a bigger and bigger part of your life that eventually helps to financially support you. But the truth is that it could be years before that happens. If you think of the long game rather than what things look like now, you'll see that consistently writing great music over a period of years is what earns artists dedicated fans. You can absolutely make that happen, but your chances of getting there will be much better if you can be realistic about your music commitment with something like two to three hours a day of work with more on the weekends.

Choose and stick to consistent times when you do nothing but focus on music

If you're being realistic about the times you can commit to music during your week and can shape how you spend your time by tackling short-term goals, you need to make absolutely sure to focus on music without distractions. This means that when you set aside time to write music during the week, all you do is write music––close your laptop, turn off your smartphone, kick your roommate/kids out of the room, and do nothing but focus on creating. Doing this is actually a lot harder than it sounds, but it will pay off. Think about whether you'll be able to focus only on music during the week when you schedule time to write.