Project Distractions
I love music. I love listening to music. I love making music. I love playing music.
One of the demons constantly in my face when I’m working on music projects is that of a specific type of distraction: The desire to work on many different projects and sound styles.
Through various reading material written by new-music-industry professionals, I’ve learned that I increase my chances of ‘break out success’ (i.e. propelling myself into a music career, which is my goal) by focusing my efforts on a specific product. In this case, the product is my style of music, and I’ve chosen downtempo and house (and their close sub-genre relatives) as my ‘main’ focus in production.
The trouble is, I get these great ideas for side projects with new monikers that I want to work on, or I get a wild streak and end up producing nearly an albums worth of song starts or snippets that are great pieces (or have the potential to be great). This pulls me away from the main path (downtempo and house) and clouds my vision of becoming a successful musician. It’s very frustrating!
The positive aspects of this are: I learn a lot about producing in different styles and pick up new tactics that I can apply to ALL of my music writing and producing. The experience gained in these side projects and one-off sessions provide me with more knowledge, skill, and tools to increase the quality of my music overall.
Like I already wrote, though, a negative is that it clouds my vision. I feel further away from my goals as a budding musician wanting to make music his prime focus as a career and a means to provide for his family. I become somewhat frustrated when thinking about the music I want to take to a live audience. My wires get crossed and I have a hard time focusing on what I *want* to do VS. what *would be nice* to do.
It all comes down to blog posts like this or journal entries that allow me to sort my thoughts and keep a calm collective about the whole thing.
Remain focused, and keep working hard on my primary craft. I will have time in the future to work on the other projects that I want to.
